> This is enshittification: Surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit
Inter-product-area rivalries/competitions/dysfunctions. Product manager attention span problems. High ego, high-status engineers with nice new technological hammers (e.g. Flutter, Fuchsia, Dart) that absolutely need to find nails, so go take other people's projects to rewrite.
Working in Home / Nest PA was very trying on the patience. They were bad for it, but the problem is endemic to anything user-facing at Google (see also Play Music vs YouTube Music, ChromeOS vs Android, Android Things, etc. etc.)
Google has a bunch of managers all vying to get their own promotions and will not hesitate to fuck over both users and other teams just for their moment of glory at Google I/O. And all of this stems from the fact that there's no leadership at Google, with an absolute inability to rally troops together on a single, common goal.
Behind all that stuff is an incredibly competent smart SRE team keeping the lights on and keeping things very efficient and reliable. And some boring but diligent SWEs writing the rather boring code to do all that boring stuff. That's what the real Google is, but it's invisible to the public.
But all that ads money needs to be spent somewhere. And you can't grow your staff forever doing "boring" stuff. And if there's an exciting interesting project inside Google it's flies to shit, people stepping over each other for promotion.
AFAIK they fixed the infighting more than a decade ago. That's why you don't see it causing problems. But also AFAIK (because I was never there), forced competition got all the way into single developers.
It is science :-)
Conway's law: ..complex products end up "shaped like" the organizational structure they are designed in or designed for. The law is applied primarily in the field of software architecture, though Conway directed it more broadly and its assumptions and conclusions apply to most technical fields.
but "shipping the org chart" really explains a lot of tech good and bad.
When sj was at apple, product was well-integrated software and hardware (as he ruled the org chart, which left no space for rivalries and fiefdoms)
with every sh*tty iot device that phones home, marketing in the org chart makes for a monetized, not-private mess for customers.
Even if their time and attention were finite, they inspired a credible worry throughout the company that they might suprisingly appear and demand answers on why a team is @$&@ing up tech / UX, as PMs/VPs rightly asked themselves "Do I want to be explaining my behavior to X?"
Which seemed to tamp down on the amount of inter-fiefdom rivalries and wasted time.
I don't get the impression many people are worried about Pichai breathing tech/ UX fire from on high in the same way.
Google's consumer products lack that. Google has an ad machine that just produces seemingly infinite cash. The hardware and consumer facing stuff is a sideshow. So it escapes project discipline.
For Google, it's hard to pretend to be the Good Guys when your main (and only) business is monopolizing internet ads.
To the contrary, Google culture (including, presumably, Pichai's views) is explicitly to try lots of competing ideas within Google and to disrupt from within. What other company would have Gmail and (previously) Inbox, multiple music services, a gazillion messaging apps, and so on?
This isn't a failure of management or accountability, this is consciously chosen policy at the highest levels. Resources go towards self-disruption by launching more new things in the same category, rather than choosing to focus on one and committing to it. This is why people are promoted for launches rather than for maintenance and support.
The upside is that Google launches way more products and could dramatically up its odds of success in a category. The downside is products fail because they don't get the support to see them through, consumers are totally confused by redundant products, and Google gets a reputation for cancelling products which might actually hinder future adoption (at least in some tech circles).
Obviously Google still seems to think the upside outweighs the downside... while many on HN come to the opposite conclusion. :)
E.g. the topical buying Nest, but then force folding it into Google Home
That's the opposite of letting the best solution among competing options win.
The broader issue is that it doesn't seem like there's a CEO who shows up in the Google Home's team meeting and live demos the broken and missing features, shows them on Nest, and then demands answers for why this wasn't done before they forced migration.
As has been quipped on here, Pichai seems to act more like a Google advocate who avoids rocking the internal boat, versus the rabid user advocate that Gates / Jobs / Bezos reportedly were.
And when there's no one you're afraid of at the top... of course the organization devolves into petty fiefdoms and bickering, at the expense of users.
They eventually choose to sunset one, and simplify brands, but in a really haphazard, broken-features way, just like we're seeing here.
But again, the issue isn't that the CEO's not checking up on the details. It's not one of quality control. It's that they don't care. It's not process, it's goals. I can't imagine Sundar wasn't briefed that the migration will involve missing features, and he signed off on that.
Because Google's core values are about trying lots of new things, with a focus on scalability and search and machine learning and metrics. Google's core values are very specifically not about maintaining consistent quality, committing to products, or guaranteeing features -- or being a "user advocate" as you mention.
So this is all just to reiterate. These aren't process failures. These are Google's processes working as intended. The Nest failures here are simply a reflection of Google's actual goals.
That makes it impossible to ship their organogram.
Apple seems to have escaped it mostly by centralizing power, but I don't think they are currently keeping it.
And what is obviously missing from this scenario is anyone in the Google organization that has the slightest care or concern for any customer need. Also strongly correlates with their obvious zero customer support / you-re-on-your-own practices. The entire company is just "what can we foist off on them this week?".