4 ms·

This seems to be a pattern among Google employees, as least as I'm seeing from the outside. They have their own company reality bubble, and clashes or inconsis

This seems to be a pattern among Google employees, as least as I'm seeing from the outside. They have their own company reality bubble, and clashes or inconsistencies with the outside world are met with disbelief.

djbusby 4y ago
The customer is always right - except when I think I'm smarter than their stated needs.
- kivle 4y ago
  The customer, eg. the advertising industry.
freedomben 4y ago
Indeed, but it's a problem in engineering society-wide, not just Google. The more I think of it actually, it's just a human problem. Even kids default to this. I wish Socratic Ignorance were taught widely and often in school.
Kye 4y ago
I remember getting into it with a Google person in a forum once. They kept insisting they couldn't do real, portable files in Google Drive for Docs because that would break collaboration. They didn't seem able to understand I didn't want collaboration. I wanted to be able to open my word processor/spreadsheet/etc files in other tools without needing to connect to the internet (predates offline mode). I wanted to be able to back them up somewhere (3-2-1 strategy). I wanted to be able to do automated analysis across all my writing. In short, I wanted to own my files. They simply could not conceive of a use case that was offline or didn't trust Google to be reliable. I honestly don't think they ever used a real desktop office suite. They had no model in their head to understand it.
- malermeister 4y ago
  It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    That's exactly the saying that came to mind when I read the parent comment. These people have an agenda, the company one, to advocate for; and won't accept anything else.
- ikiris 4y ago
  Collaboration is the killer feature of the docs ecosystem. You will never convince them to break it for X reason.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kye 4y ago
    I don't want them to break it. I understand why the two needs are incompatible. What I want is a way to opt out at a file or even account level so I can access my stuff in Drive. This is what they could not understand. It wasn't "this isn't possible," it was "why would someone want that?"
- eclipxe 4y ago
  Export your Google doc to a word docx and then just save that in Google drive. It’s a portable file like any other at that point.
  - Kye 4y ago
    Nope. Not what I want. I want it to be able to work like office suites have since before Google existed. There is no reason it can't other than lack of priority on Google's part. Microsoft's web-based stuff does this just fine, just like the offline stuff has for decades. I can edit on an app wherever I am, then have my laptop back home do some magic on the OneDrive folder and process/store/whatever I want, and I never have to invoke a magic menu item to ask Microsoft to let me. It's just there. I don't see why I have to adjust my workflow for Google's failure of imagination. I've also had too many cloud things decide to limit/remove export functionality to trust it.
summerlight 4y ago
For this specific case of MV3, I wonder how many of those developers are actually writing and maintaining extensions. Yeah, I know one suspected motivation of this change is disabling ad blockers but IMO even if we ignore this aspect this migration is planned badly everywhere. If they really wanted to focus on just kicking ass of ad blockers, it would be done much quicker without facing this level of backlashes. Not just for MV3 (or even Google), but many of those "API teams" actually don't have a good understanding on its actual use cases so the incentives are usually aligned with their own goals and directions rather than the actual customers because what they see everyday is just their code base and some OKR. I guess they really didn't want to miss out the opportunity to clean things up so they put every single wish list into the bucket without much user study and then it's spectacularly exploded as we know. I've seen a bunch of "internal migrations", which is supposed to be a way easier than this kind of external ecosystem migration. Unless it was planned and executed very well, those teams are usually shocked by the initial backlash and how "creative" their users are. Sometime those teams are able to come up with reasonable compromises, but in many cases they just deny the reality then blow things up (which sometime works if there's not much dependencies though, but many case it's just wasted as soon as upper managements kick in). This is why almost all successful API migrations are accompanied with some sort of extensive user study from the beginning rather than some arbitrary metrics/goals set by themselves.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > For this specific case of MV3, I wonder how many of those developers are actually writing and maintaining extensions. This is a huge problem, also for the Safari extensions team. Google doesn't ship many of its own extensions, and Apple ships none. Moreover, there's no evidence that either of these companies actually talk to extensions developers—i.e, have actual conversations with them—before shipping extension APIs. Did Google talk with the developers of uBlock Origin or Tampermonkey before designing MV3? Not doing so is negligence.
jiggawatts 4y ago
Not just Google, all of Silicon Valley. Here on HN, I regularly see comments along the lines of: "Wait, do people actually still use Windows on servers!?" Yes, yes they do.
- flatiron 4y ago
  In the last 10 years I haven’t had a single contract dealing with a windows server. Im sure that someone somewhere does indeed use it. But it’s gotta be 90%+ now a days Linux.
  - jiggawatts 4y ago
    Selection bias. Do you work in Silicon Valley, at startups, or ex-FAANG places? Are you a "Linux person" looking for work related to Linux technologies such as NGINX, MySQL, Postgres, Apache, etc...? Here in Australia it's a rare thing for me to see a Linux server. They exist, sure, but are generally in the minority. I have some self-selection biases as well, but I regularly work for large orgs with more than 10K staff and I've been to orgs with over 1K IT staff, and in all cases Linux servers were 30% of the fleet or less. By some[1] metrics, Windows Server is about 50% of the worldwide server OS market[2]: https://www.t4.ai/industry/server-operating-system-market-share https://www.t4.ai/industry/server-operating-system-market-sh... [1] Market research related to server OS usage is notoriously unreliable, with idiotic things such as counting "NGINX" load balancers as a "Linux web server" even if it is one tiny load-balancer VM in front a whole fleet of Windows IIS servers running ASP.NET. There are also the "hyperscalers" that skew distributions. The FAANGS alone add hundreds of millions of Linux instances, but in huge farms of essentially identical clones. At a single medium-sized customer, they have over 1K distinct Window Server VMs or HA pairs, but they also have 1x HPC cluster with 1K Linux nodes. Do you count that as "1" Linux install, or "1000"? [2] Again, is it just counting the "for money" market, or just the "list of all systems used for servers, including the unsupported free distros?" Microsoft doesn't publish a separate line-item for their Windows Server revenue, for example, making it hard to determine how much it's still being used.
    - reitanqild 4y ago

djbusby 4y ago

The customer is always right - except when I think I'm smarter than their stated needs.

kivle 4y ago
The customer, eg. the advertising industry.

freedomben 4y ago

Indeed, but it's a problem in engineering society-wide, not just Google. The more I think of it actually, it's just a human problem. Even kids default to this. I wish Socratic Ignorance were taught widely and often in school.

Kye 4y ago

I remember getting into it with a Google person in a forum once. They kept insisting they couldn't do real, portable files in Google Drive for Docs because that would break collaboration. They didn't seem able to understand I didn't want collaboration. I wanted to be able to open my word processor/spreadsheet/etc files in other tools without needing to connect to the internet (predates offline mode). I wanted to be able to back them up somewhere (3-2-1 strategy). I wanted to be able to do automated analysis across all my writing. In short, I wanted to own my files. They simply could not conceive of a use case that was offline or didn't trust Google to be reliable. I honestly don't think they ever used a real desktop office suite. They had no model in their head to understand it.

malermeister 4y ago
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
- userbinator 4y ago
  That's exactly the saying that came to mind when I read the parent comment. These people have an agenda, the company one, to advocate for; and won't accept anything else.
ikiris 4y ago
Collaboration is the killer feature of the docs ecosystem. You will never convince them to break it for X reason.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Kye 4y ago
  I don't want them to break it. I understand why the two needs are incompatible. What I want is a way to opt out at a file or even account level so I can access my stuff in Drive. This is what they could not understand. It wasn't "this isn't possible," it was "why would someone want that?"
eclipxe 4y ago
Export your Google doc to a word docx and then just save that in Google drive. It’s a portable file like any other at that point.
- Kye 4y ago
  Nope. Not what I want. I want it to be able to work like office suites have since before Google existed. There is no reason it can't other than lack of priority on Google's part. Microsoft's web-based stuff does this just fine, just like the offline stuff has for decades. I can edit on an app wherever I am, then have my laptop back home do some magic on the OneDrive folder and process/store/whatever I want, and I never have to invoke a magic menu item to ask Microsoft to let me. It's just there. I don't see why I have to adjust my workflow for Google's failure of imagination. I've also had too many cloud things decide to limit/remove export functionality to trust it.

summerlight 4y ago

For this specific case of MV3, I wonder how many of those developers are actually writing and maintaining extensions. Yeah, I know one suspected motivation of this change is disabling ad blockers but IMO even if we ignore this aspect this migration is planned badly everywhere. If they really wanted to focus on just kicking ass of ad blockers, it would be done much quicker without facing this level of backlashes. Not just for MV3 (or even Google), but many of those "API teams" actually don't have a good understanding on its actual use cases so the incentives are usually aligned with their own goals and directions rather than the actual customers because what they see everyday is just their code base and some OKR. I guess they really didn't want to miss out the opportunity to clean things up so they put every single wish list into the bucket without much user study and then it's spectacularly exploded as we know. I've seen a bunch of "internal migrations", which is supposed to be a way easier than this kind of external ecosystem migration. Unless it was planned and executed very well, those teams are usually shocked by the initial backlash and how "creative" their users are. Sometime those teams are able to come up with reasonable compromises, but in many cases they just deny the reality then blow things up (which sometime works if there's not much dependencies though, but many case it's just wasted as soon as upper managements kick in). This is why almost all successful API migrations are accompanied with some sort of extensive user study from the beginning rather than some arbitrary metrics/goals set by themselves.

lapcat 4y ago
> For this specific case of MV3, I wonder how many of those developers are actually writing and maintaining extensions. This is a huge problem, also for the Safari extensions team. Google doesn't ship many of its own extensions, and Apple ships none. Moreover, there's no evidence that either of these companies actually talk to extensions developers—i.e, have actual conversations with them—before shipping extension APIs. Did Google talk with the developers of uBlock Origin or Tampermonkey before designing MV3? Not doing so is negligence.

jiggawatts 4y ago

Not just Google, all of Silicon Valley. Here on HN, I regularly see comments along the lines of: "Wait, do people actually still use Windows on servers!?" Yes, yes they do.

flatiron 4y ago
In the last 10 years I haven’t had a single contract dealing with a windows server. Im sure that someone somewhere does indeed use it. But it’s gotta be 90%+ now a days Linux.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Selection bias. Do you work in Silicon Valley, at startups, or ex-FAANG places? Are you a "Linux person" looking for work related to Linux technologies such as NGINX, MySQL, Postgres, Apache, etc...? Here in Australia it's a rare thing for me to see a Linux server. They exist, sure, but are generally in the minority. I have some self-selection biases as well, but I regularly work for large orgs with more than 10K staff and I've been to orgs with over 1K IT staff, and in all cases Linux servers were 30% of the fleet or less. By some[1] metrics, Windows Server is about 50% of the worldwide server OS market[2]: https://www.t4.ai/industry/server-operating-system-market-share https://www.t4.ai/industry/server-operating-system-market-sh... [1] Market research related to server OS usage is notoriously unreliable, with idiotic things such as counting "NGINX" load balancers as a "Linux web server" even if it is one tiny load-balancer VM in front a whole fleet of Windows IIS servers running ASP.NET. There are also the "hyperscalers" that skew distributions. The FAANGS alone add hundreds of millions of Linux instances, but in huge farms of essentially identical clones. At a single medium-sized customer, they have over 1K distinct Window Server VMs or HA pairs, but they also have 1x HPC cluster with 1K Linux nodes. Do you count that as "1" Linux install, or "1000"? [2] Again, is it just counting the "for money" market, or just the "list of all systems used for servers, including the unsupported free distros?" Microsoft doesn't publish a separate line-item for their Windows Server revenue, for example, making it hard to determine how much it's still being used.
  - reitanqild 4y ago