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Key staff driving Apple search engine leave to rejoin Google
- johndfsgdgdfg 4y agoAnother blow to privacy. I really hope Apple would come to search market and challenge Google.
- mtoner23 4y agoApple coming to search market is a huge blow to privacy. Apple becoming an ad selling company would be horrible for privacy.
- bee_rider 4y agoApple already is a company that sells some ads, if that’s what you mean by an “ad selling company.” If you mean, a company that primarily sells ads as their main revenue stream — that would be bad.
- Clent 4y agoI do not see how one follows the other. Search does not require advertising.
- zhengyi13 4y agoServices do require monetization, or you have to subsidize them through some other revenue stream, yeah? Advertising is probably the simplest way to monetize search. Certainly other strategies could be tried, but that one at least is well understood, and nigh-ubiquitous.
- zen21 4y agoFor Apple it could just be a customer acquisition cost.
- criddell 4y agoGoogle pays Apple a lot of money to be their search engine. Presumably, if they became a competitor, Google would stop the $15 billion payments and Apple might want to make that up.
- zen21 4y agoYes, by acquiring new customers who then buy further products and services. It could also just be sold as a service, or an addition to iCloud+.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- brookst 4y agoThe loss of that payment would be part of the business model, but companies really don’t think in terms of making list revenue up. If there is an opportunity to increase revenue (subject to mission/values/etc), you take it. A decrease in another line of business doesn’t matter. Or an increase; you wouldn’t say “hey we’ve got this amazing ad opportunity but the AirPods business is killing it so let’s not bother.” I guess the nuance here is that the business decision might be “our search, with our ads” versus “Google’s search, with their ads, plus $15B/year”. In that case I think there’s a reasonable argument that users are better off with Apple’s ads than Google’s.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- babypuncher 4y agoApple monetizes their services by either tying them to expensive hardware or charging a subscription fee.
- AlbertCory 4y agoIt doesn't require it, but it provides you with Google's one big magic trick: If someone searches for "hotels new york" you have what's called a motivated customer. He or she is much more likely to click on an ad for New York hotels. It's one weird trick, but man, is it a good trick.
- drumhead 4y ago4 years from launch? Seems excessive.
- prisoner655321 4y agoThis is very common and almost always predicted. 4 years is the end of the initial stock vest. If you don't get a major promotion, or even two, your compensation takes a nose dive. It's no wonder they left.
- solomatov 4y agoCompanies like AAPL give refreshers especially to the key people. The fact that they left to GOOG most likely means that the search engine isn't that high on the priority list of Apple right now.
- isatty 4y agoRefreshers aren’t going to be high enough (I don’t know about exec compensation though) to avoid the cliff. Promotions are the only way.
- astrange 4y agoRefreshers are high enough to do that at Apple (or not). There aren’t enough levels to get promoted, and the stock keeps going up.
- prisoner655321 4y agoThe stock going up is what kills it. Apple’s stock has gone bananas the last 4 years, no refresher is going to beat or match that.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoLikely the initial shares were the an order of magnitude larger than the refreshers?
- jmull 4y ago> "...poached..." I hate it when a company hiring someone who used to work for a competitor is characterized poaching... These are people with their own agency and the freedom to find a better situation if they can, and not the presumptive property of one company or another.
- robertlagrant 4y agoIf you misread implications into that word, let me introduce you to "headhunting".
- zug_zug 4y agoMoreover, from a simplistic traditional economics perspective (which these companies love to tout so much) it's allegedly the most optimal / best thing for society as a whole when people leave jobs for higher-bids. [Though in this case it's probably just perpetuating a search monopoly that is leading to a terrible user experience]
- hnbear 4y agoExcept that Google can offer sufficient amounts of money to make it insane not to move. (Yes, I know Apple has deep pockets too). I'm mostly curious here if they were hired back by Google because Google genuinely wants their talent, or if they just want to deprive Apple of their talent. Poached isn't a great word, but there's difference in intent in behavior.
- acdha 4y ago
- pmoriarty 4y agoAnother strike against privacy.
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoWilling to bet Google offered them seven figure bonuses to leave Apple's efforts high and dry. Google being the default search on iOS is one of the things holding their monopoly together. edit: whoops
- warkdarrior 4y agoI'm not sure where you get your iPhones from, but Google [Chrome] is not the default browser on stock iOS, Safari is.
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoReading the context would tell you I meant default search. Oh well.
- fred256 4y ago> He is reportedly the company's new vice president of engineering. Google has dozens of “VPs of engineering”.
- solomatov 4y agoCompanies like Google often have several tiers of VP: VPs, Senior VPs, sometimes even Executive VPs, etc. It means that it's a manager very high in the hierarchy, but due to the company being big enough, there's non trivial amount of people like them among managers. P.S. According to levels.fyi (https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Bloomberg,Amazon&track=Software%20Engineering%20Manager https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Bloomberg,Amazon&trac...) Google has only VPs and SVPs, not EVPs.
- steve1977 4y ago> It means that it's a manager very high in the hierarchy It doesn't, because there are so many of them. Looking at this for example: https://www.zippia.com/google-careers-24972/salary/vice-president/ https://www.zippia.com/google-careers-24972/salary/vice-pres... I wouldn't say VP ranks very high at Google.
- brunoTbear 4y agoAt least in PM land, director comp starts at $1M/yr, I'm sure VP comp is a multiple of that. The link you've provided is not accurate. Am Google PM.
- vfturchin 4y agoThe link is wrong. Most VPs make more than that a month.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ricardou 4y agoThis is so wildly inaccurate. I know L3s making that much.
- taylodl 4y agoPeople always get excited over what Apple does. Supposedly Apple is working on an EV. And a VR headset. And a search engine. They're probably doing that and a whole lot more. It's called R&D. Apple doesn't want to be surprised by anything and their investors don't want Apple to miss opportunities. So Apple runs a lot of projects to better understand the item in question, its manufacturing and/or maintenance, customer profiles, and so on. What I read in a headline like this is Search was one of those items Apple has been researching. They've probably decided it's not worth their effort. The staff have learned that, whether officially or through the grapevine, and are now going back to a firm where search is worth their effort. The news for us is Apple sees no viability in search, at least not in how we've become accustomed to thinking about search.
- onion2k 4y agoThe news for us is Apple sees no viability in search, at least not in how we've become accustomed to thinking about search. I don't think you can read much about Apple's strategy from this. Apple might well see search as an important priority, they just don't feel spending the sort of money necessary to keep these particular people around is the best way to get there.
- dylan604 4y agoOr they feel these are not the people worth keeping around, so letting them go on their own is just fine?
- computomatic 4y agoAccording to an interview I watched recently, Steve Jobs wasn’t even sure they’d launch the iPhone a year before they did. There’s a relatively well-known exchange where he flat-out tells an interviewer there’s no phone, and post-launch admits he was lying. The truth was in the middle - if they couldn’t control the product enough (due to then-standard carrier influence over design and experience), then they wouldn’t make a phone. Eventually they found a launch carrier that would let them do it. If apple can’t make “the best search in the world” (by someone’s subjective definition), then they’ll never launch it. Simple as that.
- kirykl 4y agoA competitor like Google being allowed to poach Apple staff? Under Steve this never would have happened [0] [0]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-google-settle-antitrust-lawsuit-hiring-collusion https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo...
- dkdbejwi383 4y agoIs there a name for the phenomenon where somebody comments "Steve would never have allowed this" on anything related to Apple?
- chmaynard 4y agoIt's a softer version of the old "Apple is doomed" meme.
- toast0 4y agoWWSD?
- admp 4y agohttps://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wwsjd https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wwsjd
- aikinai 4y agoI think you got this backwards. GP is trying to be sarcastic about the anti-poaching collusion scandal.
- w0mbat 4y ago"He is reportedly the company's new vice president of engineering." LOL. Many people have that title at Google, there is not only one. [EDIT. Scrolling way down I see I was not the first to point this out. At least two of my friends have had that title at some point there. ]
- paxys 4y ago"Many people" is an understatement. A VP will normally have a couple hundred people reporting up to them. Google has 30-40K engineers, so one can do the math. There are 100+ VPs at Google. Plus SVPs, EVPs, presidents, even a few CEOs.
- LatteLazy 4y agoIn finance, anyone with 5 years at a large bank will have the title VP. You don't need any reports. I was amazed my first week when I, a lowly support drone, had a meeting THE vice president of Goldman Sachs. My boss laughed and explained...
- angst_ridden 4y agoBased on my experiences in the iOS app store, Apple desperately needs search tuning. Searching for a specific product sometimes yields 3rd party tutorial apps for the product but not the product itself. Following a link from the developer's web site will get me to the product itself. Amusingly enough, later the same day this occurred, the product in question was featured in an ad banner on the App store.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jeremynixon 4y agoGenuinely curious. Why is apple search still so bad after poaching all of these Google people?
- babypuncher 4y agoGiven he decline in quality of Google search over the last decade, my guess is that Google people are the problem.
- eklitzke 4y agoBecause building a high quality search product is extremely difficult, it's not just a matter of hiring a few brilliant people.
- leoh 4y agoApple search barely works on iOS for finding an application. I’m not holding my breath about their ability to execute well here. $18B for not building a search engine doesn’t sound like a bad deal.
- cianmm 4y agoThere are certain apps on my phone that iOS spotlight search doesn’t find even if I type their names out in full. But if I search for them in the App Library, they are found. Odd.
- repple 4y agoSpotAngels app — impossible to find using iOS search.
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoI have found that in the latest major version of the OS the quality of searches has regressed.
- smrtinsert 4y agoThe way things are going they should've looked for jobs at tiktok instead
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]