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Having been a Google engineer who bootstrapped a new recommendation system with the advantage of existing data and distribution... I'd take the latter any day.
by dpe82 3y ago
Having been a Google engineer who bootstrapped a new recommendation system with the advantage of existing data and distribution... I'd take the latter any day. :)
It comes down to: engineer A says we should do X to make the system better; engineer B says we should do Y. How do you decide? You run an experiment against some known important metric. Do that hundreds or thousands of time a year and you eventually end up with a pretty decent system.
By buying up Apple's traffic they made it much harder for a potential competitor to form by removing one of the most important tools: enough traffic to run experiments.
- elicash 3y agoI think you're selling yourself and the value of your skills too short! But more importantly, I hope you see the question isn't whether huge volume matters. It's whether it's nearly the only thing that matters. The quote you cited is quite innocuous, an exec saying they have "brilliant people, working tirelessly to improve its products." Twisting that quote to suggest they are a liar seems really unfair. I'd also say leadership matters, not just engineers. Microsoft says their shareholders would have struggled to accept the high price tag of a deal with Apple. That's their fault? Either that, or they don't believe their own argument here.