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Google can't seem to do anything right anymore. They're last place in cloud. They don't have a good search API product to compete with Algolia/Elasticsearch.

Google can't seem to do anything right anymore. They're last place in cloud. They don't have a good search API product to compete with Algolia/Elasticsearch. They can't release new products. Can't build new hardware. The only things they have going for them are Youtube, Google (the search engine), Android, Chrome,... Basically everything they did 10 years ago. Even Android + Youtube were acquisitions. Another good example of too big to fail.

ohaideredevs 8y ago
GCP is the cleanest cloud platform by far. But it's also the one I know only in theory, whereas I have worked with Azure and AWS enough to seem them fail miserably, so maybe I have a case of rose-tinted glasses.
- zihotki 8y ago
  I have experience with all three of them, indeed Azure fails miserably, AWS is a bit better but I didn't spend much time there. GCP is the most solid one and I had the least troubles there.
  - bilal4hmed 8y ago
    I use Azure at work and GCP for personal projects. GCP is by far the cleanest, easiest to work with
- module0000 8y ago
  I haven't experienced this failure with AWS. I've had good experiences with both GCP and AWS, and a handful of terrible experiences with Azure. I don't know your particular use-case, but I end up being clean-up for AWS disasters, and each one's root cause was poor planning and/or execution. Likely the result of an over-ambitious employee or contractor trying to implement by the seat of their pants.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  I've worked with GCP, and especially Firebase is a fantastic platform.
- iampims 8y ago
  GCP is worth it for Bigqueet, GKE & AppEngine + world class networking. Everything else is not as good as AWS offerings.
- dehrmann 8y ago
  I don't have Azure experience, but I usually look at it at AWS has better marketing people. On the tech side, they'll happily packing an open-source project into something managed. GCP has done some serious engineering for products like Spanner, Bigtable, and Bigquery, but there are gaps in the product offerings.
godzillabrennus 8y ago
Google is their own worst enemy in cloud. They raised pricing on Google Maps and have a reputation for dropping services. Now they require a $75k third party audit to have an app use Gmail API’s.
- wstrange 8y ago
  Given that 3rd party apps can scrape sensitive data, I'm glad the barrier to entry is high..
glenrivard 8y ago
Have 8 products with over a billion active users. Fastest growing smartphone brand US. YouTube TV fastest growing of the TV streaming services. Plus leasing in the self driving race. Flutter already over 50k stars GitHub. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2019/02/09/google-pixel-is-fastest-growing-us-smartphone-brand-says-report-pixel-3-vs-iphone-xs/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2019/02/09/googl... [Update] Google Pixel Is 'Fastest-Growing US Smartphone Brand' https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/youtube-tv-is-more-popular-than-directv-now-playstation-vue-sling-tv-more-according-to-tivo/ https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/youtube-tv-is-more-popular-t... YouTube TV is More Popular Than DIRECTV NOW, PlayStation ... https://github.com/flutter/flutter https://github.com/flutter/flutter flutter/flutter - GitHub
xrd 8y ago
So, Google makes (specifically subcontracts out) the Pixel (but it is their branded device). It definitely is not the most popular Android phone out there. Google makes the Pixelbook. It is definitely not the "best" laptop when you consider less expensive alternatives, and it is not the best seller. But, Android would be called a successful strategy. And, Chromebooks would be called a successful strategy. What I'm trying to say (and would love to hear comments suggesting otherwise) is that these forays into hardware might just be to guarantee a baseline level of quality for vendors of the products to aspire to. And, in that light, even if the hardware divisions aren't making a dent in the Google's reported revenue, they still serve and were effective in their goals. These cutbacks are just evidence that Google wants to optimize the way things are done, not evidence that they were failures. GCP is a different beast, however. :)
- bilal4hmed 8y ago
  The problem with Chromebooks is that they have always been touted as a way to get a computer very cheaply. Years have gone by with the marketing being that Chromebooks are cheap. When you get pixelbooks that are $600 to $1500 people are going to have sticker shock, no matter how great the product is. The pixel phones on the other hand have been selling better ( in fact grew quite a bit numbers wise as well ). The phone line has a better chance of turning in to the Googles surface line esp. since the marketing around that has been "Its the best camera ever" and people are willing to pay a premium for that.
  - xrd 8y ago
    I bought the Pixelbook (online) for a little less than full price. I also bought another Chromebook at BestBuy that was ~$250. I was blown away by another Chromebook that had a 17" screen and was less than $300 at the store. I was overwhelmed by the options (and BestBuy never helps because their employees must be rated on how well they can hide in the store and not how well they can help customers). There are plenty of options in store and online, most of which hover around the $300 price point, which is very competitive. If you are buying a Pixelbook you are buying it because you want Linux on it, or the amazing screen, and are calculating that into it. If you want an inexpensive Chromebook, you aren't stymied in that search by price.
pjmlp 8y ago
Even Android is not done right. - Android J++ - Kotlin, the successor, still faces lots of tooling issues, regarding incremental builds, code completion, thin APKs,... - NDK users keep being neglected, after 10 years there is still no alternative to manually write JNI boilerplate, handle native libraries, a proper C++ API in the NDK, the ones that exist like Oboe are either plain code dumps on GitHub, or use Blaze, which isn't part of the standard SDK tooling, IDE tools if they get added always feel like an afterthought to their Java/Kotlin counterparts - Stable support library and Android Studio releases have as much bugs as canary ones - Android Studio feels like it needs a rendering workstation to work properly The last two points have escalated so high that they finally created Project Marble to improve the current state of affairs. OEMs love Android only because it is free beer.
- dman 8y ago
  Building performant UIs has become a lost art across the entire industry. As a junior engineer I was given a hard time if any screen did not load in 250ms saying that was the cliff beyond which humans perceive things as slow. Now I have had multiple bugs I filed for a web based tool being too slow (> 30s load times) closed because the tool is working as intended.
- therockhead 8y ago
  Also Google also has two GUI technologies for Android, the original Java based one and Flutter, which replicates the material UI in full.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Which are a sign of political wars within the development groups.
sequence7 8y ago
The only thing they have going for them is: * They have the most popular operating system in the world * They have the most popular browser in the world * They have the most popular search engine in the world * They have the most popular advertising network in the world * They have the most popular video platform in the world * They have the most popular mapping software in the world * They have the third most popular cloud platform in the world It seems to me that they're doing at least something right
- s3r3nity 8y ago
  Some devil's advocate: 1) They bought Android - they didn't build it in-house. 2) They bought Double Click - they didn't build it in-house 3) They bought YouTube- they didn't build it in-house 4) Third most popular cloud platform is a bit disingenuous; it's like saying Apple Maps is a top mapping platform: sure, you're kind of right, but the gap at the top is fairly wide. (You might even make the case that the best parts of Chrome weren't built in-house, but taken from open-source contributions via Chromium, but I'm not sure I quite buy that.) I think the overarching thesis deserves merit: what was the last in-house built product that became a powerhouse with true sticking power, besides Gmail / Google Apps?
  - bilal4hmed 8y ago
    Google Photos ?
    - 013a 8y ago
      Huge cost center. Very difficult to draw a line of monetization between GP and the very hazy "its a value add to Pixel customers, and we can use the photos to train our AIs to get better at object recognition which might have applications in advertisement targeting in the future."
  - readittwice 8y ago
    I mean it's kinda true. But they still had to figure out that these were the projects/companies worth buying and afterwards pursuing and advancing them such that they would become the cash-cows they are today. IMHO the Google Home devices and Chromecast are quite successful. I admit these are probably not powerhouses on the level of Android, Chrome or YouTube. However it's just not possible to create a powerhouse every 1 or 2 years.
dylan604 8y ago
You're leaving out their most important product: AdSense. After that, every other product is just a mechanism to feed the beast including search.

ohaideredevs 8y ago

GCP is the cleanest cloud platform by far. But it's also the one I know only in theory, whereas I have worked with Azure and AWS enough to seem them fail miserably, so maybe I have a case of rose-tinted glasses.

zihotki 8y ago
I have experience with all three of them, indeed Azure fails miserably, AWS is a bit better but I didn't spend much time there. GCP is the most solid one and I had the least troubles there.
- bilal4hmed 8y ago
  I use Azure at work and GCP for personal projects. GCP is by far the cleanest, easiest to work with
module0000 8y ago
I haven't experienced this failure with AWS. I've had good experiences with both GCP and AWS, and a handful of terrible experiences with Azure. I don't know your particular use-case, but I end up being clean-up for AWS disasters, and each one's root cause was poor planning and/or execution. Likely the result of an over-ambitious employee or contractor trying to implement by the seat of their pants.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
I've worked with GCP, and especially Firebase is a fantastic platform.
iampims 8y ago
GCP is worth it for Bigqueet, GKE & AppEngine + world class networking. Everything else is not as good as AWS offerings.
dehrmann 8y ago
I don't have Azure experience, but I usually look at it at AWS has better marketing people. On the tech side, they'll happily packing an open-source project into something managed. GCP has done some serious engineering for products like Spanner, Bigtable, and Bigquery, but there are gaps in the product offerings.

godzillabrennus 8y ago

Google is their own worst enemy in cloud. They raised pricing on Google Maps and have a reputation for dropping services. Now they require a $75k third party audit to have an app use Gmail API’s.

wstrange 8y ago
Given that 3rd party apps can scrape sensitive data, I'm glad the barrier to entry is high..

glenrivard 8y ago

Have 8 products with over a billion active users. Fastest growing smartphone brand US. YouTube TV fastest growing of the TV streaming services. Plus leasing in the self driving race. Flutter already over 50k stars GitHub. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2019/02/09/google-pixel-is-fastest-growing-us-smartphone-brand-says-report-pixel-3-vs-iphone-xs/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2019/02/09/googl... [Update] Google Pixel Is 'Fastest-Growing US Smartphone Brand' https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/youtube-tv-is-more-popular-than-directv-now-playstation-vue-sling-tv-more-according-to-tivo/ https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/youtube-tv-is-more-popular-t... YouTube TV is More Popular Than DIRECTV NOW, PlayStation ... https://github.com/flutter/flutter https://github.com/flutter/flutter flutter/flutter - GitHub

xrd 8y ago

So, Google makes (specifically subcontracts out) the Pixel (but it is their branded device). It definitely is not the most popular Android phone out there. Google makes the Pixelbook. It is definitely not the "best" laptop when you consider less expensive alternatives, and it is not the best seller. But, Android would be called a successful strategy. And, Chromebooks would be called a successful strategy. What I'm trying to say (and would love to hear comments suggesting otherwise) is that these forays into hardware might just be to guarantee a baseline level of quality for vendors of the products to aspire to. And, in that light, even if the hardware divisions aren't making a dent in the Google's reported revenue, they still serve and were effective in their goals. These cutbacks are just evidence that Google wants to optimize the way things are done, not evidence that they were failures. GCP is a different beast, however. :)

bilal4hmed 8y ago
The problem with Chromebooks is that they have always been touted as a way to get a computer very cheaply. Years have gone by with the marketing being that Chromebooks are cheap. When you get pixelbooks that are $600 to $1500 people are going to have sticker shock, no matter how great the product is. The pixel phones on the other hand have been selling better ( in fact grew quite a bit numbers wise as well ). The phone line has a better chance of turning in to the Googles surface line esp. since the marketing around that has been "Its the best camera ever" and people are willing to pay a premium for that.
- xrd 8y ago
  I bought the Pixelbook (online) for a little less than full price. I also bought another Chromebook at BestBuy that was ~$250. I was blown away by another Chromebook that had a 17" screen and was less than $300 at the store. I was overwhelmed by the options (and BestBuy never helps because their employees must be rated on how well they can hide in the store and not how well they can help customers). There are plenty of options in store and online, most of which hover around the $300 price point, which is very competitive. If you are buying a Pixelbook you are buying it because you want Linux on it, or the amazing screen, and are calculating that into it. If you want an inexpensive Chromebook, you aren't stymied in that search by price.

pjmlp 8y ago

Even Android is not done right. - Android J++ - Kotlin, the successor, still faces lots of tooling issues, regarding incremental builds, code completion, thin APKs,... - NDK users keep being neglected, after 10 years there is still no alternative to manually write JNI boilerplate, handle native libraries, a proper C++ API in the NDK, the ones that exist like Oboe are either plain code dumps on GitHub, or use Blaze, which isn't part of the standard SDK tooling, IDE tools if they get added always feel like an afterthought to their Java/Kotlin counterparts - Stable support library and Android Studio releases have as much bugs as canary ones - Android Studio feels like it needs a rendering workstation to work properly The last two points have escalated so high that they finally created Project Marble to improve the current state of affairs. OEMs love Android only because it is free beer.

dman 8y ago
Building performant UIs has become a lost art across the entire industry. As a junior engineer I was given a hard time if any screen did not load in 250ms saying that was the cliff beyond which humans perceive things as slow. Now I have had multiple bugs I filed for a web based tool being too slow (> 30s load times) closed because the tool is working as intended.
therockhead 8y ago
Also Google also has two GUI technologies for Android, the original Java based one and Flutter, which replicates the material UI in full.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Which are a sign of political wars within the development groups.

sequence7 8y ago

The only thing they have going for them is: * They have the most popular operating system in the world * They have the most popular browser in the world * They have the most popular search engine in the world * They have the most popular advertising network in the world * They have the most popular video platform in the world * They have the most popular mapping software in the world * They have the third most popular cloud platform in the world It seems to me that they're doing at least something right

s3r3nity 8y ago
Some devil's advocate: 1) They bought Android - they didn't build it in-house. 2) They bought Double Click - they didn't build it in-house 3) They bought YouTube- they didn't build it in-house 4) Third most popular cloud platform is a bit disingenuous; it's like saying Apple Maps is a top mapping platform: sure, you're kind of right, but the gap at the top is fairly wide. (You might even make the case that the best parts of Chrome weren't built in-house, but taken from open-source contributions via Chromium, but I'm not sure I quite buy that.) I think the overarching thesis deserves merit: what was the last in-house built product that became a powerhouse with true sticking power, besides Gmail / Google Apps?
- bilal4hmed 8y ago
  Google Photos ?
  - 013a 8y ago
    Huge cost center. Very difficult to draw a line of monetization between GP and the very hazy "its a value add to Pixel customers, and we can use the photos to train our AIs to get better at object recognition which might have applications in advertisement targeting in the future."
- readittwice 8y ago
  I mean it's kinda true. But they still had to figure out that these were the projects/companies worth buying and afterwards pursuing and advancing them such that they would become the cash-cows they are today. IMHO the Google Home devices and Chromecast are quite successful. I admit these are probably not powerhouses on the level of Android, Chrome or YouTube. However it's just not possible to create a powerhouse every 1 or 2 years.

dylan604 8y ago

You're leaving out their most important product: AdSense. After that, every other product is just a mechanism to feed the beast including search.