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It's worth noting that was a turning point: the "more wood behind fewer arrows" policy adopted by Larry [1] initiated the die-off cycle of Google products. Prio
by eslaught 3y ago
It's worth noting that was a turning point: the "more wood behind fewer arrows" policy adopted by Larry [1] initiated the die-off cycle of Google products. Prior to that, as far as I am aware, they were much more tolerant of products staying around in a mature-but-not-wildly-successful state. Afterwards, it seemed as if they would only keep things that maintained a trajectory to become as successful as their core products.
Again, this was not entirely unpredictable. While I don't remember the details of that lecture, I remember the professor calling out these sorts of big shifts in cultural values as being typical of startups transforming into large companies. And Larry himself was part of the transformation, turning into (presumably, what he believed to be) what was needed to lead Google into its next stage as a large company.
[1]: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-wood-behind-fewer-arrows.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-wood-behind-few...
- leoc 3y agoWhat’s remarkable is that that phrase was already, at that time, notorious for having been a portent of doom at Sun Microsystems.
- jmcguckin 3y agoAll the wood behind one arrow…
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago..and now all that's left of Sun is the wood on the back of the Meta sign.
- Annatar 3y agoEvery time a socket is instantiated, Sun Microsystems comes alive; so too it is with NFS, and many other core technologies; there is lots that's left of Sun which still makes it live, even though it doesn't officially exist any more. And any time 0xide Computer ships a cloud in a rack with the Helios operating system powering it, Sun Microsystems shines bright as a beacon of indestructibility due to quality.
- pjmlp 3y agoAnd the Java/MaximeVM legacy, alongside some entertaining podcast stories.
- musicale 3y agoIt seems like the energy and creativity of Google Labs may have been lost rather than infused into all of Google.