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Yes, but what about the people who did? Here's the thing, Google is a big company. When a big company offers a service or product you expect a long shelf life s

Yes, but what about the people who did? Here's the thing, Google is a big company. When a big company offers a service or product you expect a long shelf life so you can justify the time/money investment to use it. If you stumble across an open source or just some other random project by a single dev, you have an instinctive expectation that the project could die at any time. Thus, you invest your effort accordingly unless you're a hobbyist that enjoys the exploration (which is not most people). Google has the focus of a 12 year adhd kid who just ate a whole birthday cake, unless when it comes to data collection. Google doesn't produce quality products anymore. They found their niche and pretend to do other things to try continuing that "do no evil" lie of a mission statement they used to have. Here's the lesson, you can't trust google with anything. You base your personal or business infrastructure on Google you can expect one of two things:complete privacy invasion or they're going to destroy whatever you're using because they never took it seriously in the first place.

mabbo 6y ago
> Google has the focus of a 12 year adhd kid who just ate a whole birthday cake, unless when it comes to data collection. A decade ago I was an intern at Google. One of my mentors said something that has stuck with me: "Google found a hose that money pours out of and it's name is online advertising. All we do now is desperately try to find another hose." Google's strategy for a long time was: Hire every clever person you can; give them some creative freedom; see if any of them come up with a trillion dollar idea. Only now they've 'grown up'. 20% time is dead. There is no second hose. They've mostly given up on the idea of a clever person finding a new money-hose. They just focus on the one they have now.
- nextos 6y ago
  > There is no second hose. They've mostly given up on the idea of a clever person finding a new money-hose. I think they are quite shortsighted. The idea of running Google as a conglomerate, turning it into Alphabet, was good. But somehow, they have not been able to get rid of those layers of middle management that kill innovation. I've heard that Calico and other ventures are really political, and lot's of people that moved there hoping to do great work are quite frustrated. Which is a shame, because they do have know how and technology to achieve great things. Just out of the protein folding results of this week you could spin off dozens of highly successful startups.
- guyzero 6y ago
  Google's revenue is more diversified today than it's ever been. This is a facile take.
  - hated 6y ago
    Says the commenter with zero evidence to support their claims.
    - guyzero 6y ago
      Come on, anyone can read GOOG financial statements. https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20201030_alphabet_10Q.pdf https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20201030_alphabet_10Q.pd... Q3 2019, ads were 84% of revenue Q3 2020, ads were 81% of revenue It's not a massive change, but it's changing and ads are at the lowest percentage of overall revenue they've ever been.
      - kodah 6y ago
        > It's not a massive change, but it's changing and ads are at the lowest percentage of overall revenue they've ever been. "More diversified than it's ever been" can be factually true here, but for the purposes of this discussion was highly inaccurate.
        libria 6y ago
        OP was directly responding to: > They've mostly given up on the idea of a clever person finding a new money-hose. They just focus on the one they have now. The financial numbers suggest they have not given up and have succeeded incrementally towards other sources since. How else do you correct the above statement?
      - bg24 6y ago
        Agree. Cloud, health, self-driving cars, devices.. all these have the potentials to become the next big thing. Growing from $1B to $10B is really difficult, unless you have virtually no competition.
    - 6y ago
- Hamuko 6y ago
  >20% time is dead. There is no second hose. They've mostly given up on the idea of a clever person finding a new money-hose. They just focus on the one they have now. Isn't that how they've always operated? Gmail was launched in 2004 and that sure wasn't a money-hose. But it did serve as yet another platform to support their money-hose since they could scan your emails and serve you ads. It's really only a recent change to actually monetise Gmail beyond ads. They sell it as part of G Suite and as part of Google One. Not sure if Google One brings in the dough but surely G Suite makes enough to justify its existence.
diogenesjunior 6y ago
>When a big company offers a service or product you expect a long shelf life so you can justify the time/money investment to use it. I bought a Chromebook in 2014. It still works, but support was discontinued earlier this year. That sounds okay to me. I wonder if Poly was popular? I've never heard about it 'til today.
duhi88 6y ago
They could continue to host these services for basically free...I guess the security vulnerabilities would grow over time, making them liable.
keb_ 6y ago
> If you stumble across an open source or just some other random project by a single dev, you have an instinctive expectation that the project could die at any time. Ironically at this point, I'd place more trust on an open-source project because at the very least, if the maintainer abandons it, I could fork it and potentially self-host.
d0gbread 6y ago
Alternatively, it's time to adjust expectations and understand that if a product or service doesn't hit the growth curve Google expects, they sunset it. A lot of businesses would be more successful if they learned how to do this across their own products and features. Instead engineers drown in KTLO, adding to cognitive load not only for employees but customers too.

mabbo 6y ago

> Google has the focus of a 12 year adhd kid who just ate a whole birthday cake, unless when it comes to data collection. A decade ago I was an intern at Google. One of my mentors said something that has stuck with me: "Google found a hose that money pours out of and it's name is online advertising. All we do now is desperately try to find another hose." Google's strategy for a long time was: Hire every clever person you can; give them some creative freedom; see if any of them come up with a trillion dollar idea. Only now they've 'grown up'. 20% time is dead. There is no second hose. They've mostly given up on the idea of a clever person finding a new money-hose. They just focus on the one they have now.

nextos 6y ago
> There is no second hose. They've mostly given up on the idea of a clever person finding a new money-hose. I think they are quite shortsighted. The idea of running Google as a conglomerate, turning it into Alphabet, was good. But somehow, they have not been able to get rid of those layers of middle management that kill innovation. I've heard that Calico and other ventures are really political, and lot's of people that moved there hoping to do great work are quite frustrated. Which is a shame, because they do have know how and technology to achieve great things. Just out of the protein folding results of this week you could spin off dozens of highly successful startups.
guyzero 6y ago
Google's revenue is more diversified today than it's ever been. This is a facile take.
- hated 6y ago
  Says the commenter with zero evidence to support their claims.
  - guyzero 6y ago
    Come on, anyone can read GOOG financial statements. https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20201030_alphabet_10Q.pdf https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20201030_alphabet_10Q.pd... Q3 2019, ads were 84% of revenue Q3 2020, ads were 81% of revenue It's not a massive change, but it's changing and ads are at the lowest percentage of overall revenue they've ever been.
    - kodah 6y ago
      > It's not a massive change, but it's changing and ads are at the lowest percentage of overall revenue they've ever been. "More diversified than it's ever been" can be factually true here, but for the purposes of this discussion was highly inaccurate.
      - libria 6y ago
        OP was directly responding to: > They've mostly given up on the idea of a clever person finding a new money-hose. They just focus on the one they have now. The financial numbers suggest they have not given up and have succeeded incrementally towards other sources since. How else do you correct the above statement?
    - bg24 6y ago
      Agree. Cloud, health, self-driving cars, devices.. all these have the potentials to become the next big thing. Growing from $1B to $10B is really difficult, unless you have virtually no competition.
  - 6y ago
Hamuko 6y ago
>20% time is dead. There is no second hose. They've mostly given up on the idea of a clever person finding a new money-hose. They just focus on the one they have now. Isn't that how they've always operated? Gmail was launched in 2004 and that sure wasn't a money-hose. But it did serve as yet another platform to support their money-hose since they could scan your emails and serve you ads. It's really only a recent change to actually monetise Gmail beyond ads. They sell it as part of G Suite and as part of Google One. Not sure if Google One brings in the dough but surely G Suite makes enough to justify its existence.

diogenesjunior 6y ago

>When a big company offers a service or product you expect a long shelf life so you can justify the time/money investment to use it. I bought a Chromebook in 2014. It still works, but support was discontinued earlier this year. That sounds okay to me. I wonder if Poly was popular? I've never heard about it 'til today.

duhi88 6y ago

They could continue to host these services for basically free...I guess the security vulnerabilities would grow over time, making them liable.

keb_ 6y ago

> If you stumble across an open source or just some other random project by a single dev, you have an instinctive expectation that the project could die at any time. Ironically at this point, I'd place more trust on an open-source project because at the very least, if the maintainer abandons it, I could fork it and potentially self-host.

d0gbread 6y ago

Alternatively, it's time to adjust expectations and understand that if a product or service doesn't hit the growth curve Google expects, they sunset it. A lot of businesses would be more successful if they learned how to do this across their own products and features. Instead engineers drown in KTLO, adding to cognitive load not only for employees but customers too.