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I have no love for Google but, in light of the Google Graveyard, I am at a loss to see how to cut it up in a way where almost anything can remain profitable on

I have no love for Google but, in light of the Google Graveyard, I am at a loss to see how to cut it up in a way where almost anything can remain profitable on its own. Imagine chopping Search and Ads out to be their own things. GoogAds turns into just another advertising company. Perhaps viable but uninteresting. GoogSearch, well, almost nobody wants to pay for search, so they seek some kind of way to get money, and the start up with the integrated ads, soon to result in what we have now. I used to run various Google Search Appliances, but they bailed out of that market. Peel off GMail? More than zero people want to pay for email, so you might see something like a clunky Fastmail with a free tier and a pay tier. The free tier means ads again and you're evolving to a Yahoo model. Ummm, nobody really wanted that. How about hardware? I dunno, are Pixels a loss leader for Google? I'll bow to someone else's insight on this, and I'm not really hip to the phone scene: are there a lot of "smartphones, we only make smartphones" companies? Google Docs and various officeware might stand on its own as a distant second to Microsoft. I know some people pay for that. Google Books, maaaaaaaaaaybe. It might stand on its own but here we just see people having to pay for what was once free. I just don't see anything interesting or stimulating coming out of carving up Google. Almost everything they did (it has been a while since I was "into" them) seemed focused on making things that were almost byproducts, wherein their real utility was feeding the search <-> advertising cycle.

taeric 2y ago
Oddly, breaking it up may give some items a better chance at living? Ostensibly, one of the main drivers of that graveyard is the monorepo nature of how they rollout changes, combined with them moving people off of projects. Splitting them directly addresses both of those?
- at_a_remove 2y ago
  Again, which items? Google Sets? Ain't nobody gonna pay for that! Chromecast? Google Domains? I am scrolling through the list and not seeing much that would stand on its own two feet. Stadia? Google+? I'm just not seeing much that can stand on its own, that people will pay for without it resorting to an ad model to support it.
  - taeric 2y ago
    I mean, some of the items that have been killed were actively used while they were getting killed? Such that they may not pay a lot, but that does not mean they won't pay. The problem with a lot of Google services is that they have to generate enough ad revenue to offset the high cost of development and maintenance that Google's operating style leads to. Ostensibly, you could have some of these stand on cheaper practices?

taeric 2y ago

Oddly, breaking it up may give some items a better chance at living? Ostensibly, one of the main drivers of that graveyard is the monorepo nature of how they rollout changes, combined with them moving people off of projects. Splitting them directly addresses both of those?

at_a_remove 2y ago
Again, which items? Google Sets? Ain't nobody gonna pay for that! Chromecast? Google Domains? I am scrolling through the list and not seeing much that would stand on its own two feet. Stadia? Google+? I'm just not seeing much that can stand on its own, that people will pay for without it resorting to an ad model to support it.
- taeric 2y ago
  I mean, some of the items that have been killed were actively used while they were getting killed? Such that they may not pay a lot, but that does not mean they won't pay. The problem with a lot of Google services is that they have to generate enough ad revenue to offset the high cost of development and maintenance that Google's operating style leads to. Ostensibly, you could have some of these stand on cheaper practices?