4 ms·

Performance only matters if you are in competition with others. You can win a marathon by crawling if you’re the only participant. Who are Google’s serious com

Performance only matters if you are in competition with others. You can win a marathon by crawling if you’re the only participant. Who are Google’s serious competitors? Sure there are other search engines but I’d argue that none are serious or even marginal threats. People will tolerate sub-optimal experiences if they perceive they don’t have any option; just ask anyone who has stood in line at the DMV. The first sign of a monopoly is a rapid performance degradation which can’t be explained by economics of scale and which did not exist in prior versions of a product. Free market forces and incentive structures no longer apply to monopolies, which is why many large corporations can get away with sloppy work and treating their customers poorly, but do not see much if any consequences. Behavior that would have been disastrous in a startup is tolerable in a large corporation operating as a monopoly. A product owner or dev at Google would be committing career suicide if they started to care about performance at this point, because that would not result in any appreciable changes or outcomes consistent with the incentive structures at Google.

nfm 5y ago
> Performance only matters if you are in competition with others. I'm not sure that's right. There's a strong link between performance and repeat usage. Even in the complete absence of competition, Google search being fast could result in more searches per user being conducted and more revenue as a result.
alpb 5y ago
> People will tolerate sub-optimal experiences Implying the Google Search homepage loading experience is sub-optimal? Chrome starts loading it before you finish typing google.com on your keyboard.
- hetspookjee 5y ago
  I think most products from Microsoft are relevant in this context. Teams is horrible and every week another thing breaks. Almost every page by Microsoft takes more than 10 seconds to load on my side. Yet everyone including me uses it.
  - pas 5y ago
    captive audience!
- iamleppert 5y ago
  I don’t think the actual experience is sub optimal. It’s not quite there yet, but give it another 10 years and it might be. However, from a pure engineering perspective, I think most people agree that the page weight has increased at a rate that is unjustified considering the core features and functionality have been relatively static. So why the bloat? Engineers can tell of course. The margins of acceptance have gone way up thanks to faster devices and connections, but that still doesn’t explain why they don’t seem to care to optimize anymore. In optimize, I’m talking about it from a pure engineering perspective: what is the minimum amount of data needed to do the job of displaying a list of search results? Some people have forgotten that a list and some simple formatting is all there is to it. It’s not a web app, it has minimal interactivity, and relatively basic features. The fact that it has ballooned to 500k just proves that even Google is not immune. Maybe more resistant than other giant tech companies who’s software just keeps getting larger but not immune. Remember that code is data too. 500k isn’t a lot in today’s world but multiply that by how much traffic they receive and it is. I’m not saying Google search isn’t a well designed product that doesn’t work well, but from a pure first principles perspective it does seem quite bloated based upon what it used to be.
  - majani 5y ago
    I'm convinced that Google's massive push into NLP has a lot to do with this shift. Their next chapter is turning the search engine into a smart assistant and they seem to be willing to sacrifice quality in the short term for this broader goal
pbhjpbhj 5y ago
>Performance only matters if you are in competition with others. // Or if 'resources' are limited, like carbon emissions.
moonchrome 5y ago
I would say performance only matters if it's debilitating, outside of that it's something that few notice even fewer care about. Also I guess it can impact first impressions. But once I'm using a tool for something unless the performance is actually preventing me from using it - I'm not going to bother switching. So no need for a monopoly - if your competitive edge is that you are faster than competition, unless the competition is dog slow it's not a selling point to me. Eg. I won't look for VS code alternatives just because it's electron based and the competition has higher performance, vscode is fast enough for me. I will switch to a different compiler or even language if it shaves % off buid time that makes the iteration meaningfuly faster, or the tooling addresses pain points.
- godDLL 5y ago
  Or you could say, be doing your average of 7 to 15 searches a day, as an office worker. So you've waited some on 5 to 10 of them. No big deal. But then the guy next to you is a coding intern. He averages 150 to 400 searches a day. Maybe one every couple of minutes, or every five minutes. That guy would be pissed. All the time.
Gigachad 5y ago
I have never felt like google search was slow. So I would say they are within the range of acceptable times.
- godDLL 5y ago
  I propose this exact scale, in the interest of productive discussion: 15-75 ms GOOD: (no thoughts had in that time) 75-150ms OK: oh, there it is 150- 250 NOT OKAY: wait, did I… 250- 500 VERY NOT OKAY: could I have typed something better? >500+ ms ABSOLUTELY DEPLORABLE: is this thing on, is it working still?
wodenokoto 5y ago
> Who are Google’s serious competitors? Sure there are other search engines but I’d argue that none are serious or even marginal threats. Google seems to disagree given how much they shell out to be default search engine on different devices and browsers
- howdydoo 5y ago
  Google does this for the same reason coca cola advertises during the super bowl. It's not because they're afraid of competitors. It's to reinforce their position in your mind as a household name.
  - wodenokoto 5y ago
    But if there are no alternatives to google or Coca Cola, why do they need to reinforce themselves as a household name? Truth is, if neither brand doesn’t keep fighting for their top position they will lose it to competitors. The walls are being pushed from all sides, but both Coca Cola and google has the strength to hold up those wall. But that doesn’t mean the push is insignificant.
charwalker 5y ago
The DMV is motivated to be efficient because it's the only shop in town and people who have to use it will make noise when it sucks. But they may not pursue efficiency because they are the only shop in town unless pressured. In Oregon they seem to care. I've never spent more than 25 minutes in line and often been out the door in under 20 minutes even with complex forms to complete. They often have someone near the door to check your needs and get you the right form as you take a number so when you get to the window you're set to submit your form, pay any fees, then leave vs sitting down again to start the form or something. Oregon has it figured out. Washington though, they have private offices running all aspects in separate locations ex emissions test up the highway, licensing across town, and vehicle registration down south. It took me over 3 hours to register my car when I moved and the DMVs there only proceeded to be worse.

nfm 5y ago

> Performance only matters if you are in competition with others. I'm not sure that's right. There's a strong link between performance and repeat usage. Even in the complete absence of competition, Google search being fast could result in more searches per user being conducted and more revenue as a result.

alpb 5y ago

> People will tolerate sub-optimal experiences Implying the Google Search homepage loading experience is sub-optimal? Chrome starts loading it before you finish typing google.com on your keyboard.

hetspookjee 5y ago
I think most products from Microsoft are relevant in this context. Teams is horrible and every week another thing breaks. Almost every page by Microsoft takes more than 10 seconds to load on my side. Yet everyone including me uses it.
- pas 5y ago
  captive audience!
iamleppert 5y ago
I don’t think the actual experience is sub optimal. It’s not quite there yet, but give it another 10 years and it might be. However, from a pure engineering perspective, I think most people agree that the page weight has increased at a rate that is unjustified considering the core features and functionality have been relatively static. So why the bloat? Engineers can tell of course. The margins of acceptance have gone way up thanks to faster devices and connections, but that still doesn’t explain why they don’t seem to care to optimize anymore. In optimize, I’m talking about it from a pure engineering perspective: what is the minimum amount of data needed to do the job of displaying a list of search results? Some people have forgotten that a list and some simple formatting is all there is to it. It’s not a web app, it has minimal interactivity, and relatively basic features. The fact that it has ballooned to 500k just proves that even Google is not immune. Maybe more resistant than other giant tech companies who’s software just keeps getting larger but not immune. Remember that code is data too. 500k isn’t a lot in today’s world but multiply that by how much traffic they receive and it is. I’m not saying Google search isn’t a well designed product that doesn’t work well, but from a pure first principles perspective it does seem quite bloated based upon what it used to be.
- majani 5y ago
  I'm convinced that Google's massive push into NLP has a lot to do with this shift. Their next chapter is turning the search engine into a smart assistant and they seem to be willing to sacrifice quality in the short term for this broader goal

pbhjpbhj 5y ago

>Performance only matters if you are in competition with others. // Or if 'resources' are limited, like carbon emissions.

moonchrome 5y ago

I would say performance only matters if it's debilitating, outside of that it's something that few notice even fewer care about. Also I guess it can impact first impressions. But once I'm using a tool for something unless the performance is actually preventing me from using it - I'm not going to bother switching. So no need for a monopoly - if your competitive edge is that you are faster than competition, unless the competition is dog slow it's not a selling point to me. Eg. I won't look for VS code alternatives just because it's electron based and the competition has higher performance, vscode is fast enough for me. I will switch to a different compiler or even language if it shaves % off buid time that makes the iteration meaningfuly faster, or the tooling addresses pain points.

godDLL 5y ago
Or you could say, be doing your average of 7 to 15 searches a day, as an office worker. So you've waited some on 5 to 10 of them. No big deal. But then the guy next to you is a coding intern. He averages 150 to 400 searches a day. Maybe one every couple of minutes, or every five minutes. That guy would be pissed. All the time.

Gigachad 5y ago

I have never felt like google search was slow. So I would say they are within the range of acceptable times.

godDLL 5y ago
I propose this exact scale, in the interest of productive discussion: 15-75 ms GOOD: (no thoughts had in that time) 75-150ms OK: oh, there it is 150- 250 NOT OKAY: wait, did I… 250- 500 VERY NOT OKAY: could I have typed something better? >500+ ms ABSOLUTELY DEPLORABLE: is this thing on, is it working still?

wodenokoto 5y ago

> Who are Google’s serious competitors? Sure there are other search engines but I’d argue that none are serious or even marginal threats. Google seems to disagree given how much they shell out to be default search engine on different devices and browsers

howdydoo 5y ago
Google does this for the same reason coca cola advertises during the super bowl. It's not because they're afraid of competitors. It's to reinforce their position in your mind as a household name.
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  But if there are no alternatives to google or Coca Cola, why do they need to reinforce themselves as a household name? Truth is, if neither brand doesn’t keep fighting for their top position they will lose it to competitors. The walls are being pushed from all sides, but both Coca Cola and google has the strength to hold up those wall. But that doesn’t mean the push is insignificant.

charwalker 5y ago

The DMV is motivated to be efficient because it's the only shop in town and people who have to use it will make noise when it sucks. But they may not pursue efficiency because they are the only shop in town unless pressured. In Oregon they seem to care. I've never spent more than 25 minutes in line and often been out the door in under 20 minutes even with complex forms to complete. They often have someone near the door to check your needs and get you the right form as you take a number so when you get to the window you're set to submit your form, pay any fees, then leave vs sitting down again to start the form or something. Oregon has it figured out. Washington though, they have private offices running all aspects in separate locations ex emissions test up the highway, licensing across town, and vehicle registration down south. It took me over 3 hours to register my car when I moved and the DMVs there only proceeded to be worse.