3 ms·

I’m short on google long term - they’re feeling more and more like yahoo to me. Lots of random projects, often killed, little direction - no overall vision. Th

I’m short on google long term - they’re feeling more and more like yahoo to me. Lots of random projects, often killed, little direction - no overall vision. They better hope the ad revenue keeps printing money. It’s possible they could fix this (Microsoft did), but the direction doesn’t look great.

hnzix 6y ago
> Lots of random projects, often killed, little direction This is what happened inside Yahoo as it was imploding. Every team wanted their own dev library/graphics/app style to "win" internally. It resulted in very arrogant dev & project leads fighting with each other for no customer benefit. It's the same in Academia though. "In the heart of every Vice Chancellor lies an Architect". Gotta build a new building so you can put your name on it.
- impendia 6y ago
  > It's the same in Academia though. Haha, interesting analogy! (Math professor here.) I'd say in many ways it's the same, but with one key difference. While administrators are fighting to push their visions, many faculty members tune out, do whatever work it is they want to do, and pretty much ignore what is going on overall at their institutions. If you read Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle of Higher Education, then you can read accounts of university leaders who were brought in to push for big changes, who boldly announced a change of direction, ... and who were simply ignored and then quit.
emilsedgh 6y ago
Did Microsoft really fix it? Or it pulled of an IBM and just pivoted into enterprise offerings like Azure. Can't remember when was the last time Microsoft pulled off a new successful consumer ready product or significantly improved an existing one.
- fossuser 6y ago
  VSCode is a pretty big deal. Xbox Game Pass is a good idea and the series X also looks like a good bet. Buying GitHub was smart, WSL is also a very positive move for developers. Azure is in second place behind AWS with Google a distant third. Typescript is doing really well too. That’s a lot of positive moves around a coherent strategy. Stratechery goes into more detail, and I think makes a pretty compelling case. It’s not comparable to IBM in my opinion, I think MSFT has really righted the ship - I think they’re in a strong position for the future.
  - stnmtn 6y ago
    It's wild how much good association I have with Microsoft right now. I never think of masssive companies in positive ways usually. I had to catch myself when a friend brought them up and I wanted to talk about how much I like VSCode, WSL, and Typescript. I know there's probably a good chance it's the embrace, extend, extinguish but damn the embrace phase is nice
- zo1 6y ago
  Office 365, OneDrive, Azure, Teams and all the other things they've been doing online with effectively single-sign on are having amazing synergy between them (in my opinion). I think people are massively under-appreciating what they're building towards. MS is taking over slowly in the background.
  - mark_l_watson 6y ago
    I agree. Office 365 family plan is a great deal. My personal workflow centers on Google Workspace, but if Google were to disappear tomorrow, it would only take a few hours to switch to Office 365 being my driver for personal information, writing materials, etc.
ineedasername 6y ago
Somehow they don't see this problem, which is a severe blind spot. If they end up on the wrong end of their anti-trust issues when the dust settles, the only part that might be viable long term is search/ads.

hnzix 6y ago

> Lots of random projects, often killed, little direction This is what happened inside Yahoo as it was imploding. Every team wanted their own dev library/graphics/app style to "win" internally. It resulted in very arrogant dev & project leads fighting with each other for no customer benefit. It's the same in Academia though. "In the heart of every Vice Chancellor lies an Architect". Gotta build a new building so you can put your name on it.

impendia 6y ago
> It's the same in Academia though. Haha, interesting analogy! (Math professor here.) I'd say in many ways it's the same, but with one key difference. While administrators are fighting to push their visions, many faculty members tune out, do whatever work it is they want to do, and pretty much ignore what is going on overall at their institutions. If you read Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle of Higher Education, then you can read accounts of university leaders who were brought in to push for big changes, who boldly announced a change of direction, ... and who were simply ignored and then quit.

emilsedgh 6y ago

Did Microsoft really fix it? Or it pulled of an IBM and just pivoted into enterprise offerings like Azure. Can't remember when was the last time Microsoft pulled off a new successful consumer ready product or significantly improved an existing one.

fossuser 6y ago
VSCode is a pretty big deal. Xbox Game Pass is a good idea and the series X also looks like a good bet. Buying GitHub was smart, WSL is also a very positive move for developers. Azure is in second place behind AWS with Google a distant third. Typescript is doing really well too. That’s a lot of positive moves around a coherent strategy. Stratechery goes into more detail, and I think makes a pretty compelling case. It’s not comparable to IBM in my opinion, I think MSFT has really righted the ship - I think they’re in a strong position for the future.
- stnmtn 6y ago
  It's wild how much good association I have with Microsoft right now. I never think of masssive companies in positive ways usually. I had to catch myself when a friend brought them up and I wanted to talk about how much I like VSCode, WSL, and Typescript. I know there's probably a good chance it's the embrace, extend, extinguish but damn the embrace phase is nice
zo1 6y ago
Office 365, OneDrive, Azure, Teams and all the other things they've been doing online with effectively single-sign on are having amazing synergy between them (in my opinion). I think people are massively under-appreciating what they're building towards. MS is taking over slowly in the background.
- mark_l_watson 6y ago
  I agree. Office 365 family plan is a great deal. My personal workflow centers on Google Workspace, but if Google were to disappear tomorrow, it would only take a few hours to switch to Office 365 being my driver for personal information, writing materials, etc.

ineedasername 6y ago

Somehow they don't see this problem, which is a severe blind spot. If they end up on the wrong end of their anti-trust issues when the dust settles, the only part that might be viable long term is search/ads.