5 ms·

> so many wonderful engineers can't produce a source of income other than the search engine? I get the essence of the comment and agree somewhat, but also feel

> so many wonderful engineers can't produce a source of income other than the search engine? I get the essence of the comment and agree somewhat, but also feel; There are plenty of other areas driving big revenue like adsense, youtube, play store, cloud and pixel. I dont feel its fair to compare revenue to these in the same level of search. Search was a true unicorn business and took over the world, there only so many businesses that will ever reach those heights. If any of these businesses were stand alone they would be impressive. Its like looking at that photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger standing next to Andre the Giant, Arnie is a big guy, but there he doesn't look too significant. I think, the bigger worry is their chrun and burn is going to limit take-up of future products. They need to do something like run new products in a lab type environment, not put the full weight of the weight of the brand behind them til they earn reasonable thresholds, then make them so they can be split out if teams want to take them independent should they decide to close.

jwestbury 4y ago
Taking another approach: Google is proof that having great engineering doesn't matter without competent business leadership. For all their failures, this is where Amazon and Microsoft excel -- they both have incredibly talented businesspeople with long-term focus and a focus on delivering real value, rather than pursuing the latest fad passion project.
- CydeWeys 4y ago
  > For all their failures, this is where Amazon and Microsoft excel Amazon isn't doing all that well recently, though (check $AMZN). And I'd argue that the product design on their biggest product, the e-commerce bit, is terrible. I know so many people, me included, who no longer buy entire categories of goods on Amazon because you simply can't trust the quality/authenticity of the goods anymore.
  - TchoBeer 4y ago
    Amazon's biggest money maker is AWS, so even if the storefront is slowing down in growth they're still doing fine.
    - yunwal 4y ago
      AWS’s market position is deteriorating rapidly. They’re now at just over 30% of market share compared to 50% in 2018. Meanwhile the trend right now is big companies pulling their core infra out of the cloud and into their own datacenters. They also haven’t managed to launch a game-changing best-in-class service or feature in 5 years outside of maybe custom lambda runtimes. I wouldn’t be surprised if this AI wave pushes azure into the forefront.
    - CydeWeys 4y ago
      They're not doing fine as evidenced by the loss of value in their share price. AWS on its own isn't big enough, nor still growing enough, to justify a massive valuation anymore. And the web storefront is suffering too. Amazon simply isn't doing that well at the moment any way you look at it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- pinewurst 4y ago
  Don't forget also Google's consistent bad treatment of customers (or rather victims as it often feels like) across all their businesses.
- Phelinofist 4y ago
  Not trying to be snarky, but what good business has MS done recently? Windows 11 is a shit show, ads in the start menu, milking Office and SQL, OpenAI is just an investment. I don't follow that closely so I might have missed something.
scarface74 4y ago
> There are plenty of other areas driving big revenue like adsense, youtube, play store, cloud and pixel. YouTube is still estimated to be barely above break even, GCP is losing money and if you look at the estimated Pixel sells annually of around 5 million a year is about how many iPhones Apple sells in three weeks.

jwestbury 4y ago

Taking another approach: Google is proof that having great engineering doesn't matter without competent business leadership. For all their failures, this is where Amazon and Microsoft excel -- they both have incredibly talented businesspeople with long-term focus and a focus on delivering real value, rather than pursuing the latest fad passion project.

CydeWeys 4y ago
> For all their failures, this is where Amazon and Microsoft excel Amazon isn't doing all that well recently, though (check $AMZN). And I'd argue that the product design on their biggest product, the e-commerce bit, is terrible. I know so many people, me included, who no longer buy entire categories of goods on Amazon because you simply can't trust the quality/authenticity of the goods anymore.
- TchoBeer 4y ago
  Amazon's biggest money maker is AWS, so even if the storefront is slowing down in growth they're still doing fine.
  - yunwal 4y ago
    AWS’s market position is deteriorating rapidly. They’re now at just over 30% of market share compared to 50% in 2018. Meanwhile the trend right now is big companies pulling their core infra out of the cloud and into their own datacenters. They also haven’t managed to launch a game-changing best-in-class service or feature in 5 years outside of maybe custom lambda runtimes. I wouldn’t be surprised if this AI wave pushes azure into the forefront.
  - CydeWeys 4y ago
    They're not doing fine as evidenced by the loss of value in their share price. AWS on its own isn't big enough, nor still growing enough, to justify a massive valuation anymore. And the web storefront is suffering too. Amazon simply isn't doing that well at the moment any way you look at it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
pinewurst 4y ago
Don't forget also Google's consistent bad treatment of customers (or rather victims as it often feels like) across all their businesses.
Phelinofist 4y ago
Not trying to be snarky, but what good business has MS done recently? Windows 11 is a shit show, ads in the start menu, milking Office and SQL, OpenAI is just an investment. I don't follow that closely so I might have missed something.

scarface74 4y ago

> There are plenty of other areas driving big revenue like adsense, youtube, play store, cloud and pixel. YouTube is still estimated to be barely above break even, GCP is losing money and if you look at the estimated Pixel sells annually of around 5 million a year is about how many iPhones Apple sells in three weeks.