4 ms·

Where is Google in this context then? They are the 800 pounds gorilla, but a steady stream of innovations still seems to flow from them.

Padding 12y ago
That's a good question. My guess is that Google is still much too young a company to esperience any of the issues. Maybe once the founders are out for good, and we see more tradtional MBA-style leadership, the traditional illnesses will start emerging too. Up to now Google has avoided the problem by consistently biting off more than it can chew, landing some borderline-success and improving on from there. This is what they did with search, advertising, book digitalization, online videos, etc. In short, there wasn't much need for internal competition, since they were actively looking for new challenges from the outside. It's great that they're doing all of this, but I'm curious whether at some point (a few decades from now) they'll eventually decide that all the effort isn't really worth it and focus only on the high-margin stuff.
eots 12y ago
Which innovations would that be?
lmm 12y ago
Really? They seem to have slowed a lot in recent years, and a lot of their most innovative stuff is coming from acquisitions rather than internally. They had some good ideas that kept them better a bit longer (catering, 20% time - which I hear is now much less solid than it once was), but they now look rather like a bigger Cisco. I'd expect the best people to leave soon or have left already (we already see a lot less enthusiasm about working there than there used to be), and Google to decline like any other big company.
- mercurial 12y ago
  Maybe. But as far as I know, Chrome was a 20% project originally, not an acquisition. And then you have stuff like Spanner, which came out relatively recently, or Speedy. They still make new, interesting technologies, even if a lot of it is not on the radar of ordinary consumers.
  - kbrosnan 12y ago
    Chrome had full time engineers fairly quickly. Externally I saw Google pull back resources that were working full time on Firefox and hired several engineers that were Mozilla experts Ben G., Doron, WTC.
    - mercurial 12y ago
      No doubt, but there is nothing wrong with that picture. Why wouldn't you do that if an engineer came in with a prototype and a compelling reason why his/her pet project should be important to the company?
  - ulfw 12y ago
    Plus let's not forget that Chrome for a long time used Webkit, meaning the browser core was there from the start already.
- zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
  That's selling Google a bit cheap. Google Fiber, the Internet on hot air balloons and driverless cars are all fairly innovative projects with no known competitors. There's also the secret project that Andy Rubin's team is working on and who knows what else we don't know about brewing at GoogleX.
  - ulfw 12y ago
    How on earth is Google Fiber an innovation? Please explain. Fibre Internet and Gigabit internet can be had for years across many cities of the world (Hong Kong, Singapore, Istanbul) and even in select cities in the US. What was the innovation done there? The Hot Air Balloons are a bit of a gimmick, but definitely innovative and new as is the driverless car project which could have tremendous impact on transportation of the future.
nostrademons 12y ago
Google's innovations all come from entering new markets and competing with other businesses. GMail competed with HotMail and Yahoo!Mail, Maps competed against MapQuest, Chrome competed against Firefox and IE, Android competes against iOS. Offers competes against Groupon, Wallet competes against Paypal/Square/Stripe. Google products that have not had solid competition (Glass, Wave, Groups, Knol, GoogleBase) or that have competition but don't have the management buy-in and flexibility needed to win against that competition (Orkut, Video, Jaiku, Dodgeball, Buzz, Reader & Blogger in their later years) have not tended to do as well. Google Search languished for many years (roughly 2004-2009) while Google invented all these other products. Then Bing launched in 2009, and there was a period of rapid innovation from 2009-2011 that gave us Search Options, one unified search across all corpora, 2 visual redesigns, realtime search, Instant, Authorship, Search Plus Your World, and Knowledge/Answer Cards. Then things slowed down again in 2012 when everyone realized Bing was a joke. I personally witnessed - to both my benefit and my detriment - both extremes I mentioned in my original post.

Padding 12y ago

That's a good question. My guess is that Google is still much too young a company to esperience any of the issues. Maybe once the founders are out for good, and we see more tradtional MBA-style leadership, the traditional illnesses will start emerging too. Up to now Google has avoided the problem by consistently biting off more than it can chew, landing some borderline-success and improving on from there. This is what they did with search, advertising, book digitalization, online videos, etc. In short, there wasn't much need for internal competition, since they were actively looking for new challenges from the outside. It's great that they're doing all of this, but I'm curious whether at some point (a few decades from now) they'll eventually decide that all the effort isn't really worth it and focus only on the high-margin stuff.

eots 12y ago

Which innovations would that be?

lmm 12y ago

Really? They seem to have slowed a lot in recent years, and a lot of their most innovative stuff is coming from acquisitions rather than internally. They had some good ideas that kept them better a bit longer (catering, 20% time - which I hear is now much less solid than it once was), but they now look rather like a bigger Cisco. I'd expect the best people to leave soon or have left already (we already see a lot less enthusiasm about working there than there used to be), and Google to decline like any other big company.

mercurial 12y ago
Maybe. But as far as I know, Chrome was a 20% project originally, not an acquisition. And then you have stuff like Spanner, which came out relatively recently, or Speedy. They still make new, interesting technologies, even if a lot of it is not on the radar of ordinary consumers.
- kbrosnan 12y ago
  Chrome had full time engineers fairly quickly. Externally I saw Google pull back resources that were working full time on Firefox and hired several engineers that were Mozilla experts Ben G., Doron, WTC.
  - mercurial 12y ago
    No doubt, but there is nothing wrong with that picture. Why wouldn't you do that if an engineer came in with a prototype and a compelling reason why his/her pet project should be important to the company?
- ulfw 12y ago
  Plus let's not forget that Chrome for a long time used Webkit, meaning the browser core was there from the start already.
zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
That's selling Google a bit cheap. Google Fiber, the Internet on hot air balloons and driverless cars are all fairly innovative projects with no known competitors. There's also the secret project that Andy Rubin's team is working on and who knows what else we don't know about brewing at GoogleX.
- ulfw 12y ago
  How on earth is Google Fiber an innovation? Please explain. Fibre Internet and Gigabit internet can be had for years across many cities of the world (Hong Kong, Singapore, Istanbul) and even in select cities in the US. What was the innovation done there? The Hot Air Balloons are a bit of a gimmick, but definitely innovative and new as is the driverless car project which could have tremendous impact on transportation of the future.

nostrademons 12y ago

Google's innovations all come from entering new markets and competing with other businesses. GMail competed with HotMail and Yahoo!Mail, Maps competed against MapQuest, Chrome competed against Firefox and IE, Android competes against iOS. Offers competes against Groupon, Wallet competes against Paypal/Square/Stripe. Google products that have not had solid competition (Glass, Wave, Groups, Knol, GoogleBase) or that have competition but don't have the management buy-in and flexibility needed to win against that competition (Orkut, Video, Jaiku, Dodgeball, Buzz, Reader & Blogger in their later years) have not tended to do as well. Google Search languished for many years (roughly 2004-2009) while Google invented all these other products. Then Bing launched in 2009, and there was a period of rapid innovation from 2009-2011 that gave us Search Options, one unified search across all corpora, 2 visual redesigns, realtime search, Instant, Authorship, Search Plus Your World, and Knowledge/Answer Cards. Then things slowed down again in 2012 when everyone realized Bing was a joke. I personally witnessed - to both my benefit and my detriment - both extremes I mentioned in my original post.