8 ms·

Loon and Wing graduate from Google/Alphabet X

133 points by jpm_sd 8y ago

jamestimmins 8y ago
This (almost) exact story seems to resurface every couple of years. Given that Google has to allow (or perhaps) initiate the story and access, I wonder if there's a specific type of situation in which Google's PR team decides that it's time for another "Inside X" story.
- jpm_sd 8y ago
  In this particular case, it's because Loon and Wing are "graduating" (spinning out), although that information is a few paragraphs deep. And it's in the URL, but not the article title.
  - dang 8y ago
    Ah I see. Since the title you submitted with is actually the language of the URL, we'll put it back.
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  I wonder if it's when they have trouble hitting their recruiting numbers. There's a popular theory that X is the carrot dangled in front of both current Google employees and potential hires-- "Look at this cool stuff you could work on!"-- while in reality they usually get sent to the trenches to squeeze out 0.003% gains in revenue-per-query.
  - vkou 8y ago
    Nobody I have ever worked with at Google has had this carrot dangled under their noses. It certainly wasn't dangled under mine when I was hired. I don't dangle it under the noses of anyone I interview. I think most people with a basic understanding of arithmetic realize that the overwhelming majority of the company does not work in X, and they should not expect to, either. I have zero interest in working in X. The reason hiring is hard is because the interviews have a low pass rate, everyone else is also hiring, and salaries + benefits among top tech firms in an area are fairly similar.
    - Y_Y 8y ago
      > The reason hiring is hard is because the interviews have a low pass rate But the pass rate is up to the company. Either the wrong people are being brought in for interviews, or Google is looking for some x-factor that nobody has.
      - TomVDB 8y ago
        If the hiring process is able to identify a good hire whereas just the resume does not (which is a big if, but companies assume that it does), then it totally makes sense to bring in a lot of people to interviews.
      - s2g 8y ago
        The answer is that google doesn't give a shit about false negatives. They know they will get enough people applying several times that they can just toss out qualified people all day. Eventually enough get in.
        andybak 8y ago
        Unless of course the hiring process has a systemic flaw and there's an entire class of people that are being rejected that could be game changing. (I actually don't have an axe to grind here - it's certainly not related to any obvious grouping - I just wonder if interview and selection might be so deeply flawed that a the occasional random lottery injection might improve the overall result.)
        rrdharan 8y ago
        There are effectively random lottery injections via acquisition/acquihires. Source: I was/am one.
        s2g 8y ago
        I thought they made people re-interview?
  - trhway 8y ago
    i can only wonder what kind of sweet deal the employees of the graduating project get to stay with the project and the new company as otherwise being kicked off the mothership can be expected to be a good trigger for job change.
    - kdbg 8y ago
      I believe graduating from X doesn't mean they are no longer going to be under Alphabet rather that they've graduated from being a moonshot project under X.company to being their own thing, still under Google/Alphabet and all the benefits that entails. If anything I imagine its a net positive for the team, though I'm not a Googler and don't really know the internal dynamics of the situation.
    - pm90 8y ago
      I think many employees would be very interested in their equity compensation...wonder if employees are awarded RSU's in Alphabet or the subsidiaries or ...
      - steve_musk 8y ago
        Alphabet
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  Earnings season?
1996 8y ago
TLDR: big company tries to remain dynamic by running its own internal innovation program Too bad it has never worked too well for any other big company, for structural reasons ("Internal incubators")
- agumonkey 8y ago
  do you know where I can read about this, I've always been curious about that
  - 1996 8y ago
    Try industrial organization in econ
    - agumonkey 8y ago
      Thanks a lot
- relyks 8y ago
  This is wrong. The article even mentions this. Look at Bell Labs
  - 1996 8y ago
    I am not surprised that an PR article would try to spin the positive side. There are rare exceptions in anything - but the existance of lottery winners does not mean the expected payout of a lottery ticket is positive. Bell Labs used its monopoly profits to fund research - which was good for research, but no so much for Bell. If we consider AT&T as Bells successor, it only allowed Bell to stay relevant. Still, AT&T now is nowhere close to Bell it is heyday. Same for Xerow now. Research doesn't pay as much as companies seems to think. While google position in online advertising is as close to a monopoly as legally possible, it will not change the structure of the incentives. The odds are against them. But maybe they do not aim for the kind of success they claim they will have, and only want to stay relevant, like Microsoft is now. That is more possible, even if it will be hard to pull. Personally, I think most R&D money that companies like Microsoft (or Google) have sunk into internal R&D could have had much better uses. But it's not my money! And eventually white elephants get butchered for the meat, so no big loss there.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nchase 8y ago
Are any of these moonshot projects trying to counteract human-driven climate change?
- vilhelm_s 8y ago
  > The Foundry uses this intense interrogation to root out the things that could kill a project down the line, before X has poured in piles of money and time. Take Foghorn, X’s effort to create a carbon-neutral fuel from seawater. The tech was amazing and the problem was huge, but two years in, the team realized they had no viable way to compete with gasoline on cost—and were reliant on technology that was closer to research than development. X killed Foghorn, gave everyone on the team a bonus, and let them find new projects to push.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  There's a salt battery project in X. Makani is also in X. There's a thermal pump company that graduated from X last year. There's also a team at Google working on Fusion research. Probably more I don't know too.
  - pfdietz 8y ago
    Thermal pump -- is that Malta?
    - Eridrus 8y ago
      Not sure if thermal pump is really the right term, but I meant Dandelion.
bitmapbrother 8y ago
Good to see Loon graduating into its own company. Project Loon was very instrumental in connecting Puerto Rico after the hurricane [1]. [1] https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/20/project-loon-att-puerto-rico/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/20/project-loon-att-puerto-...
- Eridrus 8y ago
  Was it? The numbers Look posted didn't seem super impressive given the number of people on the island. They also said nothing about reliability. I want to like Loon, but don't have much data to really go on.
- woah 8y ago
  Most of the comments in your history are Google related, or anti-apple

133 points by jpm_sd 8y ago

This (almost) exact story seems to resurface every couple of years. Given that Google has to allow (or perhaps) initiate the story and access, I wonder if there's a specific type of situation in which Google's PR team decides that it's time for another "Inside X" story.

jpm_sd 8y ago
In this particular case, it's because Loon and Wing are "graduating" (spinning out), although that information is a few paragraphs deep. And it's in the URL, but not the article title.
- dang 8y ago
  Ah I see. Since the title you submitted with is actually the language of the URL, we'll put it back.
Analemma_ 8y ago
I wonder if it's when they have trouble hitting their recruiting numbers. There's a popular theory that X is the carrot dangled in front of both current Google employees and potential hires-- "Look at this cool stuff you could work on!"-- while in reality they usually get sent to the trenches to squeeze out 0.003% gains in revenue-per-query.
- vkou 8y ago
  Nobody I have ever worked with at Google has had this carrot dangled under their noses. It certainly wasn't dangled under mine when I was hired. I don't dangle it under the noses of anyone I interview. I think most people with a basic understanding of arithmetic realize that the overwhelming majority of the company does not work in X, and they should not expect to, either. I have zero interest in working in X. The reason hiring is hard is because the interviews have a low pass rate, everyone else is also hiring, and salaries + benefits among top tech firms in an area are fairly similar.
  - Y_Y 8y ago
    > The reason hiring is hard is because the interviews have a low pass rate But the pass rate is up to the company. Either the wrong people are being brought in for interviews, or Google is looking for some x-factor that nobody has.
    - TomVDB 8y ago
      If the hiring process is able to identify a good hire whereas just the resume does not (which is a big if, but companies assume that it does), then it totally makes sense to bring in a lot of people to interviews.
    - s2g 8y ago
      The answer is that google doesn't give a shit about false negatives. They know they will get enough people applying several times that they can just toss out qualified people all day. Eventually enough get in.
      - andybak 8y ago
        Unless of course the hiring process has a systemic flaw and there's an entire class of people that are being rejected that could be game changing. (I actually don't have an axe to grind here - it's certainly not related to any obvious grouping - I just wonder if interview and selection might be so deeply flawed that a the occasional random lottery injection might improve the overall result.)
        rrdharan 8y ago
        There are effectively random lottery injections via acquisition/acquihires. Source: I was/am one.
        s2g 8y ago
        I thought they made people re-interview?
- trhway 8y ago
  i can only wonder what kind of sweet deal the employees of the graduating project get to stay with the project and the new company as otherwise being kicked off the mothership can be expected to be a good trigger for job change.
  - kdbg 8y ago
    I believe graduating from X doesn't mean they are no longer going to be under Alphabet rather that they've graduated from being a moonshot project under X.company to being their own thing, still under Google/Alphabet and all the benefits that entails. If anything I imagine its a net positive for the team, though I'm not a Googler and don't really know the internal dynamics of the situation.
  - pm90 8y ago
    I think many employees would be very interested in their equity compensation...wonder if employees are awarded RSU's in Alphabet or the subsidiaries or ...
    - steve_musk 8y ago
      Alphabet
ChuckMcM 8y ago
Earnings season?

1996 8y ago

TLDR: big company tries to remain dynamic by running its own internal innovation program Too bad it has never worked too well for any other big company, for structural reasons ("Internal incubators")

agumonkey 8y ago
do you know where I can read about this, I've always been curious about that
- 1996 8y ago
  Try industrial organization in econ
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    Thanks a lot
relyks 8y ago
This is wrong. The article even mentions this. Look at Bell Labs
- 1996 8y ago
  I am not surprised that an PR article would try to spin the positive side. There are rare exceptions in anything - but the existance of lottery winners does not mean the expected payout of a lottery ticket is positive. Bell Labs used its monopoly profits to fund research - which was good for research, but no so much for Bell. If we consider AT&T as Bells successor, it only allowed Bell to stay relevant. Still, AT&T now is nowhere close to Bell it is heyday. Same for Xerow now. Research doesn't pay as much as companies seems to think. While google position in online advertising is as close to a monopoly as legally possible, it will not change the structure of the incentives. The odds are against them. But maybe they do not aim for the kind of success they claim they will have, and only want to stay relevant, like Microsoft is now. That is more possible, even if it will be hard to pull. Personally, I think most R&D money that companies like Microsoft (or Google) have sunk into internal R&D could have had much better uses. But it's not my money! And eventually white elephants get butchered for the meat, so no big loss there.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

nchase 8y ago

Are any of these moonshot projects trying to counteract human-driven climate change?

vilhelm_s 8y ago
> The Foundry uses this intense interrogation to root out the things that could kill a project down the line, before X has poured in piles of money and time. Take Foghorn, X’s effort to create a carbon-neutral fuel from seawater. The tech was amazing and the problem was huge, but two years in, the team realized they had no viable way to compete with gasoline on cost—and were reliant on technology that was closer to research than development. X killed Foghorn, gave everyone on the team a bonus, and let them find new projects to push.
Eridrus 8y ago
There's a salt battery project in X. Makani is also in X. There's a thermal pump company that graduated from X last year. There's also a team at Google working on Fusion research. Probably more I don't know too.
- pfdietz 8y ago
  Thermal pump -- is that Malta?
  - Eridrus 8y ago
    Not sure if thermal pump is really the right term, but I meant Dandelion.

bitmapbrother 8y ago

Good to see Loon graduating into its own company. Project Loon was very instrumental in connecting Puerto Rico after the hurricane [1]. [1] https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/20/project-loon-att-puerto-rico/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/20/project-loon-att-puerto-...

Eridrus 8y ago
Was it? The numbers Look posted didn't seem super impressive given the number of people on the island. They also said nothing about reliability. I want to like Loon, but don't have much data to really go on.
woah 8y ago
Most of the comments in your history are Google related, or anti-apple