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Chrome, Kubernetes, TensorFlow, Golang, AngularJS, Prometheus, gRPC, Protocol Buffers, Vitess, Spanner, Flutter, Bazel, GoogleTest, Istio, V8, AlphaZero Seems

Chrome, Kubernetes, TensorFlow, Golang, AngularJS, Prometheus, gRPC, Protocol Buffers, Vitess, Spanner, Flutter, Bazel, GoogleTest, Istio, V8, AlphaZero Seems like Google innovates and builds a ton. It's the whole dealing with customers part that they don't like.

aesthethiccs 7y ago
Angularjs + Angular doesn't belong in that list. how they handled that transition gave react a huge footing, splintered the framework community, also have made it very hard to search for their own framework.
- andrewstuart 7y ago
  Wasn't the bigger problem that it was hard and heavyweight and felt like you needed to be a Java developing software engineer to make anything substantial with AngularJS?
- ErikAugust 7y ago
  Well, AngularJS shouldn't belong on that list because it was brought in from an acquisition, I believe.
jjtheblunt 7y ago
Isn't Golang really Bell Labs guys, now Google. MapReduce far far predates Google, in shared-memory multiprocessors of the late 80s and thereafter, for instance, though didn't Google popularize it.
- dagw 7y ago
  Isn't Golang really Bell Labs guys, now Google. Golang was developed at Google, with Googles blessing, by Google employees. I don't know how much more you can ask for. What difference does it make that some of the people had jobs before Google. MapReduce far far predates Google The general concept was known, the implementation and algorithms Google used to run MapReduce efficiently on large cluster of heterogeneous machines was original to Google.
jjtheblunt 7y ago
Is it Bazel or Blaze?
- ipince 7y ago
  Blaze was the internal tool developed at Google. Bazel is the external incarnation.
walkingolof 7y ago
So they seem to output outstanding software for us to use, but when it comes to making money they are still mostly a one tricky pony, but what a pony....
thomasz 7y ago
Google has a significant fraction of the best and brightest developers of our generation on payroll. It’s not surprising that they create innovative technology. It’s just that they really suck at creating products. After gmail and maps there were next to no successes; even when they throw all their weight behind something like they did with buzz and plus, they tend to fail hard.
- icebraining 7y ago
  > After gmail and maps there were next to no successes Yeah, just little used products like Android and Chrome /s
  - thomasz 7y ago
    Neither chrome nor android have a revenue stream. Both are long time strategic hedges meant to protect the ad revenue from gmail, search and maps.
curiousgal 7y ago
> Flutter I am still sad that they acquired a really cool company called Flutter back in 2013 that shipped an awesome product allowing you to control media players using your webcam with hand gestures [0]. They only kept the name it seems. So yeah, not so innovative. 0.https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/hands-on-with-googles-latest-acquisition-flutter-a-webcam-gesture-app/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/hands-on-with-google...
- dodobirdlord 7y ago
  Because a name got reused? What does that have to do with innovation?
  - curiousgal 7y ago
    Because the product didn't get reused.
pjmlp 7y ago
Flutter is going to die unless they actually release Fuchsia and force everyone to jump ship. Dart got lucky with the AdWords team that is all about it. All the original Dart designers have left Google and are no longer related to the language. Android team is pushing Kotlin/Native for common code across iOS/Android, came up with Jetpack Compose and rebuilt their reload code from scratch for Android Studio 3.5. When asked about Flutter they always give the "use what is best for you" kind of answer. Go is still playing catchup with majority of internal services written in Java/C++. Although it already has some small victories in ChromeOS, Fuchsia and Android GPU debugger. Kubernetes was originally written in Java, was rebooted into Go after another team took over and its codebase suffers from lack of generics support, leading to a pile of code generation. Some devs dislike so much how AngularJS was so badly managed, that they still mix the Angular/Typescript variant with AngularJS.
- scotth 7y ago
  Flutter might actually have some legs. It's gaining a lot of steam without any Fuchsia involvement. I'm a UI-focused engineer who's been working with it for the past 8 months or so, and I'm really liking it. Hot reload is awesome, the framework's primitives and how they compose is very natural feeling after some practice, and the framework doesn't hide low-level control from you if you need it. Dart's no slouch either. I mean, it's not super exciting, but its standard library is nice, and the language itself is improving all the time (non-nullable by default coming soon!). PLUS, with support for macOS, Windows and Linux on the horizon, we're soon going to have a really solid development environment that works on both mobile and desktop platforms. I know this sounds like an ad, but I'm serious. I like it a lot.
e12e 7y ago
Prometheus was developed at SoundCloud? Or is there another Google product with the same name?
- khazhou 7y ago
  Prometheus... now there's a name I've not heard in years. "App Engine", to non-googlers.

aesthethiccs 7y ago

Angularjs + Angular doesn't belong in that list. how they handled that transition gave react a huge footing, splintered the framework community, also have made it very hard to search for their own framework.

andrewstuart 7y ago
Wasn't the bigger problem that it was hard and heavyweight and felt like you needed to be a Java developing software engineer to make anything substantial with AngularJS?
ErikAugust 7y ago
Well, AngularJS shouldn't belong on that list because it was brought in from an acquisition, I believe.

jjtheblunt 7y ago

Isn't Golang really Bell Labs guys, now Google. MapReduce far far predates Google, in shared-memory multiprocessors of the late 80s and thereafter, for instance, though didn't Google popularize it.

dagw 7y ago
Isn't Golang really Bell Labs guys, now Google. Golang was developed at Google, with Googles blessing, by Google employees. I don't know how much more you can ask for. What difference does it make that some of the people had jobs before Google. MapReduce far far predates Google The general concept was known, the implementation and algorithms Google used to run MapReduce efficiently on large cluster of heterogeneous machines was original to Google.

jjtheblunt 7y ago

Is it Bazel or Blaze?

ipince 7y ago
Blaze was the internal tool developed at Google. Bazel is the external incarnation.

walkingolof 7y ago

So they seem to output outstanding software for us to use, but when it comes to making money they are still mostly a one tricky pony, but what a pony....

thomasz 7y ago

Google has a significant fraction of the best and brightest developers of our generation on payroll. It’s not surprising that they create innovative technology. It’s just that they really suck at creating products. After gmail and maps there were next to no successes; even when they throw all their weight behind something like they did with buzz and plus, they tend to fail hard.

icebraining 7y ago
> After gmail and maps there were next to no successes Yeah, just little used products like Android and Chrome /s
- thomasz 7y ago
  Neither chrome nor android have a revenue stream. Both are long time strategic hedges meant to protect the ad revenue from gmail, search and maps.

curiousgal 7y ago

> Flutter I am still sad that they acquired a really cool company called Flutter back in 2013 that shipped an awesome product allowing you to control media players using your webcam with hand gestures [0]. They only kept the name it seems. So yeah, not so innovative. 0.https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/hands-on-with-googles-latest-acquisition-flutter-a-webcam-gesture-app/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/hands-on-with-google...

dodobirdlord 7y ago
Because a name got reused? What does that have to do with innovation?
- curiousgal 7y ago
  Because the product didn't get reused.

pjmlp 7y ago

Flutter is going to die unless they actually release Fuchsia and force everyone to jump ship. Dart got lucky with the AdWords team that is all about it. All the original Dart designers have left Google and are no longer related to the language. Android team is pushing Kotlin/Native for common code across iOS/Android, came up with Jetpack Compose and rebuilt their reload code from scratch for Android Studio 3.5. When asked about Flutter they always give the "use what is best for you" kind of answer. Go is still playing catchup with majority of internal services written in Java/C++. Although it already has some small victories in ChromeOS, Fuchsia and Android GPU debugger. Kubernetes was originally written in Java, was rebooted into Go after another team took over and its codebase suffers from lack of generics support, leading to a pile of code generation. Some devs dislike so much how AngularJS was so badly managed, that they still mix the Angular/Typescript variant with AngularJS.

scotth 7y ago
Flutter might actually have some legs. It's gaining a lot of steam without any Fuchsia involvement. I'm a UI-focused engineer who's been working with it for the past 8 months or so, and I'm really liking it. Hot reload is awesome, the framework's primitives and how they compose is very natural feeling after some practice, and the framework doesn't hide low-level control from you if you need it. Dart's no slouch either. I mean, it's not super exciting, but its standard library is nice, and the language itself is improving all the time (non-nullable by default coming soon!). PLUS, with support for macOS, Windows and Linux on the horizon, we're soon going to have a really solid development environment that works on both mobile and desktop platforms. I know this sounds like an ad, but I'm serious. I like it a lot.

e12e 7y ago

Prometheus was developed at SoundCloud? Or is there another Google product with the same name?

khazhou 7y ago
Prometheus... now there's a name I've not heard in years. "App Engine", to non-googlers.