9 ms·

Is there any other, more gracious, way to interpret this as Google retiring for on being Google, if so I’d like to know. I think the direct impact of these comp

by Jun8 4y ago

Is there any other, more gracious, way to interpret this as Google retiring for on being Google, if so I’d like to know. I think the direct impact of these competitions to hiring were minimal. The biggest impact was to have thousands perhaps millions of coders and researchers see Google as the place to be. As the place that gets it. The Mecca of coderdom, if you will. Now they are just another corporation. I hope the couple of hundreds of hours of manpower they save by cancelling is worth this hit.

naillo 4y ago
Google has never looked more tired and more prone to be overtaken.
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  Honestly I was searching for something the other day and between displaying an excessive number of YouTube links (was not in a position to watch a video) and the adverts it was less useful that Yahoo! Circa 2006.
  - eitland 4y ago
    I have long since switched to Kagi and I am a happy paying customer. I can adjust my results, block or prioritize, but I rarely do that. What I sometimes do however is I write a bug report whenever bad results sneak in. In a matter of hours a human looks at the results, verifies or ask follow up questions and in a few days or max < 1month a fix is out. No more having to deal with a search engine that ignores both doublequotes and the verbatim operator (that is both Google and DDG and Bing). Actually, the last few months before I got access to Kagi I used (and paid for) search.marginalia.nu . It was actually and honestly better for certain queries, especially things like arcane git knowledge or (I think) the nerdier parts of history.
- pancrufty 4y ago
  Which Google are you referring to exactly? With its many successful products, I don’t see Google being overtaken anytime soon. Ads are doing better than ever, Android is holding steady worldwide, Maps has a huge moat that Apple has yet to overcome (in over a decade), nobody really complains about Google Search except us nerds. I see them just coasting, but an overtake is unlikely in this decade. “The New Bing” sounds interesting but that’s not all that Google is about, it’s not 2002 anymore.
  - reptation 4y ago
    n=1 but the built-in Maps on iphone seems to be fine these days. Doesn't steer me wrong, integrates with a car. Not sure what the moat here is other than name recognition or current popularity. Perhaps app integration or API consumption?
    - samtp 4y ago
      Accuracy of local business listings on Apple is still far behind Google. And Apple's new business admin interface is only slightly less trash than it's old one.
    - Reason077 4y ago
      Apple Maps, and the huge number of products based on OpenStreetMap are perfectly fine as maps. And actually, even better than Google Maps in many cases. But where Google Maps still dominates is in its unrivalled, global point of interest (POI) data. Accurate business locations, opening hours, photos, reviews, etc... nobody else comes close.
      - jimbokun 4y ago
        Yea, I'm planning a vacation, and using a saved lists of places in Google maps to keep track of all the places I'm interested in seeing. Clicking on one of the saved places brings up all the information you mention.
      - aniforprez 4y ago
        Honestly Apple Maps isn't even particularly good outside of the US and a few European countries. Roads are constantly out of date and can barely keep up and landmarks and businesses in tons of major cities aren't close to correct
        pb7 4y ago
        Not to mention its complete inability to reroute sometimes if you take the wrong turn. It'll keep yelling to return to the route over and over instead of routing a turnaround somewhere.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Google has been "just another company" for a while now, but I disagree with "prone to be overtaken". Yes, Google Search is a dead product. The moneymakers aren't, though: AdSense keeps on trucking, fuelled by billions of annual YouTube watch-minutes piling on top of each other. For a company to effectively displace Google, they need a lot of really well-made services priced more attractively than 'free*'.
  - alasdair_ 4y ago
    Apple (and later Spotify) demonstrated that a better quality product can beat the free offering.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- kerpotgh 4y ago
  [dead]
- Silverback_VII 4y ago
  It is the he/him culture who has corroded the giant from the inside.
  - amichne 4y ago
    Any source for this? I would say the change towards “less exciting” is driven by risk-averse management. Even their latest “risk” (Bard) was driven by Microsoft’s Bing release. I would even argue that releasing Bard represents the lower-risk approach. The risk incurred by being silent is undoubtedly what moved Google executives to rush out a half-baked and even more poorly executed “demo”.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Are you capable of guessing the gender of any given Chinese/Indian/African person by their name without being told?
  - jocaal 4y ago
    What does this even mean?
shaunsingh0207 4y ago
I hate how "normal" of a company google is becoming. Closing down services and products not because they aren't profitable, but because they aren't profitable enough. They've really lost their way the last few years. In the late 2000's/early 2010's, google was pictured as the "fun" place to work. In part due to their coding competitions and the various other events they held for students throughout the year. Everyone I knew wanted to work for google. Now? everyone sees FAANG just the same as any other company. Most of the people I know who wanted to work at google, and a few that worked at google, now have higher paying, more enjoyable, and more stable jobs elsewhere.
- jsnell 4y ago
  > I hate how "normal" of a company google is becoming. Closing down services and products not because they aren't profitable, but because they aren't profitable enough. What specific services and products are you thinking of there? How do you know they were profitable?
  - Beldin 4y ago
    Just to be pedantic: not profitable enough doesn't necessarily imply profitable. Consider, eg, shutting down their (Stadia's) game studio before the release of their first game. First release was scheduled a few months later, with no significant delays having occurred. Nevertheless, shutdown. No one would expect it to have made a profit without a release. But apparently there was no way they could be profitable enough to warrant keeping.
- waboremo 4y ago
  Most of those aren't really the huge pulls. Sure Google was "fun" and offered good benefits, but it was also incredibly stable despite it's competitive edge and "fastmoving-ness". After the massive layoffs that dwarfed any previous ones at Google (combined), that's no longer a pull to joining Google over other major techs.
- Eumenes 4y ago
  Worked at Google in the early 2010s and it was still a bit quirky/different, not enterprise at all ... but they were hiring armies of project managers, agile coaches, multiple layers of HR specialists ...
SteveNuts 4y ago
As a nerdy kid growing up, Google always felt like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory to me. There was somewhat of a feeling of mystery about the things they were working on, and when things like Gmail were unveiled it felt like such a wonder. Now they just seem like a worse version of Microsoft to me, at least Microsoft knows how to deal with enterprises.
- lizard 4y ago
  > at least Microsoft knows how to deal with enterprises. For what it's worth, this was a big part of why I had a positive image of Google. Enterprises are boring, especially when it comes to technology. They make boring decisions about technology because they are almost always made based on bullet lists of half-truths, rather than by the people who actually have to use it. Google seemed to make things for the users. Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk, none of these had feature parity with their competitors at the time, but they were just so much better to use that people abandoned those enterprise products, even if their company was the one paying for them, and Google's popularity skyrocketed. Many years ago my university asked the students to decide between Google and Microsoft for the (student) email platform. The impression I got from IT folks I knew was that they were strongly in favor of Microsoft. But when both companies were asked to make presentations to the students, I remember leaving the Microsoft one thinking they weren't even trying.
  - SteveNuts 4y ago
    Agreed on all points. Once I hit the real world (working for a large soulless enterprise like a lot of people end up in), and trying to deal with Google for G-suite was a terrible experience. So IMO, they’re not great at either thing anymore.
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    > Enterprises are boring Boring is good, sometimes. Especially when boring means "reliable" and "gets things done without being the center of attention". Scott Hanselman's old analogy here is that enterprise software is something like the "dark matter" of the software universe. It's obviously boring, and mostly kind of hidden, but yet still so heavily influences the gravity all around it. On the other side, if you live by the "exciting" technologies, you sometimes die by the "flash-in-the-pan" effect. It's unfortunate for Google that they seem determined to prove that in the ways that they support and maintain products.
iqihs 4y ago
as Google retiring for on being Google Can you learn to construct a grammatically sentence before you decide click the submit button?
- shhsshs 4y ago
  There is a much more civil way to word that. > as Google retiring for on being Google I can't tell what this phrase is supposed to mean. Can you explain/edit your comment? It seems like they meant "as Google retiring from being Google"
gwern 4y ago
I wonder if AlphaCoder was the writing on the wall? Go out on top rather than tainted with scandal and unhappiness polluting memories?
riffraff 4y ago
> Now they are just another corporation. the Google Summer of Code still exists (and that other program for high school kids I think). I think those were the nicest things they did back in the day, and I don't know of any other corp doing it.
- xnx 4y ago
  Looks like Summer of Code is still happening in 2023: https://opensource.googleblog.com/2023/02/mentor-organizations-announced-for.html https://opensource.googleblog.com/2023/02/mentor-organizatio...
kohllision 4y ago
> I think the direct impact of these competitions to hiring were minimal. I can confidently say that this is not the case in India. I have a countless list of people (including myself) who received emails from Google recruiters for advancing to later rounds of Code Jam or securing a top rank in a Kick Start round. Even if people missed out on top ranks, they would put their results on their resume/LinkedIn and would get attention from recruiters anyway. Needless to say, these were strong signals for recruiters, especially for university students. Based on the skewed demand-supply here, they were closer to necessary than sufficient.
dqpb 4y ago
Google is winding down and that's ok! There many exciting things to work on, and those things should be owned by the engineers working on them.
rfoo 4y ago
They have been just another corporation for a while. The great layoff and such things just made it official.

by Jun8 4y ago

naillo 4y ago

Google has never looked more tired and more prone to be overtaken.

VBprogrammer 4y ago
Honestly I was searching for something the other day and between displaying an excessive number of YouTube links (was not in a position to watch a video) and the adverts it was less useful that Yahoo! Circa 2006.
- eitland 4y ago
  I have long since switched to Kagi and I am a happy paying customer. I can adjust my results, block or prioritize, but I rarely do that. What I sometimes do however is I write a bug report whenever bad results sneak in. In a matter of hours a human looks at the results, verifies or ask follow up questions and in a few days or max < 1month a fix is out. No more having to deal with a search engine that ignores both doublequotes and the verbatim operator (that is both Google and DDG and Bing). Actually, the last few months before I got access to Kagi I used (and paid for) search.marginalia.nu . It was actually and honestly better for certain queries, especially things like arcane git knowledge or (I think) the nerdier parts of history.
pancrufty 4y ago
Which Google are you referring to exactly? With its many successful products, I don’t see Google being overtaken anytime soon. Ads are doing better than ever, Android is holding steady worldwide, Maps has a huge moat that Apple has yet to overcome (in over a decade), nobody really complains about Google Search except us nerds. I see them just coasting, but an overtake is unlikely in this decade. “The New Bing” sounds interesting but that’s not all that Google is about, it’s not 2002 anymore.
- reptation 4y ago
  n=1 but the built-in Maps on iphone seems to be fine these days. Doesn't steer me wrong, integrates with a car. Not sure what the moat here is other than name recognition or current popularity. Perhaps app integration or API consumption?
  - samtp 4y ago
    Accuracy of local business listings on Apple is still far behind Google. And Apple's new business admin interface is only slightly less trash than it's old one.
  - Reason077 4y ago
    Apple Maps, and the huge number of products based on OpenStreetMap are perfectly fine as maps. And actually, even better than Google Maps in many cases. But where Google Maps still dominates is in its unrivalled, global point of interest (POI) data. Accurate business locations, opening hours, photos, reviews, etc... nobody else comes close.
    - jimbokun 4y ago
      Yea, I'm planning a vacation, and using a saved lists of places in Google maps to keep track of all the places I'm interested in seeing. Clicking on one of the saved places brings up all the information you mention.
    - aniforprez 4y ago
      Honestly Apple Maps isn't even particularly good outside of the US and a few European countries. Roads are constantly out of date and can barely keep up and landmarks and businesses in tons of major cities aren't close to correct
      - pb7 4y ago
        Not to mention its complete inability to reroute sometimes if you take the wrong turn. It'll keep yelling to return to the route over and over instead of routing a turnaround somewhere.
smoldesu 4y ago
Google has been "just another company" for a while now, but I disagree with "prone to be overtaken". Yes, Google Search is a dead product. The moneymakers aren't, though: AdSense keeps on trucking, fuelled by billions of annual YouTube watch-minutes piling on top of each other. For a company to effectively displace Google, they need a lot of really well-made services priced more attractively than 'free*'.
- alasdair_ 4y ago
  Apple (and later Spotify) demonstrated that a better quality product can beat the free offering.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
kerpotgh 4y ago
[dead]
Silverback_VII 4y ago
It is the he/him culture who has corroded the giant from the inside.
- amichne 4y ago
  Any source for this? I would say the change towards “less exciting” is driven by risk-averse management. Even their latest “risk” (Bard) was driven by Microsoft’s Bing release. I would even argue that releasing Bard represents the lower-risk approach. The risk incurred by being silent is undoubtedly what moved Google executives to rush out a half-baked and even more poorly executed “demo”.
- astrange 4y ago
  Are you capable of guessing the gender of any given Chinese/Indian/African person by their name without being told?
- jocaal 4y ago
  What does this even mean?

shaunsingh0207 4y ago

I hate how "normal" of a company google is becoming. Closing down services and products not because they aren't profitable, but because they aren't profitable enough. They've really lost their way the last few years. In the late 2000's/early 2010's, google was pictured as the "fun" place to work. In part due to their coding competitions and the various other events they held for students throughout the year. Everyone I knew wanted to work for google. Now? everyone sees FAANG just the same as any other company. Most of the people I know who wanted to work at google, and a few that worked at google, now have higher paying, more enjoyable, and more stable jobs elsewhere.

jsnell 4y ago
> I hate how "normal" of a company google is becoming. Closing down services and products not because they aren't profitable, but because they aren't profitable enough. What specific services and products are you thinking of there? How do you know they were profitable?
- Beldin 4y ago
  Just to be pedantic: not profitable enough doesn't necessarily imply profitable. Consider, eg, shutting down their (Stadia's) game studio before the release of their first game. First release was scheduled a few months later, with no significant delays having occurred. Nevertheless, shutdown. No one would expect it to have made a profit without a release. But apparently there was no way they could be profitable enough to warrant keeping.
waboremo 4y ago
Most of those aren't really the huge pulls. Sure Google was "fun" and offered good benefits, but it was also incredibly stable despite it's competitive edge and "fastmoving-ness". After the massive layoffs that dwarfed any previous ones at Google (combined), that's no longer a pull to joining Google over other major techs.
Eumenes 4y ago
Worked at Google in the early 2010s and it was still a bit quirky/different, not enterprise at all ... but they were hiring armies of project managers, agile coaches, multiple layers of HR specialists ...

SteveNuts 4y ago

As a nerdy kid growing up, Google always felt like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory to me. There was somewhat of a feeling of mystery about the things they were working on, and when things like Gmail were unveiled it felt like such a wonder. Now they just seem like a worse version of Microsoft to me, at least Microsoft knows how to deal with enterprises.

lizard 4y ago
> at least Microsoft knows how to deal with enterprises. For what it's worth, this was a big part of why I had a positive image of Google. Enterprises are boring, especially when it comes to technology. They make boring decisions about technology because they are almost always made based on bullet lists of half-truths, rather than by the people who actually have to use it. Google seemed to make things for the users. Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk, none of these had feature parity with their competitors at the time, but they were just so much better to use that people abandoned those enterprise products, even if their company was the one paying for them, and Google's popularity skyrocketed. Many years ago my university asked the students to decide between Google and Microsoft for the (student) email platform. The impression I got from IT folks I knew was that they were strongly in favor of Microsoft. But when both companies were asked to make presentations to the students, I remember leaving the Microsoft one thinking they weren't even trying.
- SteveNuts 4y ago
  Agreed on all points. Once I hit the real world (working for a large soulless enterprise like a lot of people end up in), and trying to deal with Google for G-suite was a terrible experience. So IMO, they’re not great at either thing anymore.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  > Enterprises are boring Boring is good, sometimes. Especially when boring means "reliable" and "gets things done without being the center of attention". Scott Hanselman's old analogy here is that enterprise software is something like the "dark matter" of the software universe. It's obviously boring, and mostly kind of hidden, but yet still so heavily influences the gravity all around it. On the other side, if you live by the "exciting" technologies, you sometimes die by the "flash-in-the-pan" effect. It's unfortunate for Google that they seem determined to prove that in the ways that they support and maintain products.

iqihs 4y ago

as Google retiring for on being Google Can you learn to construct a grammatically sentence before you decide click the submit button?

shhsshs 4y ago
There is a much more civil way to word that. > as Google retiring for on being Google I can't tell what this phrase is supposed to mean. Can you explain/edit your comment? It seems like they meant "as Google retiring from being Google"

gwern 4y ago

I wonder if AlphaCoder was the writing on the wall? Go out on top rather than tainted with scandal and unhappiness polluting memories?

riffraff 4y ago

> Now they are just another corporation. the Google Summer of Code still exists (and that other program for high school kids I think). I think those were the nicest things they did back in the day, and I don't know of any other corp doing it.

xnx 4y ago
Looks like Summer of Code is still happening in 2023: https://opensource.googleblog.com/2023/02/mentor-organizations-announced-for.html https://opensource.googleblog.com/2023/02/mentor-organizatio...

kohllision 4y ago

> I think the direct impact of these competitions to hiring were minimal. I can confidently say that this is not the case in India. I have a countless list of people (including myself) who received emails from Google recruiters for advancing to later rounds of Code Jam or securing a top rank in a Kick Start round. Even if people missed out on top ranks, they would put their results on their resume/LinkedIn and would get attention from recruiters anyway. Needless to say, these were strong signals for recruiters, especially for university students. Based on the skewed demand-supply here, they were closer to necessary than sufficient.

dqpb 4y ago

Google is winding down and that's ok! There many exciting things to work on, and those things should be owned by the engineers working on them.

rfoo 4y ago

They have been just another corporation for a while. The great layoff and such things just made it official.