Comment by shacrw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shacrw | Hacker News Reader

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Google has no brand sense left. This is an app used by so many kids, who love it, and they are shutting it down. Instead they shouldn't have launched it. I understand user studies, but this makes no sense. And no matter how they brand it ( they literally opened a new division Area 120) which speacializes in killing products. lol), this is BS.

Where's the product strategy? vision? If they wanted to study the demand and then move it Assistant eventually, then they should've launched it on the Assistant in the first place.

The mass userbase of the native app doesn't validate whether people will find the assistant experience frictionless.

Anyways, i am just spitballing (maybe this time they have a strategy!), but one thing is quite clear that they're actively destroying brand value across demographics.

I love google products so this is kind of frustrating. I've been wondering for past 2-3 years whether they even realise how brand image damage stuff like this causes?

Also, I am just a college student and I'd love to know from SV folks if you think that apart from the old Google products, their is lack of vision in new products? lack of vision in new PMs? Is Google not able to attract good talent anymore in terms of Product Strategy, Mgmt, Branding? Is it deteriorating? I've always felt that Google is terrible at perception management.

Happy to be corrected in case something above didn't make sense :)

Sundar Pichai has no sense of leadership skills that I can note from outside of the company. He exudes no passion, no sense of optimism, and completely lacks vision. I’ve seen him speak at Google I/O and time and again, it’s just AI and people.

He needs to turn Google’s brand into Goodwill. Like Nike did. Like Apple did. Like his predecessors at Google did.

Pardon me if this is harsh, but literally being honest how I feel.

Sundar feels like an immature executive when it comes to building an image about himself and the company. Wallstreet probably likes his results and growth numbers, but there is more to stock price and performance to running a company. When he is gone, his successors will feel the pain and debt he has left behind.

Not harsh at all. I follow Google very closely. At one point literally 5-10 consecutive speeches/ keynotes/ interviews by Pichai over a period of 3 years appeared to be the same charismaless, PR written statements. It's fine if it's the same thing (in case you want to articulate a particular vision), the problem is it's dull, boring, no vision at all. Pichai is hailed as a great PM for stuff like Chrome etc.

But I don't see what he has brought to the table as the CEO. I feel like Google has a lot of great engineers who've stuck around for 15-20 years, that's their core asset, but they need more direction, vision, strategy. Apple has a solid team of designers and product people who've stuck around for decades. Google needs more product people or more importantly a strong directive from the top (Pichai) to dominate in an area like hardware, AR.

Like one thing which I am especially baffled by is Google's lack of action in the AR space. Meanwhile, Apple's been ramping up small acquistions over the past 3-4 years to assemble solid talent,IP. It's going to take a lot of time for Google to catch up in AR.

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