5 ms·

It's true that Google doesn't need creative all stars. It needs line workers, and there's no way its culture of whimsical creativity could have survived expandi

It's true that Google doesn't need creative all stars. It needs line workers, and there's no way its culture of whimsical creativity could have survived expanding so much and so quickly. Your point about emotions is also good. Here is another way to put it. The issue IMO is that they told people they were changing the world and by making information universally available etc etc. The people who went to work for them early really believed it and those people seeded their culture. The people who just wanted to make a bunch of money went into other fields (like Wall Street or law). Those people also talk about politics and undoubtedly have political activists. But the politics of someone who just wants to make a ton of money are aligned with a company whose stated goal is to just make a ton of money. This political alignment doesn't happen for free at Google. And since they seeded their culture with people who cared about improving the world, they have a higher than average rate of influencial employees who don't want to make money in traditionally "dirty" fields like arms dealing and private prisons. Google has to solve this problem because their cloud division can't survive if they can't take government contracts. I see no way of solving it except that they just have to kill the old culture while attempting to minimize attrition.

pm90 7y ago
They could try to split up. The separation into Alphabet seems almost a dream for regulators who can just separate them. I mean, just think about it. Standard Oil had the same monopoly over a valuable resource (oil then, Software and Data today) that Google has today (fine, Facebook etc too... but there is no Facebook search; also they are monopolies over different kinds of digital products). They need to be broken up; their successors will probably end up becoming quite big over time; rinse, rise, repeat. Capitalism is an amazing thing. Only the strongest survive but then they dominate everything and strangle the market itself. Fuck that, keep the markets free of such control by non state actors.
- SquishyPanda23 7y ago
  They can't break up because ads drives something like 80-90% of revenue.
- Lammy 7y ago
  > but there is no Facebook search Ouch, don't let Facebook hear you say that :p They tried so hard to get Search to stick, to the point of trying to juice the numbers by forcing you to go to a result page instead of directly to a group/page/profile in the live results dropdown.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Facebook could easily be told to shed Instagram, WhatsApp and everything else they bought up to dominate the social network space. Individually those companies might not survive, but they could spin them off, as a whole, if the FTC tired to step in. Google could be asked to do the same with some of their product lines/companies. It's very unlikely though. These companies have a lot of influence and a lot of power .. and when was the last time the Federal government broke up a company over antitrust violations? It didn't happen with Microsoft .. and for examples of really big monopolies, you'd probably have to go back to the Bell/ATT days.
  - pm90 7y ago
    > It's very unlikely though. These companies have a lot of influence and a lot of power While that's true, just money and influence aren't sufficient for this. Congress passes laws, but its upto the Executive to interpret it. The lack of breaking up of larger corporations has indeed been due to their significant influence, but I'm interested to see how e.g. a left-learning President like Sanders or Warren would use the powers of the Federal Executive (specifically the Justice Dept) to enforce existing anti-trust laws. Probably the only thorn in their plan would be SCOTUS, and its possible that its current makeup might make it amenable to the influence of corporations (its not clear to me if it will).
    - dmix 7y ago
      Have you considered how standard oil is now ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP. They did break up but we're hardly in a different place in terms of who controls the market and who has most influence on gov policy globally to keep it that way. http://2oqz471sa19h3vbwa53m33yj-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/standard-oil-timeline.jpg http://2oqz471sa19h3vbwa53m33yj-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-c... Or how Bell is now ATT and plenty of other useless oligopoly companies?
      - pm90 7y ago
        It’s true they currently have enormous power. But consider how the market would look like and how they would behave, if it were still Standard Oil and ATT.

pm90 7y ago

They could try to split up. The separation into Alphabet seems almost a dream for regulators who can just separate them. I mean, just think about it. Standard Oil had the same monopoly over a valuable resource (oil then, Software and Data today) that Google has today (fine, Facebook etc too... but there is no Facebook search; also they are monopolies over different kinds of digital products). They need to be broken up; their successors will probably end up becoming quite big over time; rinse, rise, repeat. Capitalism is an amazing thing. Only the strongest survive but then they dominate everything and strangle the market itself. Fuck that, keep the markets free of such control by non state actors.

SquishyPanda23 7y ago
They can't break up because ads drives something like 80-90% of revenue.
Lammy 7y ago
> but there is no Facebook search Ouch, don't let Facebook hear you say that :p They tried so hard to get Search to stick, to the point of trying to juice the numbers by forcing you to go to a result page instead of directly to a group/page/profile in the live results dropdown.
djsumdog 7y ago
Facebook could easily be told to shed Instagram, WhatsApp and everything else they bought up to dominate the social network space. Individually those companies might not survive, but they could spin them off, as a whole, if the FTC tired to step in. Google could be asked to do the same with some of their product lines/companies. It's very unlikely though. These companies have a lot of influence and a lot of power .. and when was the last time the Federal government broke up a company over antitrust violations? It didn't happen with Microsoft .. and for examples of really big monopolies, you'd probably have to go back to the Bell/ATT days.
- pm90 7y ago
  > It's very unlikely though. These companies have a lot of influence and a lot of power While that's true, just money and influence aren't sufficient for this. Congress passes laws, but its upto the Executive to interpret it. The lack of breaking up of larger corporations has indeed been due to their significant influence, but I'm interested to see how e.g. a left-learning President like Sanders or Warren would use the powers of the Federal Executive (specifically the Justice Dept) to enforce existing anti-trust laws. Probably the only thorn in their plan would be SCOTUS, and its possible that its current makeup might make it amenable to the influence of corporations (its not clear to me if it will).
  - dmix 7y ago
    Have you considered how standard oil is now ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP. They did break up but we're hardly in a different place in terms of who controls the market and who has most influence on gov policy globally to keep it that way. http://2oqz471sa19h3vbwa53m33yj-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/standard-oil-timeline.jpg http://2oqz471sa19h3vbwa53m33yj-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-c... Or how Bell is now ATT and plenty of other useless oligopoly companies?
    - pm90 7y ago
      It’s true they currently have enormous power. But consider how the market would look like and how they would behave, if it were still Standard Oil and ATT.