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Google makes so much good stuff but they seem to never commit enough to make it truly great... Chromecast - better than all the alternatives but they could hav

Google makes so much good stuff but they seem to never commit enough to make it truly great... Chromecast - better than all the alternatives but they could have gone that extra distance to make a whole Google TV apparatus and didn't. Pixel phones - when they had all the critical mass they fumbled and released an entire line of very mediocre hardware Pixel laptop - one of the best laptops made, ever, but they didn't commit and it was a one-off... Hangouts - could have been the messaging app for everything... Instead they split it into two and now FB Messenger is the messaging app everyone uses (outside the US anyway). GCP - again, they had a chance to become what Azure is or bigger but just seemed rather uncommitted to it... Stadia - if they had committed it could have been huge because it absolutely does work very well. The concept of it working with Chromecast was good so again, they could have again, just made the TV box, bundle a controller and it's a console for everything... But nope, cancelled right as gaming Chromebooks are coming onto the market... It sucks because many Google products are absolutely best in class but there's this eerie feeling that even those could disappear. Google probably has the best engineering in the world but also probably the worst product managers and business people in the world it seems...

_fat_santa 4y ago
And it's precisely their lack of commitment that's put Google in this position. Everyone knows that unless a product is a smash hit at Google, they will almost always kill it in a year or two. But the reason Google isn't making smash hit products anymore is no one wants to try it knowing Google will probably kill it, it's a death spiral for any new products they release.
- thatguy0900 4y ago
  They made a bold move with refunding literally every sale stadia related. Maybe the next launch can just have a contract with "use this product regularly and if we kill it we'll give you 500$". I certainly would have tried stadia if they made the refund promise in advance. Or at least bought some of the controllers for steam
  - htrp 4y ago
    Problem there is if you say upfront you're gonna kill it, you won't get any partners willing to build their businesses on top of a given product.
    - thatguy0900 4y ago
      I think it would be the opposite, it shows at least some commitment from Google. Anyone building a product on Google will know now how they are. Hell, there was a Twitter thread on here of a dev releasing their game on the day that Google shuttered stadia, irresponsible to partner with Google without knowing at this point
CharlieDigital 4y ago
It requires a culture shift; how they hire, the types people they look for, how they staff teams, how they promote, how they budget, how they measure success, etc. Product requires commitment and continuity which Google has proven to be really, really poor at historically. Likely because it has the wrong culture for it, is likely organized with the wrong incentive structures in place, and has thus far been wildly successful in spite of it.
diceduckmonk 4y ago
> GCP - again, they had a chance to become what Azure is or bigger but just seemed rather uncommitted to it... I think GCP would have bigger, but Azure is a different beast. Azure is based on Fortune500 sales. What GCP could have been is the de factor Serverless and Platform-as-a-Service for hobbyists, as App Engine was a pioneer in the space. App Engine actually preceded GCP. It could have subsumed the likes of Heroku, Twilio and various other APIs-as-a-service, and even logs / monitoring tools such as Datadog, which are billion dollar businesses in their own right.
joshstrange 4y ago
> Chromecast - better than all the alternatives but they could have gone that extra distance to make a whole Google TV apparatus and didn't. It was a super cool tech demo and then they just stopped working on it. I guess it depends on what you consider "Alternatives" but it doesn't hold a candle to the Apple TV, Fire TV, or even a Roku stick IMHO. A remote is key to any TV-based device and no, a phone is not a valid remote (at least as the "only" remote). Watching my friends rave about the Chromecast and watching them have to pull out their phones to pause/play/etc is just mind boggling to me.
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  > A remote is key to any TV-based device and no, a phone is not a valid remote (at least as the "only" remote). Watching my friends rave about the Chromecast and watching them have to pull out their phones to pause/play/etc is just mind boggling to me. Agree about the remote. But the thing that's much better about Chromecast is that discovery on your phone is much quicker than with a remote and the fact you can simply cast any video on the internet that uses the protocol without any apps. If they made it a box more like Apple TV then they'd capture both people.
  - htrp 4y ago
    >If they made it a box more like Apple TV then they'd capture both people. Paging google product
    - ancientworldnow 4y ago
      This is just the Nvidia Shield which is the best streaming device even without hardware updates for years.
  - tut-urut-utut 4y ago
    But they didn’t, and that’s the parents point.
    - Mikeb85 4y ago
crazygringo 4y ago
I'm sorry but I couldn't disagree more. This is just cherry-picking and not even accurate. First of all, let's look at the "truly great" things Google has done -- search, ads, Android, YouTube, Maps, Gmail, Apps/GSuite/Workspace, and so on. 100% commitment, 100% great. You say Google is "rather uncommitted" to GCP, which is hilarious if you'd look at the billions they've sunk into it. They committed to competing with AWS and by god they're spending the money to do it, and they're almost at profitability after more than 10 years of staying the course. If that's not commitment, then I literally don't know what is. The rest of what you're listing is just that it's very hard to achieve profitable product-market fit, even if you're Google. Hardware like Pixel is hard to turn into a series of reliable successes, consumers just didn't sign up for Stadia in the numbers needed, Hangouts is a complicated story but Google certainly keeps trying with messaging, and FB Messenger's popularity was not even remotely a result of Hangouts splitting. And just checking -- you think the 4th largest company in the world has the worst business people in the world...? No amount of genius engineering is going to get you there without an awful lot of genius business and product people too...
- bioemerl 4y ago
  > search, ads, Android, YouTube, Maps, Gmail, Apps/GSuite/Workspace, and so on. 100% commitment, 100% great. Basically all these have just been coasting on network effects since the mid oughts.
- wbkang 4y ago
  YouTube is an acquisition and they killed Google videos.
  - aetherane 4y ago
    Google did a lot to grow YouTube and still has a video tab in Google search that is equivalent to Google videos.
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  It's a bit of hyperbole. You have to admit, their engineering is far, far better than they marketing. IMO they should be the #1 company in the world. Chromebooks could have been the new general purpose computer if only they were a tiny bit less locked down... GCP could be better than AWS with a little love. There's already network effects with Gmail, Docs, Google for business and all that... They should have pushed Stadia just a bit more. It's just slightly disappointing because Google stuff works better than any other computing items I've ever used. Everything connects to the cloud and just works in a way MS' and Apple's cloud offerings don't. And they should be competing with Apple and MS but instead they're mostly selling ads...
deltree7 4y ago
GCP's 2023 Annual Revenue is projected to be $33 Billion To put that in perspective, Oracle a Fortune 50 company, with a market cap of 200 Billion, has Annual Revenue is $44 Billion. GCP on it's own can easily be a Fortune 50 company
- origin_path 4y ago
  But Oracles costs are much lower because they mostly sell software, not datacenter space. Revenue is impressive but profits moreso and GCP seems to lose a lot of money.
mgh2 4y ago
Compare the product philosophy of Apple: perseverance -> character. It reveals the ethics/values contrast of the two companies. Reminds me of this unlikely verse, also applies to corporations: Romans 5:4
piyush_soni 4y ago
They're basically an engineering company that could never become a marketing company. I personally think it's a little inverse of Apple's philosophy. It's primarily a fashion/marketing company before an engineering company.

_fat_santa 4y ago

And it's precisely their lack of commitment that's put Google in this position. Everyone knows that unless a product is a smash hit at Google, they will almost always kill it in a year or two. But the reason Google isn't making smash hit products anymore is no one wants to try it knowing Google will probably kill it, it's a death spiral for any new products they release.

thatguy0900 4y ago
They made a bold move with refunding literally every sale stadia related. Maybe the next launch can just have a contract with "use this product regularly and if we kill it we'll give you 500$". I certainly would have tried stadia if they made the refund promise in advance. Or at least bought some of the controllers for steam
- htrp 4y ago
  Problem there is if you say upfront you're gonna kill it, you won't get any partners willing to build their businesses on top of a given product.
  - thatguy0900 4y ago
    I think it would be the opposite, it shows at least some commitment from Google. Anyone building a product on Google will know now how they are. Hell, there was a Twitter thread on here of a dev releasing their game on the day that Google shuttered stadia, irresponsible to partner with Google without knowing at this point

CharlieDigital 4y ago

It requires a culture shift; how they hire, the types people they look for, how they staff teams, how they promote, how they budget, how they measure success, etc. Product requires commitment and continuity which Google has proven to be really, really poor at historically. Likely because it has the wrong culture for it, is likely organized with the wrong incentive structures in place, and has thus far been wildly successful in spite of it.

diceduckmonk 4y ago

> GCP - again, they had a chance to become what Azure is or bigger but just seemed rather uncommitted to it... I think GCP would have bigger, but Azure is a different beast. Azure is based on Fortune500 sales. What GCP could have been is the de factor Serverless and Platform-as-a-Service for hobbyists, as App Engine was a pioneer in the space. App Engine actually preceded GCP. It could have subsumed the likes of Heroku, Twilio and various other APIs-as-a-service, and even logs / monitoring tools such as Datadog, which are billion dollar businesses in their own right.

joshstrange 4y ago

> Chromecast - better than all the alternatives but they could have gone that extra distance to make a whole Google TV apparatus and didn't. It was a super cool tech demo and then they just stopped working on it. I guess it depends on what you consider "Alternatives" but it doesn't hold a candle to the Apple TV, Fire TV, or even a Roku stick IMHO. A remote is key to any TV-based device and no, a phone is not a valid remote (at least as the "only" remote). Watching my friends rave about the Chromecast and watching them have to pull out their phones to pause/play/etc is just mind boggling to me.

Mikeb85 4y ago
> A remote is key to any TV-based device and no, a phone is not a valid remote (at least as the "only" remote). Watching my friends rave about the Chromecast and watching them have to pull out their phones to pause/play/etc is just mind boggling to me. Agree about the remote. But the thing that's much better about Chromecast is that discovery on your phone is much quicker than with a remote and the fact you can simply cast any video on the internet that uses the protocol without any apps. If they made it a box more like Apple TV then they'd capture both people.
- htrp 4y ago
  >If they made it a box more like Apple TV then they'd capture both people. Paging google product
  - ancientworldnow 4y ago
    This is just the Nvidia Shield which is the best streaming device even without hardware updates for years.
- tut-urut-utut 4y ago
  But they didn’t, and that’s the parents point.
  - Mikeb85 4y ago

crazygringo 4y ago

I'm sorry but I couldn't disagree more. This is just cherry-picking and not even accurate. First of all, let's look at the "truly great" things Google has done -- search, ads, Android, YouTube, Maps, Gmail, Apps/GSuite/Workspace, and so on. 100% commitment, 100% great. You say Google is "rather uncommitted" to GCP, which is hilarious if you'd look at the billions they've sunk into it. They committed to competing with AWS and by god they're spending the money to do it, and they're almost at profitability after more than 10 years of staying the course. If that's not commitment, then I literally don't know what is. The rest of what you're listing is just that it's very hard to achieve profitable product-market fit, even if you're Google. Hardware like Pixel is hard to turn into a series of reliable successes, consumers just didn't sign up for Stadia in the numbers needed, Hangouts is a complicated story but Google certainly keeps trying with messaging, and FB Messenger's popularity was not even remotely a result of Hangouts splitting. And just checking -- you think the 4th largest company in the world has the worst business people in the world...? No amount of genius engineering is going to get you there without an awful lot of genius business and product people too...

bioemerl 4y ago
> search, ads, Android, YouTube, Maps, Gmail, Apps/GSuite/Workspace, and so on. 100% commitment, 100% great. Basically all these have just been coasting on network effects since the mid oughts.
wbkang 4y ago
YouTube is an acquisition and they killed Google videos.
- aetherane 4y ago
  Google did a lot to grow YouTube and still has a video tab in Google search that is equivalent to Google videos.
Mikeb85 4y ago
It's a bit of hyperbole. You have to admit, their engineering is far, far better than they marketing. IMO they should be the #1 company in the world. Chromebooks could have been the new general purpose computer if only they were a tiny bit less locked down... GCP could be better than AWS with a little love. There's already network effects with Gmail, Docs, Google for business and all that... They should have pushed Stadia just a bit more. It's just slightly disappointing because Google stuff works better than any other computing items I've ever used. Everything connects to the cloud and just works in a way MS' and Apple's cloud offerings don't. And they should be competing with Apple and MS but instead they're mostly selling ads...

deltree7 4y ago

GCP's 2023 Annual Revenue is projected to be $33 Billion To put that in perspective, Oracle a Fortune 50 company, with a market cap of 200 Billion, has Annual Revenue is $44 Billion. GCP on it's own can easily be a Fortune 50 company

origin_path 4y ago
But Oracles costs are much lower because they mostly sell software, not datacenter space. Revenue is impressive but profits moreso and GCP seems to lose a lot of money.

mgh2 4y ago

Compare the product philosophy of Apple: perseverance -> character. It reveals the ethics/values contrast of the two companies. Reminds me of this unlikely verse, also applies to corporations: Romans 5:4

piyush_soni 4y ago

They're basically an engineering company that could never become a marketing company. I personally think it's a little inverse of Apple's philosophy. It's primarily a fashion/marketing company before an engineering company.