4 ms·

These are different teams within Google, and it's kinda not fair to say that Google is not truly behind open web standards. Their whole web developer advocate

by hknd 7y ago

These are different teams within Google, and it's kinda not fair to say that Google is not truly behind open web standards. Their whole web developer advocate team is behind open web standards, and pushes it forward everyday. The engineering team actually working on Chrome is behind those standards, and pushes it forward. They work closely with other browser vendors. and try to make everything work everywhere. Then there is the Chrome marketing team which has to goal (OKR) to increase the reach of Chrome. They might still support the open web, but their goal is to get more users using chrome.

Tyrek 7y ago
it's kinda not fair to say that a large org should have enough internal coordination to align incentives and coordinate between different teams? It sounds reasonable to start with, but really gets to the whole making-excuses-for-them kind of thing if you think harder, no?
- username90 7y ago
  Google is very bottom-up and hence super uncoordinated, that is a part of who they are. Leaders sets some vague goals, but lower rung people still have a lot of freedom in how they go about things. The last time Google did some large scale coordination we got Google+, I don't think they want to try to repeat that anytime soon...
moron4hire 7y ago
When leadership acts unethically, the employees who stay tacitly approve. You can't tell me that Google engineers are hurting for opportunities.
Santosh83 7y ago
Okay, I get it, but in that case the marketing is doing engineering a disservice when they implement needlessly aggressive and redundant advertising of Chrome on properties and user agents which ought to be almost 100% identical functionality in Chromium based (if not web standards compliant) browsers. To put it plainly I can understand if Google promotes Chrome when there is a genuine technical feature on one of their properties that needs Chrome to function, but in most cases this is not so, which means the marketing is not for technical reasons but merely to capture more market-share for its own ends, which would make sense if they were selling their browser but that too is not the case, so why? I mean, the ultimate aim of all companies are to grow and profit, but the playing field is neither infinite nor the audience stupid, so they should take care not to keep damaging their reputation.
- scoutt 7y ago
  > marketing is doing engineering a disservice I've never seen a company where both marketing and engineering agree on something. Marketing thinks we are a bunch of nerds and we think marketing floors have a much less density regarding neurons per square meter (so, in way we are both right). By the way, marketing always win. They are closer to upper levels, the credit for success is (supposedly) theirs. They suggest all the bad tactics, technically and commercially. I can bet that a move like Chrome suggesting to ditch Edge is purely their idea, approved by upper levels and executed by engineers that can't say no.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - lallysingh 7y ago
    Do they even know that Edge is Chrome based?
    - scoutt 7y ago
      Good question. Probably all they know is that Microsoft released a competing browser and just asked the engineering team to do them a tool for showing annoying messages to the users based on the browser. I am sure marketing doesn't know/care if it was done with Chromium, 1994 Mosaic or matchsticks.
      - kunglao 7y ago
        This is Google we are talking about. I would imagine they started working on competing strategies even well before Microsoft announced officially they are going to use Chromium. You people seriously undermine the tech awareness of marketing teams, of Google no less.
      - nickv 7y ago
        This reeks of smug engineering superiority. I promise you the marketing team does serious competitive intel and probably knows more about the competitive landscape than the engineers themselves. That's true at my place of employment (also a bay area tech company), and I'd be shocked if it's not true at Google.
McGlockenshire 7y ago
I'm out of the loop. What is "OKR" in this context?
- username90 7y ago
  "Objectives and Key Results", that is how Google organize their priorities. Every level of management creates OKR's for and every employee can see the OKR's of their team, the product, the org and entire Google and are supposed to align their efforts with this. The upper OKR's are usually things like "Product should make XX% more money", or "Become the foremost user-choice for task X". The lower OKR's are usually just things like "build feature X".
- bzbarsky 7y ago
  "Objective and Key Result". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR
kunglao 7y ago
This is a naive view of how things work in big corporations. They work hard on many levels to make sure different teams are aligned under the strategic interests of the company as a whole. Sure, different teams might get in the way of each other now and then. But not at a strategic level and the managers don't let the veer too far off the main course. Unless I miss my guess, Chrome isn't just any product to Google. It had great strategic importance to them just like Android. I'm not sure if the main purpose of Chrome's existence is to drive open Web standards.

by hknd 7y ago

Tyrek 7y ago

it's kinda not fair to say that a large org should have enough internal coordination to align incentives and coordinate between different teams? It sounds reasonable to start with, but really gets to the whole making-excuses-for-them kind of thing if you think harder, no?

username90 7y ago
Google is very bottom-up and hence super uncoordinated, that is a part of who they are. Leaders sets some vague goals, but lower rung people still have a lot of freedom in how they go about things. The last time Google did some large scale coordination we got Google+, I don't think they want to try to repeat that anytime soon...

moron4hire 7y ago

When leadership acts unethically, the employees who stay tacitly approve. You can't tell me that Google engineers are hurting for opportunities.

Santosh83 7y ago

Okay, I get it, but in that case the marketing is doing engineering a disservice when they implement needlessly aggressive and redundant advertising of Chrome on properties and user agents which ought to be almost 100% identical functionality in Chromium based (if not web standards compliant) browsers. To put it plainly I can understand if Google promotes Chrome when there is a genuine technical feature on one of their properties that needs Chrome to function, but in most cases this is not so, which means the marketing is not for technical reasons but merely to capture more market-share for its own ends, which would make sense if they were selling their browser but that too is not the case, so why? I mean, the ultimate aim of all companies are to grow and profit, but the playing field is neither infinite nor the audience stupid, so they should take care not to keep damaging their reputation.

scoutt 7y ago
> marketing is doing engineering a disservice I've never seen a company where both marketing and engineering agree on something. Marketing thinks we are a bunch of nerds and we think marketing floors have a much less density regarding neurons per square meter (so, in way we are both right). By the way, marketing always win. They are closer to upper levels, the credit for success is (supposedly) theirs. They suggest all the bad tactics, technically and commercially. I can bet that a move like Chrome suggesting to ditch Edge is purely their idea, approved by upper levels and executed by engineers that can't say no.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- lallysingh 7y ago
  Do they even know that Edge is Chrome based?
  - scoutt 7y ago
    Good question. Probably all they know is that Microsoft released a competing browser and just asked the engineering team to do them a tool for showing annoying messages to the users based on the browser. I am sure marketing doesn't know/care if it was done with Chromium, 1994 Mosaic or matchsticks.
    - kunglao 7y ago
      This is Google we are talking about. I would imagine they started working on competing strategies even well before Microsoft announced officially they are going to use Chromium. You people seriously undermine the tech awareness of marketing teams, of Google no less.
    - nickv 7y ago
      This reeks of smug engineering superiority. I promise you the marketing team does serious competitive intel and probably knows more about the competitive landscape than the engineers themselves. That's true at my place of employment (also a bay area tech company), and I'd be shocked if it's not true at Google.

McGlockenshire 7y ago

I'm out of the loop. What is "OKR" in this context?

username90 7y ago
"Objectives and Key Results", that is how Google organize their priorities. Every level of management creates OKR's for and every employee can see the OKR's of their team, the product, the org and entire Google and are supposed to align their efforts with this. The upper OKR's are usually things like "Product should make XX% more money", or "Become the foremost user-choice for task X". The lower OKR's are usually just things like "build feature X".
bzbarsky 7y ago
"Objective and Key Result". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR

kunglao 7y ago

This is a naive view of how things work in big corporations. They work hard on many levels to make sure different teams are aligned under the strategic interests of the company as a whole. Sure, different teams might get in the way of each other now and then. But not at a strategic level and the managers don't let the veer too far off the main course. Unless I miss my guess, Chrome isn't just any product to Google. It had great strategic importance to them just like Android. I'm not sure if the main purpose of Chrome's existence is to drive open Web standards.