5 ms·

Sergey is brilliant but it's really the lightsaber that is super voting shares that make him uniquely empowered to slash through Google's immense bureaucracy.

fragmede 9mo ago
I think being the founder of Google gives him more political capital at Google than anything on paper. As a controlling member of the board there's a variety of things he can do with that hammer, but just simply being who he is, not even just on the org chart, has got to be worth way more.
- taneq 9mo ago
  The very fact that he (or anyone in a similar position) holds the hammer is enough to guarantee that he will very seldom have to swing it.
- bryanrasmussen 9mo ago
  this seems an idealistic view, my cynical view is that if King Lear gives up all his legal paper power he will find out nobody cares who the hell he is and take advantage of him without remorse.
  - taneq 9mo ago
    In my experience (at a much smaller scale than these guys, of course) the legal papers power is more of a formality. It’s the soft power tied up in knowledge, relationships, trust and goodwill that really count.
    - mpweiher 9mo ago
      Right up until the point that the person with the legal power yanks the rug from under you.
      - taneq 9mo ago
        That’s when you find out if the soft power you’ve accrued is sufficient.
        mpweiher 9mo ago
        Nope. That's when you find out that hard power beats soft power when the two come into conflict. Doesn't mean soft power isn't important, because most of the time there isn't such a hard conflict. Well, hopefully.
- intended 9mo ago
  Looking at the two as separate parts ends up forcing the dance apart from the dancer no
- mpweiher 9mo ago
  The ghost of Steve Jobs would like a word with you.
  - jonny_eh 9mo ago
    Are you referring to his firing in the 80s? That was because he was supposedly a jerk at the time and no one wanted to deal with him.
- mycall 9mo ago
  What you describe is a benevolent dictator.
leoc 9mo ago
Brin wasn’t bothered to wield any of that power to try to arrest the decline in Google’s search quality. He wasn’t bothered to direct the Chrome team to support MathML, or to bring back Google Reader, or do anything about a hundred small insults like, say, the deletion of YouTube comments with URLs to keep the rubes inside the casino. But he was able and willing to come back and wield his clout because he was bored and wanted to play with AI. As someone who’s old enough to remember how much leeway Google used to get from governments and the public at large on the basis that Page and Brin were nice young men who could be relied on to be responsible stewards it’s a little galling. Don’t give Mr. Brin any belly-rubs until he tells us when Reader is coming back.
- skibidithink 9mo ago
  He saw AI as an existential threat to Google.
  - dv_dt 9mo ago
    Enshittification of existing money making activities of Google independently of AI is also an existential threat. Parts of the threat are codependent on AI, but there is little reason to open the door wider as they have.
    - skibidithink 9mo ago
      There are no obvious threats to AdWords (aside from LLM chatbots) and YouTube.
  - leoc 9mo ago
    Right, though it's also reasonably clear that part of the story there is that he finds a high-stakes AI race personally interesting and exciting on a technical and a business level. Conversely it's also fairly clear that he finds doing anything about the steady encrudification of Google to be a big snooze. (Even though it may also be a long-term, though less dramatic, problem for the company's future health, exactly the sort of long-term issue which Google's dual-stock structure was supposed to empower Page and Brin to care about and act on.) But in any case, whatever his mix of motivations are, he's able to act within Google on things he cares about. He is also perfectly able to act on a number of the issues at Google which have significantly bad effects on its users and on the population of Earth at large. (Not all of them, to be sure: there are clearly some problems which would be very hard to fix, alongside a number of no-brainers.) He evidently just isn't willing, because he doesn't care about them.

fragmede 9mo ago

I think being the founder of Google gives him more political capital at Google than anything on paper. As a controlling member of the board there's a variety of things he can do with that hammer, but just simply being who he is, not even just on the org chart, has got to be worth way more.

taneq 9mo ago
The very fact that he (or anyone in a similar position) holds the hammer is enough to guarantee that he will very seldom have to swing it.
bryanrasmussen 9mo ago
this seems an idealistic view, my cynical view is that if King Lear gives up all his legal paper power he will find out nobody cares who the hell he is and take advantage of him without remorse.
- taneq 9mo ago
  In my experience (at a much smaller scale than these guys, of course) the legal papers power is more of a formality. It’s the soft power tied up in knowledge, relationships, trust and goodwill that really count.
  - mpweiher 9mo ago
    Right up until the point that the person with the legal power yanks the rug from under you.
    - taneq 9mo ago
      That’s when you find out if the soft power you’ve accrued is sufficient.
      - mpweiher 9mo ago
        Nope. That's when you find out that hard power beats soft power when the two come into conflict. Doesn't mean soft power isn't important, because most of the time there isn't such a hard conflict. Well, hopefully.
intended 9mo ago
Looking at the two as separate parts ends up forcing the dance apart from the dancer no
mpweiher 9mo ago
The ghost of Steve Jobs would like a word with you.
- jonny_eh 9mo ago
  Are you referring to his firing in the 80s? That was because he was supposedly a jerk at the time and no one wanted to deal with him.
mycall 9mo ago
What you describe is a benevolent dictator.

leoc 9mo ago

Brin wasn’t bothered to wield any of that power to try to arrest the decline in Google’s search quality. He wasn’t bothered to direct the Chrome team to support MathML, or to bring back Google Reader, or do anything about a hundred small insults like, say, the deletion of YouTube comments with URLs to keep the rubes inside the casino. But he was able and willing to come back and wield his clout because he was bored and wanted to play with AI. As someone who’s old enough to remember how much leeway Google used to get from governments and the public at large on the basis that Page and Brin were nice young men who could be relied on to be responsible stewards it’s a little galling. Don’t give Mr. Brin any belly-rubs until he tells us when Reader is coming back.

skibidithink 9mo ago
He saw AI as an existential threat to Google.
- dv_dt 9mo ago
  Enshittification of existing money making activities of Google independently of AI is also an existential threat. Parts of the threat are codependent on AI, but there is little reason to open the door wider as they have.
  - skibidithink 9mo ago
    There are no obvious threats to AdWords (aside from LLM chatbots) and YouTube.
- leoc 9mo ago
  Right, though it's also reasonably clear that part of the story there is that he finds a high-stakes AI race personally interesting and exciting on a technical and a business level. Conversely it's also fairly clear that he finds doing anything about the steady encrudification of Google to be a big snooze. (Even though it may also be a long-term, though less dramatic, problem for the company's future health, exactly the sort of long-term issue which Google's dual-stock structure was supposed to empower Page and Brin to care about and act on.) But in any case, whatever his mix of motivations are, he's able to act within Google on things he cares about. He is also perfectly able to act on a number of the issues at Google which have significantly bad effects on its users and on the population of Earth at large. (Not all of them, to be sure: there are clearly some problems which would be very hard to fix, alongside a number of no-brainers.) He evidently just isn't willing, because he doesn't care about them.