5 ms·

I don't think that this company will die in a predictible future. They are too large to be innovative. Internally they are paralyzed by processes, management,

I don't think that this company will die in a predictible future. They are too large to be innovative. Internally they are paralyzed by processes, management, and burned-out programmers who had ideals a few years ago and now are tired of the internal system. But Google is a rich company that can buy innovative startups and acquires innovative technology whenever they want. I think it will be key for their survival.

gary_0 4y ago
Google is too big to die anytime soon, but they're already dead to me. The company that seemed so cool in 2004 is long gone. They're just another Oracle or IBM or Microsoft now.
threeseed 4y ago
Apple and Microsoft are bigger than Google and both have managed to show a lot of innovation in recent years. Google's problem isn't size. It's their poor product management.
- nikcub 4y ago
  They’re here to stay - but they need a cultural shake up Sundar might end up being looked back on as the Ballmer of Google - the leader who wouldn’t take risks in order to protect the golden goose (geese in the case of MSFT)
- neel8986 4y ago
  Microsoft have not shown innovation. They have bought innovative companies at regular interval including github and openAI which is op's point. Otherwise they have blatantly copied alternative and forced them to enterprise companies like Team. Only innovative product from Microsoft itself in last 20 years is VSCode. Contributed significantly less to deep learning and distributed system research compared to google, meta or amazon
  - Kye 4y ago
    People forget how bad most Windows laptops were before the Surface. Decent-looking basic and premium Windows laptops are common enough now, and Microsoft is falling behind in every way, but there was a time where everyone was paying attention to them the way people do Apple.
  - fdeee 4y ago
    Microsoft is a very talented copycat. With the added expertise (that all the other FAANG companies are sorely lacking) of how to sell to enterprise and small business users and lock them into their portfolio.
    - AraceliHarker 4y ago
      I wonder if Microsoft is a talented imitator, but I think it can be said that they have a strong base mainly for customer companies, so they can easily spread their products by bundling them even if the quality of their products is worse than their competitors.
  - hnlmorg 4y ago
    VSC is a great product but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to call in innovative when text editors and IDEs is a saturated market and have been around for literally decades. Language Servers could be seen as innovative I guess but they weren’t the first to attempt this sort of thing. It’s just other solutions didn’t have the weight of Microsoft to gain wider adoption. None of this is a criticism of VSCode though. Something can be really good without being an innovation.
    - fdeee 4y ago
      VSCode might be the best thing since sliced bread. But for Microsoft's bottom line, it is utterly irrelevant. At best, VSC is a marketing win with a subset of the programmer population, but it doesn't even do anything for the adoption of "real" Visual Studio licenses or anything. VSC is more of an accidential side project gone right.
  - 4y ago
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  While innovation is often good, it's a side issue. Google's problem was deciding to go all-in on advertising as essentially the only revenue source for the entire company. Worse, as others have noted, this revenue source has the side effect of cheapening and distorting their main claim to fame (i.e., search). Apple and Microsoft both have numerous revenue-generating products. Google basically just has ads (all the other stuff they have is a rounding error). Now, Google has had other products that could have become revenue streams, but they have a terrible history of killing those products off. They've overtaken Oracle as the place where good products go to die. If they don't get the advertising people on a leash, I don't see Google winding up anywhere good over the next decade or so.
  - typeofhuman 4y ago
    In 2022, GCP revenue amounted to $26.28 billion, accounting for 9.2 percent of Google's total revenues.
riku_iki 4y ago
there are few other corps with cash piles who compete for innovative startups, namely MS invested in OpenAI
ax0ar 4y ago
Maybe they won’t die, but they are losing blood fast. I feel like even if they don’t die, they will only be an obsolete corporation that managed to somehow survive like yahoo. But I’m pretty sure they won’t manage to remain among the top 10 in the next 5-10 years.
stephc_int13 4y ago
Nokia is not dead, but they are not an important player anymore. Not even a skeleton crew company. When the iPhone was announced they were rich and in a powerful position, strong teams, brand loyalty, sales teams all over the world, very good relationship with telcos... And yet, it was already too late. The HN crowd is a good predictor for search popularity.
lamontcg 4y ago
The "pivot to try to save the business" usually doesn't work. Where pivots work is something like Amazon and AWS where internally Amazon already did IT at a large scale incredibly cheaply, so they figured out how to sell it. They didn't do that though because retail was collapsing, they just saw another opportunity.
- pg_1234 4y ago
  It's a bit like evolution, where species don't adapt to a new environment because their old one is killing them (in this case they just die out), they adapt because the new environment offers them a more advantageous lifestyle, and those members closer to it prosper and supplant the old guard. Large corporations are similar, both in that they don't respond like deliberate individuals anymore but rather a reactive swarm, and in that they typically only pivot successfully from a position of strength/opportunity ... when facing adversity they more often fail in their pivot and die (usually get acquired).

gary_0 4y ago

Google is too big to die anytime soon, but they're already dead to me. The company that seemed so cool in 2004 is long gone. They're just another Oracle or IBM or Microsoft now.

threeseed 4y ago

Apple and Microsoft are bigger than Google and both have managed to show a lot of innovation in recent years. Google's problem isn't size. It's their poor product management.

nikcub 4y ago
They’re here to stay - but they need a cultural shake up Sundar might end up being looked back on as the Ballmer of Google - the leader who wouldn’t take risks in order to protect the golden goose (geese in the case of MSFT)
neel8986 4y ago
Microsoft have not shown innovation. They have bought innovative companies at regular interval including github and openAI which is op's point. Otherwise they have blatantly copied alternative and forced them to enterprise companies like Team. Only innovative product from Microsoft itself in last 20 years is VSCode. Contributed significantly less to deep learning and distributed system research compared to google, meta or amazon
- Kye 4y ago
  People forget how bad most Windows laptops were before the Surface. Decent-looking basic and premium Windows laptops are common enough now, and Microsoft is falling behind in every way, but there was a time where everyone was paying attention to them the way people do Apple.
- fdeee 4y ago
  Microsoft is a very talented copycat. With the added expertise (that all the other FAANG companies are sorely lacking) of how to sell to enterprise and small business users and lock them into their portfolio.
  - AraceliHarker 4y ago
    I wonder if Microsoft is a talented imitator, but I think it can be said that they have a strong base mainly for customer companies, so they can easily spread their products by bundling them even if the quality of their products is worse than their competitors.
- hnlmorg 4y ago
  VSC is a great product but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to call in innovative when text editors and IDEs is a saturated market and have been around for literally decades. Language Servers could be seen as innovative I guess but they weren’t the first to attempt this sort of thing. It’s just other solutions didn’t have the weight of Microsoft to gain wider adoption. None of this is a criticism of VSCode though. Something can be really good without being an innovation.
  - fdeee 4y ago
    VSCode might be the best thing since sliced bread. But for Microsoft's bottom line, it is utterly irrelevant. At best, VSC is a marketing win with a subset of the programmer population, but it doesn't even do anything for the adoption of "real" Visual Studio licenses or anything. VSC is more of an accidential side project gone right.
- 4y ago
Turing_Machine 4y ago
While innovation is often good, it's a side issue. Google's problem was deciding to go all-in on advertising as essentially the only revenue source for the entire company. Worse, as others have noted, this revenue source has the side effect of cheapening and distorting their main claim to fame (i.e., search). Apple and Microsoft both have numerous revenue-generating products. Google basically just has ads (all the other stuff they have is a rounding error). Now, Google has had other products that could have become revenue streams, but they have a terrible history of killing those products off. They've overtaken Oracle as the place where good products go to die. If they don't get the advertising people on a leash, I don't see Google winding up anywhere good over the next decade or so.
- typeofhuman 4y ago
  In 2022, GCP revenue amounted to $26.28 billion, accounting for 9.2 percent of Google's total revenues.

riku_iki 4y ago

there are few other corps with cash piles who compete for innovative startups, namely MS invested in OpenAI

ax0ar 4y ago

Maybe they won’t die, but they are losing blood fast. I feel like even if they don’t die, they will only be an obsolete corporation that managed to somehow survive like yahoo. But I’m pretty sure they won’t manage to remain among the top 10 in the next 5-10 years.

stephc_int13 4y ago

Nokia is not dead, but they are not an important player anymore. Not even a skeleton crew company. When the iPhone was announced they were rich and in a powerful position, strong teams, brand loyalty, sales teams all over the world, very good relationship with telcos... And yet, it was already too late. The HN crowd is a good predictor for search popularity.

lamontcg 4y ago

The "pivot to try to save the business" usually doesn't work. Where pivots work is something like Amazon and AWS where internally Amazon already did IT at a large scale incredibly cheaply, so they figured out how to sell it. They didn't do that though because retail was collapsing, they just saw another opportunity.

pg_1234 4y ago
It's a bit like evolution, where species don't adapt to a new environment because their old one is killing them (in this case they just die out), they adapt because the new environment offers them a more advantageous lifestyle, and those members closer to it prosper and supplant the old guard. Large corporations are similar, both in that they don't respond like deliberate individuals anymore but rather a reactive swarm, and in that they typically only pivot successfully from a position of strength/opportunity ... when facing adversity they more often fail in their pivot and die (usually get acquired).