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Alphabet has too much cash. They have a well established track record of enthusiastically backing exciting new projects way outside of their core competency jus
by willmadden 8y ago
Alphabet has too much cash. They have a well established track record of enthusiastically backing exciting new projects way outside of their core competency just to dump them like hot garbage several years later.
They also compete in random new industries each time this happens.
It doesn't seem like a smart move to lease a domain from a politically active mega-monopoly that might decide to randomly become your competitor in 2 years.
- rmoriz 8y agoIt's risk management through diversification attempts. Google, like any other large scale extremely successful single product[1] company, hedges market risks in occupying "hot" spaces. Same with MS, Apple and all other giants, even in non-tech. [1] see financial report of the last year (10K). Search for "We operate our business in multiple operating segments. Google is our only reportable segment. None of our other segments meet the quantitative thresholds to qualify as reportable segments" and "How we make money" (Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204419000004/goog10-kq42018.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204419... )
- jjeaff 8y agoIt's kind of amazing that after all this time, they haven't created anything worth reporting outside of the add business.
- pfortuny 8y agoIn any other area that would be a red flag of “money laundering”. I am not accusing them of it. Just stating facts.
- SquareWheel 8y agoYoutube, maps, phones?
- jjeaff 8y agoYoutube - money loser Maps - money loser (but we will see after their recent huge price increases shake out) Phones - money loser. they are selling fewer phones annually than apple sells in a week.
- SquareWheel 8y agoIs Youtube really a money loser? I thought they'd turned it profitable years ago. Maps - in flux like you said. Phones are more than hardware sales. They also run an app store and license their own ecosystem.
- JetSpiegel 8y agoAcquired, acquired, acquired.
- SquareWheel 8y agoOriginally, perhaps. But in the last ten years how many times have these platforms been rewritten? Hosted services like Drive, Photos, and GSuite are also entirely in-house.
- benologist 8y agoI think the risk isn't that they become your competitor, it's that an algorithm flags your website for perceived abuse and that cascades down to you and your workplace being banned forever from Google, with no recourse because they choose to provide fake support despite having $100+ billion in savings and plenty of funding for eg global tax evasion.
- HillaryBriss 8y ago> ... might decide to randomly become your competitor in 2 years think of the bright side. they might be willing to buy your neato .dev domain name back ... for $12.
- skybrian 8y agoYou made a fully general argument against anything that Google touches. This isn't useful, because everyone knows that argument already. I'd rather know what Google's track record is specifically having to do with DNS (or fundamental Internet infrastructure).
- tinco 8y agoI think their 8.8.8.8 DNS server has a pretty impressive track record for I think over 10 years. I know many people who changed their dns to 8.8.8.8 when they thought their DNS was shitty. Back in highschool (15yrs ago) pinging a DNS server was something I sometimes did when fixing people's internet, always used 212.142.28.66. No idea why it's still in my head so much later, 8.8.8.8 sure is a lot easier to remember.
- dystopianqt 8y agoAnd so is 1.1.1.1
- 18pfsmt 8y agoWhich is cloudflare's IP, to be clear. I'm a fan, but I like transparency.
- prepend 8y ago1.1 is even easier (1.0.0.1)
- xvector 8y agoRemembering two distinct numbers is harder than remembering one distinct number
- Manishearth 8y agoYou misunderstand, `1.1` _is_ `1.0.0.1`, there are multiple ways to represent IP addresses.
- CydeWeys 8y agoHi. I'm the Tech Lead of Google Registry, the team that is launching .dev (not to be confused with the linked Google Domains, which is one of many registrars selling .dev domains to end users). You'll be glad to know that TLDs can't simply be discontinued like other products might be. ICANN doesn't allow it. The procedures in place preventing a live TLD from shutting down are called EBERO; more details here: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/ebero-2013-04-02-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/ebero-2013-04-02-en The way it works is that all registries must send daily full backups to a third-party escrow provider, which are then used to restore the TLD under a different operator if the original operator shuts down unexpectedly. This is not some theoretical backup/restore procedure that goes untested; it's been used in the past, e.g. with .wed: https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2017-12-08-en https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2017-12-08-en But this typically only happens when the registry operator goes abruptly bankrupt, and is thus quite rare. Many, many widely used TLDs have been seamlessly sold/transferred across registry operators without you ever realizing it, including .io last year. That would be the "worst" you would expect from TLDs launched by large established players like Google. You actually get a lot more protections with gTLDs than you do with ccTLDs (such as .io), as ccTLDs aren't bound by contract with ICANN and thus aren't forced to do EBERO, or anything else for that matter.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- longcommonname 8y agoWhat prevents Google from charging an absurd rate like some of the other TLD or other practices that effectively change the service?
- tehlike 8y agoTo be honest, TLD business is probably not one of them. Even fi google becomes your competitor, they won't touch the domain.
- ghobs91 8y agoIf I had to bet, the majority of .dev pages will be engineers posting their portfolio, not startups building developer tools.
- prepend 8y agoGithub.com/devname is way better than devname.dev
- mkoryak 8y agoIf your github profile is your resume, yes it is. But it not so good if your resume contains other things.
- cozuya 8y agoCan't agree with that. Taking a minimal amount of time and effort to host your own site on a TLD shows, at least, a moderate understanding of DNS and all that, much more than clicking things on Github Pages IMO.
- pmart123 8y agoHaha. I totally agree. As a shareholder, I almost feel like an activist campaign is needed. Sure, Verily and Waymo are interesting moonshots, but then the rollout of Youtube Plus or Premium seems like the most mismanaged rollout of a big tech company outside of the Amazon phone. Why is Google bothering with domain registry is a good question. Google code probably could have been what GitHub had it not been abandoned is another example of mismanaging product or service vision.