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Comment by dereg | Hacker News Reader

Federighi and Schiller nailed it. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that Google would have bungled a WhatsApp acquisition.

I think it’s refreshing to see that Fed & Phil had in mind a clear path to value with their existing hardware+software strategy, rather than rushing to the growth and market share at-all-costs strategy popular at the time.

It’s so easy to point to Federighi’s email and scream “monopolist”! But Apple was in no way close to commanding a monopoly in the mobile market back then.

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>it’s clear that Google would have bungled a WhatsApp acquisition

Google Meet

Google Meet (Original)

Google Meet (Acquired)

The whole thing is a bit mind boggling to me. Everyone I knew that had gmail was also actively using hangouts. How they could screw that up is beyond me. It even had voip integration. All they needed to do was polish the app.

They announced the shutdown of hangouts and the removal of google fi integration and despite the uproar they doubled down on it.

Genuine question to people here. Why ? They keep claiming that they're a data driven company. What data are these decisions based on?

My theory is that Googlers feel extra special and entitled and it makes them lazy.

And products just languish as a result.

The theory isn’t anything deep, but it seems to fit the facts.

It would be a poor explanation if it didn’t fit the facts. When faced with a body “the butler did it” is an explanation, but in the absence of actual evidence or reasoning to support it, it’s not a compelling case.

In your theory, why do Googler’s feel extra entitled compared to other big tech employees?

I’m not sure. Could it be the stock riches? The near exclusive Ivy League hiring initially at least? The jars of candy everywhere and the onsite massages? Charlie Ayers as your chef (at least for a while)? Access to the inside track on news of The AI? Party 747? Or just surviving a famous interview process and having “Googler” be a sure annointment (inexplicably, now after we see the results) conferring status? Gosh I just can’t seem to put my finger on it.

There are no equivalent benefits at Facebook or Apple?

Are you asking if Apple and Facebook have benefits? Of course they do. Just not an equivalent package of so many amped-up ego-stroking elements, no. Those two are more of a walled garden and a fiefdom, respectively, where everyone is put in their place.

Yup, IMO the deprecation of Hangouts was a strategic mistake.

> What data are these decisions based on?

The data used by the person in charge of making this decision (typically a VP or a Sr Director): what is the probability of them getting promoted. If doubling down or just maintaining and polishing existing projects was rewarded, Google wouldn't have been in this state.

Now why those incentives exist that way? It was a confluence of factors in 2000's when internet was growing rapidly, Google had lots of talented employees, a bold bet in a new area (email, news, street view or browser) had a higher expected value than polishing and maintaining existing products. The culture needs a reset, Google is currently living through its "Ballmer era".

launch/deprecate -> promote

polish/maintain -> stagnate

You can manipulate data to show whatever you want. The incentive structures within the company are to blame.

Edit: Limp leadership is also to blame. Probably some other things too?

"Data driven" is something I've seen occasionally from execs as an excuse to not have - and particularly, not commit to - a plan.

A lot of times it's much easier to find data to give you reasons not to do something long-term (very similar to investors focused on short-term results) than to confirm the value of committing significant resources to long-term bets.

Other than "keep milking ads" is there any clear strategy Google's consumer business has shown? Android looks like a good example of executing on that ads strategy, but other things that seem harder to tie to ads directly tend to languish since nobody there actually knows what they want to do in other areas: chat apps? Stadia? Random things like Cardboard? Consumer G-suite? I'd say even assistant/home stuff is languishing (where's the big money maker).

> Genuine question to people here. Why ? They keep claiming that they're a data driven company.

They're not a data driven company, they are a promotion driven company. New products drive promotions and maintaining existing products do not.

> What data are these decisions based on?

Could be as simple as “We tried this for x months. It still isn’t profitable, and we don’t see it becoming profitable soon”

For me, with zero inside knowledge, it looks like Google’s upper management gives managers lots of freedom to launch products, but expects them to bring in money soon.

That doesn’t seem the case for all kinds of products, though. I don’t see Chrome directly making money for them, for example. There, it seems they realize it indirectly, by defending their advertising income, is profitable.

It seems upper management doesn’t have a long term strategy for making money with messaging apps, but still has hope some of their managers will find it.

> They keep claiming that they're a data driven company. What data are these decisions based on?

When the data shows the results you are looking for, you say you're data-driven. When it doesn't, you manipulate and torture it long enough to produce the result you are looking for. If it still doesn't, you come up with some excuse to end up doing the thing you wanted to do anyway.

It could have been as simple as (1) acquiring WhatsApp and (2) instructing every other product division at Google to not even think about developing or launching messaging apps from now on. But yes, knowing Google chances are that they would have managed to screw it up.

The issue is there has been no one at Google with that kind of pull AND that kind of vision for a long time - if ever.

Plenty of people have that kind of pull. I don't see anyone ignoring a directive from Sundar, for example. Vision is a different story..

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