How Google Killed GDrive and Spiked Its Skype Acquisition | Hacker News Reader

How Google Killed GDrive and Spiked Its Skype Acquisition

networkeffect.allthingsd.com

35 pointsrpsubhub23 comments

“Files are so 1990,” said Pichai. “I don’t think we need files anymore.”
Horowitz was stunned. “Not need files anymore?”

“Think about it,” said Pichai. “You just want to get information into the cloud. When people use our Google Docs, there are no more files. You just start editing in the cloud, and there’s never a file.”

Color me stunned too. I just took a vacation to Italy and my camera sure has heck didn't push 40GB of photos up into the cloud on some random wifi connection that didn't exist where I was at that very moment, so that I could then saturate the nonexistent bandwidth pulling them all back down again for viewing and editing (or panorama stitching).

This is actually the #1 use case for me that prevents me from traveling a few pounds lighter with just a tablet. I need lots of storage for photos.

I'm half playing with the idea of just getting a big dropbox account for traveling and just push all my photos up at the end of the day. A 50-60GB GDrive would have been great had Google offered it.

I think the GDrive cancellation in particular highlights a real problem at Google: the tendency to have a much clearer idea of what they want users to be doing than of what users want to do.

Generic cloud storage could be a great bridge between the way the vast majority of people are used to working with data (as files) and the plethora of online services that can make that data useful in (to the user) unforeseen ways. But because the Google future is so dazzling, it's not enough to step into it. One must leap.

[I agree.] The problem is see is that there's a long tail of reasons why we will still need files, at least for the next few years. By providing an acceptable solution to "the file problem", users might more easily break free of a Windows desktop-centric world. Instead, there will be a handful of use cases holding each potential ChromeOS adoptor back, but the the total number of reasons will be unfathomably large.

By the same logic, shouldn't Google be abandoning "cloud printing"? Isn't printing stuff out so 1990's?

I'm curious, do you agree with Steve Jobs when he states, "a lot of the time, people don't know what they want until you show it to them"?

I disagree, the 'no file' approach is the forward looking one, beyond DropBox type thing. Why sync files to local machines when they are already accessible through the cloud? that's the 'leap'.

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with.

Edit: I think I understood the rationale but it's blinkered. It's Google's business to find out why such transitions are difficult or unattractive to users and to smooth the way. To answer your question, why sync, an example is data portability. While most computer users have never heard the term, they do have an intuitive understanding of the kinds of problems that can happen when you don't have a local copy of your stuff, as almost happened with the Google Video screw-up. Whether problems like this are real or permanent isn't the most relevant fact, it's that people experience them.

If I understand correctly you suggest that it was a mistake not having launched GDrive as a gate-way service to their 'no file' vision, but I agree with their approach to focus on developing the services that will eventually remove the need for files.

This is essentially just 2 small excerpts from the actual book, and a short video interview.

Here are two other excepts (from a previous HN article) of the book that also link to a free preview of the first chapter.

https://kindle.amazon.com/post/1EJFN69GTE3AN

https://kindle.amazon.com/post/2BJ69NQFHGN1P

I'd recommend reading the preview even if you don't plan on buying the book right now. But getting this book in multiple small excerpts doesn't really do it justice.

Given how well DropBox and Skype are doing this doesn't say very much about Google management. I'm surprised Pichai and Chan still have their jobs.

Those are two companies that are chained to the desktop, which for better or worse Google is trying to subplant. Since they already have video and voice chat/online storage solutions, they just be buying users which seems like a poor businees move.

Considering the crooks that run Skype, Google got real lucky on that one. Just ask eBay.

I blame eBay for that one. Not actually acquiring the underlying technology to Skype was pure idiocy on their part. I don't blame Skype one bit for taking advantage. My point was that apparently Craig Walker having kids in school and lawyers saying it would take months for the deal to go through was enough to kill a deal that had a high chance of success. I understand Chan was protecting his territory but shame on Google management for going along with it.

As Gannes notes, the timeframe of some of these discussions is left unclear by Levy's book. Are we sure this wasn't a discussion to buy Skype from eBay, or very recently since its spin-out?

They're responsible for two of the company's hottest products, that's how.

Maybe, but being right once doesn't mean they're never wrong again. It's hard for me to see how Google wouldn't have been better off buying Skype and integrating it into GMail. Easier said than done for sure but a hell of a lot easier than getting Skype users to switch to Google Voice. Also, last I checked Google Docs still wants to save things as files. I guess Pichai never had to at least prove his idea correct and justify his decision. Maybe these guys are good product managers but they seem to be pretty bad at strategy. The point I'm making is that they don't seem to have been held accountable.

Just checked. Google docs does not work with files.

Really? Then why is there a big list of files starring at me when I open Google Docs? There's also a "File" menu with the typical options. Perhaps internally they don't represent these data as files but that seems to be how they're presented to the user. Am I missing something?

I think the "File" menu is there because since everyone is used to it, it is expected. Other then that, I don't see a list of files, but I do see a list of documents. Subtle difference, big impact. A document is a file (however, I doubt even that at gdocs), but a file is not necessarily a document. Personally I want to work with documents, not so much with files. Lowlevel stuff is keeping me from doing my actual work.

In this argument, i'm with pichai and chan. They just did the thing that google is known for. Google is best when it create a web-app or any enterprise from its store. When they acquire something they are most likely take the different approach then the original thinking of that company. This in most cases fails to scale and integrate that app.

Pity. I think Google might have done better with Skype.

The crazy idea that files are obsolete reminds me of how Skype thought that the old multiwindow communicator paradigm needed replacing and forced Skype 5 on disgruntled users.

Skype insists they see the future while users keep downgrading to 2.8

These size limitations are pretty 1990 http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=37603

I'm 2/3rd of the way through the book right now, and I vacillate between being ready to ditch the book altogether (for cheerleading Google too much) and continuing on in horrid fascination (Mayer announcing basically that design was dead "machines made this")

Too much to review here, but overall I am immensely impressed with the talent at Google and their potential to change the world. It's truly an incredible thing to watch.

I also feel like if you took a bunch of hopelessly naive engineering grads, gave them 100 Billion dollars, and turned them loose on the world, you'd have a Google. That both a compliment and a critique. I strongly suspect that Googlers aren't all wearing superman capes and flying around the planet, looking for evil villains. Much of it today must be tediously boring.

But "files are so 1990"?

We are not going to reinvent the mainframe as the internet. At least I sincerely hope not. No matter how many super-incredible geniuses we throw at it, there are really good reasons that have nothing to do with 1990 that lead me to know that I want complete control over my data and my processing. That doesn't mean that those things have to permanently live locally, but it sure as hell doesn't mean that I have to "control" them through some cloud provider using html. Maybe I'm smoking crack, but it seems to me we're just proving that old saying "you can have too much of a good thing"

Hopefully one day it'll be 2025 and these same types of forward-thinking people (I consider myself one) will have moved beyond rigid cloud/client thinking and be saying "the cloud is so 2010, you know?"

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