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The move comes after the group received pressure to turn Google Hardware into "a real business" from higher-ups at Google/Alphabet -- the squeeze continues unab

The move comes after the group received pressure to turn Google Hardware into "a real business" from higher-ups at Google/Alphabet -- the squeeze continues unabated :-) Its too bad, since the Pixelbook is pretty nice and with actual investment it could have been something much more than it is, but alas it would not have the margins search advertising does. Back in the 90's I met the head of Xerox's PARC after he had given a talk on innovation. One of the challenges he saw was that gardening innovation was like gardening crops, which was to say it was very hard to know when sprouts had one leaf out of the ground which were weeds and which were crops. Ideas were the same way, you need to nurture them to at least adolescence before you can reasonably decide if they are going to go on to be great or not so great. From the outside, Google appears to be at that stage where they have not learned how to nurture an idea to see if it will be great or not before killing it.

jpm_sd 8y ago
As an Xoogler, I can tell you that promising products that "will never be a billion-dollar business" get killed all the time. $100M in projected revenue? Yawn. Kill it.
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  That was true when I was there as well. Organically Google needs to figure out how to create 100M businesses within itself that pay for the organizations that enable them, and staff them for long term success. Doing so would incrementally add a small bit of margin for each one. I expect though they are caught up in scarcity thinking, which leads to bad choices overall.
- dv_dt 8y ago
  The odd part is that this doesn't select for billion-dollar businesses, it selects for billion-dollar businesses that can be developed with revenue growth that doesn't pass through $100m for more than x-years. Essentially billion dollar rev with discontinuous growth through lower revenue - this seems unnecessarily constrained for any business that plans to be around for the long haul.
  - dv_dt 8y ago
    Another way to look at it is, how good is your estimator of a billion dollar market, vs how good the estimator of the same is with a prior that the good/service can make at least $100M?
- defen 8y ago
  > $100M in projected revenue? Yawn. Kill it. They should at least tell us what those projects are so someone can pick up the scraps.
  - konschubert 8y ago
    Google inbox. Please. Anyone?
    - compiler-guy 8y ago
      Although I love Inbox, it had no chance of being a $100 million dollar business. It would have been lucky to clear $10 million, even ignoring the fact that nearly all of its revenue would be cannibalized from gmail itself.
      - tdfx 8y ago
        The odd part is that they developed a successful blueprint for how to beat their existing Gmail product and are apparently walking away from it. Anecdotal, but I don't know anyone who I introduced Inbox to that does not prefer it to standard Gmail. I wish they would focus their consolidation efforts on their awful messaging mess and leave Inbox alone.
        ReidZB 8y ago
        Ah, but worry not, they've introduced many of the Inbox features back into Gmail! Except, you know, they didn't implement bundling, probably the single most useful feature of Inbox. (If anyone can't tell, this is incredibly frustrating for me, since Inbox is going away soon.)
        xvector 8y ago
        Ugh, the decision to kill of Inbox is what frustrates me the most. I don't think I can go back to regular mail after this. I'd love a self-hosted Gmail client that functions identically to Inbox, though (and perhaps is pluggable to other mail providers).
- threatofrain 8y ago
  Maybe that's opportunity cost working.
- pjc50 8y ago
  How on earth does this make economic sense? Normal business operates on return on capital or margins, not overall size.
  - mdorazio 8y ago
    Google did over $100B in revenue last year. A $100M revenue product would move the needle 0.1%. And that's just revenue - it's pretty unlikely the net margins would beat Google's existing business lines. Meanwhile, it would require a significant amount of manpower, marketing, and support that would otherwise be spent on much larger profit centers. At a high level it just doesn't make sense - you'd need to be running dozens of such products to get any kind of return investors would care about, gumming up the org in the process.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      That is what spin offs are for. Let it be an independent company that you still own 49% of. If it fails, at least you got to sell the 51% stake first. If it succeeds, you still own 49% of it.
      - mdorazio 8y ago
        That doesn't solve the underlying problems of profitability and minimal bottom line impact. A $100M company is unlikely to be profitable for several years, during which time Google has to spend money to get it off the ground and suffer a brain drain from existing profitable products to an unproven subsidiary. Meanwhile, "success" here would still mean < 1% impact to anything shareholders care about... years down the line. It makes more sense to just add some funding to Google Ventures.
vondur 8y ago
Too bad they never had a fully supported way to install Linxu on it. I vaguely remember reading that google internally used a heavily modified Ubuntu for themselves. (or maybe just some custom repos)
- mav3rick 8y ago
  There is Crostini now. Basically a Linux VM that is integrated in the OS.
  - 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
    Yeah, no thanks. I barely trust Google with my cloud data. Using a Google hardware product? Lol.
- netinstructions 8y ago
  You can go into the Chrome OS settings and click the button for Linux... after a few minutes of downloading/installation you're ready to go. I use it for development. https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/news/chrome-os-69-stable-release-project-crostini-linux-apps/ https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/news/chrome-os-69-stable-re... https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/containers_and_vms.md https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/c...
sriram_sun 8y ago
To me it feels like Engineering really delivered on the Pixelbook. That it didn't sell well was a marketing failure (not the first). So higher ups should take a real hard look in the mirror and work on developing a team that can brand and sell good products.
- willtim 8y ago
  The Pixel slate didn't fair so well in all the reviews though.
  - supernovae 8y ago
    The simple answer was it was overpriced and rather poor tablet experience. Does Google even care about tablets?
Theodores 8y ago
I got my 6 year old Pixel laptop out the bag in a client meeting today, used the touch screen to quickly scroll through some stuff and the non-tech crowd wanted to know what the machine was. Despite its age it still had wow factor. "You should get one of these!" - if only they knew it was 6 years old... I passed up the opportunity to buy the new Pixelbook as the original Pixel still works nicely and I don't need Android on it particularly. However, I think that Google have gone wrong with ditching the Pixelbook. There is a definite market for a decent developer machine that you can run Linuxii on that isn't a hack. Homebrew, Virtualbox, Ubuntu in Windows isn't ever native and the instructions are always less straightforward than with a stock Ubuntu or other regular distro. From recent news there seems to be a small army of pissed off Mac users that want simple things like an escape key. There are also plenty of developers that don't really need Windows. The Dell developer XPS specials are very nice but the original Pixel and its descendants get a few things right, the 'no expense spared' 3x2 screen, nicest keyboard ever, best speakers ever and best trackpad going works for me. Google should accept that their take on a 'developer machine' is going to be low volume but there is no reason why they can't make it pay its own way, really it is a matter of specification and not nickel-and-diming things like the keyboard. If anything they should make the machine exclusive. Anyone can have a posh Apple computer but it is still just an Apple to people like the clients that I met today. Break out the Pixel though and even if you are just scrolling through a web page it has some impressive statement value to people who know nothing about computers. I think the hardware division went the wrong way trying to make the Pixelbook 'for everyone' (rich). If they made it super cool with the ability to run a linux distro native as well as having ChromeOS/Android then they could have made something that Pixel laptop owners like myself would buy. Instead I run a regular PC for development. I also think that if their developer machine was the de-facto thing for Google to use in house then that would make the machine aspirational to developers. If one were to be using the same hardware that Google designed for their developers then you would feel that you had the best going for Android/web development. A Dell machine doesn't quite have that kudos because nobody at Dell writes a lot of code.
- discordance 8y ago
  My 6 year old Pixel laptop has been end-of-life'd by Google. I got notifications last year that they would not be releasing any further OS or security updates. I also have a 2011 Macbook Air, and am still able to get OS and security updates.

jpm_sd 8y ago

As an Xoogler, I can tell you that promising products that "will never be a billion-dollar business" get killed all the time. $100M in projected revenue? Yawn. Kill it.

ChuckMcM 8y ago
That was true when I was there as well. Organically Google needs to figure out how to create 100M businesses within itself that pay for the organizations that enable them, and staff them for long term success. Doing so would incrementally add a small bit of margin for each one. I expect though they are caught up in scarcity thinking, which leads to bad choices overall.
dv_dt 8y ago
The odd part is that this doesn't select for billion-dollar businesses, it selects for billion-dollar businesses that can be developed with revenue growth that doesn't pass through $100m for more than x-years. Essentially billion dollar rev with discontinuous growth through lower revenue - this seems unnecessarily constrained for any business that plans to be around for the long haul.
- dv_dt 8y ago
  Another way to look at it is, how good is your estimator of a billion dollar market, vs how good the estimator of the same is with a prior that the good/service can make at least $100M?
defen 8y ago
> $100M in projected revenue? Yawn. Kill it. They should at least tell us what those projects are so someone can pick up the scraps.
- konschubert 8y ago
  Google inbox. Please. Anyone?
  - compiler-guy 8y ago
    Although I love Inbox, it had no chance of being a $100 million dollar business. It would have been lucky to clear $10 million, even ignoring the fact that nearly all of its revenue would be cannibalized from gmail itself.
    - tdfx 8y ago
      The odd part is that they developed a successful blueprint for how to beat their existing Gmail product and are apparently walking away from it. Anecdotal, but I don't know anyone who I introduced Inbox to that does not prefer it to standard Gmail. I wish they would focus their consolidation efforts on their awful messaging mess and leave Inbox alone.
      - ReidZB 8y ago
        Ah, but worry not, they've introduced many of the Inbox features back into Gmail! Except, you know, they didn't implement bundling, probably the single most useful feature of Inbox. (If anyone can't tell, this is incredibly frustrating for me, since Inbox is going away soon.)
        xvector 8y ago
        Ugh, the decision to kill of Inbox is what frustrates me the most. I don't think I can go back to regular mail after this. I'd love a self-hosted Gmail client that functions identically to Inbox, though (and perhaps is pluggable to other mail providers).
threatofrain 8y ago
Maybe that's opportunity cost working.
pjc50 8y ago
How on earth does this make economic sense? Normal business operates on return on capital or margins, not overall size.
- mdorazio 8y ago
  Google did over $100B in revenue last year. A $100M revenue product would move the needle 0.1%. And that's just revenue - it's pretty unlikely the net margins would beat Google's existing business lines. Meanwhile, it would require a significant amount of manpower, marketing, and support that would otherwise be spent on much larger profit centers. At a high level it just doesn't make sense - you'd need to be running dozens of such products to get any kind of return investors would care about, gumming up the org in the process.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    That is what spin offs are for. Let it be an independent company that you still own 49% of. If it fails, at least you got to sell the 51% stake first. If it succeeds, you still own 49% of it.
    - mdorazio 8y ago
      That doesn't solve the underlying problems of profitability and minimal bottom line impact. A $100M company is unlikely to be profitable for several years, during which time Google has to spend money to get it off the ground and suffer a brain drain from existing profitable products to an unproven subsidiary. Meanwhile, "success" here would still mean < 1% impact to anything shareholders care about... years down the line. It makes more sense to just add some funding to Google Ventures.

vondur 8y ago

Too bad they never had a fully supported way to install Linxu on it. I vaguely remember reading that google internally used a heavily modified Ubuntu for themselves. (or maybe just some custom repos)

mav3rick 8y ago
There is Crostini now. Basically a Linux VM that is integrated in the OS.
- 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
  Yeah, no thanks. I barely trust Google with my cloud data. Using a Google hardware product? Lol.
netinstructions 8y ago
You can go into the Chrome OS settings and click the button for Linux... after a few minutes of downloading/installation you're ready to go. I use it for development. https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/news/chrome-os-69-stable-release-project-crostini-linux-apps/ https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/news/chrome-os-69-stable-re... https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/containers_and_vms.md https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/c...

sriram_sun 8y ago

To me it feels like Engineering really delivered on the Pixelbook. That it didn't sell well was a marketing failure (not the first). So higher ups should take a real hard look in the mirror and work on developing a team that can brand and sell good products.

willtim 8y ago
The Pixel slate didn't fair so well in all the reviews though.
- supernovae 8y ago
  The simple answer was it was overpriced and rather poor tablet experience. Does Google even care about tablets?

Theodores 8y ago

I got my 6 year old Pixel laptop out the bag in a client meeting today, used the touch screen to quickly scroll through some stuff and the non-tech crowd wanted to know what the machine was. Despite its age it still had wow factor. "You should get one of these!" - if only they knew it was 6 years old... I passed up the opportunity to buy the new Pixelbook as the original Pixel still works nicely and I don't need Android on it particularly. However, I think that Google have gone wrong with ditching the Pixelbook. There is a definite market for a decent developer machine that you can run Linuxii on that isn't a hack. Homebrew, Virtualbox, Ubuntu in Windows isn't ever native and the instructions are always less straightforward than with a stock Ubuntu or other regular distro. From recent news there seems to be a small army of pissed off Mac users that want simple things like an escape key. There are also plenty of developers that don't really need Windows. The Dell developer XPS specials are very nice but the original Pixel and its descendants get a few things right, the 'no expense spared' 3x2 screen, nicest keyboard ever, best speakers ever and best trackpad going works for me. Google should accept that their take on a 'developer machine' is going to be low volume but there is no reason why they can't make it pay its own way, really it is a matter of specification and not nickel-and-diming things like the keyboard. If anything they should make the machine exclusive. Anyone can have a posh Apple computer but it is still just an Apple to people like the clients that I met today. Break out the Pixel though and even if you are just scrolling through a web page it has some impressive statement value to people who know nothing about computers. I think the hardware division went the wrong way trying to make the Pixelbook 'for everyone' (rich). If they made it super cool with the ability to run a linux distro native as well as having ChromeOS/Android then they could have made something that Pixel laptop owners like myself would buy. Instead I run a regular PC for development. I also think that if their developer machine was the de-facto thing for Google to use in house then that would make the machine aspirational to developers. If one were to be using the same hardware that Google designed for their developers then you would feel that you had the best going for Android/web development. A Dell machine doesn't quite have that kudos because nobody at Dell writes a lot of code.

discordance 8y ago
My 6 year old Pixel laptop has been end-of-life'd by Google. I got notifications last year that they would not be releasing any further OS or security updates. I also have a 2011 Macbook Air, and am still able to get OS and security updates.