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Not related to Stadia, but I had some issue with my Pixel 3a yesterday that it just stopped charging and had to get in touch with Google's support to try initia

Not related to Stadia, but I had some issue with my Pixel 3a yesterday that it just stopped charging and had to get in touch with Google's support to try initiate a repair (turned out to be a software bug, thankfully). My learning is :NEVER , EVER, EVER fucking trust Google with your hard-earned money, ever FUCKING again. Even their customer support person did not know what is the link that you have click/form you have to fill to actually initiate a repair request and told me basically the process is not worth it.

wegs2 6y ago
What's been a bit amusing is seeing a string of startups go through the same lesson about Google Cloud. I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the mistake Google made was failing to recognize and focus on its core competencies. In ads and search, everything is scalable, statistical, and returns are decoupled from investment. You hire a few really smart people, and have them blow everyone else away. It worked. They should have looked for more businesses like that. Maps, gmail, etc. all did pretty well too. Even Youtube, despite playing whack-a-mole with demonetizing or removing channels with millions of subscribers, does well enough. There were plenty more businesses like that to diversify to. Then Google brought that same mindset to things which required customer service (which doesn't scale), reliability (which isn't statistical in the same way as ads and search), and other domains, hired a ton of mediocre people to do it, and it seems like a bit of a dumpster fire right now.
- loa_in_ 6y ago
  It makes sense from their perspective: they have datacentres upon datacentres of computing power that power their own endeavours, but are underutilized. So they monetize the remaining capacity in any way they can
- draklor40 6y ago
  They simply cannot handle business that require long term support, lower margins, and communication overhead. As you said, given how effective Stats and Math have been for Search + Ads, they approach every problem with the same Hammer, which even Elon learnt the hard way, is not a great idea (Tesla's production issues with too much automation). Reading Steve Yegge's posts (on Medium, IIRC), Android and Youtube are exceptions that the management leaves the teams to work indepedently instead of hosting the Google culture on top of them (he cites Android's API compatibility to this regard, which is in a way the opposite of how Google supports its products).
sjcoles 6y ago
> Not related to Stadia, but I had some issue with my Pixel 3a yesterday that it just stopped charging and had to get in touch with Google's support to try initiate a repair (turned out to be a software bug, thankfully). Yes! Android 11 has difficulty on the Pixel 3a negotiating the USB mode and will just randomly fail to charge after updates. I found moving it between a USB C PD and USB C port on an actual computer will at least bring up the notification where you can then select the USB negotiation mode.
Marsymars 6y ago
I had a painful multi-week-long email thread with Google support because I kept getting Google Fi emails even after going through the unsubscribe link in the email despite having never been a Google Fi customer and not living in a country where Google Fi was offered. They claimed that my only recourse was to mark the messages as spam, and that there was no internal path to escalate the issue. They finally relented after my repeated insistence that what they were doing wasn’t legal in my country.

wegs2 6y ago

What's been a bit amusing is seeing a string of startups go through the same lesson about Google Cloud. I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the mistake Google made was failing to recognize and focus on its core competencies. In ads and search, everything is scalable, statistical, and returns are decoupled from investment. You hire a few really smart people, and have them blow everyone else away. It worked. They should have looked for more businesses like that. Maps, gmail, etc. all did pretty well too. Even Youtube, despite playing whack-a-mole with demonetizing or removing channels with millions of subscribers, does well enough. There were plenty more businesses like that to diversify to. Then Google brought that same mindset to things which required customer service (which doesn't scale), reliability (which isn't statistical in the same way as ads and search), and other domains, hired a ton of mediocre people to do it, and it seems like a bit of a dumpster fire right now.

loa_in_ 6y ago
It makes sense from their perspective: they have datacentres upon datacentres of computing power that power their own endeavours, but are underutilized. So they monetize the remaining capacity in any way they can
draklor40 6y ago
They simply cannot handle business that require long term support, lower margins, and communication overhead. As you said, given how effective Stats and Math have been for Search + Ads, they approach every problem with the same Hammer, which even Elon learnt the hard way, is not a great idea (Tesla's production issues with too much automation). Reading Steve Yegge's posts (on Medium, IIRC), Android and Youtube are exceptions that the management leaves the teams to work indepedently instead of hosting the Google culture on top of them (he cites Android's API compatibility to this regard, which is in a way the opposite of how Google supports its products).

sjcoles 6y ago

> Not related to Stadia, but I had some issue with my Pixel 3a yesterday that it just stopped charging and had to get in touch with Google's support to try initiate a repair (turned out to be a software bug, thankfully). Yes! Android 11 has difficulty on the Pixel 3a negotiating the USB mode and will just randomly fail to charge after updates. I found moving it between a USB C PD and USB C port on an actual computer will at least bring up the notification where you can then select the USB negotiation mode.

Marsymars 6y ago

I had a painful multi-week-long email thread with Google support because I kept getting Google Fi emails even after going through the unsubscribe link in the email despite having never been a Google Fi customer and not living in a country where Google Fi was offered. They claimed that my only recourse was to mark the messages as spam, and that there was no internal path to escalate the issue. They finally relented after my repeated insistence that what they were doing wasn’t legal in my country.