3 ms·

Anyone remember Google panicking after Facebook took off so they bought Orkut and rushed out a crappy “social app development environment”?

trynewideas 4y ago
No, because it didn't happen? Orkut was rather famously a 20% project by and named after a Google engineer, predated "The Facebook" by weeks and Facebook as a global public social network by two years, and was shipped more as a response to Friendster (which Google had just tried and failed to buy for $30M) and MySpace.[1][2] Orkut had more users in India than Facebook until 2010[3] and in Brazil until 2011,[4] by which point Google had moved on to trying to make Google+ happen. 1: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2004-01-24-0401240092-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2004-01-24-04012400... 2: https://techcrunch.com/2006/10/15/the-friendster-tell-all-story/ https://techcrunch.com/2006/10/15/the-friendster-tell-all-st... 3: https://web.archive.org/web/20100828201838/ibnlive.in.com/news/facebook-overtakes-orkut-in-india-comscore/129553-11.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100828201838/ibnlive.in.com/ne... 4: https://techcrunch.com/2012/01/17/facebook-in-brazil-a-big-ending-to-2011-finally-pushes-it-past-orkut/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/01/17/facebook-in-brazil-a-big-e...
- williamcotton 4y ago
  Oh man, that was in-house? Even worse! I found the event I was invited to in 2007: https://www.wired.com/2007/11/google-summons/ https://www.wired.com/2007/11/google-summons/ It did not seem like they knew what they were doing and everything was very rushed.
simonw 4y ago
I remember Google panicking about Facebook, shipping Google+ and telling the entire company that their annual bonuses would be tied exclusively to how well their work supported the success of Google+.
scrollaway 4y ago
I think it's funny that in a thread about LLMs offering up incorrect information as factual, there's a bunch of anecdotes that present incorrect information as factual. You kinda did what an LLM does: Took a bunch of contextual cues (Orkut was owned by Google and ultimately shut down; Google often has knee-jerk reactions to the industry; Google started Google+ as a way to compete with Facebook; Google often buys companies as a way to compete), and spat out a confidently-wrong, summarized autocomplete based on that: "Google bought Orkut as a knee-jerk reaction to compete with Facebook!"
Sohakes 4y ago
Not what happened though. Orkut actually launched a month before facebook and it was a 20% project, it wasn't a panick move or a big project for them. And it was great, imo google did badly on not maintaining it. You can make this point about google+ though, totally panick move.

trynewideas 4y ago

No, because it didn't happen? Orkut was rather famously a 20% project by and named after a Google engineer, predated "The Facebook" by weeks and Facebook as a global public social network by two years, and was shipped more as a response to Friendster (which Google had just tried and failed to buy for $30M) and MySpace.[1][2] Orkut had more users in India than Facebook until 2010[3] and in Brazil until 2011,[4] by which point Google had moved on to trying to make Google+ happen. 1: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2004-01-24-0401240092-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2004-01-24-04012400... 2: https://techcrunch.com/2006/10/15/the-friendster-tell-all-story/ https://techcrunch.com/2006/10/15/the-friendster-tell-all-st... 3: https://web.archive.org/web/20100828201838/ibnlive.in.com/news/facebook-overtakes-orkut-in-india-comscore/129553-11.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100828201838/ibnlive.in.com/ne... 4: https://techcrunch.com/2012/01/17/facebook-in-brazil-a-big-ending-to-2011-finally-pushes-it-past-orkut/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/01/17/facebook-in-brazil-a-big-e...

williamcotton 4y ago
Oh man, that was in-house? Even worse! I found the event I was invited to in 2007: https://www.wired.com/2007/11/google-summons/ https://www.wired.com/2007/11/google-summons/ It did not seem like they knew what they were doing and everything was very rushed.

simonw 4y ago

I remember Google panicking about Facebook, shipping Google+ and telling the entire company that their annual bonuses would be tied exclusively to how well their work supported the success of Google+.

scrollaway 4y ago

I think it's funny that in a thread about LLMs offering up incorrect information as factual, there's a bunch of anecdotes that present incorrect information as factual. You kinda did what an LLM does: Took a bunch of contextual cues (Orkut was owned by Google and ultimately shut down; Google often has knee-jerk reactions to the industry; Google started Google+ as a way to compete with Facebook; Google often buys companies as a way to compete), and spat out a confidently-wrong, summarized autocomplete based on that: "Google bought Orkut as a knee-jerk reaction to compete with Facebook!"

Sohakes 4y ago

Not what happened though. Orkut actually launched a month before facebook and it was a 20% project, it wasn't a panick move or a big project for them. And it was great, imo google did badly on not maintaining it. You can make this point about google+ though, totally panick move.