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Comment by DesiLurker | Hacker News Reader

God bless the google tech lead whose promotion this iteration of google tv would end up supporting.

Jokes apart, I am not buying that this time is different. as much as it pains me to say, google needs a little power to the product managers to push through a consistent vision of consumer product side.

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To me this is a top down problem. VPs and execs should be putting a stop to this. There needs to be a clear product vision from the top for there to be a clear product vision in the middle and bottom. This is what Steve Jobs was so good at. He could just say, this is dumb we aren't doing this. Google needs an exec team that understands products at the consumer level, not the engineering level and sees products as long living endeavors. The Apple Watch did not do great when it was released, but Apple kept making updates, kept improving it. They committed to the project and the vision and had the confidence to stick with it even if it lost money in its early days.

Yes! Better to iterate, even dramatically, on a clear product vision and brand than to keep pitching "same but different" products like Google TV, Android TV, and YouTube TV (or Google's various text and video chat apps). Users get confused and fragmented and they won't want to commit to your new products.

I'm in full agreement with you. However, it is hard for management to change how the company operates in such a massive way when the shareholders have been nothing but happy with the company's performance. Google have to have left a ton of revenue on the table by giving up on products rather than developing them to be useful and giving their customers confidence that the product they depend on won't be depreciated.

Why do you think the shareholders are nothing but happy with its performance? It’s by far the slowest growing FAANG, and over the past 5 years has basically tracked the Nasdaq, suggesting it is performing no better than any random tech company.

Not just lose money but was ridiculed. The Apple Watch and Airpods made Apple the laughing stock when they came out but fast forward a few years and the Apple Watch is the most successful smart watch out there and every other tech company is trying to mimic the success that the Airpods had down to getting rid of the headphone jack.

"No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

Exactly the point. The first iPod was exactly what the slashdotters called it - mostly useless. It took them 2 years to get useful functionality (USB and Windows support) and another 2 years to leave everything else behind in the dust on aesthetics and UX.

promo doc submitted and targeting q4 for promo

too true

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