4 ms·

Google seems determined to make exactly the same mistakes with YouTube Music that it made trying to pushing Google+ down people's throats. I.e., abuse a domina

by pja 12y ago

Google seems determined to make exactly the same mistakes with YouTube Music that it made trying to pushing Google+ down people's throats. I.e., abuse a dominant position in one area to force users onto its other services whilst completely ignoring both the collateral damage caused and the actual stated preferences of their users. This is exactly the kind of thing that people used to (rightfully) castigate Microsoft for & it's predictable but depressing to see Google treading the same path. (I know "don't be evil" was just a slogan, but there was a time when Google stood for the principle of winning simply by being better than everyone else & it's saddening to see them resort to these kind of underhanded tactics to force their products into the marketplace.) These kind of tactics do work in the short term of course, but ultimately they have a corrosive effect on your long term success because users cease to trust that you'll treat them fairly. Meanwhile the execs involved run off into the sunset with their bonuses extracted by burning the company's goodwill in order to drive short term metrics the way they need them to hit whatever internal targets they've set themselves.

loceng 12y ago
Really it's bizarre because the service they're offering on its own is quite valuable, so they'll get user adoption eventually I imagine - maybe not 100% but that's greedy or unreasonable at minimum. Far more damage is done with an aggressive/controlling stance, future long-term revenues and negative mindshare.
- msandford 12y ago
  Google's definitely lost their way. Got too big, too fast and didn't preserve the culture. The biggest an organization can get and hope to have a reasonable chance of not going evil is probably some multiple of Dunbar's number. I think realistically the uppermost limit on it is going to be Dunbar's squared and assuming everyone has really high social skills and no life outside work then it's 250*250 = 62k people. But that only counts if everyone's job is doing nothing more than keeping up with the company's culture; no actual work gets done. If you assume that you want your people to work while they're at the office then Dunbar's probably goes down quite a bit. Let's use the more reasonable 150 number that's closer to average and let's assume that you only want people to spend about 20% of their time on keeping in tune with everyone around them. That puts your group size at 30 instead of 150 or 250. Now let's suppose that we organize hierarchically and that the senior execs really do live/eat/sleep/breathe the company. They're professional, high functioning managers, so let's give them the full 250. And then let's suppose that there are group managers who split their time between talking with their group and with senior management. That gives you 250 groups of 30 people each or 7500 total employees. And in order to keep up with all these groups you've got to have 3-15 execs who are all on the same page and running themselves ragged trying to keep up. If you start adding more levels of management hierarchy you run the risk that as information gets passed down the chain it gets modified slightly or tremendously to serve the interests of any one individual in said chain. And there are too many bosses you have to "go over" to get a reasonable chance of talking to a real decision maker if you think something isn't right, but your direct boss is telling you to do anyhow. This chart shows that Google cracked 7500 employees before 2007. http://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-time-google-employees/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-tim... I'd guess that they did between 2002 and 2004. The Google+/youtube integration debacle started in what, 2013? That means it took them a good decade before they really started to do outwardly very unattractive things. That's pretty impressive (or my theory is totally wrong). Either way, past a certain point more employees are more of a liability than a badge of honor. It just increases the risk you do something stupid because everyone believes they're doing the right thing and there are no lines of communication to correct the misunderstanding, intentional or not.
  - pja 12y ago
    Everything I've read suggests that the G+ / GMail / YouTube integration was forced onto the various parts of Google by executive fiat: The rank & file Google employees were against it, but a company is not a democracy so it was forced on them & by extension us. Executive culture tends to laud the "visionary leader" who pushes their vision on everyone else. When that vision is wrong-headed you end up with situations like the G+ débâcle: it was a failure of the Google executive, not the employees. My guess is that we have the same effect in play with the YouTube Music debacle: an "up and coming" exec who wants to make their mark by creating a new business line for Google that brings in big profits. They don't care if they sully the Google brand in the process because their incentives aren't aligned with Google's, any negative effects on Google's userbase (be they musicians, music consumers or just ordinary users of Google services) are just collateral damage in their internal political game. This is warring business units in action.
    - loceng 12y ago
      There would have been many ways that integration could have occurred, so that executive direction isn't inherently the problem - it's more if there was no one to direct the nuances of doing then there's a problem. That kind of nuanced understanding is the difference usually between successfully companies and their unsuccessful companies.
  - loceng 12y ago
    I always feel there should be a single controller that reviews all major outreach tactics - or even a team dedicated merely to that once at that scale. It's just too important to skulk at.
  - loceng 12y ago
    Interesting analysis btw - thanks for sharing. I wonder if this is per company or per leader for trickle down effect - I imagine it is per leader, the one setting pace, vision, culture, etc.
    - msandford 12y ago

by pja 12y ago

loceng 12y ago

Really it's bizarre because the service they're offering on its own is quite valuable, so they'll get user adoption eventually I imagine - maybe not 100% but that's greedy or unreasonable at minimum. Far more damage is done with an aggressive/controlling stance, future long-term revenues and negative mindshare.

msandford 12y ago
Google's definitely lost their way. Got too big, too fast and didn't preserve the culture. The biggest an organization can get and hope to have a reasonable chance of not going evil is probably some multiple of Dunbar's number. I think realistically the uppermost limit on it is going to be Dunbar's squared and assuming everyone has really high social skills and no life outside work then it's 250*250 = 62k people. But that only counts if everyone's job is doing nothing more than keeping up with the company's culture; no actual work gets done. If you assume that you want your people to work while they're at the office then Dunbar's probably goes down quite a bit. Let's use the more reasonable 150 number that's closer to average and let's assume that you only want people to spend about 20% of their time on keeping in tune with everyone around them. That puts your group size at 30 instead of 150 or 250. Now let's suppose that we organize hierarchically and that the senior execs really do live/eat/sleep/breathe the company. They're professional, high functioning managers, so let's give them the full 250. And then let's suppose that there are group managers who split their time between talking with their group and with senior management. That gives you 250 groups of 30 people each or 7500 total employees. And in order to keep up with all these groups you've got to have 3-15 execs who are all on the same page and running themselves ragged trying to keep up. If you start adding more levels of management hierarchy you run the risk that as information gets passed down the chain it gets modified slightly or tremendously to serve the interests of any one individual in said chain. And there are too many bosses you have to "go over" to get a reasonable chance of talking to a real decision maker if you think something isn't right, but your direct boss is telling you to do anyhow. This chart shows that Google cracked 7500 employees before 2007. http://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-time-google-employees/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-tim... I'd guess that they did between 2002 and 2004. The Google+/youtube integration debacle started in what, 2013? That means it took them a good decade before they really started to do outwardly very unattractive things. That's pretty impressive (or my theory is totally wrong). Either way, past a certain point more employees are more of a liability than a badge of honor. It just increases the risk you do something stupid because everyone believes they're doing the right thing and there are no lines of communication to correct the misunderstanding, intentional or not.
- pja 12y ago
  Everything I've read suggests that the G+ / GMail / YouTube integration was forced onto the various parts of Google by executive fiat: The rank & file Google employees were against it, but a company is not a democracy so it was forced on them & by extension us. Executive culture tends to laud the "visionary leader" who pushes their vision on everyone else. When that vision is wrong-headed you end up with situations like the G+ débâcle: it was a failure of the Google executive, not the employees. My guess is that we have the same effect in play with the YouTube Music debacle: an "up and coming" exec who wants to make their mark by creating a new business line for Google that brings in big profits. They don't care if they sully the Google brand in the process because their incentives aren't aligned with Google's, any negative effects on Google's userbase (be they musicians, music consumers or just ordinary users of Google services) are just collateral damage in their internal political game. This is warring business units in action.
  - loceng 12y ago
    There would have been many ways that integration could have occurred, so that executive direction isn't inherently the problem - it's more if there was no one to direct the nuances of doing then there's a problem. That kind of nuanced understanding is the difference usually between successfully companies and their unsuccessful companies.
- loceng 12y ago
  I always feel there should be a single controller that reviews all major outreach tactics - or even a team dedicated merely to that once at that scale. It's just too important to skulk at.
- loceng 12y ago
  Interesting analysis btw - thanks for sharing. I wonder if this is per company or per leader for trickle down effect - I imagine it is per leader, the one setting pace, vision, culture, etc.
  - msandford 12y ago