Paul Buchheit: Four Reasons Google is still Awesome | Hacker News Reader

Paul Buchheit: Four Reasons Google is still Awesome

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

325 pointspaul100 comments

Great article.

Choosing a place where people appreciate honest criticism works for friendships as well. My biggest criteria for friends is that the person is cool with honesty, including telling them when they're wrong.

Interesting point about how if you never fail, you're too conservative. The same idea applies to poker. Microsoft fails constantly and people accept it, yet every Google failure means they've lost their mojo. No Wave and no Buzz means no GMail.

Microsoft fails constantly and people accept it? :) I would argue the exact opposite - Microsoft succeeds consistently in a lot of very measurable ways but isn't given enough credit for it (that a Google/Apple would get for doing the very same thing).

I didn't mean that people ignore instances when Microsoft fails. I meant that failing is an accepted part of Microsoft's DNA. People didn't like Vista, but putting out an (arguably) busted OS didn't seem out of character for Microsoft.

That's just lowered expectations. They just don't put out quality innovation products and we're all used to that.

Yeah, WP7 and Kinect are the same old tired crap, and they're definitely not doing anything interesting with Bing...?

The general pattern I've seen with Microsoft is they mostly just copy other people's successes. Sometimes their copies do okay, or well enough. Sometimes they fail. But due to their huge install base and lock-in effects and user inertia and huge cash pile they have the ability to muddle onward. In some ways, Microsoft treats Apple as a sort of external UI R&D department, one with the wonderful quality that Microsoft doesn't have to pay the Apple folks anything, just copy whatever people seem to like. I do think they succeed enough, at the right things, that it keeps them shambling forward. But the same is true of a zombie.

Parsing note: "Microsoft doesn't have" should be repeated immediately after it appears.

Care to list some examples? (Not that I disagree)

1. Project Natal/Kinect

2. Surface Table

Both are good innovations, on which media would go over gaga, had they come from Apple/Google.

Yes, but both of those are (I believe) technologies developed outside of Microsoft that were then purchased.

While Google and Apple do also purchase technologies, they seem to produce more interesting in-house products than Microsoft. At least in my perception.

I can't recall the last time that Microsoft actually developed internally and rolled out a significant "game changer" device or software.

Your perception of Microsoft may be correct, but it alsao applied to the others. Apple didn't invent multi-touch either. Google didn't do Android inhouse it was an acquisition (at least at first).

No, but I would credit Apple with "inventing" the iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air. Even though all of those products likely have core pieces that were from acquisitions, it seems like Apple executed the grand vision of bringing it together.

Same thing with Google, though they appear to buy several things that they don't fully roll out (Dodgeball, etc.). Android may have originally been an acquisition, again it feels like Google made it into a finished product far beyond what they acquired.

Microsoft appears to have bought the Kinect technology/product and done little more than change the logo on the device. The surface table also hasn't been productized into anything revolutionary or different.

Kinect was on the top of my list. When I used Kinect, it seemed quite magical (and I'm jaded enough that few pieces of tech makes me go that way). I really suspect a Kinect from Apple would have been handled differently.

You're probably right. But you've got to admit that Apple itself makes its products seem much more magical than Microsoft does. They do such a good job that it's really easy for the media to pick it up and run with it.

Nearly all of Microsoft's own promotional stuff is extraordinarily bad, especially in comparison to Apple.

A big problem Microsoft has is their pre-announcements.

They will announce stuff before it's ready so when it does arrive there's no buzz about it. BUT it's a necessary culture for them because of the way their business interdepends upon their partners.

I think the bigger problem that Microsoft faces is their tarnished past image. Whatever they make, no matter how innovative or well made it is, people's perception towards the product changes immediately when the word Microsoft is attached to it. This I think is the major PR and marketing challenge faced by Microsoft today. People need to move on and have a broader outlook. People will still bring up IE6 to support their anti-MS arguments.

The media did go "gaga" over those, even despite the fact that 99.99% of people will never see a Surface.

How was Surface a success where Wave wasn't?

We can't really talk about the sucess or failure of Surface, actually. Microsoft sold a few of them at $12,000 each to hotels, luxury stores, etc... but never intended to make it a mass-consumer product.

which was a failure - a failure to commercialize a technology that we all wanted. Apple later delivered the iPad, and the rest is history.

Kinect is a game changer, but most of its credit should be given to the company MS obtained the technology from.

From an academic point of view, perhaps. Bit from a business point of view, the credit goes to Microsoft for recognizing a hot piece of technology, acquiring it and launching it as a cool product. Each one of those things are more difficult than you seem to give them credit for.

xbox, bing

People accept that Microsoft fails? Does the name "Windows Vista" mean anything to you? Of all the reactions people had to that version, "acceptance" isn't on the list.

To be fair, I can't imagine Google fucking up web search or AdWords without receiving the same kind of criticism. We can shrug it off when Google fucks up Wave, or when Microsoft fucks up Kin, as long as products like AdWords and Windows keep making money.

Vista was 5 years late, overhyped, full of bugs and incompatibilities, slow and IMHO ugly.

For me it was the biggest failure I've seen since Netscape Navigator.

And while Windows 7 is not that bad, IMHO that's the next worst thing customers can say about your product.

Hhmm. You didn't actually mention my first reason (though #3 is sort of related): Google creates more value than it captures. Remember the Web in '98? Remember domain name bidding wars, because typing "www.shopping.com" into the address bar was actually a plausible strategy for attempting to buy something online, because search basically didn't work? Google made search work, which made the Internet work, which changed millions of lives and created many more billions in value than they have ever booked as revenue. Wave was an attempt to fix the way hundreds of millions of people work. They are trying to substantially improve the way we get around the planet. Succeed or fail, Google persistently tries to make the world a better place. How many companies can say that?

I think equating Wave to a 'big' risk is a bit much, financially there was no risk. All they lost was face.

Also Chrome and Android are not successes, Google Adwords is a success, MS Office is a success, MS Windows is a success. The key ingredient to a success for a company is some MONEY. Anything else is just showing off.

I'm still very disappointed with the follow through on Wave and Buzz, a bit of PR and a few man years of engineering is pretty minor compared to the profit they make. The 'oh well, it didn't work, we're giving up' attitude Google has been displaying recently is pretty disconcerting.

We may all hate MS, but at least they tend to follow through with some serious chops when the going gets tough (I'm thinking Silverlight rather than Danger).

I'm actually getting a little worried about Google's follow through on certain projects, as an external company I wouldn't be putting any investment in any of their new products given their recent track record.

I'm also not keen on Google 'competing' in the 'oh, we'll make money through search advertising' way they're doing recently. It's stifling innovation in certain markets imo.

Actually, rereading my post, I really don't agree with Paul very much.

On the other hand, I still think they're great, if a worrying monopoly. It could be worse though, Google could be run by Zynga.

Chrome and Android are both a huge success. Google takes a long-term view which doesn't require every product to immediately pay for itself, which is very smart. The long term value of owning these platforms is immense.

Also, your notion that "Wave was not a risk" is similarly mistaken. The opportunity cost of having a large team of smart people working for several years is enormous.

If you want to argue that we should take the long view with respect to Chrome and Android making money, then I would counter with needing to take the long view with respect to their being a success as well. The OP was (IMO) correct - a product's success, when done by a private company, is whether or not it improves the company's bottom line. I don't think that that claim can be made about Chrome or Android at the moment. I certainly doubt whether the little money they are currently making out of Android would not be largely blown aware by another allocation of that energy and resources.

That's not to say that in the long term these products don't end up being major successes, but until they start making money, that claim can't be made.

You should read some material on microeconomics and about complementary products. That's not arguing, it's how the economy currently works.

     a product's success ...
     is whether or not it improves the company's bottom line

Microsoft controlling the platform through Windows and IExplorer hasn't improved their bottom line?

RedHat paying high wages to highly skilled kernel hackers to work on (get this, open-source software) hasn't improved their bottom line?

     until they start making money, that claim can't be made

Because, you know, Apple and Microsoft installing Bing alternatives (Maps / Search) on their phone operating systems wouldn't affect Google in no way whatsoever.

http://www.businessweek.com/print/technology/content/jan2010...

I find it quite baffling actually that so many people are criticizing investments made by Google, Apple or Microsoft; These are big companies that grew to unimaginable levels in just a few years (with respect to oil mining which can take a few generations to reach a fraction of that size).

You should really learn from them, because not so many companies can achieve what they did ;-)

You're not replying to my point. I didn't say that Android and Chrome wouldn't end up being critical products that add to Google's bottom line. I said that right at the moment, that's not the case, and until it does become the case, you can't claim that they're a success.

It's important to read what is written, not what you think is written ;) (yeah, I find the winky smiley annoying when it's placed after a condescending remark)

Do you think such a long term view is allowed because of the legacy of figuring out search engine advertising?

Clearly the money is coming from somewhere :)

Using that advantage to invest in the future is the right way to build a long-term business. Focusing only on milking the current business is what leads a company to eventual disruption and collapse (because something new will come along that hurts the old business).

I do wonder about dividends, returning value to the shareholders. Should they start issuing dividends? If not, when and why should a company?

There's a big difference between "opportunity cost" and "risk". Wave had huge potential upside and I completely agree that it's a good example of Google looking to go big; but they approached it in a risk-averse way, and it didn't work out.

Also Chrome and Android are not successes... The key ingredient to a success for a company is some MONEY

Android is profitable, which is pretty impressive for such a big project. I'm not sure how big the team is, but it's gotta be many hundreds, if not thousands of people.

And Chrome is probably profitable too. Google pays Mozilla Corp somewhere north of $50 million a year. Chrome has about a quarter of FF's share, so they're making Google at least $12.5m/year. Probably much more, given that Google surely profits off of their Firefox deal. Not sure how big their dev team is, but it was apparently only four in '08. Even if it's 20 people now, that's probably a million dollars in revenue per employee.

Seriously, if you started a phone OS business that went from 0 handsets to being the 2nd best selling phone OS in the world in two years and hit profitability in the same timeframe, you wouldn't consider that a financial success?

And tell Flock that a 10% share of the web browser market is financial failure.

Not only is Android profitable, but dominance and prominence on a consumer device makes it that much easier for Google to push its other products.

Think about Maps on Android vs. iPhone - one is a lot more full featured and up to date with Google's tech than the other. Android being the de facto standard smartphone platform would be immensely useful to Google's other products.

e.g. Google Voice simply does not integrate well into the Apple user experience, but does so flawlessly on Android.

Google is vertically integrating the entire stack between them and the user - this is a great thing for Google, and not every link in the chain needs to make money doing it.

At some point, you have to acknowledge that you lost. It's much better to do that than to force people to work on something that everybody knows lost, or at least is worse than the competition. That's what 'follow-through' amounts to. One way that Google is still even vaguely an acceptable place to work is that it allows a fair amount of freedom about what to work on, and nobody good wants to work on something that clearly lost.

Also, it's unclear that success is measured by direct profit from that project. For example, the world with Android is clearly much more promising for Google's continued revenue growth than one without Android. Mainly, Google is the only company with the software chops to write and maintain iPhone-clone software that even vaguely works and the cash and testicles to negotiate with carriers. If Google didn't continue to bang hard on Android, all the non-iPhone smartphones would suck fairly seriously, and Apple would probably cut pretty seriously into Google's ad profits, despite Apple's ads not being as effective, purely because Apple controlled the dominant smartphone platform. Apple might also have a much stronger influence over the tablet web experience, beyond than just having written the first tablet web browser that worked.

(Disclaimer: I like iOS better than Android, having owned both.)

The funny thing about Google Buzz is it's so simple that it can't die. It can always be integrated into any other Google service. For example, you can view geo-tagged Buzz messages in Maps for Android.

I was really surprised to see the parent voted down. I thought it made some interesting points quite articulately and added to the conversation not matter whether or not you agree.

I was under the impression that Android was profitable by itself- though I'm not sure where the money is coming from. Certification/contract work with manufacturers?

Mobile ads.

Not to stir the pot, Paul, but was google the only place where your criticisms were welcomed? What about Facebook?

ycombinator?

Y Combinator and FriendFeed don't count, naturally. Somehow, they don't go in the "job" category the same way other jobs do.

This implicitly means Facebook does count. You don't have to answer this one.

In light of YC's recent tie-up with Facebook, it's good to see that there might very well be a voice of caution within the organization.

Note that he said "Google was the only one where me speaking my mind never seemed to cause a problem." So he's not necessarily implying that all criticism is wholly rejected at Facebook, just that his criticism sometimes caused problems.

He is talking about Google-size companies.

Chrome is a risk? I'd say Chrome is a hedge against risk - allowing Apple, MS, Mozilla, etc. to dictate the terms of browser innovation.

Developing Chrome is a risk. It's only a hedge against risk if it works.

It's a little like if you could buy insurance, but there'd be a 25% chance that you paid for it and it just didn't do anything. The insurance is a hedge against risk, but buying it is (another) risk.

The thing about taking risks is spot-on. I noticed that where I work, every project is treated as though failure would mean death to the company; there is no agility or experimentation, and projects that should die because they suck last forever because failure is absolutely not an option. If we said, "hey, let's try this out" once in a while, we would have a lot better technology.

In retrospect Google is the new type of Einstein and Tesla and it is very exciting to be living right now with all their new pushes in inovation.

Paul, would you mind sharing the title of the new google book?

I've probably already said too much about the book ;)

You're kidding me with the analogies. Seriously?

"Google" is not a person/individual. I'd definitely place _why, brad fitzpatrick, and zed shaw as POSSIBLE equals to einstein and tesla, but that would still be a stretch...

""Google" is not a person/individual."

Neither was "Edison".

Sorry, i was making the HUGE leap of faith that the reference to "thomas edison" was being made.

So which is the original reference to: "edison the co." or "thomas edison"?

Edit: "edison" wasn't even mentioned in the original post???

Thomas Edison? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

From that article:

"Edison was legally attributed with most of the inventions produced there, though many employees carried out research and development under his direction. His staff was generally told to carry out his directions in conducting research, and he drove them hard to produce results."

So, when you read "Edison invented such and such", it really means that the people working under him invented such and such. So, it really is similar to the way "Google" is inventing lots of interesting things. The difference is Larry and Sergey refrain from claiming that they personally invented everything that comes out of Google.

BTW, when is Google going to allow third party developers to enhance its core search results via a search API?

Such an API would allow third party developers to add Wolfram Alpha like features among other things right into the core Google search.

I think they used to do this - I could swear that I used to have a third-party plugin that I "installed" on my Google account that would show me JavaDocs whenever I Googled a Java class name. It hasn't shown up in about 3 years, though, and I haven't found any trace of it in the code I work with (which should be right around that area of the page...), so maybe it was discontinued.

http://www.google.com/preferences

At the bottom is 'Subscribed Links'. I recall having the same java search thing enabled, but it looks like there's only a lame javacio.us thing now that doesn't work the same way. They still have a manpages search option which is nifty, though it doesn't show up at the top anymore, unfortunately.

Yes, the web search api has been Deprecated.

http://code.google.com/apis/websearch/

(In favor of "custom search" - but that only works for your own website)

Was there any third party computation/ui?

Such a feature would fit nicely with the app engine to provide third party computation/ui to enhance the core search results.

User feedback would determine which third party code is run by default for various queries/contexts.

Third party developers would make more money when their code is executed more often.

Yeah, it was totally third-party, and labeled as such. I have no idea how the technology behind it worked - I was just a user, not a developer.

It should not require you to subscribe. User feedback (possibly implicit) should be used to determine what third party code is used for which queries/contexts by default.

http://www.google.com/coop/subscribedlinks/directory/All_cat... may be what you are thinking of.

What I think Google could hugely benefit from, is stop hiring too much PHD & engineering-type people. I think they have a cultural problem that has the effect of many consumer products they develop (where the technology is not the only important ingredient) to don't work: you can't rule the "social" world from the nerd-point-of-view, seriously. Get creative/artistic people into the mix, and Google could turn into some magical stuff again.

Engineers are creative and artistic people.

No... engineers, like any other subset of people selected by profession, are a mix of creative/artistic and non creative/artistic people. And if you hire doing a huge selection pressure based on PHDs, ability to reply to strictly logical problems, and so forth, you are mounting a selective pressure that will get you with an environment where there are high logical skills but possibly deficiencies in other fields.

All engineers? Are you sure about that?

#3 is my favorite thing about Google. On some level it makes me feel better about handing over personal data when the company doesn't act asshole-ish.

On some level it makes me feel better about handing over personal data when the company doesn't act asshole-ish.

As well meaning as all of the employees at Google are, and as far as they'll go to do the right thing (far, in my experience), from what I understand of our legal system, it's really the role of government to protect you from corporations mis-purposing your data. The free market isn't meant to be a democratic institution, and while some top executives have a certain talent for aligning stockholders interests with those of their users, the system they operate within simply isn't designed with democratic responsibility in mind.

I suspect risk taking is only encouraged outside their core business.

With what justification? Google has made numerous innovations in terms of search. Think Instant, Goggles, and their shiny new (painfully unusable) implementation of Image Search. Plus they've got a bunch of micro-innovations--the AROUND operator, for example, and the reading level filters.

As an example of something really risky, see my comment about a search API.

Innovations are not necessarily a risk

Instant?

Also, that preview window thing you get when you click in the description text.

Personally, it annoys the hell out of me because I'm a compulsive clicker and I really wish there was some way to turn it off permanently but it's definitely another example of a change made to core search.

Yeah, me too. Hate those popups. To remove: (1) download Stylish add-on for chrome or firefox, (2) add CSS style below

  #vspb, button.ws, button.vspib { display: none !important }
  .vspi { background: none !important; border: none !important }

Works great, thanks a lot!

Bing had search result preview window much before Google.

The gp's post was about risk, not innovation. The path Google is going down now (adding more features and bloat into their results) is risky because a lot of the population likes how simple and easy to use Google is. The more features they add, the more confusing it gets and if someone comes along with a much simpler interface and a new idea that gives better results they're in trouble.

Bing innovating on features is good for Bing because it differentiates them. Google copying those features is risky because it diverges from the simplicity they're famous for and makes them look like they're playing catch-up.

Sure, but in that case it's worth pointing out that Google had Google before MS changed their search engine to be as similar to Google's as possible.

There's a risk that Instant won't enhance the search experience for most users significantly, but it won't make it worse. That's not much of a risk.

When Instant was under development, we had an office pool for "How long will it be before Instant is rolled back, and why?", and two of the most popular answers were "2 days - user revolt" and "1 month - global search outage". Of course, anyone who voted there has egg on their face now because it was a successful launch with relatively few problems, which is mostly a credit to the teams involved and the hard work they put in to foresee problems and fix them before launch. But things looked very, very different when the product was still iterating, the UI wasn't worked out, and there was significant doubt that it would be physically possible to do it.

It's very easy to look at a product in hindsight and say "Duh, that's obvious, of course it's a good idea, why didn't anyone do it sooner?" It's much harder to take a random idea that's been batted around a few times and say definitively "This is a good idea that we can and must do."

Just watching that process from a distance internally was a good lesson for me in product development. Normally I'd expect that if an idea is generally good, people will kinda like the first version, until after gradual iteration eventually they love it. For some things, that's just not true. With the iterations of Instant over months, I saw coworkers go from "argh I hate this I hope it never launches" to "wow, this is cool." They spent most of that time hating it, and only started to like it once it was near perfect. It wasn't a gradual switchover from "meh" to "awesome." It was a sudden shift from "HATE" to "WOW."

This is really interesting: certain kinds of features and projects suck until they're good. A steeply sloped sigmoid of suckage.

Why did the people working on Instant persevere despite their coworkers' reactions? Was it because they had a clear end-vision of awesomeness, and they knew they just hadn't implemented to that point yet? Or was it more intuitive, a sense that there was awesomeness somewhere in parameter space, and that they could get there with continued iteration?

It's actually more interesting than that: several of the key people working on the project believed it was impossible and could never succeed.

The short answer to your question is "because Larry and Sergey really wanted it". It's amazing how much attention projects that the founders are personally interested in get.

That would be very misleading, though, because it's not like anyone was forced to work on Instant, nor is the typical Googler a mindless automaton who always does what he's told. Everyone who worked on Instant was there because they wanted to work on Instant, even the ones who felt it didn't have a prayer of success.

The longer answer is that Google's created a culture that tolerates ambiguity remarkably well. Y'know how they say that it's a sign of intelligence (and insanity) to be able to hold multiple conflicting ideas in your head at once? That's the same drive that lets people say "I think this is a terrible idea, and it'll never succeed...but it's interesting, and it deserves an honest chance, so let me help you with that." Strong opinions lightly held.

This starts with the hiring process, I think, which tends to select for people who can appreciate nuance and tend to explore lots of technologies outside those that are immediately useful to them (contrary to popular opinion, Google does not solely care about GPA and alma mater when hiring). Then new recruits get to the Googleplex, and they're immersed in a culture that's just awash in ideas, most of which are terrible, and all of which are listened to. When you see that your coworker's reaction to the brain-dead idea that was just spouted forth is "Hmm. That's interesting - what could you do to test that and develop it?" instead of "That's stupid and it'll never work", you start to reevaluate your snap judgments. And of course, if you work there for any length of time, you'll see a number of those stupid ideas actually launch and become giant successes with millions of users.

I remember clearly telling my coworker, about Instant, "I think it's a terrible idea and will fail miserably, but I am really, really glad that I work in a company where we can place these sorts of bets."

I wish more places had a culture like this. FaceBook, I've heard, has it. So do many prominent investors in Silicon Valley, and I wonder if that's where Google got it. Top-flight research labs and universities do too. But it's sorely lacking in the general public, and on Reddit, and among our politicians & government, and in many big corporations. It, unfortunately, is not the sort of thing you can pick up from a book or a few blog or forum posts. You really have to be immersed in the culture to absorb it, and even then, your natural inclination is going to say "This is stupid" to most new ideas. It seems to take a lot of mental effort to suspend that judgment and say "Well, this sure looks stupid, but I'll stick with it a little longer and see where it ends up."

I've found, though, that that culture is perhaps the most valuable thing that I've gotten out of my time at Google.

Thanks for this gem of a comment. It's encouraging to hear that this sort of culture actually can exist in a large organization. Especially related to/enjoyed this at the end:

It seems to take a lot of mental effort to suspend that judgment and say "Well, this sure looks stupid, but I'll stick with it a little longer and see where it ends up."

Half of the progress was UI improvements that made it more natural, half of it was just making it fast enough. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that a lot of what we mistake for UI confusion in general is really just UI slowness. Very complicated things can become intuitive when you have instant feedback.

Nearly orthogonally great answers from both of you, thanks.

There wasn't user revolt, but is Instant widely regarded as a success? I find it mildly annoying myself, but maybe I'm in the minority.

By public comments, help forum feedback, and press reaction, it was perhaps Google's most successful search launch ever, and certainly within the last year or two. I personally find it mildly annoying too, but I'm apparently in the minority.

there's always risk, the question is - how do you measure risk/reward ratio.

I've always been the "tell the truth because it is truth" type and I wish my startup had an advisor like Paul. It would be an invaluable asset to any startup that really cared about making it. I can see why YC was able to attract him.

Shouldn't this be titled "Reasons Google is still awesome"?

IMHO the main reason Google will remain a force to be reckoned with is that they have 10000 driven and highly skilled individuals on board with the right experience. That trumps all arguments the article provides.

One word: Intrapreneurship

Six words: absorb other startups into your company

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