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The advantages of a single platform are as obvious as the disadvantages. In that they are often whatever you want to frame them as for a narrative. I do think

by taeric 5mo ago

The advantages of a single platform are as obvious as the disadvantages. In that they are often whatever you want to frame them as for a narrative. I do think Google will continue to get results out of their tooling, as long as they are investing in the tooling. But that is not zero cost. Is it worth it for what they are doing? Largely seems to be. But it isn't like they are that much more successful at software projects than any other company? They are still largely an ads company, no?

compiler-guy 5mo ago
Google is an ads company with a large amount of infrastructure to back it up. Sure, the money is mostly in ads, but serving searches, AI, youtube, and all the rest at the scale Google does it requires a technical tour-de-force. Does Google do it better than everyone? Absolutely not. But it does it better than many. Certainly it isn't the _only_ way to do it--other companies also manage to do it. But not all that many at the same scale. It's an existence proof that you can.
- taeric 5mo ago
  Most of what they do really really well, though, is accomplished by massive amounts of spending. That isn't a knock on it. Consider that they spend more on trying to build up and support this central IDE than most companies dream of losing in productivity to not having this.
- randomCloud 5mo ago
  There are things people do in Borg that when ported to our own public cloud kills entire regions. Sure you get limited choice but things work at global scale without thought
vineyardmike 5mo ago
> But it isn't like they are that much more successful at software projects than any other company? They are still largely an ads company, no? They have a ton of other software in 2026. And they have a pretty diverse (and diversifying) income stream today. Like 30-40% from non-ads. Is it worth it? That’s for them to say, but they can ramp up cloud services at scale pretty fast as a core competency.
- taeric 5mo ago
  I mean, ads is 73% of revenue. Of the rest, ~60% is Cloud, ~35% is hardware and subscriptions and app store fees. So, sure, lots of spots for software there. But still nothing that would make me think of them as a software company. Or, worse, a lot of software that I don't have a strongly favorable view on. :D
ajross 5mo ago
> But it isn't like [Google] are that much more successful at software projects than any other company? I re-read this several times trying to figure out where the irony was hidden. But... it's not there?
- taeric 5mo ago
  Do they have more success in software products than other companies, though? Most of the software many of us know from them, were acquisitions. They still do heavy acquisitions. Notable that they have double the acquisitions of Amazon. They are on par with IBM. A colossal amount of money spent to make things happen. So, again, are they that much more successful at software than other companies? They have more hilarious flops than any other company. Don't get me wrong. I still use some of the stuff. I don't hate them. I don't even think they are particularly bad at things. I just don't think they are any more successful than other software companies. Specifically at the software side of it.
  - computerdork 5mo ago
    Think for a large tech company, they did a really good job with success in software. For exammple, they were probably the first large tech company to realize AI was actually working, and made it their focus: https://www.businessinsider.com/sundar-pichai-wants-to-build-a-personal-google-for-every-user-2016-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/sundar-pichai-wants-to-build... And yeah, they did/do a lot through acquistions, but seems like most major companies screw up acquistions. Google has it's fair share of failed acquistions, but especially in the earlier half of the company's lifespan, they really did some great one: Youtube, Google docs, Nest... maybe am biased, but have always thought Google in general does do it better than most tech companies. think it's their focus on the love of interesting ideas vs the love of money (although, that changes more and more as the company ages)
    - taeric 5mo ago
      My point on the acquisitions was that a surprising amount of their successful software was not made in house. Again, I don't mean it as a knock against them, necessarily. AI is an odd example. For one, a lot of the research there is from acquisitions. Somewhat feeding back to my first point. They also were seen as tripping up on a lot of the current AI race, no?
FergusArgyll 5mo ago
The catch is that you need to build good software so people use it so that you can show ads
- taeric 5mo ago
  The caveat to that, though, is that "good" is another term that you can frame however you want.
VirusNewbie 5mo ago
If GCP was its own company it would almost be a Fortune 50 company on its own. Youtube would be a Fortune 100 company. That seems a lot more successful than most software companies. Meta on the other hand, really just has ads.
- rcleveng 5mo ago
  Totally. GCP makes more revenue than Oracle, which is in the 96th spot. Also YouTube was 2x Paramount revenue in 2025.
- taeric 5mo ago
  Question is if it got there purely on the merits of the software? Marketing and general infrastructure build out were far more influential in their rise. Again, I am not meaning this as a knock on their strategy. It is valid and is producing real results. I just don't think their unified IDE is a meaningful contributor to it. The equivalent of boots on the ground is far more of a contributor there. I had similar complaints about AWS back in the day. It wasn't a lack of ML offering in AWS that made Amazon Photos less useful than Google's photo offering. Despite what some internal folks would say.
  - VirusNewbie 5mo ago
    Google has chosen to invest all across the stack in numerous ways. Why do they have 180k people working for them? Because they design their own racks, build their own machines, built their own network, designed their own databases, built their own scheduler, created their own build system, and yes invested in developer tools. I don't know what the coefficients are for each one, but you can go find plenty of older software companies that only try a handful of these and skimp on the rest. I don't believe any of those companies have as many billion dollar successes as Google. They aren't the only company to do this, but they certainly do it at an unprecedented scale.
    - taeric 5mo ago
      Are we disagreeing? My point, at large, is that they are able to spend more money on all things than most are. At the level that they spend, it will be easy to build a narrative that makes any particular spend look vital. It would also be easy to build a narrative to show any particular spend is a waste. My contention would be that none of those narratives is a lie. But none would be that useful on their own, either.
rossjudson 5mo ago
The Acquired podcasts on Google are a solid background. https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/google https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/google

by taeric 5mo ago

compiler-guy 5mo ago

Google is an ads company with a large amount of infrastructure to back it up. Sure, the money is mostly in ads, but serving searches, AI, youtube, and all the rest at the scale Google does it requires a technical tour-de-force. Does Google do it better than everyone? Absolutely not. But it does it better than many. Certainly it isn't the _only_ way to do it--other companies also manage to do it. But not all that many at the same scale. It's an existence proof that you can.

taeric 5mo ago
Most of what they do really really well, though, is accomplished by massive amounts of spending. That isn't a knock on it. Consider that they spend more on trying to build up and support this central IDE than most companies dream of losing in productivity to not having this.
randomCloud 5mo ago
There are things people do in Borg that when ported to our own public cloud kills entire regions. Sure you get limited choice but things work at global scale without thought

vineyardmike 5mo ago

> But it isn't like they are that much more successful at software projects than any other company? They are still largely an ads company, no? They have a ton of other software in 2026. And they have a pretty diverse (and diversifying) income stream today. Like 30-40% from non-ads. Is it worth it? That’s for them to say, but they can ramp up cloud services at scale pretty fast as a core competency.

taeric 5mo ago
I mean, ads is 73% of revenue. Of the rest, ~60% is Cloud, ~35% is hardware and subscriptions and app store fees. So, sure, lots of spots for software there. But still nothing that would make me think of them as a software company. Or, worse, a lot of software that I don't have a strongly favorable view on. :D

ajross 5mo ago

> But it isn't like [Google] are that much more successful at software projects than any other company? I re-read this several times trying to figure out where the irony was hidden. But... it's not there?

taeric 5mo ago
Do they have more success in software products than other companies, though? Most of the software many of us know from them, were acquisitions. They still do heavy acquisitions. Notable that they have double the acquisitions of Amazon. They are on par with IBM. A colossal amount of money spent to make things happen. So, again, are they that much more successful at software than other companies? They have more hilarious flops than any other company. Don't get me wrong. I still use some of the stuff. I don't hate them. I don't even think they are particularly bad at things. I just don't think they are any more successful than other software companies. Specifically at the software side of it.
- computerdork 5mo ago
  Think for a large tech company, they did a really good job with success in software. For exammple, they were probably the first large tech company to realize AI was actually working, and made it their focus: https://www.businessinsider.com/sundar-pichai-wants-to-build-a-personal-google-for-every-user-2016-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/sundar-pichai-wants-to-build... And yeah, they did/do a lot through acquistions, but seems like most major companies screw up acquistions. Google has it's fair share of failed acquistions, but especially in the earlier half of the company's lifespan, they really did some great one: Youtube, Google docs, Nest... maybe am biased, but have always thought Google in general does do it better than most tech companies. think it's their focus on the love of interesting ideas vs the love of money (although, that changes more and more as the company ages)
  - taeric 5mo ago
    My point on the acquisitions was that a surprising amount of their successful software was not made in house. Again, I don't mean it as a knock against them, necessarily. AI is an odd example. For one, a lot of the research there is from acquisitions. Somewhat feeding back to my first point. They also were seen as tripping up on a lot of the current AI race, no?

FergusArgyll 5mo ago

The catch is that you need to build good software so people use it so that you can show ads

taeric 5mo ago
The caveat to that, though, is that "good" is another term that you can frame however you want.

VirusNewbie 5mo ago

If GCP was its own company it would almost be a Fortune 50 company on its own. Youtube would be a Fortune 100 company. That seems a lot more successful than most software companies. Meta on the other hand, really just has ads.

rcleveng 5mo ago
Totally. GCP makes more revenue than Oracle, which is in the 96th spot. Also YouTube was 2x Paramount revenue in 2025.
taeric 5mo ago
Question is if it got there purely on the merits of the software? Marketing and general infrastructure build out were far more influential in their rise. Again, I am not meaning this as a knock on their strategy. It is valid and is producing real results. I just don't think their unified IDE is a meaningful contributor to it. The equivalent of boots on the ground is far more of a contributor there. I had similar complaints about AWS back in the day. It wasn't a lack of ML offering in AWS that made Amazon Photos less useful than Google's photo offering. Despite what some internal folks would say.
- VirusNewbie 5mo ago
  Google has chosen to invest all across the stack in numerous ways. Why do they have 180k people working for them? Because they design their own racks, build their own machines, built their own network, designed their own databases, built their own scheduler, created their own build system, and yes invested in developer tools. I don't know what the coefficients are for each one, but you can go find plenty of older software companies that only try a handful of these and skimp on the rest. I don't believe any of those companies have as many billion dollar successes as Google. They aren't the only company to do this, but they certainly do it at an unprecedented scale.
  - taeric 5mo ago
    Are we disagreeing? My point, at large, is that they are able to spend more money on all things than most are. At the level that they spend, it will be easy to build a narrative that makes any particular spend look vital. It would also be easy to build a narrative to show any particular spend is a waste. My contention would be that none of those narratives is a lie. But none would be that useful on their own, either.

rossjudson 5mo ago

The Acquired podcasts on Google are a solid background. https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/google https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/google