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Google cites 'durable cost savings' as CEO Sundar Pichai warns of more layoffs
- itsoktocry 3y agoGoogle is still a juggernaut BUT... I don't think anyone here would claim competitor's "AI" isn't going to take a chunk of their search market, would they? Search quality was diminishing for the past few years as it is, but there was no real alternative. Now I'm using ChatGPT as much (or more) than Google. Almost everything about Google Search is mediocre.
- ejb999 3y agoI agree, google has been coasting way to long on past successes - they are ripe for smaller/nimbler/newer companies to start chipping away at their revenues.
- andsoitis 3y agoMicrosoft is financing OpenAI.
- ejb999 3y agocorrect, now they are - but OpenAI got a pretty good head start and foothold before Microsoft made an investment, and inarguably, were smaller and nimbler than google at the time - but I am not talking just about openAI, google has many, many products and services - they need to defend them all from lots of different startups and smaller players simultaneously who only need to be good at that one thing to start making dents in googles armour.
- nielsbot 3y agocoasting on their search+ads monopoly you mean.
- AirMax98 3y agoGithub Copilot was the real killer for me. I would say around 80% of the time I no longer have to leave my IDE for trivial problems (e.g. I no longer Google the regex) that I'd otherwise just rip from Stack Overflow.
- surajrmal 3y agoThose searches aren't monetized anyway afaik, so I'm not sure it's really a bad thing for Google that you no longer make those queries.
- zug_zug 3y agoWell, I would argue that if the company had the gumption to do a 180 (on short-term spam/enshit/ads) they are the best placed company to revitalize and still dominate the search market 5 years from now. It's really hard to argue they don't have everything they would need to build the best product on a technical level - information, AI-talent, capital. But somehow we all know they are going to kill the golden goose for a quick feast.
- SoftTalker 3y agoWhy do you think ChatGPT will stay free of ads, SEO-spam, tracking, profiling, all the stuff that's wrong with traditional search?
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoI think SEO-spam would be much harder to implemented in an LLM vs. a traditional search engine. The harder part is figuring out an economic model where sources get any traffic in the first place.
- lupire 3y agoIn fact LLMs are precisely what is helping SEO spam destroy Google (and all other) search. That may be why MS loves ChatGPT so much.
- andsoitis 3y agoI’ve mostly switched to Bard, which I find superior to ChatGPT. More nuanced for most of the questions and conversations I have and I especially appreciate them linking out to sources!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- surajrmal 3y agoSuperior technology is not enough to win. For the most part, people are happy with Google, it integrates well into all that various surfaces folks use, etc. ChatGPT had a lot of hype and seemed the closest to getting mind share to the point where it would affect search usage, but from what I can tell, it's not made a dent. Anecdotes from the bubble of technologists don't really speak to the wider trends anymore. Things which are mediocre and still dominate their segments include: Toyota cars, Heinz ketchup, GoPro cameras, Microsoft Windows, etc. Brand loyalty, trust, and familiarity simply go further than you think.
- brycewray 3y agoThose of us Of A Certain Age™ would add VHS to that list in your second paragraph. BetaMax was better in almost every way and even had the Sony name behind it, but in the end it didn’t matter.
- drewcoo 3y agoAssuming there's competition, doesn't dominating a market mean your product is the new mediocre? Competitors will try to compete on price but be low quality, compete on quality but be high priced, and you're in the sweet big middle spot?
- closeparen 3y agoSearch quality is diminishing because "the web" as a graph of hyperlinked text documents where any domain name is a priori equally likely to contain a gem of information you're looking for, doesn't really exist anymore.
- Amezarak 3y agoIt does, Google just heavily penalizes non-top-website pages for some inexplicable reason, sometimes outright de-indexing them. I guess you could argue this is a consequence of stopping spam - better to just ignore all small sites rather than risk catching blogspam. But somehow there's still plenty of blogspam.
- wantsanagent 3y agohttps://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-... Nearly $20B in profit in a quarter? Good time for layoffs.
- oldpersonintx 3y agothat's irrelevant they overhired and now they are fixing it, and that profit margin will rise with the reduction in compensation they're firing because they can
- ldargin 3y agoThere shouldn't be much controversy over fixing pandemic-era over hiring. But that's just the public-facing rationale. Betting more heavily on AI tech might be the real reason.
- asadotzler 3y agoYou should fix overhiring by firing the people that overhired. That never happens though because there's no accountability in leadership in any major tech company.
- asadotzler 3y agoOverhiring should be punished. But it isn't. A shitty CEO can tell his company to overhire and then when that becomes a problem, he can tell his company to do layoffs and never pay a price.
- noname120 3y agoMaybe he's just optimizing the short-term stock market value so he can sell all his shares.
- lupire 3y agoHe has rolling multi year vests and annual trading plans.
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoCan anyone name one thing of value this dude has actually done in his time in charge. Feel in a few years he's gonna have a worse reputation than Ballmer in terms of squandering potential.
- racl101 3y agoAt least Ballmer was funny and charismatic.
- hardasspunk 3y agofunny: ok. charismatic: this is too much!
- kranke155 3y agoHe had this weird manic energy.
- hardasspunk 3y agoYeah, he was maniac for sure.
- logicchains 3y agoDevelopers, developers, developers!
- belter 3y agoNowadays would be LLMs, LLMs LLMs
- mostlysimilar 3y agoNo, because developers actually provide value to the world.
- hangonhn 3y ago
- anon291 3y agoWhat does Google even do anymore? I can't think of any innovation they've made in the past five years or so? Anyone?
- noname120 3y agoWaymo, Google Brain, and now DeepMind (acquired).
- logicchains 3y agoGoogle Brain is like the Betamax of the 2010s.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ben7799 3y agoI think this is just expected. Google hired way too many people during the pandemic. Really a question of why they thought that was a good idea. They added like 70k employees in about 4 years. For what?
- cortesoft 3y agoMoney was stupid cheap, so employees didn't have to return much value to be a positive investment. Now, money is more expensive so they aren't worth it anymore.
- lupire 3y agoThey aren't firing the people they allegedly wrongly hired. Google is still valued as a growth company. They need to hire everyone they can to build new profitable things.
- candiodari 3y agoJudging by what's happening to Google's search results, perhaps adding another 70k employees would have been the better tactic.
- diogenescynic 3y agoI know a person who works there that barely did their job when I worked with them. I know it’s anecdotal but when they got hired there I knew they just not have the same standards as they used to. I know another person there who says there isn’t even enough work to stay busy.
- PichaiSu___ 3y ago[flagged]
- gnarlouse 3y agoGoogle search has gotten so bad I’m genuinely considering trying bing
- racl101 3y agoYeah, me too. Never thought I'd ever do that.
- 0x000xca0xfe 3y agoI switched to Bing (and some smaller engines) after Google failed to find exact ASCII matches on sites I care about. Bing is not yet superior, but it's mostly good enough and abandoning Google felt like a big relief somehow...
- seydor 3y agogoogle still controls the search bars in android and ios. At most, openAI+apple could conspire to take their chunk away
- candiodari 3y agoThere's people that use those bars? It could be Baidu, those search bars, and in 10+ years of using ios and android (ipad + android phone), I'd never have noticed.
- seydor 3y agoi mean the omnibox
- candiodari 3y agoWhat's the omnibox?
- hendi_ 3y agoI've switched to Kagi a year ago and haven't looked back. I've tried Bing and DDG before and went back to Google immediately. Not so with Kagi, since switching over to it I've googled less than a handful of times. Seriously, try it.
- Workaccount2 3y agoSundar should have been let go years ago, but I guess the pandemic money explosion made it easy for him to show big returns. But look between the margins and it's clear google is rotting on the inside. Search sucks. Gemini a year behind (despite google inventing transformers). Canceling products left and right leaving no consumer faith in new offerings. Cloud platform being an absolute terrible experience, even if you have a rep inside too. Internal power groups crippling anything that isn't deemed sufficiently DEI compliant. The laying off Sundar should be what investors want the most.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago> The laying off Sundar should be what investors want the most. Alphabet union [1] should put forth such a public letter, in keeping with tradition of Google stakeholders publicly demanding unnecessary expenses to be reined in [2]. [1] https://www.alphabetworkersunion.org/ https://www.alphabetworkersunion.org/ [2] https://www.tcifund.com/files/corporateengageement/alphabet/20th%20January%202023.pdf https://www.tcifund.com/files/corporateengageement/alphabet/...
- nostrademons 3y agoRuth Porat IMHO is a worse offender. After the layoffs last year she was like "I was head of Morgan Stanley during the Global Financial Crisis" and Memegen was all "That is not the flex you think it is." Go from ruining the American economy to ruining Google... Most of the dysfunction within Google comes from management trying to manipulate a finance department that is not-very-bright to loosen their purse strings for their pet projects. There's a lot of "That Slides presentation seems pretty promising, here's another $250M for you" and not a whole lot of understanding of how to build an enduring product.
- ycdxvjp 3y agoIdk man Bard has been better than ChatGPT imho. It has reduced my time spent on Google Search or watching long youtube videos (which is where most of their Ad revenue comes from). Not sure if thats already showing up in quarterly results but it's a hard job keeping those numbers up while this big transition is happening. Doesn't matter who the CEO is.
- ldargin 3y agoI wonder if this move is sound. Granted, inflation of consumer products hasn't died down, so they are getting choosier in how they spend, affecting Google's advertising revenue. So Google is betting more heavily on AI as a potential vehicle for revenue. But will the current AI tech really prove so disruptive, with high pricing?
- mathverse 3y ago[flagged]
- wnevets 3y agoMore layoffs will certainly make Google's search better!
- hardasspunk 3y agoWow, this is bad! I dreamt of working at Google since I was 16, but now I am not sure if it's the right place anymore!
- andyjohnson0 3y ago> “Improve company velocity, efficiency, and productivity, and deliver durable cost savings,” said one of the seven stated goals > The top goal on Google’s list was to “deliver the world’s most advanced, safe, and responsible AI.” > The cost-cutting moves came as Google pours more resources into its heated competition with Microsoft-backed OpenAI So are they reducing headcount so that they can buy a load more A100s or whatever? Or is this being demanded by shareholders? How does the means connect with the objective(s)?
- crowcroft 3y agoThis is a distraction from the real problem. Yes, 'cost savings' in the form of layoffs is bad given the amount of money Google is making. But the real issue is that they hardly seem to be really narrowing their focus and pushing out something that captures people's imagination and gives them a reason to believe in the company. I believe the technical folks have mostly done their job across the years. The product, marketing and comms folks seem to be MIA though. Not every technical feat Google accomplishes will be a home run, but between ChromeOS/Pixelbooks, Stadia, Bard (so far), Nest/Smarthome their should be at least one winner. IMO in every case I think you can trace the failure back to bad product launches, poor PR and comms, and poor marketing. Very rarely is the tech 'bad'.
- pzo 3y agoGoogle has been standing on their laurels for the last decade but these days they have bigger competition for their Ad market and also landscape changed: 1) Apple new permission for tracking affected probably not only Facebook but Google as well 2) Web turned into bigger junk and SEO game and Google Search is not that useful anymore 3) Some (small fraction) still moved to DuckDuckGo / Bing or other search engines 4) Apple competing with google map with their own product 5) Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat/TikTok/Twitter eating a bigger chunk of their Ads cake 6) They tried to dominate Facebook with Google+ and failed 7) They tried to dominate Whatsapp / Messenger with google meetup / hangout ( / whatever) and failed 8) Amazon also eating some of Google Ads profits with their Ads inside amazon.com (they failed with Google Shopping) 9) Now ChatGPT and friends also ganging up for google search 10) Lots of regulatory obstacles in EU and elsewhere. They focused too much on cloning competitors rather than innovating something new: Google+ after Facebook Google Shopping after Amazon Google Cloud after AWS / Azure Google Meetup after Whatsapp / Messenger Youtube Shorts after Tiktok / Instagram
- kranke155 3y agoLiterally any one of their crazy messaging apps could have worked had they just you know - Picked One and Stuck To It.
- elforce002 3y agoGoogle Domains, a product that gave them some change(189M), was shut down. It seems like they'll shut down any product that doesn't cause the world to stop. We're using some products and upper management is thinking on moving parts of the core business to different platforms "just in case". Google is loosing what little credibility they have left by always shutting down perfectly good products.
- diogenescynic 3y agoI know someone who works there who says there isn’t even enough work for people to stay busy.