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Google is fine with expensive (they sunk many billions into Maps over 10+ years and only just started monetizing it). But humans don't scale. If you want to hav

Google is fine with expensive (they sunk many billions into Maps over 10+ years and only just started monetizing it). But humans don't scale. If you want to have ten thousand data points about every business on Earth, you can't get there by relying on humans. You need to automate everything from top ot bottom.

rabidrat 7y ago
Perhaps scaling to Google-size is the problem.
toast0 7y ago
Humans can scale, it's just that Google chooses not to use them. Anything that requires a human in the loop is something they won't do. Customer service, not going to happen. Having Youtube Kids actually have appropriate content for kids, unlikely. Being a trustworthy source for businesses on maps, no way.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  Wikipedia seems to be an example of humans scaling.
- dmitriid 7y ago
  Google products have up to 2 billion users. It's nearly impossible to scale any human support to this size. Because it's actually billions of users. It's a billion of users for Google Maps. It's two billion of users for Youtube. It's nearly a billion for GMail. And the requests for those different products have to go to different support personnel. In areas where there's significantly less users they do provide human support, for example in GCP.
  - Majromax 7y ago
    If it's impossible to provide human support for a system, and if it's possible to automatically exploit the system to affect a nontrivial fraction of users, then perhaps the system shouldn't have billions of users? There's resilience in diversity.
    - dmitriid 7y ago
      > then perhaps the system shouldn't have billions of users How do you imagine Google Maps achieving that? Telling people "oh, sorry, can't serve you today"?
  - toast0 7y ago
    I work for a product with big numbers too. We have humans reading the support queue (with a lot of engineering to prefilter and group for bulk replies and what not). People may or may not like our support, or may complain it's not as good as it used to be, but it's there. Frankly, we couldn't have as many users as we do without a human connection in support. Users tell us what we're doing wrong, and what we need to do that we're not doing, and where we need to improve --- but only if you listen to them.
    - dmitriid 7y ago
      > Frankly, we couldn't have as many users as we do without a human connection in support. Different companies and different products are different. It looks like many Google products are good enough to attract many users without support.

rabidrat 7y ago

Perhaps scaling to Google-size is the problem.

toast0 7y ago

Humans can scale, it's just that Google chooses not to use them. Anything that requires a human in the loop is something they won't do. Customer service, not going to happen. Having Youtube Kids actually have appropriate content for kids, unlikely. Being a trustworthy source for businesses on maps, no way.

Apocryphon 7y ago
Wikipedia seems to be an example of humans scaling.
dmitriid 7y ago
Google products have up to 2 billion users. It's nearly impossible to scale any human support to this size. Because it's actually billions of users. It's a billion of users for Google Maps. It's two billion of users for Youtube. It's nearly a billion for GMail. And the requests for those different products have to go to different support personnel. In areas where there's significantly less users they do provide human support, for example in GCP.
- Majromax 7y ago
  If it's impossible to provide human support for a system, and if it's possible to automatically exploit the system to affect a nontrivial fraction of users, then perhaps the system shouldn't have billions of users? There's resilience in diversity.
  - dmitriid 7y ago
    > then perhaps the system shouldn't have billions of users How do you imagine Google Maps achieving that? Telling people "oh, sorry, can't serve you today"?
- toast0 7y ago
  I work for a product with big numbers too. We have humans reading the support queue (with a lot of engineering to prefilter and group for bulk replies and what not). People may or may not like our support, or may complain it's not as good as it used to be, but it's there. Frankly, we couldn't have as many users as we do without a human connection in support. Users tell us what we're doing wrong, and what we need to do that we're not doing, and where we need to improve --- but only if you listen to them.
  - dmitriid 7y ago
    > Frankly, we couldn't have as many users as we do without a human connection in support. Different companies and different products are different. It looks like many Google products are good enough to attract many users without support.