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>Google is famous for not innovating on anything successfully PageRank Gmail Maps MapReduce Chrome Protocol Buffers Go

teractiveodular 2y ago
Maps was technically an acquisition (Where2). But like YouTube, Doubleclick, Google Docs (Writely), Translate (Word Lens), Google Flights (ITA) and many others, Google successfully grew these products into giants.
- akoboldfrying 2y ago
  I didn't know Maps (or Google Docs, or Translate) were acquisitions, thanks.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >Maps was technically an acquisition (Where2) Technically, but it's morphed so much that it doesn't even resemble its former self. I remember when Google Maps first came out and showed AJAX technology, so obviously superior to the competitors at the time like MapQuest. However, these days Google Maps is really more of a business directory with navigation, and it wasn't like that in the early days: you needed an address to navigate to.
dehrmann 2y ago
Didn't some of the early GPT work come out of Google?
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  The popular transformer paper, which went on to be used in things like ChatGPT, was authored by Google employees. But “come out of Google” is giving the organization too much credit and the individual too little. Also transformers were themselves a continuation of prior work like multi head attention. And it is possible that transformers were not needed - see this discussion from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41732853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41732853
  - tgma 2y ago
    Come on... that's so unfair. There is a reason such individuals chose to work at Google and not Apple or Amazon for example and were able to "individually" come up with such work without being pestered by their management to do other stuff.
kolinko 2y ago
Gmail was revolutionary at the start, but stopped innovating 10 years ago - why don’t we still have a good search engine within it? MapReduce would be invented anyway (I implemented it from scratch before learning of it’s existence). Chrome is just a slightly upgraded Firefox (and novadays Safari is just as good if not better with ai) PageRank was what gave Google monopoly, it’s not a result of monopoly. Go - I can give you that. ProtoBuf - not my field, but isn’t it just a format that someone else would develop to fill a niche? (unlike say mp3 that had new compression algorithms baked in) Maps - I can give you that. Some people might argue that it was an acquisition, but without Google’s muscle, Street View would not be feasible.
- nine_k 2y ago
  > Chrome is just a slightly upgraded Firefox Wat. It's like saying that an apple is a slightly upgraded orange. I would understand if you mentioned KHTML and Safari as relatives, but "slightly upgraded" does not fit anyway. > PageRank was what gave Google monopoly I don't think so. PageRank has been successfully implemented elsewhere, and outmatched. What helped Google build a monopoly was the first mover advantage, the network effects, and the incessant streams of money from AdWords (invented by Google), DoubleClick (acquired) and a bunch of other advertisement tools. > Maps - I can give you that. Don't :) Google Maps is an acquisition from 20 years ago. (As is Android, AdSense, and many other core flagship products of the Google brand.) If you want a relatively recent, successful Google service for general public, it's Google Photos.
  - whitehexagon 2y ago
    >If you want a relatively recent, successful Google service for general public, it's Google Photos. I seem to recall that followed the acquisition of Picasa.
    - nine_k 2y ago
      Picasa was rather different: it had a desktop client, had tags, did not have a dedicated view mode, etc. It ran as a separate product, and then was shut down, not integrated. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa
porridgeraisin 2y ago
Comparing the innovations of Bell Labs with..... _Protobuf_ of all things makes me gag.
- akoboldfrying 2y ago
  Gag if you want to gag, but I'm not comparing anything with Bell Labs. I'm giving evidence that the claim I quoted is false.
treyd 2y ago
Go you can hardly call an innovation. All of the ideas existed previously, and it's a poor execution on those ideas for reasons that have been discussed on HN at length before. They created it to serve their own needs in conditioning the labor market to make their hiring process easier.
- kajecounterhack 2y ago
  Gosh this is pretty unfair to Rob Pike and Ken Thompson. A lot of infrastructure companies have benefitted from Go the same way Google has, for the same reasons. Typical HN comment writing off significant thoughtfulness as "not an innovation" lol

Maps was technically an acquisition (Where2). But like YouTube, Doubleclick, Google Docs (Writely), Translate (Word Lens), Google Flights (ITA) and many others, Google successfully grew these products into giants.

akoboldfrying 2y ago
I didn't know Maps (or Google Docs, or Translate) were acquisitions, thanks.
shiroiushi 2y ago
>Maps was technically an acquisition (Where2) Technically, but it's morphed so much that it doesn't even resemble its former self. I remember when Google Maps first came out and showed AJAX technology, so obviously superior to the competitors at the time like MapQuest. However, these days Google Maps is really more of a business directory with navigation, and it wasn't like that in the early days: you needed an address to navigate to.

dehrmann 2y ago

Didn't some of the early GPT work come out of Google?

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
The popular transformer paper, which went on to be used in things like ChatGPT, was authored by Google employees. But “come out of Google” is giving the organization too much credit and the individual too little. Also transformers were themselves a continuation of prior work like multi head attention. And it is possible that transformers were not needed - see this discussion from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41732853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41732853
- tgma 2y ago
  Come on... that's so unfair. There is a reason such individuals chose to work at Google and not Apple or Amazon for example and were able to "individually" come up with such work without being pestered by their management to do other stuff.

kolinko 2y ago

Gmail was revolutionary at the start, but stopped innovating 10 years ago - why don’t we still have a good search engine within it? MapReduce would be invented anyway (I implemented it from scratch before learning of it’s existence). Chrome is just a slightly upgraded Firefox (and novadays Safari is just as good if not better with ai) PageRank was what gave Google monopoly, it’s not a result of monopoly. Go - I can give you that. ProtoBuf - not my field, but isn’t it just a format that someone else would develop to fill a niche? (unlike say mp3 that had new compression algorithms baked in) Maps - I can give you that. Some people might argue that it was an acquisition, but without Google’s muscle, Street View would not be feasible.

nine_k 2y ago
> Chrome is just a slightly upgraded Firefox Wat. It's like saying that an apple is a slightly upgraded orange. I would understand if you mentioned KHTML and Safari as relatives, but "slightly upgraded" does not fit anyway. > PageRank was what gave Google monopoly I don't think so. PageRank has been successfully implemented elsewhere, and outmatched. What helped Google build a monopoly was the first mover advantage, the network effects, and the incessant streams of money from AdWords (invented by Google), DoubleClick (acquired) and a bunch of other advertisement tools. > Maps - I can give you that. Don't :) Google Maps is an acquisition from 20 years ago. (As is Android, AdSense, and many other core flagship products of the Google brand.) If you want a relatively recent, successful Google service for general public, it's Google Photos.
- whitehexagon 2y ago
  >If you want a relatively recent, successful Google service for general public, it's Google Photos. I seem to recall that followed the acquisition of Picasa.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Picasa was rather different: it had a desktop client, had tags, did not have a dedicated view mode, etc. It ran as a separate product, and then was shut down, not integrated. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa

porridgeraisin 2y ago

Comparing the innovations of Bell Labs with..... _Protobuf_ of all things makes me gag.

akoboldfrying 2y ago
Gag if you want to gag, but I'm not comparing anything with Bell Labs. I'm giving evidence that the claim I quoted is false.

treyd 2y ago

Go you can hardly call an innovation. All of the ideas existed previously, and it's a poor execution on those ideas for reasons that have been discussed on HN at length before. They created it to serve their own needs in conditioning the labor market to make their hiring process easier.

kajecounterhack 2y ago
Gosh this is pretty unfair to Rob Pike and Ken Thompson. A lot of infrastructure companies have benefitted from Go the same way Google has, for the same reasons. Typical HN comment writing off significant thoughtfulness as "not an innovation" lol