4 ms·

I was an intern at Google right around the time where Google+ (long before it was known under that name) became a thing for Google engineers internally. I sat n

by anyfoo 4y ago

I was an intern at Google right around the time where Google+ (long before it was known under that name) became a thing for Google engineers internally. I sat next to a team that was majorly impacted by that. It's all subjective of course, but I could practically "feel" Google changing. Before I started my internship and still during it for the most time, Google was this incredible company that people, including me, were in awe about. All their products were so good. So technically refined, so methodical, you could really see that the people working on them were really smart, and really cared about it all. And then it changed and became this "corporation", and nowadays it's sometimes seen as almost the opposite of what it was, working there being boring but stable. Part of that is probably just a normal consequence of the immense growth, but personally I can't shake the feeling that Google+ had a large part in it.

acdha 4y ago
Thanks for that perspective – your subjective impression certainly matches my outside experience. That seemed like the point where the halo faded.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  It didn't so much fade as that it got switched off. Suddenly Google was just another evil US corporation when before you might have had the impression that they meant what they said. To be fair to your comment: there were some earlier signs but they could all explained away in one way or another, but that time the mask fell and they never managed to put it back on again. Now they get a lot of business because they are the least bad option. Which still makes Google useful but I'd love for some actual competition. But with the network effects at play any viable competition can be stifled.
gwillen 4y ago
I was a fulltimer there around the same time, and I agree. I ended up quitting fairly soon after the G+ real names fiasco blew up, and it felt like a lot of internal "social capital" got burned on that, which was never really recovered. I don't think the whole place went to hell at that moment, or anything, and your description is maybe a little more dramatic than I'd go with, as to the role of G+... but it definitely seemed like one of the big turning points.
- anyfoo 4y ago
  Sorry, I did not mean to imply a dramatic and sudden change either. I just perceived this as a turning point, like you say (and with only my limited first hand experience there, of course).
Patrol8394 4y ago
Google major revenue stream is and will always be search/ads. Everything else is marginal, irrelevant and that’s why I think they don’t care much. I still can’t explain how Google got beaten at their own game (cloud / computing at scale) by an e-commerce site : Amazon. That says it all. Having many friends who work at Google, I think they have the wrong system of incentives in place. Rightfully, people optimize and prioritize based on their path to promotion rather than building products that people love. It’s much easier to get a promotion if you build something new vs keep iterating on existing products making it better.
- vl 4y ago
  >I still can’t explain how Google got beaten at their own game (cloud / computing at scale) by an e-commerce site : Amazon. But it wasn’t Google’s game at all: cloud computing is a low margin business (relatively speaking). Amazon knows how to run low margins businesses, and Google doesn’t. Google was so unimpressed with cloud, that they got serious about it only around 2012, when it became obvious that other clouds will outgrow Google as a whole. I think it was Google’s Internet Explorer moment.
  - vbezhenar 4y ago
    I don't understand how cloud computing is a low margin business. I can rent a dedicated server at Heztner. 8 hyperthreads, 32 GB RAM, 4 TB HDD. €33. Amazon EC2. t4g.2xlarge 8 cores, 32 GB RAM, $194. 2 TB EBS HDD $30. $224 total. Also Amazon charges for traffic. Surely Hetzner is not working at loss. Surely economies of scale allow AWS to have better deals. I mean, AWS is literally 7x compared to Hetzner. How is it bad margin?
    - bigDinosaur 4y ago
      I'm curious, have you benchmarked both of these and seen if there's no real world difference? I've had major performance differences between clouds on what is supposedly similar hardware. If AWS is faster in nothing then why they're so expensive would be a very good question indeed. My initial guess would be AWS is relying on its advantage that users who are currently using AWS heavily are unlikely to switch clouds if they suddenly have to go from VM's to dedicated servers, and thus they can profit off such capture. e.g. 7x cost is probably fine when you consider what the cost might be to employ people for a cloud migration.

by anyfoo 4y ago

acdha 4y ago

Thanks for that perspective – your subjective impression certainly matches my outside experience. That seemed like the point where the halo faded.

jacquesm 4y ago
It didn't so much fade as that it got switched off. Suddenly Google was just another evil US corporation when before you might have had the impression that they meant what they said. To be fair to your comment: there were some earlier signs but they could all explained away in one way or another, but that time the mask fell and they never managed to put it back on again. Now they get a lot of business because they are the least bad option. Which still makes Google useful but I'd love for some actual competition. But with the network effects at play any viable competition can be stifled.

gwillen 4y ago

I was a fulltimer there around the same time, and I agree. I ended up quitting fairly soon after the G+ real names fiasco blew up, and it felt like a lot of internal "social capital" got burned on that, which was never really recovered. I don't think the whole place went to hell at that moment, or anything, and your description is maybe a little more dramatic than I'd go with, as to the role of G+... but it definitely seemed like one of the big turning points.

anyfoo 4y ago
Sorry, I did not mean to imply a dramatic and sudden change either. I just perceived this as a turning point, like you say (and with only my limited first hand experience there, of course).

Patrol8394 4y ago

Google major revenue stream is and will always be search/ads. Everything else is marginal, irrelevant and that’s why I think they don’t care much. I still can’t explain how Google got beaten at their own game (cloud / computing at scale) by an e-commerce site : Amazon. That says it all. Having many friends who work at Google, I think they have the wrong system of incentives in place. Rightfully, people optimize and prioritize based on their path to promotion rather than building products that people love. It’s much easier to get a promotion if you build something new vs keep iterating on existing products making it better.

vl 4y ago
>I still can’t explain how Google got beaten at their own game (cloud / computing at scale) by an e-commerce site : Amazon. But it wasn’t Google’s game at all: cloud computing is a low margin business (relatively speaking). Amazon knows how to run low margins businesses, and Google doesn’t. Google was so unimpressed with cloud, that they got serious about it only around 2012, when it became obvious that other clouds will outgrow Google as a whole. I think it was Google’s Internet Explorer moment.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  I don't understand how cloud computing is a low margin business. I can rent a dedicated server at Heztner. 8 hyperthreads, 32 GB RAM, 4 TB HDD. €33. Amazon EC2. t4g.2xlarge 8 cores, 32 GB RAM, $194. 2 TB EBS HDD $30. $224 total. Also Amazon charges for traffic. Surely Hetzner is not working at loss. Surely economies of scale allow AWS to have better deals. I mean, AWS is literally 7x compared to Hetzner. How is it bad margin?
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    I'm curious, have you benchmarked both of these and seen if there's no real world difference? I've had major performance differences between clouds on what is supposedly similar hardware. If AWS is faster in nothing then why they're so expensive would be a very good question indeed. My initial guess would be AWS is relying on its advantage that users who are currently using AWS heavily are unlikely to switch clouds if they suddenly have to go from VM's to dedicated servers, and thus they can profit off such capture. e.g. 7x cost is probably fine when you consider what the cost might be to employ people for a cloud migration.