7 ms·

Larry Page: one-year anniversary of taking over Google's CEO

54 points by tilt 15y ago

bambax 15y ago
> Is there an Android tablet you’re happy with? > I really like using my Samsung tablet. I previously used the Motorola Xoom for a while and liked that. He liked the Xoom? It's sad. Like Bill Gates before him, for all his success, all his money and all of his intelligence, he can't use an iPad in public.
- cryptoz 15y ago
  I have a Xoom and love it. Why is that sad to you? I deal with iPads at my job and hate the experience. I'd prefer my Xoom to any iPad without hesitation.
- moultano 15y ago
  I have a xoom and love it. Have you used one? You might be surprised. The hardware is less sexy than competing tablets (heavier mostly), but the software is wonderful, and I'm extremely happy with the overall experience.
dude_abides 15y ago
I miss the Google run by Eric Schmidt. What Larry Page is doing to Google reeks of what Ballmer did to Microsoft. It is no doubt a profitable strategy, at the cost of "coolness" that Google has always been known for. History books might remember Google Plus having displaced Facebook similar to how IE displaced Netscape.
- melling 15y ago
  He's trying to run the company more like Apple, which is what Steve Job's recommended that Larry do. It comes down to doing a few things well and focusing. Probably a lesson that we all need to learn.
  - dude_abides 15y ago
    He definitely learnt "focus" from how Steve Jobs ran Apple, which is a great thing. But he also learnt a few things from Microsoft: clone the market leader, and use your dominant position to gain market share for your clone (eg. Android, Google+). That is just not Apple strategy.
  - gdubs 15y ago
    How is that what they're doing? I personally miss the simple search engine it used to be. Didn't PG write something similar recently? Google has become a frustrating user experience. Everything is constantly moving around, it feels cluttered and I frequently lose interesting search results pages due to strange glitches, probably resulting from key mappings that I'm not aware of.
    - melling 15y ago
      They are killing off lots of other projects and focusing on far fewer. What you wrote is a tangent from what I wrote. You are complaining because by focusing more on search they are making it worse. Whether search is better now can be debated, and I don't have an opinion, but they are certainly focusing on it.
beatle 15y ago
Producing the best thing we possibly can for users is our paramount thing. I think we have demonstrated that over a very long period of time with a whole variety of different issues we’ve faced around the world. Hilarious. Lately, Google's wannabe products/services are knee-jerk reactions to existing products. Google is driven by envy, not by the desire to innovate or create a better product or service. Android = iOS Android tablets/ICS = iPad Motorola Acquisition = iOS Google+ = Facebook Google Offers = Groupon Google Places/Hotpot = Yelp Chrome = IE/Firefox Google Docs = MS Office so on...
- untog 15y ago
  I think Google+ is the only one that qualifies as a knee-jerk reaction, as Google realised very suddenly that social is a valuable currency on the internet, and they didn't have any. Aside from that, there are no kneejerks in your list. Android was bought two years before the iPhone came out. Chrome was not a response to any kind of threat to Google. They created Google Offers after GroupOn refused to be bought. Google Docs was clearly an innovation, not a reaction. I could go on...
  - dmishe 15y ago
    >Android was bought two years before the iPhone came out. obligatory http://www.technobuffalo.com/companies/google/android/android-before-and-after-the-iphone/ http://www.technobuffalo.com/companies/google/android/androi...
    - untog 15y ago
      Not really relevant in this case, though. Clearly, Google was planning to get involved in the mobile space before the iPhone. The physical form of that involvement may have changed, but that doesn't qualify Android as a "knee-jerk reaction". In any case, since then the iPhone notification tray has clearly copied Android, etc. etc. All to the benefit of the end user, IMO.
      - beatle 15y ago
hsuresh 15y ago
Bit off topic. But i seriously don't understand the negative sentiment anything related to Google of late. It used to be Facebook a while back, and it seems to be Google's turn right now. There must be some sort of group behaviour explanation to this.
- danilocampos 15y ago
  > There must be some sort of group behaviour explanation to this. Inasmuch as Google acts and observers all sharing the same planet react, sure. Let's run down the list! - Perceived decline in search quality. They've remedied this to a decent extent, but when your SERPs are full of spammy, scrape-y dogshit for the better part of 18 months, that's going to ding your brand a bit. - Shoe-horning Google+ into SERPs. Clutters a UI that was once sacred, often with content of lesser value than crawlable content from other platforms. - Sharing user information across Google products that users considered to be separate. Complicated. Good for Google – helps their business. Not unreasonable for users to be suspicious. - For special bonus points: Every time Schmidt's mouth has opened for the last three years, the creepiest shit pours out. Google's willingness – delight? – to be misunderstood for long periods of time is laudable, but costly in terms of potentially irreplaceable goodwill.
  - trevelyan 15y ago
    > Perceived decline in search quality. Perceived? Result #2 in my industry features a site with 10 inbound links, while result #3 has #13. I can't start to imagine how much black SEO those companies are engaged in, but that is generally indicative of first-page results, which feature none of the paid and free services people actually use. Maybe search is a "hard problem", but the reason Google gets crap over its quality freefall is that the company has the aggregate anonymized data to tell webmasters how long visitors stay on their sites keyword-by-keyword. And yet the company refuses to use this data to prune the garbage from its results, and instead seems focused on mining individual search data to compete with Facebook.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- 15y ago
martythemaniak 15y ago
My view on this is pretty simple: Larry should keep doing what he's doing and let the haters keep on hating. Before G+, people made fun of Google for not doing social and now that they have a good product, they are made fun of because they didn't kill facebook 6 months. People moaned and complained how no two Google products were alike or connected, and now that they complain that they work well together. And of course, Android's been hated forever, even as it takes over the market and iOS starts lifting its major features from Android. So, Larry's focus and determination will probably result in a very productive reign, despite all the hate from the Valley folk and HNers
- gms 15y ago
  They don't have a good product (yet?). No one uses Google+ besides nerds and people who work at Google. It makes it all the more irritating that they are forcing a non-compelling product down the throats of everyone. The only happiness generated from this is in their own egos.
  - duaneb 15y ago
    While I agree that few people use Google+ - certainly nobody I know - I think it's a much better site than facebook is.
    - gms 15y ago
      Fine, but your opinion is in the extreme minority. The majority of people not only don't think it's better than Facebook - they simply don't care.
  - omonra 15y ago
    How are they forcing anything?
    - gms 15y ago
      Look at how Google+ is making a showing on every Google property (including search).
pinaceae 15y ago
fuck the new google. seriously. i am not an android user. google, you know that. why, oh why, do i suddenly have a google play link in my now even more so useless google menu/top bar?! why are my picasa albums suddenly less relevant than circle's photos? the fukc do i need circles for? to be reminded why i went off facebook?! pushing google services at every turn is really, really annoying. i like search, gmail, maps and docs to some extent - can i PLEASE disable the fucking rest, once and for all? i grew up, internet wise, with google search. as it came out, it rocked my world. a super simple search box, with perfect results. my god, was it glorious. now it is turning into yahoo.
- trb 15y ago
  Could you please offer an argument instead of an opinion? Why should Google fulfill any of your demands, aside from you wanting it? Could you please outline how google.com is turning into a web portal like yahoo.com?
  - pinaceae 15y ago
    play, circles - google is pushing those things onto me, hereby cluttering up the rest of their products. yahoo, for me, always was the definition of clutter, whereas google had focused clarity. that clarity is gone, under the helm of larry page. it is becoming more and more obvious just how great the performance of schmidt was.

54 points by tilt 15y ago

> Is there an Android tablet you’re happy with? > I really like using my Samsung tablet. I previously used the Motorola Xoom for a while and liked that. He liked the Xoom? It's sad. Like Bill Gates before him, for all his success, all his money and all of his intelligence, he can't use an iPad in public.

cryptoz 15y ago
I have a Xoom and love it. Why is that sad to you? I deal with iPads at my job and hate the experience. I'd prefer my Xoom to any iPad without hesitation.
moultano 15y ago
I have a xoom and love it. Have you used one? You might be surprised. The hardware is less sexy than competing tablets (heavier mostly), but the software is wonderful, and I'm extremely happy with the overall experience.

dude_abides 15y ago

I miss the Google run by Eric Schmidt. What Larry Page is doing to Google reeks of what Ballmer did to Microsoft. It is no doubt a profitable strategy, at the cost of "coolness" that Google has always been known for. History books might remember Google Plus having displaced Facebook similar to how IE displaced Netscape.

melling 15y ago
He's trying to run the company more like Apple, which is what Steve Job's recommended that Larry do. It comes down to doing a few things well and focusing. Probably a lesson that we all need to learn.
- dude_abides 15y ago
  He definitely learnt "focus" from how Steve Jobs ran Apple, which is a great thing. But he also learnt a few things from Microsoft: clone the market leader, and use your dominant position to gain market share for your clone (eg. Android, Google+). That is just not Apple strategy.
- gdubs 15y ago
  How is that what they're doing? I personally miss the simple search engine it used to be. Didn't PG write something similar recently? Google has become a frustrating user experience. Everything is constantly moving around, it feels cluttered and I frequently lose interesting search results pages due to strange glitches, probably resulting from key mappings that I'm not aware of.
  - melling 15y ago
    They are killing off lots of other projects and focusing on far fewer. What you wrote is a tangent from what I wrote. You are complaining because by focusing more on search they are making it worse. Whether search is better now can be debated, and I don't have an opinion, but they are certainly focusing on it.

beatle 15y ago

Producing the best thing we possibly can for users is our paramount thing. I think we have demonstrated that over a very long period of time with a whole variety of different issues we’ve faced around the world. Hilarious. Lately, Google's wannabe products/services are knee-jerk reactions to existing products. Google is driven by envy, not by the desire to innovate or create a better product or service. Android = iOS Android tablets/ICS = iPad Motorola Acquisition = iOS Google+ = Facebook Google Offers = Groupon Google Places/Hotpot = Yelp Chrome = IE/Firefox Google Docs = MS Office so on...

untog 15y ago
I think Google+ is the only one that qualifies as a knee-jerk reaction, as Google realised very suddenly that social is a valuable currency on the internet, and they didn't have any. Aside from that, there are no kneejerks in your list. Android was bought two years before the iPhone came out. Chrome was not a response to any kind of threat to Google. They created Google Offers after GroupOn refused to be bought. Google Docs was clearly an innovation, not a reaction. I could go on...
- dmishe 15y ago
  >Android was bought two years before the iPhone came out. obligatory http://www.technobuffalo.com/companies/google/android/android-before-and-after-the-iphone/ http://www.technobuffalo.com/companies/google/android/androi...
  - untog 15y ago
    Not really relevant in this case, though. Clearly, Google was planning to get involved in the mobile space before the iPhone. The physical form of that involvement may have changed, but that doesn't qualify Android as a "knee-jerk reaction". In any case, since then the iPhone notification tray has clearly copied Android, etc. etc. All to the benefit of the end user, IMO.
    - beatle 15y ago

hsuresh 15y ago

Bit off topic. But i seriously don't understand the negative sentiment anything related to Google of late. It used to be Facebook a while back, and it seems to be Google's turn right now. There must be some sort of group behaviour explanation to this.

danilocampos 15y ago
> There must be some sort of group behaviour explanation to this. Inasmuch as Google acts and observers all sharing the same planet react, sure. Let's run down the list! - Perceived decline in search quality. They've remedied this to a decent extent, but when your SERPs are full of spammy, scrape-y dogshit for the better part of 18 months, that's going to ding your brand a bit. - Shoe-horning Google+ into SERPs. Clutters a UI that was once sacred, often with content of lesser value than crawlable content from other platforms. - Sharing user information across Google products that users considered to be separate. Complicated. Good for Google – helps their business. Not unreasonable for users to be suspicious. - For special bonus points: Every time Schmidt's mouth has opened for the last three years, the creepiest shit pours out. Google's willingness – delight? – to be misunderstood for long periods of time is laudable, but costly in terms of potentially irreplaceable goodwill.
- trevelyan 15y ago
  > Perceived decline in search quality. Perceived? Result #2 in my industry features a site with 10 inbound links, while result #3 has #13. I can't start to imagine how much black SEO those companies are engaged in, but that is generally indicative of first-page results, which feature none of the paid and free services people actually use. Maybe search is a "hard problem", but the reason Google gets crap over its quality freefall is that the company has the aggregate anonymized data to tell webmasters how long visitors stay on their sites keyword-by-keyword. And yet the company refuses to use this data to prune the garbage from its results, and instead seems focused on mining individual search data to compete with Facebook.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
15y ago

martythemaniak 15y ago

My view on this is pretty simple: Larry should keep doing what he's doing and let the haters keep on hating. Before G+, people made fun of Google for not doing social and now that they have a good product, they are made fun of because they didn't kill facebook 6 months. People moaned and complained how no two Google products were alike or connected, and now that they complain that they work well together. And of course, Android's been hated forever, even as it takes over the market and iOS starts lifting its major features from Android. So, Larry's focus and determination will probably result in a very productive reign, despite all the hate from the Valley folk and HNers

gms 15y ago
They don't have a good product (yet?). No one uses Google+ besides nerds and people who work at Google. It makes it all the more irritating that they are forcing a non-compelling product down the throats of everyone. The only happiness generated from this is in their own egos.
- duaneb 15y ago
  While I agree that few people use Google+ - certainly nobody I know - I think it's a much better site than facebook is.
  - gms 15y ago
    Fine, but your opinion is in the extreme minority. The majority of people not only don't think it's better than Facebook - they simply don't care.
- omonra 15y ago
  How are they forcing anything?
  - gms 15y ago
    Look at how Google+ is making a showing on every Google property (including search).

pinaceae 15y ago

fuck the new google. seriously. i am not an android user. google, you know that. why, oh why, do i suddenly have a google play link in my now even more so useless google menu/top bar?! why are my picasa albums suddenly less relevant than circle's photos? the fukc do i need circles for? to be reminded why i went off facebook?! pushing google services at every turn is really, really annoying. i like search, gmail, maps and docs to some extent - can i PLEASE disable the fucking rest, once and for all? i grew up, internet wise, with google search. as it came out, it rocked my world. a super simple search box, with perfect results. my god, was it glorious. now it is turning into yahoo.

trb 15y ago
Could you please offer an argument instead of an opinion? Why should Google fulfill any of your demands, aside from you wanting it? Could you please outline how google.com is turning into a web portal like yahoo.com?
- pinaceae 15y ago
  play, circles - google is pushing those things onto me, hereby cluttering up the rest of their products. yahoo, for me, always was the definition of clutter, whereas google had focused clarity. that clarity is gone, under the helm of larry page. it is becoming more and more obvious just how great the performance of schmidt was.