Google combines Maps and Waze teams in restructuring move
wsj.com
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Google Maps is one of the services which actually does some minor damage to me. Delivery drivers usually blame me for not finding my street, while GMaps data is what is the problem. I've had one delivery person stuck in snow and require technical assistance in another street, because Google Maps shows my street there.
I cannot get Google to change my street name to correct legal one.I've tried 'suggesting an edit' it at least 10 times. There is no support to contact to or anything. I've looked. They say I don't have any proof that my suggested street name is correct - but I even add a link to Google Street view which has a literal street sign with correct name and coordinates. I tried official street registry links. Still rejected. It is insane.
I personally can use openstreetmap.org, but delivery drivers and etc. - they don't use it. So I am stuck in this non-sense.
Maybe ask more people to do it!
I have the same, but my friend from the UK has the opposite. Does it depend on the country ? Where I live, when I use Google maps, it sends me into fields on roads that are gone already for ages while Waze works perfectly... Google maps sends me to places I cannot get out of or continue (so narrow that I cannot continue or turn and have to drive backwards to get out) etc.
It might be, but in my opinion, most of these problems can be solved with two minute call with a real person who has elevated access to Google Maps edits. This would save people months of frustration.
I never had any problems with other big tech support. Only Google
My best guess so far is that they request driving directions using GPS coordinates for my address, which leads to GMaps reserve-mapping it to the neighbouring street, which is closer to the building but the drivers will face a fence. Food drivers usually leave the packages to a neighbour, Uber drivers make angry phone calls and claim that I'm not at the pickup point. Customer service keeps blaming me for failing to enter my address and location properly, so my improvement suggestions go nowhere past the first tier support.
I have to favour services with a proper localisation, usually the ones not developed around a mobile app.
All of the possible choices invariably lead drivers to the wrong location.
No one at Uber read anyting like “myths programmers believe about addresses” it seems.
Also, my country (Portugal) has a postal code that almost uniquely identifies my house, and both Google Maps and Waze ignore it in favor of hand-wavy parsing of the rest of the address.
Yes, Finland is a bilingual country and some southern cities have official names in Swedish, but this town was a full 300km from the southern border and zero of the street names had official Swedish alternatives. Google just decided to autotranslate all the street names with no fallback.
People complained, Google didn't care. At one point after a few weeks it just magically reverted back.
A typical Danish name might be Ny Munkegade -- new monk's street. Google maps directions produce "noy mun keg ade", which is utterly incomprehensible.
Google Maps' decision as to which street names to translate to German when using voice directions seemed completely arbitrary. Numbered streets I could kinda understand (e.g. First Street was called out as "Erste Straße"), but others were perplexing: it insisted on calling Rainbow Blvd. "Regenboden Boulevard" despite using (non-translated, but German-accented) English for every other nearby street.
If I was a German-only speaker, looking at street signs, I would have been lost.
(This was also an educational experience re: dark patterns. I eventually had to switch back to English, because I repeatedly almost got tricked into clicking "yes" instead of "not now" on things I didn't ever want to enable. Despite my having repeatedly opted out in English, Google almost got me to "consent" in German because my language skills there weren't as good.)
Sometimes the lane guidance also likes to pick up on the destinations from the overhead signs, trying to pronounce the Finnish and Swedish names with less than stellar results.
Not only is the portuguese pronounciation pretty bad most of the time (in their defense streets can have very annoying names over here), they don't use location to expand acronyms, so the state/province-managed highways ("SC-401" etc) get read aloud as "South Carolina 401". Couldn't be more wrong.
I'm not sure how this happens. Most of the time, only the English (even though I use the UK variant) voice does this incorrect substitution, but in some occasions the portuguese voice can try saying the english words "south carolina" with portuguese pronounciation, which is hilarious in a disappointing way.
(Maybe the pt-BR voice model knows to pronounce SC as humans do, just the letters, but the acronym expansion happens in text, before voice is involved, in some code paths? No idea, just guessing)
So Google did care?
At this scale, change takes time to unfold due to bureaucracy and technical reasons.
Other mapping source datas (TomTom, HERE) all fix mapping issues, even if takes time to get it approved. For Google, it's a blackhole, the only way to get it properly fixed was to reach out to a contact at Google to raise it internally.
Regarding OSM data, I think Google does not use any of OSM data, otherwise they would have to credit it and I don't see it credited. I don't think that OSM has any impact here.
Please don’t do a small insignificant change in OSM just because it might trigger something somewhere else. Make changes to improve the map data in OSM!
According to Google Maps my hotel was a 20 minute meandering walk through the blistering heat.
Thankfully, I've been in the very hotel already and new this to be garbage information.
Actually you just walk up some steps and three minutes later you arrive at the hotel.
When I told that to the proprietor he just groaned and told me that it took him years of effort to get Google to correct the street route they had marked to his hotel.
Let's just say this made quite a dent in my confidence in all things Google.
USPS knows what they are doing, but packages delivered by other services sometimes just don't show up. Delivery drivers are constantly confused; we have made a habit of putting long instructions in the order notes about the actual location. Sometimes this even works.
The first couple of times it happened we were walking into the lobbies of neighboring buildings scouring for our delicious 8-corner.
Finally we figured out the mapping API they were using was wrong and asked Google to correct it.
I am now happy to report our 8-corners get delivered to the correct building lobby.
Do the report from the app on a phone while you're at the location and take a picture of the sign yourself. I've had more success this way. I think it logs that you're actually looking the place while reporting and finds it more trustworthy.
This is the thing that I hate the most. It wouldn't be so bad if they kept a zoom level where I could see what's coming up, but they zoom in super tight until the phantom merge point is passed. If I'm traveling 60 mph and I have to cut across 3 lanes of busy traffic in less than a tenth of a mile, I'd like to have a fucking heads up. When cruising on the interstate, I'd like to know my exit number without having to scroll past all the instances where the number of lanes changes on my way there.
My Garmin GPS from 2007 had a better UX than this.
I'm used to the speedtrap, speed limits and general crowd sourced alerts in Waze. I remember seing this in google maps, but it disappeared again. I don't know if my location (Denmark) has something to say about that?
That being said, the estimates that waze give me, especially for sudden accidents, are way off. I'm told it's better in the Copenhagen area, due to more users on the road, but where I live, it's almost non-existant.
[1] https://www.radioarabella.de/geisterfahrer-wir-warnen-sie-in...
About two years ago I had an opportunity to run a "for fun" experiment. My family and another family went on vacation together but I had to come home a couple of days early due to business travel. Because of vehicle sizes, I ended up taking the other car home -- which was a small luxury SUV with a high-end radar detector ... somewhere inside the damn thing[1]. I had Waze up. For whatever reason, between two different states, the roads were teaming with traffic enforcement. When I stopped to fill up, I grabbed a small notebook and a pen and kept score: Radar/Waze with ticks under "Cop Missed", "Cop Found", "False Positive". The radar was worthless. It had lower false-positives than I'd expected (I remember those things going off all the time for nothing) but when it went off, it went off too late. It missed more than half of them.
Waze, on the other hand, had very few false positives. I suspect some that I marked "false positive" were really me failing to see the police officer[2]. This was "8-hours of highway (non-turnpike/toll)" and there was a police officer every 5 miles (I went 2, maybe 3 pages in tick marks on a hand-sized spiral-bound $0.99 gas station notepad). I don't even know that I bothered calculating everything out completely. For one, Waze did not miss a single speed trap that entire drive. Where I live (metro to a major mid-west city), it's rare that I'm the first reporter or that I see a cop that Waze isn't alerting me about already.
Beyond police, the reports for disabled vehicles (by law you must move one lane over where I live) is very helpful for both "ticket avoidance" and safety (if you care enough to follow the rules).
I prefer the Google Maps interface -- and generally everything else about it over Waze, but I use Waze 99.9% of the time and for every drive. I have it setup to not speak the directions because much of the time I'm traveling to places that I am very familiar with the routes (I might follow a suggestion over my own preference, though, because "Waze tends to be more right"). I use it, entirely, for the social reporting features. Though Maps, at one point, added this (is it still there?) it wasn't even close to the quality of that provided by Waze. I'm really hoping they "put the social features into Maps" and I'll switch to maps or "move the UI more toward Maps in Waze" and I'll continue using Waze.
[0] For context, I'm not an aggressive driver ... I don't drive that much any longer as it is so I tend to be a lot more cautious these days. But it's way too easy to not notice a 10-15 MPH speed limit change accidentally and driving laws are among the small set of laws that are more often broken unintentionally, than intentionally.
[1] I would have had no idea what the insane beeping was all about but it was a brand that a friend of mine owned growing up and I recognized the tone ... but he had it installed in a manner that it you'd never know there was one in the car except for the sound (they're illegal in Canada which they traveled to frequently). It was a very expensive model outfitted with the latest Radar Detector Detector Detector Detector Detector (odd or even number, I can't remember). I had no idea how to silence it so I was afraid I'd get pulled over and guarantee myself a ticket for having it.
[2] Where I live, on-ramps make great speed traps. If positioned just so, you can't see them until they're behind you, and you can't see them in your passenger mirror at all if it's a typical mirror/aimed the way most drivers aim them -- requiring you to turn your head to locate them (something you're probably not in the habit of doing while chilling at highway speeds).
My wife recorded her voice in Waze and I love hearing from her telling me "turn left, honey", "be careful, there's cops ahead!"...etc.
Here is a screenshot of the feature I'm talking about: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/waze-plann...
Basically, I know I want to go to A, but I'm not sure when to leave, I just know I want to avoid as much traffic as possible, so when should I leave? The feature kind of answers that.
With that said, I do prefer waze’s graph showing traffic changing over time to help decide when to leave
In the US I solely use maps
People would even be allowed to try to effect change. In this case, it would mean weighing saving a likely insignificant amount of time for a subset of people, against residents of the street dealing with constant traffic. What is "fair" depends on the exact circumstances, but taken at face value, I suspect if one were to effect regulation such that speed bumps are added, or through traffic prohibited, or the path being made less convenient, then almost none of the insignificant-time-savers would even notice much. They'd take the new suggested route and be likely just as happy.
The sarcasm will continue until the NIMBYs improve.
1. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0473537,-118.3282794,78m/dat...
2. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0448801,-118.3296309,60m/dat...
3. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0593371,-118.3293991,73m/dat...
The place where I work has a fridge full of beers. Every so often I see someone stick a couple in their bag, on their way home. Oh no! An employee taking beers intended for employees to consume!, right?
I blame the parents.
I blame the parents.
In Germany, that is culturally accepted. It even has, as always in German, its own name: "Wegbier" or the pun version "Fuß-Pils" (a play on "athlete's foot").
Many public residential streets are not designed for heavy traffic use. I don't think it's unreasonable for local residents to be upset by the noise and congestion of people taking a shortcut off the highway to cut 30 seconds off their travel time.
Do you think we should return to those good old days? Or is there perhaps an argument to be made that new technologies can lead to suboptimal outcomes when operated within the bounds of regulations that didn't (and couldn't reasonably have been expected to) anticipate their development?
The asphalt layers are thinner, ground support is spec'd for low and moderate traffic... that means that should such a road be subject to unplanned amounts of traffic, the roads will degrade way faster, particularly if heavy goods traffic comes into play.
I used to think the same until we A/B tested it a few times (Maps/Waze) with different cars going to the same destination.
Waze really was faster very time.
Another thing, I suspect there's a significant resource cost in constantly re-evaluating these few-second saving opportunities that may not scale well to the size of Map's user base. Could be wrong here.
From personal experience, i've regretted ignoring waze because "i live here and know better" every time at rush hour.
I know these sorts of scenarios aren't a priority for them, but I'm surprised they don't even have a roughly accurate estimate given how much location tracking info they collect. If 40 people this year have driven a stretch of road with a range of travel times from 25-40 minutes, an estimate of 7 minutes seems pretty obviously wrong and easy to catch.
This results in 5-10 semis getting stuck every year. There is nothing that google is willing to do to help the state out. The state has put up signage telling drivers their GPS is wrong, and they ignore it.
This highlights that routing algorithms do not understand the concept of safe driving and cannot evaluate how dangerous it is to just pick any alternative route.
Bad Google!
I've definitely noticed this getting worse; it likes to suggest I do a zig-zag route across rural areas. If I didn't have to decelerate for a 90 degree turn it'd probably be much faster, but I do. Maybe the Maps devs are all in fast-cornering supercars.
Waze routes have started to look more like maps routes though with the environmental gas saving trip focus instead of the most direct or fastest route.
I may try Apple Maps or something else. The waze directions don’t account for traffic and the capability to follow the directions.
Waze doesn't seem to be aware of fords, but then, I wouldn't expect it to be.
I also like that I can tell Waze "I ain't afraid of tricky intersections", and that it's happy to take side-roads if it'll get you there slightly faster, which Google Maps prefers not to do.
And then she hit the final badge and that was it. She was crushed. Why can't they just keep making more badges?
Faster adjusting to real-time traffic, better navigation UI, more importantly tells you where polices are but also other various things that are good to know beforehand.
Google maps is still useful to pre-plan a route, get information about businesses, restaurants, opening hours and just better overall building information with street view and such, but I'd never go back to using maps for navigation unless they do exactly as waze does.
The data sharing between the 2 services has mostly gotten them to a point where they both give very comfortable estimates about traffic.
Waze is still better because someone Maps will tell you to turn too early when Waze's timing is more realistic.
I saw the most spectacular failure like this on Good Friday this year, where I had to take a cross-town trip and Waze was telling my Bolt driver that it would take 2h+ (and trying to make them avoid all large roads), when in reality and in Google Maps, the city was essentially empty and the trip took ~30 minutes.
The 2h+ estimate was definitely correct for a normal day, but that day was part of a long weekend and no one was around, and yet Waze had absolutely no idea. Even on normal days, it typically significantly overestimates how long rush hour lasts by at least another hour.
Maybe this is somehow specific to my city, but at least it shows that in some places Google Maps and Waze use significantly different data (or weigh different sources very differently).
But we should find a better way to describe this than using language like "always" and "forever"...
I started using mIRC as a teenager, I had almost no money so used pirated versions. Many years later, since the program gave me many hours of enjoyment (and through it I had the first conversations the person who is now my wife, no less!), I bought a couple of licenses because I felt I owed it to the devs.
I don't regret doing that, of course... but there's no way I'll be renewing my lifetime licenses. The contract I signed gave me a lifetime right to use the software so my understanding is that if the dev wants to remove that right from me, it's completely legitimate to resort to piracy, and I doubt a court could say otherwise.
Google says many things. Always believing them is a huge mistake.
What’s the benefit of Waze being a separate app at this point besides the brand name? Why not just fold it into the main Maps app?
It doesn't surprise me that Google's doing it, what's the point in having a monopoly if you can't use it to your advantage. It's not good for users though.
Even if it’s just a GUI, different apps get you different experiences, and if you succeed it’s a bigger % of phone usage. People who mentally treat location searching and navigation as separate tasks (worthy of separate apps) are at risk of leaving for a competitor. So build two tools specific to each use case. It’s the Unix way.
I don’t know if this is the case, but it’s likely there is some left over legal issues to wrt user data.
Once I showed my father-in-law the "police reported ahead" and "hazard reported ahead" features he was sold. He now demands Waze on every road trip and he's not especially tech-savvy. Google doesn't supply this same data.
This seems to have been added in 2019: https://www.macobserver.com/tips/quick-tip/google-maps-repor...
Does CarPlay even offer UX to allow that? It looks like Apple might support it, although the directions aren't very thorough: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/report-traffic-incide...
For example I live near a busy road during "rush hour" in the morning and evenings. A few mins up the road from me 2 major roads intersect which causes more hassle during these peak times. Now If you are travelling West to East to wish to turn right at the intersection to continue your journey south its quicker during those times to cut though my neighborhood (and same in the other direction) and cut out the queues leading up to the intersection. However my neighborhood's roads are not designed for that much traffic to flow though them (cars parked in the street narrowing the roads and reducing visablity of pedestrians esp kids playing outside).
The handful of locals that travel though the neighborhood to get home (live one side but enter the other) are fine however if Google Maps routed everyone wishing to make that turn though the neighborhood it would make the neighborhoods roads much less friendly to the pedestrians of the neighborhood esp at times kids are going to school or are back home from school and playing outside.
Keeping the through traffic to the major roads keeps everyone safer, and actually faster overall because the major roads aren't littered with cards parked in the road creating bottlenecks.
Much like how the london underground lies to travellers and routes them around long detours during busy periods to help prevent a crush if they all went the shortest & fastest route possible - https://youtu.be/IrHRQSm6LIs?t=57
> [The] idea was that if each driver is making the optimal self-interested decision as to which route is quickest, a shortcut could be chosen too often for drivers to have the shortest travel times possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox
Personally I'd rather not go through neighborhoods for just a tiny micro-optimization because of how much more "work/attention" is required given the increased pedestrian traffic.
2. Waze has features that google maps does not (?) s.a the "ETA histogram"
If I told you one uses Maps and one uses Waze, could you guess which one is likely which? That's the two use cases.
There's a reason minivans don't come with an option for supercharged v12 engines. In theory you can say that people can just "not chose that option" but there's something deeper about how the product is positioned in the market there.
Just like you wouldn't expect an option on a minivan for drag racing mode, you don't expect an option for crazy routing on a mainstream app. Grandma can activated it by accident and cause huge traffic trying to make some impossible left turn. It's not worth it.
Or rather, the group of people in Google who are in charge of this product are reaching the conclusion that it's not the same thing. I don't know the details of their thinking,I can just come up with my own thinking for why it could make sense.
Oh I can tell you pretty much exactly their thinking. If Google folds the functions of their products into another product/team, a number of them are going to have to find a new role. I think you'll be hard put to find a product manager or development team that goes "Eh, we should just kill my product. The competing product is better for most people."
But more to the point, devs and PMs have managers and at some point, some manager is "paying" for both products and must be weighing the pros and cons of consolidation vs separation.
Maps's use case:
> I used Maps just for finding new restaurants and other places.
I find the Waze experience on Carplay to be far superior to Gmaps. I prefer how it provides access to the key features like reporting/voice prompt, the size/position/color how things are displayed, etc. The level of detail (surrounding streets and landmarks) is more useful on Waze.
My experience has been that Waze seems to have better traffic prediction and avoidance in the areas I use it. Just last night I was following a cow orker from the plant we were working at to a restaurant about 30 mins away. We were right behind each other when my Waze suggested taking the exit and following a different route than my friend. I arrived at the restaurant a good 5 minutes before him, I asked, and he was using gmaps.
Disclaimer: I haven't used Waze in years so this might have changed.
There are differences in my region which make me think that the apps have different mapping and routing engines.
Turn by turn dirrections and road condition information are much more accurate in Waze. There's a larger Waze local community that helps keep maps up to date.
We do use Google Maps, but mostly as a Yellow Pages substitute or for checking business opening time.
The thing is: what Waze does is borderline illegal, and it is regularly updated to still do its thing without getting struck down. Google Maps is "cleaner", and therefore much worse at detecting speed traps. I guess the questionable legality is a good reason for keeping these apps separate.
Very insightful post. And as much as a reader might think it highlights dysfunction at Google, the continued growth and success of Waze within Google argues otherwise.
> Having trouble scheduling meetings because [...] "I’m taking a personal day" drove me crazy.
Yikes.
- Not being able to just fire people he didn't want anymore
- Having to spend engineering time on things like Privacy protection and Legal compliance
- Work life balance
- Employee entitlement
- Equity compensation being relatively stable, not a win-or-lose lottery ticket
... and then a bunch of rants about political correctness, not being allowed to say offensive things, pronouns...
Yikes is right! Holy cow!
If Waze had stayed independent and done so, it would likely be destined for a consent decree with the FTC.
Either way his life would have gotten a lot worse--he just experienced the pain via corporate insistent, rather than direct governmental influence.
I agree with the author. It is somewhat shocking to me that so many employees in tech feel, or at least project, that being available during normal working hours is "kinda optional". And to be clear, I'm not talking about someone that has a real emergency. But to have the expectation that one should be available between 9-5ish is somehow considered "toxic" is just baffling to me. I'd also highlight that many professions, e.g. those that have shift work, are nowhere near as lax.
Here's the full quote:
> Having trouble scheduling meetings because “it's the new Yoga instructor lesson I cannot miss” or “I’m taking a personal day” drove me crazy. The worst thing is that this was inline with the policies and norms - I was the weirdo who wanted to push things fast and expected some level of personal sacrifice when needed. I don't believe long hours are a badge of honor but I also believe that we have to do whatever it takes to win, even if its on a weekend.
We have two groups of people - tech workers who have a generally great working environment, and shift workers who do not. The idea that in our advanced society we should base our expectations on those who are currently doing worse is frankly absurd. Our aim should be for _everyone_ to have the work-life balance that tech workers have now.
With what, a magic wand? There is the fundamental difference that, for shift work, every employee who is out needs to be replaced by someone else. And it's not just a low-skilled workers issue, for example the same dynamic exists in say doctor groups or pilots. With tech/project-based work, if someone is out it's not like someone else needs to cover for that timeslot.
But just, at a more fundamental level, basically saying "you are expected to be available for your job at particular times" is an expectation for which there is considerable disagreement between generations.
Right, because everyone should be stuck in traffic to work at 9AM, marvellous idea.
It baffles me that it appears to be so hard for managers to just schedule meeting at 11 instead of 9
As to "It baffles me that it appears to be so hard for managers to just schedule meeting at 11 instead of 9", this is the exact point I'm getting at. Why is it somehow hard for people to be available at 9? Having been a manager, it's much more difficult to juggle 15 different individualized schedules when you need to have a meeting with a couple people.
> The worst thing is that this was inline with the policies and norms - I was the weirdo who wanted to push things fast and expected some level of personal sacrifice when needed. I don't believe long hours are a badge of honor but I also believe that we have to do whatever it takes to win, even if its on a weekend.
You're making map app dude, week later or earlier on a feature won't save the world
For people who grew up on the lower half of the household income or wealth distribution, it takes many years of FAANG comp to feel stable there.
It’s a big privilege to risk your career in the pursuit of self-actualization. Not in the sense that one should be ashamed of it, but in the sense that it’s prudent not to look down on people for declining to take it.
The marginal $300k/year is worth significantly more impactful for most people than the expected returns of pursing of self-actualization-through-work. I think most people would rather have a secure income and seek self-actualization outside of work — in their family life or hobbies.
And according to your bio is Dropbox? Well good thing you let the whole HN know that Dropbox is toxic to work at.
But you're the one equating a bunch of stuff with toxicity, just keep in mind that that is not a universal equivalence, it's your opinion.
(Although for the record I don't _completely_ agree with the guy. Obviously work-life balance is a good thing. But much of the other stuff resonates.)
Nahh they were pitching google to get the mega bucks so they could rest and vest on the roof.
The biggest problem arises when a workplace has a mix of employees who have different motivations and goals. Some may be content with just doing their job and going home, while others may be ambitious and want to do great things. This can lead to resentment and hostility when these different perspectives clash. It's the role of the HR department and recruitment to make sure you don't get too many outliers in any direction, but alas those are often doing really poor job with this. Not to mention that the quality of "being a good fit" has been branded "problematic" so it's often not even taken into account.
As the economy moves from a period of growth to a recession, the balance of motivations and goals among employees is likely to shift. And the amount of entitlement will reduce.
(Not in Silicon Valley, but...) I have never regretted sacrificing work for life.
That sounds like you're striking a balance. Obviously, if you "sacrifice" work too much, eventually you won't be able to afford your life, either because you'll be fired or your lax employer will suffer and not be able to pay.
Sometimes it takes a while to manifest.
As a long-time Googler with very mixed feelings, I feel this deeply.
I'm amazed that it only have 10 comments...
Anyway, at all jobs (so far) I've deeply cared about the quality of our product and the company bottom line, which explains why I'm invariably miserable at big company jobs.
I can actually think back to explicit feedback when I was passed up for a promotion that boiled down to "improve brown nosing skills, even if it puts the core business at risk".
The core business at that particular former employer is imploding; I'm long gone, as are 90% of the people I'd like to work with again (many left for similar reasons).
Anyway, there were lots of forehead slapping moments for me while I read that post.
Having said that, the main insight was the central thesis of Office Space. Same shit, different horse, I guess.
Because remember, it's only "actual work" when this guy is doing it
> Young people want it all - they want to get promoted quickly, achieve economic independence, feel fulfilled at Work, be home early, not miss the Yoga class at 11:00am etc. Having trouble scheduling meetings because “it's the new Yoga instructor lesson I cannot miss” or “I’m taking a personal day” drove me crazy.
Based off of my own personal experiences, the yoga instructor thing is a gross misrepresentation. Not only this, but a highly dismissive, caricatured way of talking about people you work with
> I have always been a pretty passionate guy, especially at Waze. After the acquisition, I was invited to speak on many different Google panels and events and very quickly, I began racking up my HR complaints. I used a four letter word, my analogy was not PC, my language was not PG… I actually stopped speaking at events where the majority appreciated what I was saying but the minority that was offended by something (words and not content) made it a pain.
I wonder if it ever crossed this guy's mind that maybe he is the problem. At least he's broadcasting his own entitlement under his own name for everyone to see
Of course not: he's such a narcissist that this would never occur to him.
Lack of ability to communicate is not a good quality in any leader. Phrasing is as important as the message many times.
Some of the most dysfunctional work environments I've worked in followed periods of great business success. The marketplace success can obscure a slow descent into workplace dysfunction. When the profits are rolling in, it's easy to have large swaths of dysfunctional managers and teams blend in, and nobody is looking too hard. It's when the profits come back to earth that the teams are forced to excise the dysfunction or face failure.
Early stage equity is one hell of a drug.
As a founder/manager, it’s irrational to expect anything other than fundamentally different levels of output from each “ring” of growth on the tree, because the inputs are very different. Anybody would work much harder for inter generational wealth than they would for a cool $500k. It’s shocking how common it is for early people to project their personal expectations on others and experience dissonance as a result.
TCI sent Google a letter [1] telling them they need to cut people to get higher margins (>40%) as well as pay the investors more (stock buybacks).
Google is choosing to do what this group of investors says instead of supporting it's employees.
Just so you know.
[1] https://www.tcifund.com/files/corporateengageement/alphabet/...
Edit: This data came from me asking myself of the headline "ok who is it that is putting "Pressure to Cut Costs" on Google." Luckily TCI made it really clear
TCI, who do not actually run the business, are threatening the CEO (addressed to Sundar) that they will move their money if Google doesn't do what they say - namely cut costs etc...
Is it more likely that TCI investors know how better to run Google than Google does or that they don't care and are blindly seeking alpha with no care for the people that run it?
This group of investors however can compel Google to do things differently and as George Carlin once said: "It's a big club, and you ain't in it"
You can generalize that to say the average HN reader knows how to run anything better.
90% of management is equal to or worse than calling random() to make decisions. If the margins are large enough, and the competition is asleep, anyone can be a successful CEO.
What does "move their money" technically mean in this situation? Google is not a bank, they don't keep TCI's money. Is this a threat of tanking the stock price by selling all $6B at once? TCI would hurt themselves too if they do that.
Sell GOOG and buy META (or whatever)
>Is this a threat of tanking the stock price by selling all $6B at once? TCI would hurt themselves too if they do that.
The act of liquidating their position is what reduces the price. So they drop their ask to the lowest bid price that liquidates their position net positive and in theory that action would cause a price cascade. It's a threat, not a guarantee.
Larry and Sergey own 51% of GOOGL. Owning GOOG doesn't give you any control over the behavior of the company.
Why would Google care? This fund owns Google stock; it isn't giving money to Google, it gave money to whoever it bought that stock from.
Selling a fraction of a percent of the total in the market might move the stock price a little, but probably not much.
'Moving their money' just means transferring that stock to someone else who may have more faith in the company's strategy.
The story seems about the same everywhere: When money was pouring and people were spending more time on their devices than usual, the projection was that people will just resign from the physical world and live in VR so hire as many people as possible but that projection looks silly now.
This creates a pressure on Google to try and raise their profitability, and one way to do that is cut on areas where it seems wasteful.
The letter mentioned above is just a trailing sign of this in my opinion.
6 billion dollars worth or 0.5% of the market cap. Not so big
In the UK, being a salaried employee means you pay a rather high rate of tax, compared to other schemes used by rich people - like for example having some of the work done as charitable work, having mostly stock, getting paid via a company, etc.
>The company has too many employees and the cost per employee is too high.
>Headcount is too high.
>... the business could be operated more effectively with significantly fewer employees.
Yeah, cash-hungry hedge fund calling for layoffs. Got it. Yet here's an excerpt from the WSJ article on this restructuring:
>Google said it planned to maintain Waze as a stand-alone service and didn’t plan to conduct any layoffs as part of the reorganization.
1. Google did the Waze Maps/Maps merger to appease TCI so they could prevent layoffs
2. The Waze Maps/Maps merger is unrelated to the TCI memo
>In September, Mr. Pichai said he wanted Google to become 20% more productive and indicated the company could merge teams working on overlapping products.
TCI's memo highlights five areas they think need to be adjusted, none of which Alphabet acquiesced to with this restructuring.
TCI
- Sent letter to Alphabet in mid-November
- Holds a mere .5% of Alphabet's market cap
- Asked for headcount reduction
- Asked Alphabet to pay employees less
Alphabet
- Publicly commented in September that they intended to combine overlapping groups
- Combined overlapping groups
- Didn't lay anyone off
The genesis here was me keying off of related phrases within the WSJ piece:
"...Amid Pressure to Cut Costs"
"...faces pressure to streamline operations and cut costs"
Ok, great. So, my question is where is this pressure coming from?
"The activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management called on Alphabet to aggressively cut costs last month, writing in a letter to management that it thought the company’s head count was too high"
This is the WSJ suggesting that there is a link (granted they do not give confidence intervals) between these things. You could argue that perhaps WSJ is just poorly suggesting that there is a general "background radiation" of "pressure" related to Google.
So it's not like I'm just fabricating this link :)
But since you asked, the larger point and the particular axe I have to grind (that is permanently attached to my hand) is that investors have more power than the collective google employees do, do not have employee interests in mind at all, and Google management and the board will always align with investors NOT employees.
... so, 16.33% headcount reductions?
... I'm not arguing whether or not they intended to keep the apps separate? If you want to know why he left, he's already told you[1].
>Knowing Google, I find it hard to believe that Waze under the Google maps lead will get resources and continue.
Sure. Agreed. That's not what this comment chain was discussing, though. You sure you responded to the right post?
[1]https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-did-i-leave-google-stay-s...
The article clearly states that SHE left with no explanation why:
Waze CEO Neha Parikh will exit her role following a transition period
You're referencing an article that is over a year old about a completely different person.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-did-i-leave-google-stay-s...
Not sure what Google ultimately got out of Zagat rather than maybe a bit of kickstart for restaurant ratings.
Tim Zagat invited us all to visit him if we were in MYC, to get a good restaurant recommendation (and reservation? I'm not sure if he said that).
You don't have much experience with corporate acquisitions, do you?
The Acquiree CEO always leaves after a year or three, unless Acquirer is a company like Cisco that's really good at it. Why?
Because Acquirer has middle manager drones, who continually complain about the how Acquiree is not "aligning with our strategy." Eventually, Acquiree's CEO gets sick of it and quits.
But you're right - they won't maintain it as a separate app. Because those drones can wear anyone out.
Also I’m very familiar with acquisitions particularly at Google.
Counterpoint - why would Google announce layoffs to the WSJ before it even happened? It’s possible that it’s in the works…
I suspect you mean, "at that point", talking about after "the coming months". If you do indeed mean today (at this point), then I'm actually curious why you think forming the opinion now isn't hasty.
The subtleties of this and that sort of elude me, just like these and those.
"Google Combines Maps and Waze Teams Amid Pressure to Cut Costs"
"...as the search giant faces pressure to streamline operations and cut costs."
"The activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management called on Alphabet to aggressively cut costs last month, writing in a letter to management that it thought the company’s head count was too high."
Are you suggesting that the WSJ is totally off base by drawing the conclusion that pressure from TCI, via this letter, is not the cause of the restructuring?
That's a misrepresentation of what the WSJ piece says. All the article is doing there is highlighting that there has been external pressure on Google to cut costs.
The excerpt you highlighted points out TCI's request for reduced headcount, while a few paragraphs earlier, the article says that there is no plan to reduce headcount.
Yes. In fact its off base enough that I don't think they actually make that claim in the article.
TCI holds something like .5% of alphabet market cap, that's less than is held by multiple individual human investors in Google, and likely less than rank-and-file employees hold collectively. It'd be weird to pay any attention to such a group.
Like perhaps there is a pressure to fire people, but Google isn't firing anyone, so they are pretty clearly ignoring said pressure.
What a masterclass in logical fallacies.
The implication of the article is that generally investors think Google is too liberal on spending (anecdotally, I will tell you this sentiment is very real).
The WSJ used a specific and public example of someone putting that into writing, but if you think a non-Top 20 shareholder can convince Google to do something (that Google doesn't believe most of its shareholders want), then you really don't understand how corporate governance works.
Even the more aggressive well-known activists rely on the idea that they can convince more than 51% of shareholders to agree with them
Google is doing this because it thinks the majority of shareholders agree with it, otherwise they'd tell TCI to kick rocks (as often happens with activists, Google knows that no-one can actually buy enough shares to influence their management decisions, unlike some SMID caps.)
I'm glad we agree. That's almost precisely the argument I made throughout this entire thread.
It’s like when you’re annoyed about something local government is doing and you show up with 50 other people also annoyed. Now you’re part of a news story and a stakeholder faction. But you all got there because of your individual desires.
Also, the letter is a public artifact. The investor is also meeting formally and/or informally with Google or individual directors.
It’s not like sending a letter cost them anything, but now they are famous.
But there is no evidence that this change is related to their letter (especially since none of the changes made in this case match any of the specific requests in the letter).
Because that is unethical
Google has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders.
Google has no duty to retain an employee hired at-will.
Is it more ethical to reject a duty by favoring the employees? Deontological ethics suggests otherwise.
"Shareholder Primacy" is the biggest most unethical scam that continues to go unchecked as though it were law, which it is most certainly not. It is an unethical and outdated relic of rapacious greed
"On August 19, 2019, 181 CEOs of America’s largest corporations overturned a 22-year-old policy statement that defined a corporation’s principal purpose as maximizing shareholder return" [1]
On the contrary, Andrew, corporations are chartered through a particular state's corporate code. In every case I'm aware of, the shareholders are the ones who own the company. The "stakeholders" (employees, customers, neighbors) have legally defined rights, which do not include ownership. So it most certainly IS law.
From https://short-facts.com/how-many-major-corporations-are-ther...:
The US Constitution was interpreted by the US Supreme Court to allow corporations to incorporate in the state of their choice, regardless of where their headquarters are. Over the 20th century, most major corporations incorporated under the Delaware General Corporation Law, which offered lower corporate taxes,
These 181 CEOs: did they have any rule-making authority? Or was that result just the opinion of 181 people?
What about all the corporations and single-proprietor businesses that were not part of that? Or the state of Delaware, whose laws govern most of them? Not to mention the Congress and the courts.
No I reject your assertion and assert the opposite. It would be unethical not to fire them.
Source: been on receiving end of such messages (bit smaller endeavor than Google though :-)).
Are "Property rights just for losers"?!
How dare they. :rollseyes:
Now, if Blackrock, Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, and all the pension funds got together, that might add up to something.
Which is true. And "many others" is a vapid, meaningless phrase.
However, proxies are voted in accordance with the "recommendations" of a very few advisory firms. That means that if you buy 10 million dollars worth of ETFs, all of those many, many shares are voted without your input. I'd certainly support legislation to give the "final" owners of those shares the right to vote the proxies themselves.
Maybe that's what you meant.
Google is still growing revenue YoY despite 2021 being a huge year for online services due to pandemic shifts.
They’re making hundreds of thousands in net profit per full-time employee.
A dumb CEO would do layoffs at this moment. They don’t need to financially, and the morale hit (and lost productivity) could be disastrous for the company.
But yeah, since other companies are doing layoffs, Google should too.
Not really. TCI doesn't even appear in the top 10 [1], and even if they were, the Founders still hold controlling interest.
[1] https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?s...
I think merging Waze and Google Maps teams is actually smart, whether it cuts cost or not seems like they have similar goals as a product.
That said, doesn't mean Alphabet won't head some investors letters or something, so its always possible
[0]: https://capital.com/alphabet-shareholder-who-owns-most-googl
Yes, they can. It’s called fiduciary responsibility, and shareholders sue for it all the time.
Management can just say “in our judgement X is the right thing to do, not Y”. Google is too big for TCI to try to gain control over.
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2021/12/01/dodge-v-ford-what...
Firstly, if an executive says "we believe this is in the interest of long-term shareholder value", the courts basically just defer to their judgement. You can't get the courts to run a company for you.
And second, the precedent has been softened since 1916 (or wasn't even true at the time), and for example some corporations like B-corps explicitly reject it, without any legal consequences.
Waze seems more willing to save time even if the path gets more complicated. Maps on the other hand even exposes a "greener" path that minimizes fuel when it won't cost too much time.
In NYC, it often makes absurd suggestions - I once got in an uber on 33rd and 2nd trying to get to penn station on 31st and 7th avenue. Far and away the most straightforward path is to head west on 31st street all the way to 7th avenue, but there's always a backup between 5th ave and 7th avenue - but that's still the fastest route. Waze directed the uber to head north on 3rd avenue to 39th street, head west, make a left on 5th avenue, then make a right on 35th, then make a left on 7th. It took twice as long, but we were always moving - it just wasn't taking into account how long it can take to make a turn on nyc streets.
These people are not forced to make more money at the expense of others. It's their choice.
Don't be that kid.
If the threat is that unloading a position will cause a dip in shareholder value of $X, but those actually in control believe their own thesis and operating model is worth more than $X, then they can choose to weather the storm, believing their way will negate the loss of $X.
If they really don't have an answer to the activist investor's thesis, then yea, they'll roll over.
More likely, though I haven't read their letter in depth, is that their beliefs actually aren't that far out there - I mean, you probably aren't going to get pushback from anyone if you say "Google is bloated and needs to trim and focus". So they write a letter and make some noise, and then when Google makes some rather unsurprising changes they can say something like "look how influential and prescient we are", and that has value in the investment world.
Only if the Waze teams takes over for the Maps team..
Google Maps is TERRIBLE app, I hate it. and if the Maps team is going to start messing with Waze it will be ruined
I would never use anything other than driving directions
I only walk to and from my car, and i do not own a bike, and if a business does not have parking less than 300ft from the door I am going to a different business
Then in my last trip I tried using it to find gas stations on my drive and it was a huge pain in the ass. It was once again impressive in how bad it was.
Waze has some nice features, but it's janky af. Google Maps is considerably better in almost every way. Waze is useful to see speed traps and has more information about gas prices. (Much less helpful in getting you TO those gas stations, though.)
Seriously, Google Maps being a all-caps TERRIBLE app? Come on. It's basically the gold standard.
TCI is making the news for being an activist investor calling for layoffs because 1) the media is frothing at the opportunity to announce Google layoffs, even though none have been announced 2) the goal of an activist investor is to drum up support to make their activist wish happen.
If I was Google I would tell them to take a walk if they want to.
But TCI didn’t do that.
Misallocation of resources is bad for broader society. Great for those who benefit from the misallocation though
Also, are letters like this normal? I have never seen a letter like this, but you always hear that all shareholders care about is money. And yet, here we are with a letter that brazenly says something just below “fuck all employees, we want more money just because we have you some money”. I mean, part of their argument is some random person’s quote that companies could be smaller. For one, that’s a weak and amateur argument for an investor to make. And sure, that’s probably true, but the tone of this email is extremely flippant towards anyone that isn’t themselves.
I doubt S&L will care.
TCI has a trivial stake in Google — at most, less than half of one percent of the company[0]. By voting shares, Larry and Sergey alone control >50% voting power[1]. TCI has nowhere near enough influence to move the needle in any appreciable way here.
[0] $6B / $1200B market cap (edit: to clarify, this is an upper limit, in practice it's even less because of super-voting shares owned by the founders)
[1] https://capital.com/alphabet-shareholder-who-owns-most-googl
Ownership percentage is only important because of how it lets them impact the stock price.
Class A shares (such as TCI have) have regular voting rights. Class B shares (such as Larry and Sergey have) have 10x voting rights. Thus, as I understand it, TCI's voting voting power is at most roughly ~0.5. In practice, it's way less than that due to all the class B shares[0], reinforcing my point.
[0] https://capital.com/alphabet-shareholder-who-owns-most-googl
>GuruFocus data, as of 29 November 2022, revealed that 59.13% of Alphabet’s stock was owned by insiders, including the two founders, while 22.21% of common shares were owned by institutions including brokerage firms, hedge funds, pension funds and asset management companies.
1) All shareholders will benefit including the employees who were well paid in stock.
2) When you sell an ownership stake you have to listen to owners. You might as well blame whoever decided to go public or sell the activist a stake.
3) Larry and Sergei have super voting shares and can block it if they want. But they probably want their shares to increase too.
Case in point: Why has Google had two navigation apps with entirely separate redundant teams for almost ten years?
> Reduce losses in Other Bets
> Over the last five years, Other Bets has generated only $3 billion of cumulative revenues but incurred a massive $20 billion of cumulative operating losses. Alphabet's investments in Other Bets have been unsuccessful. Alphabet should reduce annual operating losses in Other Bets (which we expect to amount to $6 billion this year) by at least 50%.
> The biggest component of Other Bets is Waymo. Unfortunately, enthusiasm for self-driving cars has collapsed and competitors have exited the market. Ford and Volkswagen recently decided to shut down their self-driving car venture, saying: "We have looked at this every way you can and we just see the profitability a long way out." Waymo has not justified its excessive investment and its losses should be reduced dramatically.
And is this kind of thinking just bandwagon, and not potentially accounting for some distinctive performance that Waymo may be on the verge of? (of course, seems like every AV company promises they're on the verge of something breakthrough)
Google as far as my understanding only shows fixed/permanent cameras.
Also why does Waze think train crossings are a huge deal. It seems to go to great lengths to warn me a bout them.
Sorry if that's wrong. This was a feature of my boyhood, but I've never seen it in California.
https://9to5google.com/2020/08/12/waze-railroad-alerts-app-u...
I used to have a high level of trust in Google Maps, but starting six months ago or so, the directions got substantially worse.
I think this is for the best of Google's interest.
I probably need to start using Apple Maps more often, don't I?
It is quite good at routing though. Of course this very strongly depends on where you live.
[0] as opposed to a "department" organization, not a "dysfunctional" organization
Pressure to reduce costs.
They keep doing UX changes which mess with muscle memory, that already make their product more unsafe - rather than improve the product itself.
Just when I thought I fled Google.
@&$/"!#%¥
That one time that I missed ... way back in 2013.
Google, I'm sorry I never clicked on any of those Waze ads for petrol stations or fast food.