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I think the answer is: This is the best the richest and best companies in the world, with their best paid 100x rockstar developers can do. Google is literally b

I think the answer is: This is the best the richest and best companies in the world, with their best paid 100x rockstar developers can do. Google is literally both the creator of the browser (Chrome), the framework (Angular) and the web-app (GCP) we use and still, this mess is the best they can give us. They have direct access to the creators of Chrome and Angular, in some sense they are the owners of the internet and the owners of the way we access the internet. And yet, that's the best they can do. It's just that hard and impossible to get it right. Sorry guys!

boatsie 6y ago
This isn’t tied directly to ads/revenue/profit. Make it more obviously profitable to have it fast and you will see what the best they can do is..
solarkraft 6y ago
It's not the best they can do. It's the best they will do. There are companies with higher (arguably actually acceptable) quality standards, but they're few and far between.
- onion2k 6y ago
  It's not the best they can do. Without seeing them do better there's no way to actually know that. You're assuming they're capable, but you could be wrong.
  - tracker1 6y ago
    Considering as a company, they created the first very fast JavaScript engine, massively usable browser implementation and UX features along with other applications that are pretty complex with UIs that aren't excessively slow to load, evidence is contrary. I think it comes down to their best and most experienced developers and designers are focused on other areas with higher visibility, engagement or critical function.
FooBarWidget 6y ago
I think 'building cloud solutions' is higher on their priority list than 'making the UI fast'. Whether they have access to the Chrome and Angular teams is irrelevant.
pfortuny 6y ago
Probably the best they want to do because they do not want to allocate more resources to it.
codeulike 6y ago
They are optimising for something other than performance. E.g. ease of maintenance, or ease of scaling
tanilama 6y ago
I don't think I agree with you here. Make Cloud UI fast is probably not their priority. This is an enterprise product, not consumer facing, users are much less likely to be turned off due to slow UI. They will wait. Integrity/Security would be much higher on the list than UI loading speed. Not surprising at all.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  >This is an enterprise product, not consumer facing, users are much less likely to be turned off due to slow UI. Shouldn't this be the opposite? Maybe this is just me but if I have to use something to do my actual job and it take more time that it should because of the UI I'd look elsewhere.
  - tanilama 6y ago
    > I have to use something to do my actual job and it take more time that it should because of the UI I'd look elsewhere The one who made the decision to use GCP would not be the one who would use it actually. If GCP offers a bigger cut than other Cloud providers, loading time would be irrelevant in that optics. Enterprise users are risk averse. Speed is definitely a plus, but they would care more about stability/predictability than anything.
  - choathedolls 6y ago
    Not the opposite, but we're missing the simple fact that enterprise products would rather get more features out over micro optimizations. There are constantly clients bringing their demands for additional features or major fixes, very rarely are they "please optimize the UI". For consumer facing products, that's not really the case, unless some massive features are missing, they would rather things be snappy as they tend to be extremely distracted at all times so dropping your app/site/whatever is no big deal. During work, what else are you going to do if Cloud UI is slow besides just wait? Go through the entire process of trying to convince management to make a switch because UI is a little clunky? Good luck with that!
    - 6y ago
lmilcin 6y ago
I am pretty sure there as boatloads of developers that want to do good and even know what needs to be done just as in every single company I have ever worked with.
woah 6y ago
Is this some kind of dig against the web? I prefer native myself, but obviously there are huge numbers of faster websites out there. The answer is that Google’s frameworks suck, and have for many years. I can’t comment on whether things are equally a mess in their proprietary code, but I don’t see any reason to think they’re not. This is a problem with Google, and their slide into mediocrity.
- Implicated 6y ago
  The parent is being sarcastic, very sarcastic.
- onion2k 6y ago
  Is this some kind of dig against the web? I prefer native myself, but obviously there are huge numbers of faster websites out there. The parent isn't saying no one can do better. They're saying Google's engineers can't do better. It's sarcasm, but at the same time there could be a grain of truth to it - it would be unfair to believe Google's engineers aren't doing the best work they can. Most people do try their best. Perhaps it's actually fair to assume Google's engineers just aren't very capable when it comes to frontend dev work.
  - Traubenfuchs 6y ago
    I wasn't trying to be sarcastic, but I prefer the sarcastic interpretation.
- Traubenfuchs 6y ago
  I love the web from the bottom of my heart. I love Javascript, I love Typescript, I love Angular. Develop once, run everywhere, no client side updating required. I love rest(ful) APIs. I consider working with Angular a joy. I am serious here.
  - mszcz 6y ago
    Kinda funny that after all you said you felt the need to add a I am serious here ;)
haolez 6y ago
I think the UI is probably not a high priority on their side and they assign most of the work to juniors and outsourced.
thanksforthe42 6y ago
After working with graduates from "the best university", I doubt it is "the best". After using "the best" search engine, and finding what I needed on Bing instead, I started doubting it was "the best". Perception is different than reality. I genuinely wonder if these are "the best", or if these employees were merely the ones willing to move their lives to a new city for a high paying job. But I'm sure FAANG and FAANG employees would tell you they are the best. I wonder if they would fall for marketing tricks. Do "the best" fall for marketing tricks?
- mitjak 6y ago
  while i agree with you, there's a lot more going into performance and usability of a product than whether the employees are "the best"
- vmception 6y ago
  That conversation can always be reserved elsewhere, right now the greater issue is the incentives of the organization and deployment process. People act differently in groups than as an individual. The coordination is not solved and is not proclaimed to be the best at these large organizations, no matter what an individual's skillset and competence is.
- sieabahlpark 6y ago
  They built a language to simplify development and maintenance because their employees weren't the best. I think it's safe to assume a majority of Google isn't the best.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  It's all a matter of signal to noise ratio. > Perception is different than reality. I genuinely wonder if these are "the best", or if these employees were merely the ones willing to move their lives to a new city for a high paying job. You can always find that one diamond in the rough. It's true there's a selection bias toward folks that are willing to relocate. But I bet the average engineers at Google is much better than at Generic Company Co.
zaptheimpaler 6y ago
Yep its simple The more money you make, the better of a person you are, in literally every way - this is known as rule 1. So if the highest paid people work for FAANG, they must be the best people, so obviously the best humanity can do is 5 seconds to load a spinner. At my lowly serf job, we are only able to make a web app that usually responds in <1s with a total of 8 low paid, middling, dull engineers working on many other things at the same time.
doomlaser 6y ago
How is it that Microsoft's Electron apps are so snappy and performant? You would never know Visual Studio Code was Electron by how it performs. I'm not a user of their cloud apps, but are they similarly snappy, or is it just that Microsoft's Dev Tools team is way out in front?
- manigandham 6y ago
  Performance is a priority for VSC. Same with Azure's console. Same with sites like Stackoverflow. It's not a priority with many of Google's current apps.
  - StillBored 6y ago
    Which is a problem with the dev environment. If it takes a lot of effort to make an application performant then most of the applications written in that environment will be slow.
    - tracker1 6y ago
      It isn't so much about environment as it is experience. It is incredibly easy to bring in libraries and components that bring the entire jungle for want of a banana. Especially graphing/charting libraries. It's also about focus, the focus is on the feature not the performance/feel.
  - riejo 6y ago
    VSC dev here. Correct, perf is a priority for us and it's no black magic. A simple one is to keep your bundles small. VSC's main bundle is less than 9MB, Cloud UI seems to be 15.
moogleii 6y ago
That sounds a bit dramatic. It seems more likely that, given the competition and alternative choices, their current effort is good enough, not their maximum capability... I think YouTube has been going downhill for years, but where else are people going to go? Vimeo? Users have been trickling away to other platforms, sure, but not enough to seriously challenge YT. FB video is probably the only serious contender in the rear view mirror at the moment.
manigandham 6y ago
It's not the best. It's what is passable considering the politics and priorities involved. Attach a monetary concern directly to the performance and there will be improvements overnight. Otherwise this is the "best" we get, given the circumstances.
allenu 6y ago
I wonder if it's a case of Conway's Law at play. Google is a big company and there are multiple pieces involved in GCP and so in the end the interface between those pieces is inefficient and slow. They've shipped the org chart.
shadowgovt 6y ago
"Best" is a tradeoffs assessment, and Cloud is chasing "the best features," not "the best speed." They're taking the eng-hours of the people who could be responsible for speeding up and consolidating and saying "Okay, as long as it doesn't mean we can't release high-granularity-IAM-control-based-on-user-eye-color this quarter. Because it's a non-starter to get LensCrafters on board until we have those table stakes."
sam0x17 6y ago
The speed of GCP's internal control panel isn't going to affect Google's bottom line like it would with their search offering or other massively user facing things. Google could redo this frontend from scratch and make it really lean and fast, but they clearly don't think they need to.
- tracker1 6y ago
  You might be surprised there... enough friction for the developer experience will open the door to opportunities for other tools/platforms to take root. If the AWS UI/UX was exceptional, there's no way Google or Azure could have gained the footholds they did.
  - sam0x17 6y ago
    Totally true, just wanted to clarify that point of the OP
Arelius 6y ago
I think there is an important difference between what the company "can do" and "do do". Which is to say if it was a focus, surely they could do better, Looking at the article shows that it's clearly possible to do better with focused effort. I think you're right in that this is the best any individual in the company "can do" they likely run up against organizational road blocks and incentives that run they astray. But if the organization would take this as a priority, surely with all the capacity they have, they could do better.
lqet 6y ago
This is especially frustrating if you consider that Google's own benchmark tool Lighthouse constantly gives you MOTDs like "Company X increased their revenue Y dollars per 100 ms page load speedup." I am on mobile; what are the Lighthouse scores for Google's own products?
otabdeveloper4 6y ago
Google employs 115000 people, are you sure they are all 100x rockstars? Anyways, if the management was forced to use Google Cloud's UI, I'm sure it would look and feel completely different. As it is, they're making a product they don't really have a personal stake in.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

boatsie 6y ago

This isn’t tied directly to ads/revenue/profit. Make it more obviously profitable to have it fast and you will see what the best they can do is..

solarkraft 6y ago

It's not the best they can do. It's the best they will do. There are companies with higher (arguably actually acceptable) quality standards, but they're few and far between.

onion2k 6y ago
It's not the best they can do. Without seeing them do better there's no way to actually know that. You're assuming they're capable, but you could be wrong.
- tracker1 6y ago
  Considering as a company, they created the first very fast JavaScript engine, massively usable browser implementation and UX features along with other applications that are pretty complex with UIs that aren't excessively slow to load, evidence is contrary. I think it comes down to their best and most experienced developers and designers are focused on other areas with higher visibility, engagement or critical function.

FooBarWidget 6y ago

I think 'building cloud solutions' is higher on their priority list than 'making the UI fast'. Whether they have access to the Chrome and Angular teams is irrelevant.

pfortuny 6y ago

Probably the best they want to do because they do not want to allocate more resources to it.

codeulike 6y ago

They are optimising for something other than performance. E.g. ease of maintenance, or ease of scaling

tanilama 6y ago

I don't think I agree with you here. Make Cloud UI fast is probably not their priority. This is an enterprise product, not consumer facing, users are much less likely to be turned off due to slow UI. They will wait. Integrity/Security would be much higher on the list than UI loading speed. Not surprising at all.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago
>This is an enterprise product, not consumer facing, users are much less likely to be turned off due to slow UI. Shouldn't this be the opposite? Maybe this is just me but if I have to use something to do my actual job and it take more time that it should because of the UI I'd look elsewhere.
- tanilama 6y ago
  > I have to use something to do my actual job and it take more time that it should because of the UI I'd look elsewhere The one who made the decision to use GCP would not be the one who would use it actually. If GCP offers a bigger cut than other Cloud providers, loading time would be irrelevant in that optics. Enterprise users are risk averse. Speed is definitely a plus, but they would care more about stability/predictability than anything.
- choathedolls 6y ago
  Not the opposite, but we're missing the simple fact that enterprise products would rather get more features out over micro optimizations. There are constantly clients bringing their demands for additional features or major fixes, very rarely are they "please optimize the UI". For consumer facing products, that's not really the case, unless some massive features are missing, they would rather things be snappy as they tend to be extremely distracted at all times so dropping your app/site/whatever is no big deal. During work, what else are you going to do if Cloud UI is slow besides just wait? Go through the entire process of trying to convince management to make a switch because UI is a little clunky? Good luck with that!
  - 6y ago

lmilcin 6y ago

I am pretty sure there as boatloads of developers that want to do good and even know what needs to be done just as in every single company I have ever worked with.

woah 6y ago

Is this some kind of dig against the web? I prefer native myself, but obviously there are huge numbers of faster websites out there. The answer is that Google’s frameworks suck, and have for many years. I can’t comment on whether things are equally a mess in their proprietary code, but I don’t see any reason to think they’re not. This is a problem with Google, and their slide into mediocrity.

Implicated 6y ago
The parent is being sarcastic, very sarcastic.
onion2k 6y ago
Is this some kind of dig against the web? I prefer native myself, but obviously there are huge numbers of faster websites out there. The parent isn't saying no one can do better. They're saying Google's engineers can't do better. It's sarcasm, but at the same time there could be a grain of truth to it - it would be unfair to believe Google's engineers aren't doing the best work they can. Most people do try their best. Perhaps it's actually fair to assume Google's engineers just aren't very capable when it comes to frontend dev work.
- Traubenfuchs 6y ago
  I wasn't trying to be sarcastic, but I prefer the sarcastic interpretation.
Traubenfuchs 6y ago
I love the web from the bottom of my heart. I love Javascript, I love Typescript, I love Angular. Develop once, run everywhere, no client side updating required. I love rest(ful) APIs. I consider working with Angular a joy. I am serious here.
- mszcz 6y ago
  Kinda funny that after all you said you felt the need to add a I am serious here ;)

haolez 6y ago

I think the UI is probably not a high priority on their side and they assign most of the work to juniors and outsourced.

thanksforthe42 6y ago

After working with graduates from "the best university", I doubt it is "the best". After using "the best" search engine, and finding what I needed on Bing instead, I started doubting it was "the best". Perception is different than reality. I genuinely wonder if these are "the best", or if these employees were merely the ones willing to move their lives to a new city for a high paying job. But I'm sure FAANG and FAANG employees would tell you they are the best. I wonder if they would fall for marketing tricks. Do "the best" fall for marketing tricks?

mitjak 6y ago
while i agree with you, there's a lot more going into performance and usability of a product than whether the employees are "the best"
vmception 6y ago
That conversation can always be reserved elsewhere, right now the greater issue is the incentives of the organization and deployment process. People act differently in groups than as an individual. The coordination is not solved and is not proclaimed to be the best at these large organizations, no matter what an individual's skillset and competence is.
sieabahlpark 6y ago
They built a language to simplify development and maintenance because their employees weren't the best. I think it's safe to assume a majority of Google isn't the best.
908B64B197 6y ago
It's all a matter of signal to noise ratio. > Perception is different than reality. I genuinely wonder if these are "the best", or if these employees were merely the ones willing to move their lives to a new city for a high paying job. You can always find that one diamond in the rough. It's true there's a selection bias toward folks that are willing to relocate. But I bet the average engineers at Google is much better than at Generic Company Co.

zaptheimpaler 6y ago

Yep its simple The more money you make, the better of a person you are, in literally every way - this is known as rule 1. So if the highest paid people work for FAANG, they must be the best people, so obviously the best humanity can do is 5 seconds to load a spinner. At my lowly serf job, we are only able to make a web app that usually responds in <1s with a total of 8 low paid, middling, dull engineers working on many other things at the same time.

doomlaser 6y ago

How is it that Microsoft's Electron apps are so snappy and performant? You would never know Visual Studio Code was Electron by how it performs. I'm not a user of their cloud apps, but are they similarly snappy, or is it just that Microsoft's Dev Tools team is way out in front?

manigandham 6y ago
Performance is a priority for VSC. Same with Azure's console. Same with sites like Stackoverflow. It's not a priority with many of Google's current apps.
- StillBored 6y ago
  Which is a problem with the dev environment. If it takes a lot of effort to make an application performant then most of the applications written in that environment will be slow.
  - tracker1 6y ago
    It isn't so much about environment as it is experience. It is incredibly easy to bring in libraries and components that bring the entire jungle for want of a banana. Especially graphing/charting libraries. It's also about focus, the focus is on the feature not the performance/feel.
- riejo 6y ago
  VSC dev here. Correct, perf is a priority for us and it's no black magic. A simple one is to keep your bundles small. VSC's main bundle is less than 9MB, Cloud UI seems to be 15.

moogleii 6y ago

That sounds a bit dramatic. It seems more likely that, given the competition and alternative choices, their current effort is good enough, not their maximum capability... I think YouTube has been going downhill for years, but where else are people going to go? Vimeo? Users have been trickling away to other platforms, sure, but not enough to seriously challenge YT. FB video is probably the only serious contender in the rear view mirror at the moment.

manigandham 6y ago

It's not the best. It's what is passable considering the politics and priorities involved. Attach a monetary concern directly to the performance and there will be improvements overnight. Otherwise this is the "best" we get, given the circumstances.

allenu 6y ago

I wonder if it's a case of Conway's Law at play. Google is a big company and there are multiple pieces involved in GCP and so in the end the interface between those pieces is inefficient and slow. They've shipped the org chart.

shadowgovt 6y ago

"Best" is a tradeoffs assessment, and Cloud is chasing "the best features," not "the best speed." They're taking the eng-hours of the people who could be responsible for speeding up and consolidating and saying "Okay, as long as it doesn't mean we can't release high-granularity-IAM-control-based-on-user-eye-color this quarter. Because it's a non-starter to get LensCrafters on board until we have those table stakes."

sam0x17 6y ago

The speed of GCP's internal control panel isn't going to affect Google's bottom line like it would with their search offering or other massively user facing things. Google could redo this frontend from scratch and make it really lean and fast, but they clearly don't think they need to.

tracker1 6y ago
You might be surprised there... enough friction for the developer experience will open the door to opportunities for other tools/platforms to take root. If the AWS UI/UX was exceptional, there's no way Google or Azure could have gained the footholds they did.
- sam0x17 6y ago
  Totally true, just wanted to clarify that point of the OP

Arelius 6y ago

I think there is an important difference between what the company "can do" and "do do". Which is to say if it was a focus, surely they could do better, Looking at the article shows that it's clearly possible to do better with focused effort. I think you're right in that this is the best any individual in the company "can do" they likely run up against organizational road blocks and incentives that run they astray. But if the organization would take this as a priority, surely with all the capacity they have, they could do better.

lqet 6y ago

This is especially frustrating if you consider that Google's own benchmark tool Lighthouse constantly gives you MOTDs like "Company X increased their revenue Y dollars per 100 ms page load speedup." I am on mobile; what are the Lighthouse scores for Google's own products?

otabdeveloper4 6y ago

Google employs 115000 people, are you sure they are all 100x rockstars? Anyways, if the management was forced to use Google Cloud's UI, I'm sure it would look and feel completely different. As it is, they're making a product they don't really have a personal stake in.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]