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>Google’s problem remains its reputation for turning things off. I'd put it this way: Google has a reputation for turning things off, but its _problem_ is an i

>Google’s problem remains its reputation for turning things off. I'd put it this way: Google has a reputation for turning things off, but its _problem_ is an inability to stop doing that, to commit to its users/customers. In other contexts this could be written in terms of addiction. If I were Sergey and Larry, this would be the thing I'd be retiring over, and I'm not sure Suchar can change it.

adventured 7y ago
If Satya Nadella could get Microsoft to move beyond its Windows-all-or-nothing pathology, someone in charge at Google (including the two founders that vote-control the entire company directly - they can de facto hand Sundar the power to act as he needs to) can trivially put a stop to the relationship commitment issues at Google.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Its far from trivial to change an entire corporate culture on a dime. From everything we have seen of Google's culture, working on new projects is exciting and is absolutely the way to get promoted. Doing maintenance work, especially on products that aren't wildly successful gets you no attention, no staff, no funding, and probably more than a little tongue waging. The CEO cant just change all that with directives, even if they do something extreme like a "No Depreciations" policy, products are liable to be depreciated in all but name (Joe the intern takes care of it every 5th Tuesday, technically not depreciated) by sheer corporate momentum alone, nobody wants to be stuck with a dead fish, even if its now illegal to openly comment on how much it stinks. It would require change at every level of Google to place value into fixing/improving existing projects, rather than all the glory going to greenfield development. Considering the kind of "kingmaker" culture Google's mentality breeds, ie what gets me ahead is gathering resources to focus on my project, changing things to a setup where contributing to other peoples silos is welcome and common is going to be an extremely difficult prospect because virtually all the people with power inside Google got that way by carefully tending their fiefdom, they aren't just going to throw that all a way, no matter what any executive says.
  - jbigelow76 7y ago
    Its far from trivial to change an entire corporate culture on a dime. You can say that, but when it's a response to the fact that Microsoft did that EXACT THING on the the scale in which they did it your statement doesn't hold any water. Go back in time and walk onto the Microsoft campus in Seattle and tell anyone that will listen in say 1995, 1999, 2001, 2007, or 2012 that Windows licensing is a dead end and see if you don't get lumped in with the loonies talking about the end of the world. To say that Google can't do it is more an indictment of Google's leadership as opposed to the enormity of the task. To thinking a company with a 934 billion dollar market cap (Alphabet) can't figure out how to do enterprise software support if it wanted to, what a joke. Edit: spelling.
    - dragonsh 7y ago
      I am not sure why you are saying Microsoft transformed, its still the same old one now trying to embrace Linux as it runs as the main workload on Azure instead of windows. This is just done for survival, otherwise Microsoft would have gone to irrelevance. Windows and Office licenses are still the main driver for Microsoft, just with accounting tricks and office 360 made into cloud revenues. This is an investor story to jack up the stocks. They are no better than google when it comes to platform lock-in. On top of it having used Azure services, I can say without a doubt its inferior to Amazon and Google cloud experience. Microsoft didn't transform it's just that enterprises who hold up upgrading Windows and Office did so after windows 7 debacle to Windows 10. This is just cyclical uptick, not really transformation, its just lucky Nadella. The only good thing Nadella did is, didn't take any disastrous decision to thwart the uptick by embracing Linux and trying open source, by understanding that if it's not done Microsoft will go the IBM path to irrelevance. In the process Microsoft having an old relationship with enterprises helped them to move some workloads to Azure even though it is an inferior service, by supporting Linux and showing commitment to it for financial gain not out of goodwill towards open source. Still today Microsoft relevance on mobile is due to its office products, otherwise it is as good as irrelevant on mobile application and development front. It's alive on mobile just due to proprietary platform lock-in to .NET. Now made it open source to try to increase the share as it's not as useful given the rise of nodejs, Python, rust and other platforms.
- eitland 7y ago
  Microsoft has changed. A lot. But there still seems to be a fight going on in the cockpit.
gurjeet 7y ago
s/Suchar/Sundar/
itronitron 7y ago
I think Google needs to explicitly spin out a Google Product company that is customer focused and develops/maintains/supports platforms and applications. It would be distinct from Search and Ads and would instead sell them (and other customers) access to Google data centers and GCP.
- rhizome 7y ago
  I think Google needs to explicitly spin out a Google Product company that is customer focused and develops/maintains/supports platforms and applications. Honestly, and I'm more of a Google side-eyer than a hater, but I'm not sure they're capable of this, it's just not in their DNA. I've been saying "Google is bad at product" for a long time, like a "high PR" long time, and this mindset has been greeted with continual killoffs and usability stumbles (current Android is kind of a mess UI-wise, e.g.). I simply don't think they're capable of putting a division together that could be relied upon. Heck, Alphabet might simply kill that off after a few years!

adventured 7y ago

If Satya Nadella could get Microsoft to move beyond its Windows-all-or-nothing pathology, someone in charge at Google (including the two founders that vote-control the entire company directly - they can de facto hand Sundar the power to act as he needs to) can trivially put a stop to the relationship commitment issues at Google.

throwaway2048 7y ago
Its far from trivial to change an entire corporate culture on a dime. From everything we have seen of Google's culture, working on new projects is exciting and is absolutely the way to get promoted. Doing maintenance work, especially on products that aren't wildly successful gets you no attention, no staff, no funding, and probably more than a little tongue waging. The CEO cant just change all that with directives, even if they do something extreme like a "No Depreciations" policy, products are liable to be depreciated in all but name (Joe the intern takes care of it every 5th Tuesday, technically not depreciated) by sheer corporate momentum alone, nobody wants to be stuck with a dead fish, even if its now illegal to openly comment on how much it stinks. It would require change at every level of Google to place value into fixing/improving existing projects, rather than all the glory going to greenfield development. Considering the kind of "kingmaker" culture Google's mentality breeds, ie what gets me ahead is gathering resources to focus on my project, changing things to a setup where contributing to other peoples silos is welcome and common is going to be an extremely difficult prospect because virtually all the people with power inside Google got that way by carefully tending their fiefdom, they aren't just going to throw that all a way, no matter what any executive says.
- jbigelow76 7y ago
  Its far from trivial to change an entire corporate culture on a dime. You can say that, but when it's a response to the fact that Microsoft did that EXACT THING on the the scale in which they did it your statement doesn't hold any water. Go back in time and walk onto the Microsoft campus in Seattle and tell anyone that will listen in say 1995, 1999, 2001, 2007, or 2012 that Windows licensing is a dead end and see if you don't get lumped in with the loonies talking about the end of the world. To say that Google can't do it is more an indictment of Google's leadership as opposed to the enormity of the task. To thinking a company with a 934 billion dollar market cap (Alphabet) can't figure out how to do enterprise software support if it wanted to, what a joke. Edit: spelling.
  - dragonsh 7y ago
    I am not sure why you are saying Microsoft transformed, its still the same old one now trying to embrace Linux as it runs as the main workload on Azure instead of windows. This is just done for survival, otherwise Microsoft would have gone to irrelevance. Windows and Office licenses are still the main driver for Microsoft, just with accounting tricks and office 360 made into cloud revenues. This is an investor story to jack up the stocks. They are no better than google when it comes to platform lock-in. On top of it having used Azure services, I can say without a doubt its inferior to Amazon and Google cloud experience. Microsoft didn't transform it's just that enterprises who hold up upgrading Windows and Office did so after windows 7 debacle to Windows 10. This is just cyclical uptick, not really transformation, its just lucky Nadella. The only good thing Nadella did is, didn't take any disastrous decision to thwart the uptick by embracing Linux and trying open source, by understanding that if it's not done Microsoft will go the IBM path to irrelevance. In the process Microsoft having an old relationship with enterprises helped them to move some workloads to Azure even though it is an inferior service, by supporting Linux and showing commitment to it for financial gain not out of goodwill towards open source. Still today Microsoft relevance on mobile is due to its office products, otherwise it is as good as irrelevant on mobile application and development front. It's alive on mobile just due to proprietary platform lock-in to .NET. Now made it open source to try to increase the share as it's not as useful given the rise of nodejs, Python, rust and other platforms.
eitland 7y ago
Microsoft has changed. A lot. But there still seems to be a fight going on in the cockpit.

gurjeet 7y ago

s/Suchar/Sundar/

itronitron 7y ago

I think Google needs to explicitly spin out a Google Product company that is customer focused and develops/maintains/supports platforms and applications. It would be distinct from Search and Ads and would instead sell them (and other customers) access to Google data centers and GCP.

rhizome 7y ago
I think Google needs to explicitly spin out a Google Product company that is customer focused and develops/maintains/supports platforms and applications. Honestly, and I'm more of a Google side-eyer than a hater, but I'm not sure they're capable of this, it's just not in their DNA. I've been saying "Google is bad at product" for a long time, like a "high PR" long time, and this mindset has been greeted with continual killoffs and usability stumbles (current Android is kind of a mess UI-wise, e.g.). I simply don't think they're capable of putting a division together that could be relied upon. Heck, Alphabet might simply kill that off after a few years!