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"Google is getting good, really good, at building things that see the world around them and actually understand what they’re seeing." That statement spells it

by 51Cards 14y ago

"Google is getting good, really good, at building things that see the world around them and actually understand what they’re seeing." That statement spells it for me. With Google I see research, I see pushing tech boundaries and hardware experiments, I see new ways to interpret the world. With Facebook I see a huge lump of data but nothing really too groundbreaking. I don't deny Facebook's momentum... it's huge and it's valuable... but is it future proof? Are they thriving on momentum alone? Which wins the race? Dunno yet. Maybe it's just not the same race.

falling 14y ago
With Google you see research (which is of course commendable), but so far they haven’t been able to produce profit from anything else than ads, so I would call that research awesome, useful, beautiful, but not (yet) future proof for the company.
- mtgx 14y ago
  Making money from ads is just a business model. Don't confuse it for a one-hit product. Google could make a lot of different products and services that are based on ads. What you're saying is like saying 30 years ago that TV networks only survive on ads. I think in the next 5-10 years we'll also see a much more hardware-oriented Google, too. I think Google is serious about hardware (Glass,Motorola devices...maybe even a self-driving, self-sustaining electric car in the future? Who knows).
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  Google don't have to produce profit now. Remember that they didn't profit from search or ads for a long time. What they have to do is ensure no one else profits from some research, and to have a way of profiting in the long term. That is a lot easier to work out once something is successful, you know how people use it and it has become somewhat indispensable to users.
  - falling 14y ago
    Isn’t that repeating the same thing I said? They are creating new cool tech, but they have to figure out how to make money from it, thus it’s not future proof. Android is successful, but apparently it’s not generating much profit for Google.
    - rogerbinns 14y ago
      > Isn’t that repeating the same thing I said? Not even close. They do not have to figure out how to make money from things now or even for several years. Or in some cases ever. The ad revenues can subsidise things forever. For example their maps product (excluding premium) being free means no one else can realistically charge for an equivalent service. But all the people using it provide Google with a large amount of information such as places people actually want to go and where they don't. Those signals can be further used to improve their search relevance which keeps users away from competing search products. asymco.com has various revenue numbers. At best Google is making around $4 per Android user per year in revenue (not profit). However if Google did not provide Android then they would be completely at the mercy of the likes of Apple and Microsoft who could make using and finding Google products on their devices hard. Chrome is another example. Even if not a single person used Chrome, its effect was a massive reinvigoration of browsers (sandboxing, Javascript performance etc). Google depend on browsers to deliver their products so this helped ensure continued good delivery. (If users started abandoning browsers for native platform apps then again Google would be in danger of being shut out.)
- markmark 14y ago
  You hear this a lot (Google is an advertising company, they make 95% of their money from ads). But by that metric many companies are ad companies. Pretty much every web site on the web is just an ad company, because that is how they actually make money, most of the television and radio industries are just ad companies, because that is how they make money. From http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html if I'm reading it right, 69% of their revenue comes from ads on their own sites. For mine that deserves to be counted as "technology company revenue" not "advertising company revenue". If they didn't have their own ad arm they still would have made a big chunk of that 69% by using some other company to show ads on gmail, youtube and their search page, but if they were only an advertising company they would have just made the 27% that was pure "advertising on other sites" revenue. Just because youtube makes money by showing ads, doesn't make youtube not profitable.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- saraid216 14y ago
  This is actually why I've been saying that Google is acting more like a government than like a business. They have a buoy of revenue to coast on and are spending it on (what appears to be) unrelated R&D. It smells more like IBM or Microsoft than Ford or Chevrolet. To me, it's not just not the same race. It's not even the same game. Facebook's playing Tetris; Google's playing Civilization.
  - gaius 14y ago
    It smells like Bell Labs. Where do Ken Thompson and Rob Pike work these days? ;-)
ajross 14y ago
There's a lot of truth to this (though I'm generally a big skeptic when people talk about "research" in the abstract; and I remain genunienly "WTF are they thinking!?" about Glass). Google tries stuff, fails a lot, and stumbles on as many successes as they engineer. Facebook has executed really well on their core stuff, but... what else? I mean, they've been on a huge hiring binge now for four years. What do they have to show for all that talent? It seems like a big waste to society if nothing else.
- taligent 14y ago
  Being able to connect with people from around the world and share content is not a big waste to society.
  - samstave 14y ago
    It is if that service is designed to A) Collect data about the society as a whole in order to B) sell them shit and C) spy on them.
  - dvdhsu 14y ago
    > Being able to connect with people from around the world and share content is not a big waste to society. That's correct. However, the ability to "connect with people from around the world and share content" is, as your parent post notes, is Facebook's "core" functionality. What does Facebook have to show for the engineers they've hired this year, engineers they've hired last year? Are read receipts on Facebook chat more beneficial to "society" than other endeavors the engineers could be working on instead?
    - nkwiatek 14y ago
      Do you really think it's appropriate to compare a 2-days-to-make chat feature with self-driving vehicles and clothes with computers in them?
    - taligent 14y ago
      When Google changes its icons for special occasions is that more beneficial to "society" than other things they could be working. Is ANYTHING people do really the best they could do for society. I just don't understand why you are holding Facebook to some arbitrary standard.
tlrobinson 14y ago
If I were Facebook, publicly I'd focus on growth, while quietly building killer applications with the massive amounts of data they have. Consider how many photos they have with users' faces tagged. They'd be crazy not to leverage that data. With the right facial recognition technology they will own that space, which would be extremely useful in products that compete with, say, Project Glass. Ditto with location data, but they don't quite have the same monopoly there, so I wouldn't be surprised if they acquire Foursquare in the next year (perhaps more difficult than Instagram give the stock price)
- saraid216 14y ago
  Are you seriously suggesting that they'll come out with a piece of software that can compete with a piece of hardware? Competing with Glass, assuming it's successful by some meaningful measure, will require physical manufacture. I guess they could leverage their massive amounts of data to blackmail supply chains or something...
  - tlrobinson 14y ago
    No, I'm suggesting they could compete directly with Project Glass or similar types of products, or at least partner with hardware companies. The software is what makes the hardware interesting to use. I have no clue what you're talking about regarding blackmail.
bane 14y ago
Google just seems to be taking a strategy of pushing the "R" a little closer to "D" in "R&D" then taking it directly to market. What most people don't see is that a feature of the "R" is a great many failures. By pushing the "R" forward some of those failures end up in the public sphere. Will it work? Who knows. But history shows that investments into pure R&D ultimately end up paying in large multiples of the initial investment despite the large numbers of failures.
danielrhodes 14y ago
There's no question that Google is good at R&D. In the past these projects have led to full featured products that were pretty great. However, lately that hasn't been the case and it wasn't because of lack of vision but lack of top notch execution and lack of attention to the experience element people expect these days. When companies start competing with each other rather than with themselves, they tend to lose sight of the end goal which is to create great products.

by 51Cards 14y ago

falling 14y ago

With Google you see research (which is of course commendable), but so far they haven’t been able to produce profit from anything else than ads, so I would call that research awesome, useful, beautiful, but not (yet) future proof for the company.

mtgx 14y ago
Making money from ads is just a business model. Don't confuse it for a one-hit product. Google could make a lot of different products and services that are based on ads. What you're saying is like saying 30 years ago that TV networks only survive on ads. I think in the next 5-10 years we'll also see a much more hardware-oriented Google, too. I think Google is serious about hardware (Glass,Motorola devices...maybe even a self-driving, self-sustaining electric car in the future? Who knows).
rogerbinns 14y ago
Google don't have to produce profit now. Remember that they didn't profit from search or ads for a long time. What they have to do is ensure no one else profits from some research, and to have a way of profiting in the long term. That is a lot easier to work out once something is successful, you know how people use it and it has become somewhat indispensable to users.
- falling 14y ago
  Isn’t that repeating the same thing I said? They are creating new cool tech, but they have to figure out how to make money from it, thus it’s not future proof. Android is successful, but apparently it’s not generating much profit for Google.
  - rogerbinns 14y ago
    > Isn’t that repeating the same thing I said? Not even close. They do not have to figure out how to make money from things now or even for several years. Or in some cases ever. The ad revenues can subsidise things forever. For example their maps product (excluding premium) being free means no one else can realistically charge for an equivalent service. But all the people using it provide Google with a large amount of information such as places people actually want to go and where they don't. Those signals can be further used to improve their search relevance which keeps users away from competing search products. asymco.com has various revenue numbers. At best Google is making around $4 per Android user per year in revenue (not profit). However if Google did not provide Android then they would be completely at the mercy of the likes of Apple and Microsoft who could make using and finding Google products on their devices hard. Chrome is another example. Even if not a single person used Chrome, its effect was a massive reinvigoration of browsers (sandboxing, Javascript performance etc). Google depend on browsers to deliver their products so this helped ensure continued good delivery. (If users started abandoning browsers for native platform apps then again Google would be in danger of being shut out.)
markmark 14y ago
You hear this a lot (Google is an advertising company, they make 95% of their money from ads). But by that metric many companies are ad companies. Pretty much every web site on the web is just an ad company, because that is how they actually make money, most of the television and radio industries are just ad companies, because that is how they make money. From http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html if I'm reading it right, 69% of their revenue comes from ads on their own sites. For mine that deserves to be counted as "technology company revenue" not "advertising company revenue". If they didn't have their own ad arm they still would have made a big chunk of that 69% by using some other company to show ads on gmail, youtube and their search page, but if they were only an advertising company they would have just made the 27% that was pure "advertising on other sites" revenue. Just because youtube makes money by showing ads, doesn't make youtube not profitable.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
saraid216 14y ago
This is actually why I've been saying that Google is acting more like a government than like a business. They have a buoy of revenue to coast on and are spending it on (what appears to be) unrelated R&D. It smells more like IBM or Microsoft than Ford or Chevrolet. To me, it's not just not the same race. It's not even the same game. Facebook's playing Tetris; Google's playing Civilization.
- gaius 14y ago
  It smells like Bell Labs. Where do Ken Thompson and Rob Pike work these days? ;-)

ajross 14y ago

There's a lot of truth to this (though I'm generally a big skeptic when people talk about "research" in the abstract; and I remain genunienly "WTF are they thinking!?" about Glass). Google tries stuff, fails a lot, and stumbles on as many successes as they engineer. Facebook has executed really well on their core stuff, but... what else? I mean, they've been on a huge hiring binge now for four years. What do they have to show for all that talent? It seems like a big waste to society if nothing else.

taligent 14y ago
Being able to connect with people from around the world and share content is not a big waste to society.
- samstave 14y ago
  It is if that service is designed to A) Collect data about the society as a whole in order to B) sell them shit and C) spy on them.
- dvdhsu 14y ago
  > Being able to connect with people from around the world and share content is not a big waste to society. That's correct. However, the ability to "connect with people from around the world and share content" is, as your parent post notes, is Facebook's "core" functionality. What does Facebook have to show for the engineers they've hired this year, engineers they've hired last year? Are read receipts on Facebook chat more beneficial to "society" than other endeavors the engineers could be working on instead?
  - nkwiatek 14y ago
    Do you really think it's appropriate to compare a 2-days-to-make chat feature with self-driving vehicles and clothes with computers in them?
  - taligent 14y ago
    When Google changes its icons for special occasions is that more beneficial to "society" than other things they could be working. Is ANYTHING people do really the best they could do for society. I just don't understand why you are holding Facebook to some arbitrary standard.

tlrobinson 14y ago

If I were Facebook, publicly I'd focus on growth, while quietly building killer applications with the massive amounts of data they have. Consider how many photos they have with users' faces tagged. They'd be crazy not to leverage that data. With the right facial recognition technology they will own that space, which would be extremely useful in products that compete with, say, Project Glass. Ditto with location data, but they don't quite have the same monopoly there, so I wouldn't be surprised if they acquire Foursquare in the next year (perhaps more difficult than Instagram give the stock price)

saraid216 14y ago
Are you seriously suggesting that they'll come out with a piece of software that can compete with a piece of hardware? Competing with Glass, assuming it's successful by some meaningful measure, will require physical manufacture. I guess they could leverage their massive amounts of data to blackmail supply chains or something...
- tlrobinson 14y ago
  No, I'm suggesting they could compete directly with Project Glass or similar types of products, or at least partner with hardware companies. The software is what makes the hardware interesting to use. I have no clue what you're talking about regarding blackmail.

bane 14y ago

Google just seems to be taking a strategy of pushing the "R" a little closer to "D" in "R&D" then taking it directly to market. What most people don't see is that a feature of the "R" is a great many failures. By pushing the "R" forward some of those failures end up in the public sphere. Will it work? Who knows. But history shows that investments into pure R&D ultimately end up paying in large multiples of the initial investment despite the large numbers of failures.

danielrhodes 14y ago

There's no question that Google is good at R&D. In the past these projects have led to full featured products that were pretty great. However, lately that hasn't been the case and it wasn't because of lack of vision but lack of top notch execution and lack of attention to the experience element people expect these days. When companies start competing with each other rather than with themselves, they tend to lose sight of the end goal which is to create great products.