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Google DID build things which changed the world. Now of days what have they built that changed the world? Youtube, aquisition. Android, aquisition. Workspaces,

Google DID build things which changed the world. Now of days what have they built that changed the world? Youtube, aquisition. Android, aquisition. Workspaces, aquisition. DoubleClick, aquisition. Waze, aquisition. Feels like it has been roughly a decade since Google changed the world.

clpm4j 5y ago
Cloud infrastructure, the Go programming language, Kubernetes. Now of course your definition of "change the world" comes into play here, but it certainly hasn't just been advertising and acquisitions.
- zeruch 5y ago
  "Now of course your definition of "change the world" comes into play here" Indeed. Cloud Infrastructure = playing catch up to a player that set the stage (and still leads), Go I don't think "changes the world" quite as much as consolidates and improves things that already were available in everything from C to Python, but suited to a specific set of use cases that Google particularly cared about for their own business first and the "world" later. K8s came out in roughly the same window as other orchestration tech (e.g. Mesos) but had/s the benefit of the 'Google' name attached to it. It simplifies some things certainly, but is it really a "world changer"? TBH, more seems to be about changing Googles world more than the broader one, but that goes to your original quote.
  - sterlind 5y ago
    iirc Mesos was inspired by Borg. Google kept Borg secret for quite a long time, eventually releasing K8s when they started failing hard at cloud and needed to keep their foot in the door for developer mind-share. Borg's real win was the insane colocation and oversubscription it enabled, both of which K8s and all major public clouds have failed to replicate because you can't securely share bare metal between customers. and K8s ended up being too little too late, despite beating Mesos and being quite successful, because VMs had won by that point.
bhawks 5y ago
A sibling poster points out there is quite a bit of original work but can we discuss acquisitions? Most acquisitions are kind of gigantic re-orgs: they cost a ton and rarely leave things better than when they started - oh and generally execs will always feel they were successful :) Most of the examples you listed are the dream acquisition with exponential improvement. I have a hard time seeing Android on 2 billion devices or YouTube with millions of creators delivering HD content across the world without standing hand-in-hand with the rest of the teams at Google. Similarly Google would not be able to do it either (Google video would have been sunset without YouTube acquisition and no one was building a consumer electronics focused os). Google certainly has screwed the pooch on many acquisitions but to chalk up all those other successes as a given or as pure luck is a naive statement. There was a ton of hard work, huge chance of failure and really impactful results.
- bushbaba 5y ago
  Sure and the last one was over a decade ago. Youtube acquired in 2006 Android acquired in 2005 Docs acquired in 2012.
sterlind 5y ago
I'm reminded of the "what have the Romans ever done for us?" scene from Life of Brian: https://youtu.be/uvPbj9NX0zc https://youtu.be/uvPbj9NX0zc I'm not sure the history with workspaces, but Google Docs etc. were very important. Google also gets points in my book just by scaling YouTube, Maps, Gmail etc. To the degree they've published their work it's been revolutionary to the field. Excellent engineering with terrible/conservative corporate strategy, imo.

clpm4j 5y ago

Cloud infrastructure, the Go programming language, Kubernetes. Now of course your definition of "change the world" comes into play here, but it certainly hasn't just been advertising and acquisitions.

zeruch 5y ago
"Now of course your definition of "change the world" comes into play here" Indeed. Cloud Infrastructure = playing catch up to a player that set the stage (and still leads), Go I don't think "changes the world" quite as much as consolidates and improves things that already were available in everything from C to Python, but suited to a specific set of use cases that Google particularly cared about for their own business first and the "world" later. K8s came out in roughly the same window as other orchestration tech (e.g. Mesos) but had/s the benefit of the 'Google' name attached to it. It simplifies some things certainly, but is it really a "world changer"? TBH, more seems to be about changing Googles world more than the broader one, but that goes to your original quote.
- sterlind 5y ago
  iirc Mesos was inspired by Borg. Google kept Borg secret for quite a long time, eventually releasing K8s when they started failing hard at cloud and needed to keep their foot in the door for developer mind-share. Borg's real win was the insane colocation and oversubscription it enabled, both of which K8s and all major public clouds have failed to replicate because you can't securely share bare metal between customers. and K8s ended up being too little too late, despite beating Mesos and being quite successful, because VMs had won by that point.

bhawks 5y ago

A sibling poster points out there is quite a bit of original work but can we discuss acquisitions? Most acquisitions are kind of gigantic re-orgs: they cost a ton and rarely leave things better than when they started - oh and generally execs will always feel they were successful :) Most of the examples you listed are the dream acquisition with exponential improvement. I have a hard time seeing Android on 2 billion devices or YouTube with millions of creators delivering HD content across the world without standing hand-in-hand with the rest of the teams at Google. Similarly Google would not be able to do it either (Google video would have been sunset without YouTube acquisition and no one was building a consumer electronics focused os). Google certainly has screwed the pooch on many acquisitions but to chalk up all those other successes as a given or as pure luck is a naive statement. There was a ton of hard work, huge chance of failure and really impactful results.

bushbaba 5y ago
Sure and the last one was over a decade ago. Youtube acquired in 2006 Android acquired in 2005 Docs acquired in 2012.

sterlind 5y ago

I'm reminded of the "what have the Romans ever done for us?" scene from Life of Brian: https://youtu.be/uvPbj9NX0zc https://youtu.be/uvPbj9NX0zc I'm not sure the history with workspaces, but Google Docs etc. were very important. Google also gets points in my book just by scaling YouTube, Maps, Gmail etc. To the degree they've published their work it's been revolutionary to the field. Excellent engineering with terrible/conservative corporate strategy, imo.