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Comment by arnaudsm | Hacker News Reader

I bet they'll rehire like crazy in AR once the Apple Vision Pro is a success. I miss when Google had vision instead of trend following lazily

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Did it ever really have vision? Honestly, Google kinda seems like it suffers from ADHD: it bounces from one shiny new project to another, quickly losing interest in anything that doesn't immediately take off. In the old days, that was enough: their little experiments really _did_ take off. Now, in a more crowded field, it takes more discipline and focus to get things off the ground...and discipline and focus are two things that Google leadership seems to seriously lack.

Which of their own projects took off? E.g. Android and Maps were acquisitions IIRC. Maybe Google+?

Gmail

Then Microsoft, Netflix, FB, Apple, Dell, HP, Xerox would look like genius and way more excessively innovative if you can only name, gmail. Even that was a bit copy from yahoo and outlook mail back then. Plus, you have just indirectly praised Marrisa for her greatness involving in gmail back then.

I don’t claim it to be an exhaustive list but OP was missing the most obvious possible example.

You sound like a twat.

Huh, I didn't know Maps was an acquisition! I've always had that chalked up in the 'internal project' category.

Being a visionary does not mean you'll become a leader; more than likely you will be lucky if you're a footnote in history.

Microsoft had visions of smartphones and mobile ecosystems long before Apple or Google had them. They failed hard, which Apple and then Google took lessons from for their subsequent success.

Facebook, Sony, Valve and HTC all had visions of augmented and virtual realities. They all stagnafailed hard, which Apple is taking lessons from for their seeming success soon.

IBM had visions of personal computing long before Apple or Microsoft did. They failed hard, which both Microsoft and Apple took lessons from for their subsequent successes.

Being a visionary does not mean you'll become a leader, but you won't become a leader without a vision.

Search sure took off. Gmail also.

Chromebook?

Their cloud?

However, you need vision to know which company to acquire, too.

Their cloud is a distinct third fiddle though, no match for Aws or even Azure

I see their massive investments in AI as some kind of vision.

However, I don’t think they’ve been able to turn said money spending into more than research/demos ( deep mind included ) even pre-openAI ?

Edit : I understand they use it extensively internally, I meant for regular user facing products ( like openAI did with ChatGPT )

Paying brilliant researchers then refusing to ship their work happened at Kodak, Xerox, and now Google. History repeats itself

Well I understand they use it internally ( job scheduling, data center optimization, code analyzers, etc ) which to some extent is shipping and does provide you with an advantage ( basically you reduce your operating costs).

Get rid of Sundar.

He may not be Sam Altman, but his position in Google is quite solid. His number is also good until chatgpt happened.

Yeah, we'll probably get ten new VR chat apps.

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