4 ms·

Stepping past all the AI hype, as an engineer in what was Play/Android/Chrome, I'm excited about being closer to hardware. The fact that Pixel was in another di

Stepping past all the AI hype, as an engineer in what was Play/Android/Chrome, I'm excited about being closer to hardware. The fact that Pixel was in another division was always weird and felt like it was an artifact of legacy decisions rather than the right way for things to work today.

azangru 3y ago
> The fact that Pixel was in another division was always weird Was there a mechanism to communicate this weirdness to decision-makers? In a company that is in control of all of its teams, what is stopping a faster reorg?
- hashtag-til 3y ago
  - Politics - moats - "if we do this, XYZ is going to leave" - weak leadership - comfort zone - too many managers risking being spotted as obviously redundant as a result of a reorg :) What else?
- danpalmer 3y ago
  Yes this was a well understood phenomenon. These sorts of things grow slowly over time though, and the orgs are large, so understandable why it took a while.
- Xeamek 3y ago
  You assume this is 'just weirdness', but in the thread You have multiple examples that there were upsides to this separation as well
Zigurd 3y ago
It was probably kept apart while Google was deciding if Pixel was going to survive and to not antagonize 3rd party Android phone OEMs. But all that is more locked-in now.
Rinzler89 3y ago
>The fact that Pixel was in another division was always weird Why? Having a separate division also has upsides, like keeping it away from terrible exec interference. A lot of products we take for granted today succeeded because they were a sort of skunkworks project away form the reach of the mothership that's full of execs who would have tried to push their own agenda in the product or shut it down due to their lack of vision. The original PlayStation, first Xbox, DirectX, Gameboy, etc.
bushbaba 3y ago
Was done as pixel made negative profit while android made positive profit. Even now I’m not sure pixel is bringing any meaningful revenue to Google. Google sold just 10 million pixel phones last year. That’s not even 10% of Samsung.
Xeamek 3y ago
I think there is value in having core android team that focused on AOSP separate from the product oriented pixel or apps teams. And yes, in the end everyone end up using GMS (besides those who are banned, ie. Huawei). But still, it's better to have a separation that is imperfect, vs not having one at all
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  I don’t think most of GMS works behind the great firewall right? So technically, all Android phones sold in China should be using something else.

azangru 3y ago

> The fact that Pixel was in another division was always weird Was there a mechanism to communicate this weirdness to decision-makers? In a company that is in control of all of its teams, what is stopping a faster reorg?

hashtag-til 3y ago
- Politics - moats - "if we do this, XYZ is going to leave" - weak leadership - comfort zone - too many managers risking being spotted as obviously redundant as a result of a reorg :) What else?
danpalmer 3y ago
Yes this was a well understood phenomenon. These sorts of things grow slowly over time though, and the orgs are large, so understandable why it took a while.
Xeamek 3y ago
You assume this is 'just weirdness', but in the thread You have multiple examples that there were upsides to this separation as well

Zigurd 3y ago

It was probably kept apart while Google was deciding if Pixel was going to survive and to not antagonize 3rd party Android phone OEMs. But all that is more locked-in now.

Rinzler89 3y ago

>The fact that Pixel was in another division was always weird Why? Having a separate division also has upsides, like keeping it away from terrible exec interference. A lot of products we take for granted today succeeded because they were a sort of skunkworks project away form the reach of the mothership that's full of execs who would have tried to push their own agenda in the product or shut it down due to their lack of vision. The original PlayStation, first Xbox, DirectX, Gameboy, etc.

bushbaba 3y ago

Was done as pixel made negative profit while android made positive profit. Even now I’m not sure pixel is bringing any meaningful revenue to Google. Google sold just 10 million pixel phones last year. That’s not even 10% of Samsung.

Xeamek 3y ago

I think there is value in having core android team that focused on AOSP separate from the product oriented pixel or apps teams. And yes, in the end everyone end up using GMS (besides those who are banned, ie. Huawei). But still, it's better to have a separation that is imperfect, vs not having one at all

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
I don’t think most of GMS works behind the great firewall right? So technically, all Android phones sold in China should be using something else.