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When the CEO just says "We're going to spend X% on research, here is the budget" then they thrive again. Incidentally, this is how OpenAI wound up in a situati

When the CEO just says "We're going to spend X% on research, here is the budget" then they thrive again. Incidentally, this is how OpenAI wound up in a situation where they might die in a few years. (Aka be acquired by Microsoft.) The logic works at Google, Facebook, and Disney. Not so much for startups without a revenue model.

jedberg 6y ago
That's why I said in my last sentence, that this is all predicated on already having positive cashflow.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  Sorry, you’re right. I’ll read more carefully from now on.
scarface74 6y ago
Has it really worked at Google? After all of these years they are still an ad company after years of trying to diversify.
- tracker1 6y ago
  I think it helped with their mind-share and broader lockin as a side effect.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Lock-in how? There is absolutely nothing Google offers outside of search where there are not better, more polished alternatives. I’ll admit that ChromeBooks+GSuite is excellent for elementary and middle school though.
    - greiskul 6y ago
      What is more polished than YouTube? For live content there is Twitch, but for edited amateur content YouTube is king.
      - jedberg 6y ago
        YouTube wasn't created at Google.
    - angrais 6y ago
      There may be more polished products from other companies, but fact is they do sell many other services, which perhaps in aggregate turn good profit? Like: Drive? Android (e.g. Play store)? Photos? YouTube? Google music?
      - scarface74 6y ago
        It came out in the Oracle lawsuit that Android had only made Google $23 Billion in profit from its inception through mid 2016. https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/21/10810834/android-generated-31-billion-revenue-google-oracle https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/21/10810834/android-generate... Google pays Apple a reported $8 Billion a year to be the default search engine for iOS. The profit from Android isn’t even enough to pay Apple. YouTube is thought to be barely above break even and streaming music has horrible economics for the platform. Look at Spotify. Google Music is third behind Spotify and Apple. Who pays for Google Photos? You get free unlimited good enough storage.
        angrais 6y ago
        $23 BILLION over 3-4 years is a lot though! Since Apple isn't confirmed we can only speculate, and if you're right that's crazy. What about Google cloud infrastructure and Sass that they deliver? Possibly this and data across services is part of the package they sell to add companies? I don't think it's fair to compare between different companies. If they turn a good profit, then good for them. Of course, not photo books are likely not selling at the scale of other products. Also, I meant Google One for storage, which I pay for, and you can buy photo books via Google Photos.
        scarface74 6y ago
        That’s $23 Billion over 6 years. Compare that to Apple in one quarter. Actually now reports are that it’s up to $12 billion that Google pays Apple. https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-engine/ https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-en... > What about Google cloud infrastructure and Sass that they deliver? Around $10 billion in revenue and no telling how little in profit. GCP is a distance third. > Of course, not photo books are likely not selling at the scale of other products. Also, I meant Google One for storage, which I pay for, and you can buy photo books via Google Photos. If DropBox is number one by a large margin and can’t make a decent profit, how well do you think Google is doing? But that is also included in the $10 billion revenue for cloud.
    - tracker1 6y ago
      trying to move/migrate gigabytes of old emails that people stopped trying to sort/delete. gsuite docs are another point. Applications on one's phone that they are used to, not to mentioned all of the google service integrations that individually aren't too hard, but in aggregate much harder to work around. I do think o365 is leaps and bounds better than gdocs, and outlook, even on android, is better than google's mail. The last time I used Firefox for a few days, it wasn't bad, only a couple plugins I use regularly were missing, and that was difficult and evenually moved back to chrome. I actually let myself fall into using my google or twitter logins across other sites... which was really bad when I was false-flagged on twitter, and after 5 days and 2 appeals, just deleted the "offending" post. I still say the person in question was a "fucking moron," and that it wasn't a call to action in any way shape or form. And while I've started migrating some stuff away, the daily use isn't always easy.
      - scarface74 6y ago
        Applications on one's phone that they are used to, not to mentioned all of the google service integrations that individually aren't too hard, but in aggregate much harder to work around. Switching from Android to Google though is easy because no company serious about mobile makes Android only apps - not even Google. Google also makes it easy to import and export documents from GSuite and Office. As standalone software, Apple’s iWork equivalents are better than Google’s (yes their are web versions), not to mention like you said, O365 apps are miles better. For collaboration, yeah GSuite is pretty good.

jedberg 6y ago

That's why I said in my last sentence, that this is all predicated on already having positive cashflow.

sillysaurusx 6y ago
Sorry, you’re right. I’ll read more carefully from now on.

scarface74 6y ago

Has it really worked at Google? After all of these years they are still an ad company after years of trying to diversify.

tracker1 6y ago
I think it helped with their mind-share and broader lockin as a side effect.
- scarface74 6y ago
  Lock-in how? There is absolutely nothing Google offers outside of search where there are not better, more polished alternatives. I’ll admit that ChromeBooks+GSuite is excellent for elementary and middle school though.
  - greiskul 6y ago
    What is more polished than YouTube? For live content there is Twitch, but for edited amateur content YouTube is king.
    - jedberg 6y ago
      YouTube wasn't created at Google.
  - angrais 6y ago
    There may be more polished products from other companies, but fact is they do sell many other services, which perhaps in aggregate turn good profit? Like: Drive? Android (e.g. Play store)? Photos? YouTube? Google music?
    - scarface74 6y ago
      It came out in the Oracle lawsuit that Android had only made Google $23 Billion in profit from its inception through mid 2016. https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/21/10810834/android-generated-31-billion-revenue-google-oracle https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/21/10810834/android-generate... Google pays Apple a reported $8 Billion a year to be the default search engine for iOS. The profit from Android isn’t even enough to pay Apple. YouTube is thought to be barely above break even and streaming music has horrible economics for the platform. Look at Spotify. Google Music is third behind Spotify and Apple. Who pays for Google Photos? You get free unlimited good enough storage.
      - angrais 6y ago
        $23 BILLION over 3-4 years is a lot though! Since Apple isn't confirmed we can only speculate, and if you're right that's crazy. What about Google cloud infrastructure and Sass that they deliver? Possibly this and data across services is part of the package they sell to add companies? I don't think it's fair to compare between different companies. If they turn a good profit, then good for them. Of course, not photo books are likely not selling at the scale of other products. Also, I meant Google One for storage, which I pay for, and you can buy photo books via Google Photos.
        scarface74 6y ago
        That’s $23 Billion over 6 years. Compare that to Apple in one quarter. Actually now reports are that it’s up to $12 billion that Google pays Apple. https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-engine/ https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-en... > What about Google cloud infrastructure and Sass that they deliver? Around $10 billion in revenue and no telling how little in profit. GCP is a distance third. > Of course, not photo books are likely not selling at the scale of other products. Also, I meant Google One for storage, which I pay for, and you can buy photo books via Google Photos. If DropBox is number one by a large margin and can’t make a decent profit, how well do you think Google is doing? But that is also included in the $10 billion revenue for cloud.
  - tracker1 6y ago
    trying to move/migrate gigabytes of old emails that people stopped trying to sort/delete. gsuite docs are another point. Applications on one's phone that they are used to, not to mentioned all of the google service integrations that individually aren't too hard, but in aggregate much harder to work around. I do think o365 is leaps and bounds better than gdocs, and outlook, even on android, is better than google's mail. The last time I used Firefox for a few days, it wasn't bad, only a couple plugins I use regularly were missing, and that was difficult and evenually moved back to chrome. I actually let myself fall into using my google or twitter logins across other sites... which was really bad when I was false-flagged on twitter, and after 5 days and 2 appeals, just deleted the "offending" post. I still say the person in question was a "fucking moron," and that it wasn't a call to action in any way shape or form. And while I've started migrating some stuff away, the daily use isn't always easy.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      Applications on one's phone that they are used to, not to mentioned all of the google service integrations that individually aren't too hard, but in aggregate much harder to work around. Switching from Android to Google though is easy because no company serious about mobile makes Android only apps - not even Google. Google also makes it easy to import and export documents from GSuite and Office. As standalone software, Apple’s iWork equivalents are better than Google’s (yes their are web versions), not to mention like you said, O365 apps are miles better. For collaboration, yeah GSuite is pretty good.