7 ms·

Google seems unfocused - AR is an example of this, their messaging platforms and failure to leverage Google voice for 10yrs after the acquisition are too. I’d

Google seems unfocused - AR is an example of this, their messaging platforms and failure to leverage Google voice for 10yrs after the acquisition are too. I’d bet on Apple, FB, or some new entry (harder without the underlying OS). DeepMind is the most interesting thing coming out of Google imo.

AlwaysRock 5y ago
It's not impossible to "focus" Google but lets not pretend Google is making these decisions to focus on something or not. It's small groups of people or singular people who make these decisions and those visionaries can easily change their focus or be offered a more compelling role at a start up doing the same thing after they spend 12 months learning how to do it at Google. I don't love Facebook/Meta but it looks like they put a lot of eggs into the Metaverse bucket. Google has never really done that. They have dabbled and because its Google people assume its going to be big or meaningful. But once people internally make enough progress to get promoted and move around internally its not going to continue to be supported without guidance from the top and the top doesnt care about AR/VR/Metaverse. Or at least they havnt until now.
- gonehome 5y ago
  I’m a little confused by your first sentence because it sounds like we’re mostly in agreement? Google does a bunch of random things kind of haphazardly. Whether this is caused by incentive problems around promo or something else I don’t know. I don’t think they compare favorably to Apple, Zuckerberg, or modern Microsoft. I’d guess it comes from the top.
- potatolicious 5y ago
  The two statements don't really work together: > It's small groups of people or singular people who make these decisions and those visionaries can easily change their focus or be offered a more compelling role True! All companies face this problem. Smart, capable people have options and frequently will decide to leave and do something else/go somewhere else. > but lets not pretend Google is making these decisions to focus on something or not This is where the disconnect is. As a company you decide what things are priorities, and you build teams to pursue those priorities in a way that is resilient to people leaving - even extremely senior leadership individuals. If a project withers and dies because a key player leaves, then it never had the company's focus. Part of effectively managing a company is to ensure your most important things don't have a low bus factor (or in Google's case, a bug factor of exactly one). MS, FB, Apple, etc, all have a record of being able to relentlessly pursue a particular goal despite being subject to the same workforce attrition forces that affect Google.
- jfim 5y ago
  > I don't love Facebook/Meta but it looks like they put a lot of eggs into the Metaverse bucket. Google has never really done that. They did with Google Plus, and they eventually killed it.
moritonal 5y ago
It hurts to see it the accidental implication that DeepMind came out of Google. DeepMind was one of the UK's greater recent creations and it got bought/absorbed for a pittance in exchange for custom TPUs. I'll agree though that DeepMind would not have been able to exist really without Google's ongoing funding and hardware, so maybe it is Google's creation at this point.
- gonehome 5y ago
  Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply that Google created it or anything. For better or worse they are owned and supported by Google now though.
- ca01an 5y ago
  Did DeepMind have anything to do with the TPUs? I was under the impression another group in Google designed them
peterangular 5y ago
> their messaging platforms and failure to leverage Google voice for 10yrs after the acquisition are too The Hangouts > Chat transition is exactly this. Objectively, they've made it worse and more buggy on their own Android platform. Ever since the transition I talk to friends less on Google services. Many of us jumped to Discord Don't even get me going on the Gmail rollout... Google was once an innovator (search, Gmail, Docs) but I'm not expecting quality from any of their future product rollouts... especially if it's an existing product.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  > Google was once an innovator (search, Gmail, Docs) Docs was from an acquisition.
  - simonh 5y ago
    I used to think that mattered, but I’m not so sure any more. After all the people that developed that product became part of Google, and they didn’t become any less the innovators of it as a result. I think what matters with an acquisition is how it’s managed and how the technology is developed. I think it’s unarguable Google has put significant investment into docs and done a good job developing the product so I have no problem at this point giving them credit for it.
    - tata71 5y ago
      If you want maintained, passionately developed software, it absolutely matters.
  - dvh 5y ago
    I used to use Google docs because it was faster that starting libre office. Now Google docs starts 15s for empty document.
    - sciurus 5y ago
      FWIW on multiple browsers on several different computers I've never had Google docs take anywhere close to 15 seconds to load.
hiptobecubic 5y ago
Google is unfocused. That's the how the company is designed. It's a federation of VPs, each trying to build a little fiefdom and buy a third bay area house. Sometimes this works well because it fosters competition, but there's a definite lack of coherency.
- selestify 5y ago
  Was that just a random number you threw out? Because it's depressing if even VPs can only afford three Bay Area homes.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    I'd guess a VP can afford just one? Median housing price is 3M in Palo Alto.
    - temporalparts 5y ago
      I'm guessing Google VPs make ~5 mil a year, given that L8 engineers make ~1 mil a year [0] [0] levels.fyi
      - sombremesa 5y ago
        There are huge issues with how these salaries are reported. When you include stock compensation especially: what about vesting schedules and taxes? You can leave a job (by choice or otherwise) where you worked for a year and were making "1 million a year" with less than $300k in total compensation. It feels like a little trick being played on the employees, kind of like unlimited PTO. I'm sure some people actually enjoy the full benefits of what they're promised, but I'd be surprised if that's a majority.
        romanhn 5y ago
        It's all fairly straightforward actually, as long as you're familiar with how compensation works at big companies (salary, stock, bonus, refreshers). Blind and levels.fyi have raised the transparency on comp quite a bit. $1M/year total compensation (that's annual comp, not the total four year vest) is reasonable for a L8/director-level at the tech giants. This is before tax of course, which is how literally everyone talks about compensation.
Const-me 5y ago
> harder without the underlying OS I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the current mainline Linux. There’re issues on desktop, sure. But VR/AR stuff is not similar to desktop, quite the opposite, it’s similar to embedded. For newer mobile GPUs, Linux even support Vulkan in addition to GLES.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  But the tooling (vs Metal/DX/LibGNMX/...), oh my.
taneq 5y ago
Google isn't one entity any more, it sounds like it's more like some kind of unofficial in-house version of YC except with more politics because the startups are more closely coupled. Also DeepMind didn't come out of Google, it came out of some British boffins that got acquired for squillions (comparatively, I mean it's only a serious and arguably somewhat successful attempt at building general AI, it's not like it's adtech or finance or something else really important...) and as far as I can see the number one thing Google has done to help them, other than throwing money at them, is to otherwise leave them the hell alone.

AlwaysRock 5y ago

It's not impossible to "focus" Google but lets not pretend Google is making these decisions to focus on something or not. It's small groups of people or singular people who make these decisions and those visionaries can easily change their focus or be offered a more compelling role at a start up doing the same thing after they spend 12 months learning how to do it at Google. I don't love Facebook/Meta but it looks like they put a lot of eggs into the Metaverse bucket. Google has never really done that. They have dabbled and because its Google people assume its going to be big or meaningful. But once people internally make enough progress to get promoted and move around internally its not going to continue to be supported without guidance from the top and the top doesnt care about AR/VR/Metaverse. Or at least they havnt until now.

gonehome 5y ago
I’m a little confused by your first sentence because it sounds like we’re mostly in agreement? Google does a bunch of random things kind of haphazardly. Whether this is caused by incentive problems around promo or something else I don’t know. I don’t think they compare favorably to Apple, Zuckerberg, or modern Microsoft. I’d guess it comes from the top.
potatolicious 5y ago
The two statements don't really work together: > It's small groups of people or singular people who make these decisions and those visionaries can easily change their focus or be offered a more compelling role True! All companies face this problem. Smart, capable people have options and frequently will decide to leave and do something else/go somewhere else. > but lets not pretend Google is making these decisions to focus on something or not This is where the disconnect is. As a company you decide what things are priorities, and you build teams to pursue those priorities in a way that is resilient to people leaving - even extremely senior leadership individuals. If a project withers and dies because a key player leaves, then it never had the company's focus. Part of effectively managing a company is to ensure your most important things don't have a low bus factor (or in Google's case, a bug factor of exactly one). MS, FB, Apple, etc, all have a record of being able to relentlessly pursue a particular goal despite being subject to the same workforce attrition forces that affect Google.
jfim 5y ago
> I don't love Facebook/Meta but it looks like they put a lot of eggs into the Metaverse bucket. Google has never really done that. They did with Google Plus, and they eventually killed it.

moritonal 5y ago

It hurts to see it the accidental implication that DeepMind came out of Google. DeepMind was one of the UK's greater recent creations and it got bought/absorbed for a pittance in exchange for custom TPUs. I'll agree though that DeepMind would not have been able to exist really without Google's ongoing funding and hardware, so maybe it is Google's creation at this point.

gonehome 5y ago
Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply that Google created it or anything. For better or worse they are owned and supported by Google now though.
ca01an 5y ago
Did DeepMind have anything to do with the TPUs? I was under the impression another group in Google designed them

peterangular 5y ago

> their messaging platforms and failure to leverage Google voice for 10yrs after the acquisition are too The Hangouts > Chat transition is exactly this. Objectively, they've made it worse and more buggy on their own Android platform. Ever since the transition I talk to friends less on Google services. Many of us jumped to Discord Don't even get me going on the Gmail rollout... Google was once an innovator (search, Gmail, Docs) but I'm not expecting quality from any of their future product rollouts... especially if it's an existing product.

dehrmann 5y ago
> Google was once an innovator (search, Gmail, Docs) Docs was from an acquisition.
- simonh 5y ago
  I used to think that mattered, but I’m not so sure any more. After all the people that developed that product became part of Google, and they didn’t become any less the innovators of it as a result. I think what matters with an acquisition is how it’s managed and how the technology is developed. I think it’s unarguable Google has put significant investment into docs and done a good job developing the product so I have no problem at this point giving them credit for it.
  - tata71 5y ago
    If you want maintained, passionately developed software, it absolutely matters.
- dvh 5y ago
  I used to use Google docs because it was faster that starting libre office. Now Google docs starts 15s for empty document.
  - sciurus 5y ago
    FWIW on multiple browsers on several different computers I've never had Google docs take anywhere close to 15 seconds to load.

hiptobecubic 5y ago

Google is unfocused. That's the how the company is designed. It's a federation of VPs, each trying to build a little fiefdom and buy a third bay area house. Sometimes this works well because it fosters competition, but there's a definite lack of coherency.

selestify 5y ago
Was that just a random number you threw out? Because it's depressing if even VPs can only afford three Bay Area homes.
- gonehome 5y ago
  I'd guess a VP can afford just one? Median housing price is 3M in Palo Alto.
  - temporalparts 5y ago
    I'm guessing Google VPs make ~5 mil a year, given that L8 engineers make ~1 mil a year [0] [0] levels.fyi
    - sombremesa 5y ago
      There are huge issues with how these salaries are reported. When you include stock compensation especially: what about vesting schedules and taxes? You can leave a job (by choice or otherwise) where you worked for a year and were making "1 million a year" with less than $300k in total compensation. It feels like a little trick being played on the employees, kind of like unlimited PTO. I'm sure some people actually enjoy the full benefits of what they're promised, but I'd be surprised if that's a majority.
      - romanhn 5y ago
        It's all fairly straightforward actually, as long as you're familiar with how compensation works at big companies (salary, stock, bonus, refreshers). Blind and levels.fyi have raised the transparency on comp quite a bit. $1M/year total compensation (that's annual comp, not the total four year vest) is reasonable for a L8/director-level at the tech giants. This is before tax of course, which is how literally everyone talks about compensation.

Const-me 5y ago

> harder without the underlying OS I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the current mainline Linux. There’re issues on desktop, sure. But VR/AR stuff is not similar to desktop, quite the opposite, it’s similar to embedded. For newer mobile GPUs, Linux even support Vulkan in addition to GLES.

pjmlp 5y ago
But the tooling (vs Metal/DX/LibGNMX/...), oh my.

taneq 5y ago

Google isn't one entity any more, it sounds like it's more like some kind of unofficial in-house version of YC except with more politics because the startups are more closely coupled. Also DeepMind didn't come out of Google, it came out of some British boffins that got acquired for squillions (comparatively, I mean it's only a serious and arguably somewhat successful attempt at building general AI, it's not like it's adtech or finance or something else really important...) and as far as I can see the number one thing Google has done to help them, other than throwing money at them, is to otherwise leave them the hell alone.