4 ms·

It seems pretty bold and visionary to me. They've lucked out with gmail, chrome, golang, android, maps, etc. and they still have the best search in the world.

by _wldu 7y ago

It seems pretty bold and visionary to me. They've lucked out with gmail, chrome, golang, android, maps, etc. and they still have the best search in the world. Having a HIPPO tell everyone what to do, how to do it and when is not visionary. Letting engineers do what they want and then making money from the ideas is.

amluto 7y ago
> and they still have the best search in the world. Which is disappointing, since Google of ten years ago had a distinctly better search.
- airstrike 7y ago
  Better for users, but not for investors.
- Enginerrrd 7y ago
  Yes! As soon as wikipedia stopped being the first result for nearly everything it started going downhill. The decline in usability for me has been most notable in the last 5 years.
scarface74 7y ago
Chrome was split off from WebKit, Android was acquired. They didn’t build either from scratch. Compare their success to failure ratio to Apple, Amazon and Microsoft.
- kevinslashslash 7y ago
  And Apple bought NeXT which is what macOS and iOS are based off of. A purity contest of "from scratch" isn't really relevant. Google clearly put, and continues to put, a lot of serious technical work into Chrome and Android which is reflected in their success.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Chrome isn’t a “success” because of any technical work. It’s a success because Google hocked it on their home page. How is Chrome anymore of technical success than other browsers? As far as Android, it came out in the Oracle trial that it only made about $22 billion in profit during its entire existence and the entire ecosystem is still a mess as far as security and updates compared to Windows - ie where one company controls the operating system and licenses it to other OEMs. Not to mention that the entire Android market is a profit less race to the bottom for all of the manufacturers. All that being said, Google still derives almost all of its profit from ads compared to Apple, Microsoft and Amazon who have had far more success in introducing diversified products. But if Google’s failures can be attributed to a lack of leadership, most of Apple’s current success wasn’t the result of the NeXT acquisition. It was the result of bringing its founder back.
    - username90 7y ago
      > How is Chrome anymore of technical success than other browsers? When chrome was new it was extremely innovative with how much space it gave to websites, and also came with orders of magnitude faster javascript. The other browsers then copied Chrome so all of them are now fast and sleek, but back then the difference was huge.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Orders of magnitude faster than JavaScriptCore in 2008?
        username90 7y ago
        Yes, it depends on what benchmarks you ran though. Example: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-is-insanely-fast-faster-than-firefox-3-0/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-is-insanely-fast...
        scarface74 7y ago
bouvin 7y ago
They bought Maps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#History
- jefftk 7y ago
  "Google Maps began as a C++ desktop program at Where 2 Technologies. In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google, which converted it into a web application. After additional acquisitions of a geospatial data visualization company and a realtime traffic analyzer, Google Maps was launched in February 2005."

by _wldu 7y ago

amluto 7y ago

> and they still have the best search in the world. Which is disappointing, since Google of ten years ago had a distinctly better search.

airstrike 7y ago
Better for users, but not for investors.
Enginerrrd 7y ago
Yes! As soon as wikipedia stopped being the first result for nearly everything it started going downhill. The decline in usability for me has been most notable in the last 5 years.

scarface74 7y ago

Chrome was split off from WebKit, Android was acquired. They didn’t build either from scratch. Compare their success to failure ratio to Apple, Amazon and Microsoft.

kevinslashslash 7y ago
And Apple bought NeXT which is what macOS and iOS are based off of. A purity contest of "from scratch" isn't really relevant. Google clearly put, and continues to put, a lot of serious technical work into Chrome and Android which is reflected in their success.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Chrome isn’t a “success” because of any technical work. It’s a success because Google hocked it on their home page. How is Chrome anymore of technical success than other browsers? As far as Android, it came out in the Oracle trial that it only made about $22 billion in profit during its entire existence and the entire ecosystem is still a mess as far as security and updates compared to Windows - ie where one company controls the operating system and licenses it to other OEMs. Not to mention that the entire Android market is a profit less race to the bottom for all of the manufacturers. All that being said, Google still derives almost all of its profit from ads compared to Apple, Microsoft and Amazon who have had far more success in introducing diversified products. But if Google’s failures can be attributed to a lack of leadership, most of Apple’s current success wasn’t the result of the NeXT acquisition. It was the result of bringing its founder back.
  - username90 7y ago
    > How is Chrome anymore of technical success than other browsers? When chrome was new it was extremely innovative with how much space it gave to websites, and also came with orders of magnitude faster javascript. The other browsers then copied Chrome so all of them are now fast and sleek, but back then the difference was huge.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Orders of magnitude faster than JavaScriptCore in 2008?
      - username90 7y ago
        Yes, it depends on what benchmarks you ran though. Example: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-is-insanely-fast-faster-than-firefox-3-0/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-is-insanely-fast...
        scarface74 7y ago

bouvin 7y ago

They bought Maps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#History

jefftk 7y ago
"Google Maps began as a C++ desktop program at Where 2 Technologies. In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google, which converted it into a web application. After additional acquisitions of a geospatial data visualization company and a realtime traffic analyzer, Google Maps was launched in February 2005."