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I have never really seen Google investing on the Next Big Thing. Google Ads is what they do correctly. Google Maps, certainly strategic. Driving cars? Awesome,

by tajen 11y ago

I have never really seen Google investing on the Next Big Thing. Google Ads is what they do correctly. Google Maps, certainly strategic. Driving cars? Awesome, but why not wait for a thousand startups to invent it and aquire. Android? It's a defensive position. The rest goes in decreasing order of size and revenue and half of it could be shut down. If they want to make an impact, AirBnb, Spotify, Uber, Facebook, MongoDB, iPhone, AWS, those were the next big thing in the last 10 years. On all those topics they're on the second step. None of them were particularly hard, especially when you have the funding. At least with that many talent, they have good chances of inventing a human-grade IA; with that much data they could decently feed their IA; with that much computing power they're ready to host the IA. If they don't, then they should have settled with the first 5000 employees who made the Search, Maps and Android.

rdl 11y ago
I think it's more that if they're not in "wartime" mode, and employ a bunch of brilliant people who are well resourced and not working flat-out, they have a good chance of coming up with big things accidentally. gmail isn't necessarily huge compared to AdSense, but it's big compared to startups. What sucks for startups is when there's a google-subsidized free or below cost kind of crappy option for something at $0 or $50/yr, which crowds the market out for a $200/yr version. Or when something like Reader happens, which basically kills all innovation in an area, and then eventually gets killed on its own after those other competitors have died. I'm kind of bitter because there are 2 big projects I'd love to do, but there's a crappy Google (or in one case, Google + a couple other companies) product in the middle of the field in the low price position.
- pw 11y ago
  What are the 2 big projects?

by tajen 11y ago

rdl 11y ago

I think it's more that if they're not in "wartime" mode, and employ a bunch of brilliant people who are well resourced and not working flat-out, they have a good chance of coming up with big things accidentally. gmail isn't necessarily huge compared to AdSense, but it's big compared to startups. What sucks for startups is when there's a google-subsidized free or below cost kind of crappy option for something at $0 or $50/yr, which crowds the market out for a $200/yr version. Or when something like Reader happens, which basically kills all innovation in an area, and then eventually gets killed on its own after those other competitors have died. I'm kind of bitter because there are 2 big projects I'd love to do, but there's a crappy Google (or in one case, Google + a couple other companies) product in the middle of the field in the low price position.

pw 11y ago
What are the 2 big projects?