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Google feels like a company that's run by a bunch of engineers/product managers instead of a product leader with a cohesive vision. Anyone with an iPhone would
by 8ytecoder 8y ago
Google feels like a company that's run by a bunch of engineers/product managers instead of a product leader with a cohesive vision. Anyone with an iPhone would understand what iMessages is and what FaceTime is. What is what and what you can do with each. Now explain it to me Google - what's your vision? (Or is it "target end state" in engineering speak?) As customers we want (at most) one chat application and one video calling application. What is it going to be?
It's the exact same story with Music applications too. Android Music and Google Play Music seems abandoned. YT Music is pushed down the throat with a ton of the features of GPM missing. Subscription pricing keeps changing around. Same story with Gmail/Inbox. One by one I have left all Google's products now.
That said, whoever is running Google Maps is a genius. It's one product that gets it right. The fact that overlayed business listing, transit, traffic and now ride share systems ...etc. is just brilliant. We take it for granted. But if Google Maps ended up in the hands of whoever was in charge of their messaging or music strategy we'd have - Google Maps, Google Directions, Google Transit, Google Businesses, Google Restaurants and Google Rides.
- pesmhey 8y agoStraight from the source: On Google's philosophy versus Apple's: "I used to have this debate with Steve Jobs, and he would always say, 'You guys are doing too much stuff.' He did a good job of doing one or two things really well. We'd like to have a bigger impact on the world by doing more things."
- AlexandrB 8y agoThat would make sense if all the things Google did has a lifespan of more than a few years.
- londons_explore 8y agoThe lead of Maps spends a large proportion of his time listening to user feedback (some of it even here on HN!). I suspect that's a big part of the reason for the higher quality product.
- harryf 8y agoIs that still Bernie Seefeld ?
- e98cuenc 8y agoBernie's a genius and super humble guy. I was lucky enough to work close to him during his last months in Switzerland before he left to NY. He's inspiring.
- usrusr 8y agoMaps is just so much closer to the ad business than all those glorified ICQ clones and B2C experiments. The traditional web ad isn't terribly attractive for local businesses, but with Google maps effectively filling the role that yellow pages directories used to have, small businesses seem almost desperate to throw their money to Google. And Google carefully keeping maps from becoming a cacophony of virtual billboards only seems to make that urge stronger: "if we can't directly pay for ranking, maybe buying some other Google ad products will make the algorithms more favorable". The two sacrificial offerings comes to mind. Maps must be a core strategical asset for Google, because the aggregate ad spending potential of all those small businesses is huge, even when you are Google.The chat apps etc are insignificant compared to that. Maybe they really are just Google-scale coding katas to the organization.
- Spooky23 8y agoI just did a ad buy for a small k-8 school. The power of the targeting availability in Google around the map is incredible. AdWords is pretty amazing, as is Waze.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- darzu 8y agoIt's ironic you pick Google Maps as the one product that "gets it right". Did you hear about the recent pricing scandal? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17570029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17570029
- shaklee3 8y agoI didn't really read that as much of a scandal. Just that they were increasing prices and people got upset.
- i_cant_speel 8y agoI'm upset by this because I just got burned by it last week. I needed their geocoding API for a project at work. I didn't realize I was looking at their old pricing page at first, and came to the conclusion it would cost us about $65 a month. Once I realized my mistake, I did the math again and it came to over $700 a month, which couldn't be justified for the use case. So I've spent the last week implementing the functionality I needed myself. While I agree it's not a 'scandal', it's extremely frustrating and baffling to me.
- shaklee3 8y agoyes, I agree that's extremely frustrating. It was a huge price increase, and probably needed to be justified or at least have a different tiered structure to make it less expensive.
- fouc 8y agoThat's only screwing the other sites that integrate with google maps. Not so much the end user that is using google maps directly.
- ams6110 8y agoI'd put Google Drive/Docs/Sheets in there as home runs. They just keep getting better and better. I hardly ever think about using a desktop office suite any more. Remember when collaborating on a document meant emailing copies and revisions back and forth to each other? Unthinkable now. But Allo? My thought was "oh, another Google product I never heard of is shutting down."
- tinus_hn 8y agoThey have to, otherwise Microsoft will trample them with their SharePoint/Office online offering.
- parineum 8y agoApple is currently trampling Google in messaging.
- Phrodo_00 8y agoI don't think that true in the broad messaging space (speaking of martekshare), mostly because apple limits itself to the portion of the market that happens to own apple products. Facebook is, though.
- solarkraft 8y agoMeh, everyone I know uses Telegram. I haven't used Facebook messages in years because the feature is apparently not on the mobile website and I'm not willing to install an app that requires suspiciously many permissions.
- lbebber 8y agoHere’s a lil trick: if you have to, you can access your Facebook messages on mbasic.facebook.com. (And on to the point, Facebook has also, of course, WhatsApp, which is massive)
- 8y ago
- eveningcoffee 8y agowe - me
- scaleout1 8y agowait till they break Google voice into Google talking and Google Listening
- harryf 8y agoIt’s 1.0-ism. Engineers are apparently most positively rewarded at google for being part of the first public release of a product but there’s little reward for then sticking around for 1.1+ I’ve heard Google PMs complaining how their engineering team mostly bailed after 1.0 to the point where it becomes hard to get even basic stuff like i18n done.
- just_myles 8y agoTotally in agreement. Same can be said about their hardware lines. From nexus phones to chromebooks. Terrible. I was a hangouts guy. That's what has me worried about their cloud services. Are they going to suddenly just add and remove things without any real notice?
- hossbeast 8y agoI have some Hangouts that I use daily over the last 5 years. I am going to be very sad when they shut it down
- yangikan 8y agoTheir worst update was with Google Finance. It was a fully functional product with great features before they updated it. Now, you cannot compare the returns of more than two stock, cannot compare across different custom time periods, no way to get annualized financial results, the portfolio feature is gone. It is a mess.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lokedhs 8y agoYou mean just like how the messaging "strategy" that gave us Allo also created Duo? Because adding just one new messaging application was not enough. They had to split messaging into two. Is Duo also being shut down?
- solarkraft 8y agoNope, they're fine with its success. I've never heard of anyone using it after its launch, felt it was very buggy when it launched and the name implying it only supports two users limits it severely ... but they seem to be happy with it. ... or they forgot it exists.
- spiritcat 8y ago> felt it was very buggy when it launched I spent all that time convincing my mom it was just as easy as facetime, and all for nothing after the stream kept cutting out the first time we tried it. Now we just facetime, which is the only reason I have an iPad.
- beginningguava 8y ago>Now explain it to me Google - what's your vision It's a bunch of very talented, bored engineers who realize that launching a product, even if it fails, is better for their career and resume than doing grunge work that might be better for google's bottom line Basically resume driven development and Google hasn't done anything to prevent it. They probably don't care, they'd rather have them wasting money at Google than leaving due to boredom and potentially creating a startup or going to a competitor that might disrupt Google somehow.
- zorpner 8y agoThis is exactly correct (former Googler; still in touch with many). This is one of the reasons for the endless usability-destroying redesigns on their successful products -- people need listable accomplishments in order to advance, either internally or externally. Google has destroyed, or at least nullified, a generation of engineering talent with their unambitious, checkbox-resume based advancement scheme. We should all expect more from a supposedly engineering-driven organization.
- DenisM 8y agoLarge companies rise, and then fall to clear up the space for the next aspiring large company. It's Google's natural destiny to fall, too. Interestingly, the lifetime of a company is directly tied to the attention span of its customers. As long people come to the store asking for Coca Cola the company will endure, so this is probably generational. Enterprise software sticks around, so does Oracle. Internet consumer technology promotes attention span that's measured in seconds, Google can come crashing down quite suddenly.
- typon 8y agoIt's because making a chat app isn't actually that hard... The product has been commotodized. Maps on the other hand..incredibly complicated and we are still far from a "perfect" maps experience.
- kamaal 8y ago>>Google feels like a company that's run by a bunch of engineers/product managers instead of a product leader with a cohesive vision. Google is a company that follows a model called OKR. Here, in this model, the company is always supposed to be chasing moonshots. There fore all incentives, pay, raise, promotions, stock grants etc etc are all attached to such moonshots. There is zero incentive for anyone for to maintain anything. The system is working perfectly as designed.
- majewsky 8y agoIt's always a good idea to expand acronyms that you're using. OKR apparently stands for "Objectives and key results", according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR.
- Markoff 8y agoGoogle maps get it right? so i can download just country package before visiting it? i can just use it as offline navigation avoiding steep roaming fees or even better lack of network coverage in wilderness? i am honestly surprised by anyone using Google maps, that app it's missing basic features other apps had for years F-droid Maps user
- WalterSear 8y agoGoogle map's offline download feature works fine on my phone.
- Markoff 8y agoyou can select country in list of countries without highlighting some area finally?
- WalterSear 8y agoNo. Can you select a physical area that you are going to visit and download that you to your phone for offline use? Yes. Perhaps you can explain to me: what does selecting an area from a list afford you that highlighting an area visually does not? I've even used this, on a couple of occasions, to download the roadmaps for entire, albeit tiny, countries.
- Markoff 8y agoit's much easier than highlighting whole area including nearby countries since most of the countries don't have blocky shape and if you end up highlighting whole country you must highlight also unnecessary areas behind border you must be really fanboy if you need to have explained how it's choosing package of country/region data superior to highlighting some area you also forgot to answer how it's offline navigation working in these great Google maps
- basch 8y ago>whoever is running Google Maps is a genius. Yet waze is still a separate product, instead of a set of features to be enabled in Google Maps.
- 8ytecoder 8y agoFirst of all, Waze was an acquisition and the users/following of Waze is very different from Google Maps. It's a niche product to be honest. Google Maps already absorbs the most valuable information from Waze. I believe that's how they show accidents and road closures.