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Google was the oppositive of boring: - GMail with "unlimited" (never-seen-before 1GB) of storage when everyone had 10MB quotas was a "holy shit" moment, and fa

Google was the oppositive of boring: - GMail with "unlimited" (never-seen-before 1GB) of storage when everyone had 10MB quotas was a "holy shit" moment, and fast web mail was a fresh breath of air - Google Maps, yet another "holy shit" experience when you used Mapquest before - Google Translate, so much better than everything that came before - Google search - OK that's late 1990s but I remember the "aha" moment of trying the Google beta after needing to become a power user of lycos/altavista/askjeeves You notice that all of these were more than a decade ago before their IPO. Larry and Sergei have gotten old and lazy, and so have their CxOs and VPs. No goals, no focus, no discipline because who cares if all the execs already have their private jets.

jldugger 6y ago
> You notice that all of these were more than a decade ago before their IPO. I don't, and neither does wikipedia: Gmail: April 1, 2004 IPO: Aug 19, 2004 Maps: February 8, 2005 Translate: April 28, 2006
- projektfu 6y ago
  GP is probably confusing the creation of Alphabet, Inc. with the IPO of Google.
- bagacrap 6y ago
  even search was just ~6 yrs pre IPO
rorykoehler 6y ago
You touch on something I have thought about a lot.... why don’t we launch companies with the intent of winding them down once we have achieved what we set out to? It’s rhetorical as I know the answer is money But I yearn to live in a society where that would be the norm.