10 ms·

Google got caught tweeting from an iPhone while promoting Pixel

30 points by stalfosknight 4y ago

malux85 4y ago
Before I started working at Google, I was working for an agency that was contracted by Google to use their new ad SDK's to come up with some fun, interactive ads. I spent ages with various crappy Android emulators and phones making the best demos I could, I learnt heaps about optimising the Android webview and animation, and rendering and versioning differences, it took me weeks of hard work, but I finally made some killer demos. We took them to present at Google at the office in the heart of London, the head of the EU ad division was there, everyone was excited about seeing what their new Android Ad SDK could do. I told them I had live demos, to pull our your phones and go to this URL and you can try it! Not one of them had an Android phone, every single one had an iPhone. There was 10 seconds of awkward silence that felt like 100 years, and then I burst out laughing when I realised none of them had an Android phone. They didn't see the funny side as much as I did
- mywittyname 4y ago
  Humorous story aside, I think it's typical for execs not to buy their own products. I doubt McDonalds execs eat at their restaurants very often.
  - ganbatekudasai 4y ago
    Pretty sure Apple execs use their products, a lot.
    - fdfaz 4y ago
  - N19PEDL2 4y ago
    I'd be curious to know if Ford Motor executives drive Mercedes.
- googlryas 4y ago
  I assume you were meeting with business types - I bet 90+% of SWEs at google have androids. And to be fair, Google ad business basically has nothing to do with android. Deep into the Android years, Eric Schmidt got a lot of flack for proudly announcing that he loved his blackberry and you could pry his physical keyboard from his cold, dead hands.
  - posguy 4y ago
    The only Google SWEs I know with Androids were provided a Pixel as a work phone.
    - dekhn 4y ago
      It wasn't hard to get an iPhone from mobile services at Google. What Google did do, over many years, was hand us free Android phones to just play with. Every christmas.
    - googlryas 4y ago
      Weird, literally everyone I work with has an android. Maybe it's office dependent - I'm not in CA or NY.
- ender341341 4y ago
  I was at amazon (in the app store) when the fire phone was released, leadership made a big deal of showing of that they were using the fire phone for the first week or so and then got really quiet and where back on their iPhones.
  - posguy 4y ago
    The hardware specs were significantly behind what was standard on Androids of the time. Fire phones had only a slight price differentiation ($0.99 on a 2 year contract versus $199 for a Samsung Galaxy with a 1080p screen) and there were no commission incentives to push them, which made these a nonstarter.
    - drcongo 4y ago
      99c vs $199 seems like a pretty big price differentiation.
      - drcongo 4y ago
        I'm sorry, I just realised it's a typo and should be $99 vs $199. $1 did seem like a fair price for a Fire Phone in my defence.
    - ender341341 4y ago
      oh, definitely. When I was first shown it I assumed it was a test model (it was common to get test models with big ugly casing pre-launch so any photos leaked looked didn't have much to go on), but nope, the big ugly thing was what shipped...
- _def 4y ago
  > They didn't see the funny side as much as I did Why so? That's hilarious for everyone involved :D
retskrad 4y ago
Apple is gaining more and more market share in the US (55% right now) and they're gaining in Europe and China also while Android is losing. Mark Zuckerberg did an interview with The Verge recently and even he said iPhone is winning the smartphone war. I would ring the alarm if I were Google.
- seydor 4y ago
  But if everyone has an eyephone, wont android become the cool one?
  - snapcaster 4y ago
    No, because it's made by an advertising company and has no taste. Something else will likely become cool
    - bezier-curve 4y ago
      Taste is subjective though, and if you don't happen to like what Apple provides you are out of luck. There are many more ways to customize Android without rooting, and I think that is cool.
      - SxC97 4y ago
        Hacker news does sort of self select for people who value tinker-ability over any kind of aesthetic design choices. I think we are part of a relatively small minority here.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - unethical_ban 4y ago
      The Android ui is much better than apple. They don’t and effects are nicer on Apple.
    - seydor 4y ago
dmitrygr 4y ago
Hardly surprising As I remember from my 7+ years there, more than 50% of engineers at Google use iPhones. An even larger percentage of non-SWE roles do too. These numbers grew as “dogfooding” population makeup became politically fraught
- ganbatekudasai 4y ago
  > These numbers grew as “dogfooding” population makeup became politically fraught As someone who doesn't know what's going on at Google, can you elaborate on that? I know what dogfooding is, but what does the rest mean?
  - dmitrygr 4y ago
    At least, in the android wear team, the higher-ups directly told us that the dogfooding population had to have certain percentages of certain sexes and skin colors. Unfortunately, engineering didn’t have enough people to fill each cell of that grid, so the limited number of development watches got allocated to many people outside of the team and outside of engineering, who, then proceeded to not use them (we kept track of dogfooding devices that were or were not used. People outside of our team rarely used the devices more than once a week) and/or file useless bug reports(a-la “connection seemed flaky last Tuesday, no I did not collect a bug report then, when it was happening”). As a result, we got fewer bug reports, and a lower percentage of them were usable. Predictably, quality suffered. The solution would’ve been simple: make more test devices, so that all the engineers, who actually file bug reports get one, and whoever else you want can get one to collect dust on their desk too. Didn’t happen. Similar situation played out an android proper. In 2012 in 2013, almost all android engineers were carrying a dogfood device. By 2019, they were almost impossible to obtain, except ...
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      Wow, that's an astonishingly short-sighted decision. Was there any pushback on it? And were you also blocked from redeploying the testing units away from those who didn't care?
gpmcadam 4y ago
Is this what The Verge is now, Tweet-like blog spam? Here’s the tweet they have ”quoted”: https://twitter.com/ianzelbo/status/1582886309277769730 https://twitter.com/ianzelbo/status/1582886309277769730 Maybe this is the better link?
- brundolf 4y ago
  I love their new format, because little tidbits like this don't have to get padded out into an entire (fluffy) article. I don't even have to click a link from their home page to see the full post
  - mikestew 4y ago
    Visually, I think the new design is hideous. But you do bring up a great point about how the layout allows little blurbs like this that aren't worth a full page. But that only helps if I can stand looking at the page. :-)
tus666 4y ago
Does Google ban it's employees from using Apple products? Google is barely a hardware company, it would hardly be surprising if large number of Google employees using Apple laptops/imacs/ipods...and yes iphones.
- thehappypm 4y ago
  No
- mcphage 4y ago
  Even if your personal phone is an iPhone, tweeting as the Google Pixel account from your iPhone is probably not a good idea.
kelnos 4y ago
Employees of one company often use products made by a competitor. So what? Big nothingburger here.
- quantumsequoia 4y ago
  The tweet was responding to Tim Cook and throwing shade in the iPhone. It's not just that they were using an iPhone, it's that the tweet was hypocritical
dekhn 4y ago
So what? PR people can use the phone they want to promote another type of phone.
togs 4y ago
Who cares though
Tyr42 4y ago
Googler here. I had a work iPhone as I was working on a iOS app. It's not that weird, right? It's not a cult. You don't gotta buy Google stuff. Now if it was an apple employee...? More surprising but like, not worth an article.
- kazinator 4y ago
  Using an iPhone while promoting Google Pixel is directly damaging to the Google Pixel brand. This employee made a significant mistake. It may not be that easy to undo; the Internet has a long memory. Years later, people will still be having conversations like, "LOL, you're not thinking of buying a Pixel? Did you know Google themselves send tweets from an iPhone to promote that thing? Incredible, but true!" What Google can do here is use their dominance in the search space to make it hard to search for this incident.
- checkyoursudo 4y ago
  Do you have to buy your own work phone at Google? Or are you allowed to use your personal phone also as your work phone? Or am I simply reading your comment too literally?
kazinator 4y ago
Reminiscent of that Linux Foundation president showing up to a presentation with a Windows laptop.

30 points by stalfosknight 4y ago

Before I started working at Google, I was working for an agency that was contracted by Google to use their new ad SDK's to come up with some fun, interactive ads. I spent ages with various crappy Android emulators and phones making the best demos I could, I learnt heaps about optimising the Android webview and animation, and rendering and versioning differences, it took me weeks of hard work, but I finally made some killer demos. We took them to present at Google at the office in the heart of London, the head of the EU ad division was there, everyone was excited about seeing what their new Android Ad SDK could do. I told them I had live demos, to pull our your phones and go to this URL and you can try it! Not one of them had an Android phone, every single one had an iPhone. There was 10 seconds of awkward silence that felt like 100 years, and then I burst out laughing when I realised none of them had an Android phone. They didn't see the funny side as much as I did

mywittyname 4y ago
Humorous story aside, I think it's typical for execs not to buy their own products. I doubt McDonalds execs eat at their restaurants very often.
- ganbatekudasai 4y ago
  Pretty sure Apple execs use their products, a lot.
  - fdfaz 4y ago
- N19PEDL2 4y ago
  I'd be curious to know if Ford Motor executives drive Mercedes.
googlryas 4y ago
I assume you were meeting with business types - I bet 90+% of SWEs at google have androids. And to be fair, Google ad business basically has nothing to do with android. Deep into the Android years, Eric Schmidt got a lot of flack for proudly announcing that he loved his blackberry and you could pry his physical keyboard from his cold, dead hands.
- posguy 4y ago
  The only Google SWEs I know with Androids were provided a Pixel as a work phone.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    It wasn't hard to get an iPhone from mobile services at Google. What Google did do, over many years, was hand us free Android phones to just play with. Every christmas.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    Weird, literally everyone I work with has an android. Maybe it's office dependent - I'm not in CA or NY.
ender341341 4y ago
I was at amazon (in the app store) when the fire phone was released, leadership made a big deal of showing of that they were using the fire phone for the first week or so and then got really quiet and where back on their iPhones.
- posguy 4y ago
  The hardware specs were significantly behind what was standard on Androids of the time. Fire phones had only a slight price differentiation ($0.99 on a 2 year contract versus $199 for a Samsung Galaxy with a 1080p screen) and there were no commission incentives to push them, which made these a nonstarter.
  - drcongo 4y ago
    99c vs $199 seems like a pretty big price differentiation.
    - drcongo 4y ago
      I'm sorry, I just realised it's a typo and should be $99 vs $199. $1 did seem like a fair price for a Fire Phone in my defence.
  - ender341341 4y ago
    oh, definitely. When I was first shown it I assumed it was a test model (it was common to get test models with big ugly casing pre-launch so any photos leaked looked didn't have much to go on), but nope, the big ugly thing was what shipped...
_def 4y ago
> They didn't see the funny side as much as I did Why so? That's hilarious for everyone involved :D

retskrad 4y ago

Apple is gaining more and more market share in the US (55% right now) and they're gaining in Europe and China also while Android is losing. Mark Zuckerberg did an interview with The Verge recently and even he said iPhone is winning the smartphone war. I would ring the alarm if I were Google.

seydor 4y ago
But if everyone has an eyephone, wont android become the cool one?
- snapcaster 4y ago
  No, because it's made by an advertising company and has no taste. Something else will likely become cool
  - bezier-curve 4y ago
    Taste is subjective though, and if you don't happen to like what Apple provides you are out of luck. There are many more ways to customize Android without rooting, and I think that is cool.
    - SxC97 4y ago
      Hacker news does sort of self select for people who value tinker-ability over any kind of aesthetic design choices. I think we are part of a relatively small minority here.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    The Android ui is much better than apple. They don’t and effects are nicer on Apple.
  - seydor 4y ago

dmitrygr 4y ago

Hardly surprising As I remember from my 7+ years there, more than 50% of engineers at Google use iPhones. An even larger percentage of non-SWE roles do too. These numbers grew as “dogfooding” population makeup became politically fraught

ganbatekudasai 4y ago
> These numbers grew as “dogfooding” population makeup became politically fraught As someone who doesn't know what's going on at Google, can you elaborate on that? I know what dogfooding is, but what does the rest mean?
- dmitrygr 4y ago
  At least, in the android wear team, the higher-ups directly told us that the dogfooding population had to have certain percentages of certain sexes and skin colors. Unfortunately, engineering didn’t have enough people to fill each cell of that grid, so the limited number of development watches got allocated to many people outside of the team and outside of engineering, who, then proceeded to not use them (we kept track of dogfooding devices that were or were not used. People outside of our team rarely used the devices more than once a week) and/or file useless bug reports(a-la “connection seemed flaky last Tuesday, no I did not collect a bug report then, when it was happening”). As a result, we got fewer bug reports, and a lower percentage of them were usable. Predictably, quality suffered. The solution would’ve been simple: make more test devices, so that all the engineers, who actually file bug reports get one, and whoever else you want can get one to collect dust on their desk too. Didn’t happen. Similar situation played out an android proper. In 2012 in 2013, almost all android engineers were carrying a dogfood device. By 2019, they were almost impossible to obtain, except ...
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    Wow, that's an astonishingly short-sighted decision. Was there any pushback on it? And were you also blocked from redeploying the testing units away from those who didn't care?

gpmcadam 4y ago

Is this what The Verge is now, Tweet-like blog spam? Here’s the tweet they have ”quoted”: https://twitter.com/ianzelbo/status/1582886309277769730 https://twitter.com/ianzelbo/status/1582886309277769730 Maybe this is the better link?

brundolf 4y ago
I love their new format, because little tidbits like this don't have to get padded out into an entire (fluffy) article. I don't even have to click a link from their home page to see the full post
- mikestew 4y ago
  Visually, I think the new design is hideous. But you do bring up a great point about how the layout allows little blurbs like this that aren't worth a full page. But that only helps if I can stand looking at the page. :-)

tus666 4y ago

Does Google ban it's employees from using Apple products? Google is barely a hardware company, it would hardly be surprising if large number of Google employees using Apple laptops/imacs/ipods...and yes iphones.

thehappypm 4y ago
No
mcphage 4y ago
Even if your personal phone is an iPhone, tweeting as the Google Pixel account from your iPhone is probably not a good idea.

kelnos 4y ago

Employees of one company often use products made by a competitor. So what? Big nothingburger here.

quantumsequoia 4y ago
The tweet was responding to Tim Cook and throwing shade in the iPhone. It's not just that they were using an iPhone, it's that the tweet was hypocritical

dekhn 4y ago

So what? PR people can use the phone they want to promote another type of phone.

togs 4y ago

Who cares though

Tyr42 4y ago

Googler here. I had a work iPhone as I was working on a iOS app. It's not that weird, right? It's not a cult. You don't gotta buy Google stuff. Now if it was an apple employee...? More surprising but like, not worth an article.

kazinator 4y ago
Using an iPhone while promoting Google Pixel is directly damaging to the Google Pixel brand. This employee made a significant mistake. It may not be that easy to undo; the Internet has a long memory. Years later, people will still be having conversations like, "LOL, you're not thinking of buying a Pixel? Did you know Google themselves send tweets from an iPhone to promote that thing? Incredible, but true!" What Google can do here is use their dominance in the search space to make it hard to search for this incident.
checkyoursudo 4y ago
Do you have to buy your own work phone at Google? Or are you allowed to use your personal phone also as your work phone? Or am I simply reading your comment too literally?

kazinator 4y ago

Reminiscent of that Linux Foundation president showing up to a presentation with a Windows laptop.