Google quietly launches an AI-powered Pinterest rival named Keen
theverge.com
theverge.com
Is it engineers internally that gather up momentum for a projects, see it to fruition and then folks move to other projects?
Or is it the sort of "google waterwheel" that scoops up non-google participants, gets them to create a google account, and in a few years moves on to other corners of the internet?
the end result is that google seems to "dabble"
One is the standard big company political issues thing. Bad products are sustained, good ones killed because the bad one happened to have a manager who couldn't listen or see clearly, and had some political credibility while the good one lacked political strength. This is simply one of the pathologies of big organizations. (even the best large organizations suffer seriously from this problem, and I doubt many would consider google to be particularly well run. They have a huge gusher of money flowing their way even if everybody went home for a week, so have no competitive pressure to improve on that dimension).
This interlocks with the second factor. 87% of their revenue comes from one source and that source is very large. So you could start a new project, generate some revenue, but if it isn't on a growth trajectory that would move that 87% down, well, is it really worth investing in? I believe this is why Nest was brought onto Google's balance sheet: it contributes something around a percent or so to google's revenue, which helped push that number down slightly.
By contrast, look at Apple which has a (slightly) diversified set of products; they continue to invest in macs and ipads which don't constitute a huge percentage of revenue (though they'd be F200 or F100 businesses were they on their own). Apple is so secretive, even internally, you'd think they were worse run than google but somehow it works. Perhaps that secrecy makes the internal fighting harder as only a small number of people who know each other well end up seeing the big picture? I haven't the faintest idea.
So they probably have some planned investment period with a model to profitability, then miss it and kill it.
This is why I worry about GCP because it seems like a lower margin than search ads.
Why do we need an alternative??
It's unfortunate, the only mitigation, for now, is for the source to use the middleman to link back to the source.
I agree, what I'm most surprised by is it suffers no penalties from Google. Why is consistently on the top for so many searches? How is it that news journals who go the mile of writing things and put it behind a paywall suffer the wrath of Google ranking them down, but a compilation site that erects so many hoops and hassles to get you to the image you found it for on Google is consistently on the top?
I'm pretty sure the venn diagram of hacker news and pinterest is not one circle. :)
Because the current Pinterest "pollutes my search results with garbage."
It's a massive collation of human knowledge through pictures done for free by users.
The might be arguments against it, but to me I'm not sure if it's an idea that's not hugely valuable, yet
From the very first paragraph: "Google’s Area 120 team, an internal incubator that creates experimental apps and services, has launched Keen..."
In a way this is exactly what you're suggesting: an entirely separate identity [1] to launch these experiments, and avoid direct association with Google's core products. Keen's site[2] only mention Google in the footer.
Of course, "Google launches a Pinterest-rival" makes it sound more juicy than "Area 120 launches an experimental product"...
(disclaimer: Googler, but no affiliation with A120 or the product. I'm hearing for the first time here)
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/22/googles-collections-featur...
Well, I guess that won't make people switch from Pinterest...
this is someone's project to get noticed for being innovative and moved on to somewhere else with more money and then this gets staffed with people not on the fast track who will try their best to get out of it and finally it will close down and if anyone has been suckered into using it they will write an article about how Google closed it down and then HN will repeat the ever expanding list of things Google has closed down. Something may have just made me cynical about Google products though.
There's also a general faith that Pinterest will actually keep their service open in a few years. With Google, it's a crap-shoot if it gets any updates 6 months from now.
EDIT: after reading more about "Keen," and trying it a bit, my bet is that it will be like Google Spaces - an interesting idea with some utility, but will die out because they won't have "Google scale" engagement to keep funding it.
EDIT 2: I also learned that Google Collections is the exact same thing. This is Hangouts vs. Allo vs. Duo vs. Spaces all over again.
Google’s brand is tainted. They are real good at search, tracking and shoving ads. Not so great at fostering things from 0 and maintaining them.
Another case of free products where you are the product.
Having your work cancelled and thrown away is one of the most disheartening things as a developer.
It has to be back of mind for them when they are building. When it gets released they get to come see all the comments better on how long until Google kills it, and the people who won’t try it because of that risk.
Shell spent billions on trying to find oil in the Chukchi Sea and there isn't enough to be worth it. But if you don't do things like that you don't find the other big finds.
That's why you don't fall in love with the software. It's there to see if the product is viable. Honestly, I like that environment.
Spending years building something that thousands/millions of people end up using and liking, and then seeing it killed anyway, has to be discouraging.
But my understanding is that these area 120 projects are built with more of a startup attitude, that you're taking a risk and there's a high probability of failure. It sounds really fun to me to build a "pure" product, being able to create exactly what you think the product should be without having to concede to business requirements, and just see how your vision will be accepted.
All the standard warnings about lack of privacy on Keen, treat it like you would FaceBook, enjoy checking it out, but treat it much as you would a rattlesnake on a hiking trail. I almost regret reading the book Surveillance Capitalism because life before that was like ignorant life in the move Matrix (except for me, I could have written a shorter version of SC myself). Reading that book was definitely taking the Red Pill. I don’t blame anyone for continuing the good old Blue Pill lifestyle :-)
EDIT: it is interesting how the site is not really “Google branded” at all. Just in the fine print “ Keen - An experimental product from Area 120 and PAIR at Google”