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Doesn't matter, what matters is that they published the story with a picture (a stupid picture, that there's no way it would work without alien technology) in h

Doesn't matter, what matters is that they published the story with a picture (a stupid picture, that there's no way it would work without alien technology) in hundreds of websites, generating buzz and a rise in their stock value due to investors goodwill. This is why I dislike Google. If you read the news, you would think they have the future in their hands, but after 10 years of Android, many more of YouTube and Gmail, and only one thing works, only one thing brings them 90% of their revenue: advertising. And boy do they sell advertising, but they also know how to advertise themselves... Google is like a children whose parents give free access to chocolate (ad business money). Why would a child eat anything else besides chocolate? It's tasty, it's sweet, it's easy to eat. And it turns out that engineering something is not as easy as turning up ads on YouTube.

patrickaljord 8y ago
It's hard to create a multi-billion business like ads. It's not surprising they could not and probably will never be able to replicate that success. There's a handful of success like these in a century and it rarely comes twice from the same company. I agree with hype of their futurist stuff, they should tone it down if it's just for buzz.
- rightbyte 8y ago
  It's hard now when Google have their market position. For Google it was easy to grab the low hanging fruit. I wonder if former competitors like Altavista just never though of spying on their users and selling the info or if they assumed it would be illegal and didn't do it?
  - josephjrobison 8y ago
    Yea I thought something similar - executives at the older companies feared jail time for doing some of those tactics so they stayed away. Of course there’s always lawyers to read the fine print, but still...
    - candiodari 8y ago
      Ah come on, the truth is not at all that altavista didn't spy, or didn't do ads. It's that they (and exite, yahoo, infoseek, ...) completely overdid the spying and ads and Google instead massively optimized their backend. And then a crisis came boom no more competitors. Google was the least obtrusive of all of the search competitors, and the most useful. That was their great strength. Man thinking about when this happened, it's now some 20 years ago. I'm old.
  - sct202 8y ago
    Altavista had enough issues with trying to become a portal versus being a good search engine (plus being sold multiple times), which probably hobbled them more than anything else.
  - mhb 8y ago
    I was pretty surprised that gmail was successful. I didn't imagine that people wouldn't care that their email wasn't on their own computer. But, there you go.
    - wild_preference 8y ago
      Well, people had been using hosted email from their ISPs, AOL, Hotmail, etc. long before Gmail. Gmail came out and offered an insane amount of storage, basically toppling the regime. So surely Gmail wasn't the one that surprised you. That ship had long sailed before then.
  - glenrivard 8y ago
    Companies bid on the search terms is how google makes money where Altavista did not. Has nothing to do with personal data.
- bunnycorn 8y ago
  It is... if you don't have Google money, Google brand, Google costumer goodwil, Google P&R team, Google capability to attract talent, Google global outreach, Google datacenters, etc. If you ARE Google, and you have all of that? I think it's more difficult to explain why they failed.
  - cobookman 8y ago
    Because they found a better solution through partnership with dexcom. https://www.wareable.com/health-and-wellbeing/dexcom-g6-cgm-diabetes-verily-259 https://www.wareable.com/health-and-wellbeing/dexcom-g6-cgm-... https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medical-devices/jpm-dexcom-dishes-google-verily-partnership-its-top-r-d-expense https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medical-devices/jpm-dexcom-dis...
    - bunnycorn 8y ago
      Is it a transparent contact lens that you put in the eye?
notatoad 8y ago
So you don't like Google because all their revenue comes from advertising, but you're also angry that they're trying to branch out into things other than advertising?
- ModernMech 8y ago
  I think what the parent is saying is that if you listen to the hype, you would perceive Google as bringing a lot of innovative tech into the world. But the reality is many of these hyped projects that provide this perception are quietly shut down, and at the end of the day after more than a decade Google is still just an ad machine. The parent is upset about the difference between what Google sells itself as doing versus what they actually do.
  - notatoad 8y ago
    yeah, i understand what the parent is saying, and i think it's stupid. how are they supposed to diversify if they don't try? or are they supposed to do all their R&D in secret, just to avoid any perception that they might not be entirely evil? yes, their PR people hype up their R&D efforts. But the point is that they're doing R&D, and why shouldn't they get a PR win out of that?
    - ModernMech 8y ago
      Well the point is it's been over a decade. They've done a lot of trying with little return.
      - saulrh 8y ago
        The projects they're attempting take decades. Period. Loon, for example: Two years for a handful of prototypes, two years for LTE functionality and a "real" trial run, two more years for a mesh network so they aren't bottlenecked by satellites, another year for a large-scale real-world trial run (Puerto Rico), and now we're at the present day. Their job now is to demonstrate that they can keep a balloon fleet up long enough and at sufficiently low cost that it's safe to transition an entire country's economy over to the system. That's probably going to take another ten or fifteen years simply because that's how long it takes to show that your system is reliable enough to be core, critical infrastructure. And Loon is just an easy example. Waymo, Brain. Anything to do with healthcare. Etc. There's a reason these things are called "moonshots".
gothungry 8y ago
This is a hilariously bad take... a) Have you heard of Waymo? There could not be a better example of a company with the future in their hands, due to a decade of investment and research in autonomous driving, about to launch a product many years ahead of its closest competitors. b) You say this is what you dislike about google, but is this not true for any of the big 4? Does Facebook or Amazon have anything that compares to their main cash cows?
- bunnycorn 8y ago
  > waymo So how is your waymo car going? Does it drive well? Does it get good mpg? Is it that secure? Waymo is one of the worst offenders: https://www.cnet.com/news/googles-sergey-brin-youll-ride-in-robot-cars-within-5-years/ https://www.cnet.com/news/googles-sergey-brin-youll-ride-in-... It was promised in 2012 to be completed in 2017... 2018 is ending and there is still no waymo anywhere besides on google's hands. While Google has been promising that didn't deliver, not even close, others have been actually delivering self-driving cars to the hands of real costumers and don't get any credit.
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    As far as I know, waymo has the only public beta of an autonomous vehicle, and it's been running for over a year. In other words, waymo has put sdcs nn the hands of a limited set of consumers, and right on schedule. Or do you think that sergeys comments imply autonomous vehicles for public purchase, because that isn't implied and in many cases doesn't make sense.
    - bunnycorn 8y ago
      Everyone and their dog has autonomous vehicles. Meanwhile Google is trying to patent technology it's not theirs: https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/02/waymo-self-driving-lidar-patent-infringement-uber-velodyne/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/02/waymo-self-driving-lidar...
      - 8y ago
jschwartzi 8y ago
Yeah, it's hard to believe that they intended to build this into a product considering they hadn't even done basic research to determine the correlation between tear glucose and blood glucose. It's going to be really hard for me to take any of their products seriously because of this.
blhack 8y ago
WTF are you on about here? YouTube doesn't work? Gmail doesn't work? Search doesn't work? Android doesn't work? Maps doesn't work? This is just absolutely a ridiculous stance to take.
- saurik 8y ago
  The person you are responding to clearly means "only one thing works to make money", as "works" in the context of a business and a discussion about stock price is not "it functions correctly" but "it brings on income".
  - blhack 8y ago
    But YouTube, gmail, etc. all drive people to advertising. That's like saying the words in the NYT don't "work".
lawrenceyan 8y ago
You're argument doesn't make sense. YouTube, Android, and Google are 100% completely different businesses and are all wildly profitable. What you seem to be confused about here is that you think a business model is the same as a business itself. This couldn't be further from the truth.
- bunnycorn 8y ago
  Profitable because people pay for those services? No, nobody is paying for YouTube red, nobody is buying "Android", they are profitable because they put ads in people screens. Nothing more, nothing less.
  - lawrenceyan 8y ago
    Again, you're failing to understand the point. There is a difference between a business model and the business itself. There are many different ways to monetize a product/service besides direct sales.

patrickaljord 8y ago

It's hard to create a multi-billion business like ads. It's not surprising they could not and probably will never be able to replicate that success. There's a handful of success like these in a century and it rarely comes twice from the same company. I agree with hype of their futurist stuff, they should tone it down if it's just for buzz.

rightbyte 8y ago
It's hard now when Google have their market position. For Google it was easy to grab the low hanging fruit. I wonder if former competitors like Altavista just never though of spying on their users and selling the info or if they assumed it would be illegal and didn't do it?
- josephjrobison 8y ago
  Yea I thought something similar - executives at the older companies feared jail time for doing some of those tactics so they stayed away. Of course there’s always lawyers to read the fine print, but still...
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Ah come on, the truth is not at all that altavista didn't spy, or didn't do ads. It's that they (and exite, yahoo, infoseek, ...) completely overdid the spying and ads and Google instead massively optimized their backend. And then a crisis came boom no more competitors. Google was the least obtrusive of all of the search competitors, and the most useful. That was their great strength. Man thinking about when this happened, it's now some 20 years ago. I'm old.
- sct202 8y ago
  Altavista had enough issues with trying to become a portal versus being a good search engine (plus being sold multiple times), which probably hobbled them more than anything else.
- mhb 8y ago
  I was pretty surprised that gmail was successful. I didn't imagine that people wouldn't care that their email wasn't on their own computer. But, there you go.
  - wild_preference 8y ago
    Well, people had been using hosted email from their ISPs, AOL, Hotmail, etc. long before Gmail. Gmail came out and offered an insane amount of storage, basically toppling the regime. So surely Gmail wasn't the one that surprised you. That ship had long sailed before then.
- glenrivard 8y ago
  Companies bid on the search terms is how google makes money where Altavista did not. Has nothing to do with personal data.
bunnycorn 8y ago
It is... if you don't have Google money, Google brand, Google costumer goodwil, Google P&R team, Google capability to attract talent, Google global outreach, Google datacenters, etc. If you ARE Google, and you have all of that? I think it's more difficult to explain why they failed.
- cobookman 8y ago
  Because they found a better solution through partnership with dexcom. https://www.wareable.com/health-and-wellbeing/dexcom-g6-cgm-diabetes-verily-259 https://www.wareable.com/health-and-wellbeing/dexcom-g6-cgm-... https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medical-devices/jpm-dexcom-dishes-google-verily-partnership-its-top-r-d-expense https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medical-devices/jpm-dexcom-dis...
  - bunnycorn 8y ago
    Is it a transparent contact lens that you put in the eye?

notatoad 8y ago

So you don't like Google because all their revenue comes from advertising, but you're also angry that they're trying to branch out into things other than advertising?

ModernMech 8y ago
I think what the parent is saying is that if you listen to the hype, you would perceive Google as bringing a lot of innovative tech into the world. But the reality is many of these hyped projects that provide this perception are quietly shut down, and at the end of the day after more than a decade Google is still just an ad machine. The parent is upset about the difference between what Google sells itself as doing versus what they actually do.
- notatoad 8y ago
  yeah, i understand what the parent is saying, and i think it's stupid. how are they supposed to diversify if they don't try? or are they supposed to do all their R&D in secret, just to avoid any perception that they might not be entirely evil? yes, their PR people hype up their R&D efforts. But the point is that they're doing R&D, and why shouldn't they get a PR win out of that?
  - ModernMech 8y ago
    Well the point is it's been over a decade. They've done a lot of trying with little return.
    - saulrh 8y ago
      The projects they're attempting take decades. Period. Loon, for example: Two years for a handful of prototypes, two years for LTE functionality and a "real" trial run, two more years for a mesh network so they aren't bottlenecked by satellites, another year for a large-scale real-world trial run (Puerto Rico), and now we're at the present day. Their job now is to demonstrate that they can keep a balloon fleet up long enough and at sufficiently low cost that it's safe to transition an entire country's economy over to the system. That's probably going to take another ten or fifteen years simply because that's how long it takes to show that your system is reliable enough to be core, critical infrastructure. And Loon is just an easy example. Waymo, Brain. Anything to do with healthcare. Etc. There's a reason these things are called "moonshots".

gothungry 8y ago

This is a hilariously bad take... a) Have you heard of Waymo? There could not be a better example of a company with the future in their hands, due to a decade of investment and research in autonomous driving, about to launch a product many years ahead of its closest competitors. b) You say this is what you dislike about google, but is this not true for any of the big 4? Does Facebook or Amazon have anything that compares to their main cash cows?

bunnycorn 8y ago
> waymo So how is your waymo car going? Does it drive well? Does it get good mpg? Is it that secure? Waymo is one of the worst offenders: https://www.cnet.com/news/googles-sergey-brin-youll-ride-in-robot-cars-within-5-years/ https://www.cnet.com/news/googles-sergey-brin-youll-ride-in-... It was promised in 2012 to be completed in 2017... 2018 is ending and there is still no waymo anywhere besides on google's hands. While Google has been promising that didn't deliver, not even close, others have been actually delivering self-driving cars to the hands of real costumers and don't get any credit.
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  As far as I know, waymo has the only public beta of an autonomous vehicle, and it's been running for over a year. In other words, waymo has put sdcs nn the hands of a limited set of consumers, and right on schedule. Or do you think that sergeys comments imply autonomous vehicles for public purchase, because that isn't implied and in many cases doesn't make sense.
  - bunnycorn 8y ago
    Everyone and their dog has autonomous vehicles. Meanwhile Google is trying to patent technology it's not theirs: https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/02/waymo-self-driving-lidar-patent-infringement-uber-velodyne/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/02/waymo-self-driving-lidar...
    - 8y ago

jschwartzi 8y ago

Yeah, it's hard to believe that they intended to build this into a product considering they hadn't even done basic research to determine the correlation between tear glucose and blood glucose. It's going to be really hard for me to take any of their products seriously because of this.

blhack 8y ago

WTF are you on about here? YouTube doesn't work? Gmail doesn't work? Search doesn't work? Android doesn't work? Maps doesn't work? This is just absolutely a ridiculous stance to take.

saurik 8y ago
The person you are responding to clearly means "only one thing works to make money", as "works" in the context of a business and a discussion about stock price is not "it functions correctly" but "it brings on income".
- blhack 8y ago
  But YouTube, gmail, etc. all drive people to advertising. That's like saying the words in the NYT don't "work".

lawrenceyan 8y ago

You're argument doesn't make sense. YouTube, Android, and Google are 100% completely different businesses and are all wildly profitable. What you seem to be confused about here is that you think a business model is the same as a business itself. This couldn't be further from the truth.

bunnycorn 8y ago
Profitable because people pay for those services? No, nobody is paying for YouTube red, nobody is buying "Android", they are profitable because they put ads in people screens. Nothing more, nothing less.
- lawrenceyan 8y ago
  Again, you're failing to understand the point. There is a difference between a business model and the business itself. There are many different ways to monetize a product/service besides direct sales.