4 ms·

Street view may be tricky to justify from a financial perspective, but it's pretty easy to justify from a mission perspective, which for Google is to "organize

Street view may be tricky to justify from a financial perspective, but it's pretty easy to justify from a mission perspective, which for Google is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". The mark of a good mission statement is that many seemingly unprofitable things that you do to pursue the mission end up paying dividends in the long term. I'm also not sure how expensive early street view actually was, does anyone know how many cars/drivers it takes?

SuperQue 4y ago
We had 2 initial prototypes to index the bay area. I think there were maybe 10s of cars in the first big sweep over the US. I have no idea how many cars they're running these days.
burntoutfire 4y ago
> which for Google is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" Those missions statements always make me laugh. What if someone at Google found a great and cheap way to do that (organize the world's information blah blah blah) in a way that's unfortunately completely unmonetizable? Of course, Google would not implement it - and would patent the idea if possible, so that no one else can. The only true mission is to make as much money as possible.
- khazhoux 4y ago
  But Street View itself is not monetized (not directly, and Maps itself is barely monetized). Street View proves your thesis wrong.
  - sargun 4y ago
    Maps is very well monetized. They make money from maps ads, as well as maps API[1]. Their minimum $ for maps was very expensive last I checked too. [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/061115/how-does-google-maps-makes-money.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/061115/how-d...
- astrange 4y ago
  How can something be completely unmonetizable? If users want to use it, then you can sell them access or show them ads. It'd be strange to have a product that's logically only usable by people without money. I mean, it's possible if the content you're indexing is offensive or pornographic of course.

SuperQue 4y ago

We had 2 initial prototypes to index the bay area. I think there were maybe 10s of cars in the first big sweep over the US. I have no idea how many cars they're running these days.

burntoutfire 4y ago

> which for Google is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" Those missions statements always make me laugh. What if someone at Google found a great and cheap way to do that (organize the world's information blah blah blah) in a way that's unfortunately completely unmonetizable? Of course, Google would not implement it - and would patent the idea if possible, so that no one else can. The only true mission is to make as much money as possible.

khazhoux 4y ago
But Street View itself is not monetized (not directly, and Maps itself is barely monetized). Street View proves your thesis wrong.
- sargun 4y ago
  Maps is very well monetized. They make money from maps ads, as well as maps API[1]. Their minimum $ for maps was very expensive last I checked too. [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/061115/how-does-google-maps-makes-money.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/061115/how-d...
astrange 4y ago
How can something be completely unmonetizable? If users want to use it, then you can sell them access or show them ads. It'd be strange to have a product that's logically only usable by people without money. I mean, it's possible if the content you're indexing is offensive or pornographic of course.