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Comment by wavephorm | Hacker News Reader

Everything Google does, they do in a half-assed sort of way. And it's getting really annoying. Even their core business of search is showing signs of neglect. SEO experts have learned to game the system such that the quality of search results is pretty abysmal now.

GAE is a half baked AWS. Google+ is a half baked Facebook. Google Docs is a half baked MSOffice. They have no blood in these projects and don't really care whether they succeed or not, which coincidentaly means they probably won't.

Google is getting absolutely clobbered in every category other than search advertising dollars. Their products wreak of ambivilence and neglect, and I'm surprised anyone expected GAE to be a good platform.

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> Google is getting absolutely clobbered in every category other than search advertising dollars. Their products wreak of ambivilence and neglect, and I'm surprised anyone expected GAE to be a good platform.

Except for the largest business on the internet... Well search, video delivery, mobile phones, email, mapping, news, RSS, web analytics, and web browsers. Getting clobbered in almost everything else though.

They make no money on those products. They can't charge money for their products because they are half-assed knockoffs that nobody will pay anything for.

They make a ton of money on those products. It's all part of the ecosystem. Android users use Google search. So do Chrome users. Analytics users use AdWords (get too many hits with Analytics and you need to start spending some sweet AdWords bucks). YouTube and Gmail users see ads (Google Apps business users pay money directly).

Nonsense. Google makes 97% of their revenue from search advertising, they can't make any money elsewhere and they even say so themselves. Everything else they do is to keep up appearances that they are a market leader, which is very far from reality.

Android is a junky iOS-knockoff operating system they pawn off for free because it can't be sold. This comapany can't produce a single product worth paying for other than search ads, and even that is going down the tube. Sure, maybe their shareholders have been fooled, but the paying consumer hasn't. Whether they admit it not, Google is in severe trouble if search advertising decreases even a few percent.

Everyone seems to have a crush on Google, but they are going to get fucked pretty badly long term unless they find some alternative, major, multi-billion dollar sources of revenue of which they've found zero so far. Self-driving cars maybe?

Those products bolster search advertising... That's the point. Android produces a ton of search revenue. So does Chrome.

> Android is a junk iOS-knockoff operating system they pawn off for free because it can't be sold.

It's the most popular smartphone OS... Is Linux free as well because it can't be sold? Your blind hatred of Google is bizarre.

> It's the most popular smartphone OS

Would it be if they charged for it? Android has massive issues across development, the market, the user experience and poor vendor practices that are routinely ignored by the same people that jump on every mistake Apple makes.

Don't get me wrong, Android has a lot of promise but it's popular because it's on so many phones. That's not exactly a "winner" if it takes dozens of phone to compete against one phone. The same goes for tablets.

The more Android devices you make, the more iOS devices stand out among them.

I said they are half-assed products. Google is not commited to GAE, or anything for that matter. Perhaps they lead in indirect ways to advertising revenue. But that's no excuse for having no support at all for any of their products. The poor quality of GAE is a symptom of an ambivalent company that doesn't deserve your respect.

Poor quality? Did you not read the posts of all the devs saying they really like GAE, some of them so much that the pricing change isn't really even an issue?

You're not contributing to this conversation at all, you're just spewing opinionated venom with no support for your claims.

My original points of Google building half-assed products they don't care about was succinct. It's others on this board that keep dragging on and defending the company for some reason or another. Perhaps it's because they're employed by them?

> Nonsense. Google makes 97% of their revenue from search advertising

No, Google makes 97% of their revenue from advertising, not just search advertising. 31% of the revenue comes from "Google Network web sites" (AdSense).

http://investor.google.com/earnings/2010/Q4_google_earnings....

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