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Comment by NorwegianDude | Hacker News Reader

> laid off employees who worked on ... the Pixel phone.

That sounds weird to me. Pixel phones has grown very fast in the last years and I don't se how it can be seen as anything but a great success.

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Pixel is not officially sold and supported in a substantial number of countries. It results in many issues, such as 5G not working when traveling from country to country. Or in case of Chromecast dongle, 5GHz Wi-Fi not working. Which makes my head explode, considering that they employ only "top talent" and has considerable resources to properly catalogue and implement all radio frequencies of the world.

Google cannot release any product worldwide. Their knowledge doesn't go too far beyond US market. You can call it Americentrism or just lack of competence of the ones in charge.

Google is good at making algorithms and tech but product development and long term vision have never been its strong points.

Institutionally, Google has the attention span of a Goldfish. Apple will continue to entrench their position as a leader in edge computing. Apple deserve their success; I hope they don’t get complacent once the Pixel division implodes.

Was Pixel ever a big player in the Android market? I get the feeling Xiaomi and Samsung are the actual competitors Apple cares about

Even if technically Apple is capable their predatory business models will never make me consider any of their products worth it.

Fair point perhaps, but they seem like the only game in town that seem to care about their customers. They’re far from perfect, but to me they are better than the rest. I really want Apple to feel some heat and have worthy competitors, but I just don’t see that.

Is it predatory?

Apple must turn a profit somewhere and charging a bit more to their high-end customers to give a bit more of a break to their low-end customers isn't a terrible method.

If you hate Apple's pricing, you have WAY more companies to hate on first.

Apple has a gross margin of 44%.

Amazon has gross margin of 46%

AMD has a gross margin of 47%

IBM has a gross margin of 54%.

Microsoft has a gross margin of 71%.

Oracle has a gross margin of 72%

Nvidia has a gross margin of 74%.

Meta has a gross margin of 78%

"Amazon has gross margin of 46%"

Reference please? Amazon has massive retail sales and it's not even making a profit on this much of the time--and the rest of the time it's low.

I just considered the top Google hits for some big tech companies.

This particular one is from this site.

https://finbox.com/NASDAQGS:AMZN/explorer/gp_margin/

You need to add references for all these numbers. I find it hard to believe Microsoft has a gross margin of 71%.

I literally just looked at the Google default results. In this case, here's your source.

Those margins plus the AI bubble are why MS stock prices are so high.

https://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/gross_profit_margin

This is misleading. Gross margin excludes operating expenses and taxes. Net margin or operating margin is more meaningful. Here's now the operating margins stack up for Q3 2023

Nvidia 57.5% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/nvda/financial...

Microsoft 47.6% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/msft/financial...

Meta 40.2% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/meta/financial...

Apple 30.1% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/aapl/financial...

Google 27.8% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/goog/financial...

IBM 14% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/ibm/financials

Amazon 7.8% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/amzn/financial...

AMD 3.8% https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/amd/financials

Apple is still extremely profitable for a company that primarily makes and sells hardware. Nvidia has a higher margin but that's because of the AI boom.

I have been waiting my whole career to get a hold of their previous Nexus line. Then their Pixel line. Still no luck. It has been over a decade. Now it’s too late my whole family is now deeply invested in Apple’s ecosystem.

top down coordination doesn’t scale to $2T companies, at some point you’re basically a government

Bot one stuck in feudalism, with a king and fiefs distributed in smoke-filled rooms, or golf fames.

Honestly, I don't see anything that a phone manufacturer _requires_ to localise apart from frequency bands. How is Apple managing to sell iPhones with literally no other localisation?

I wonder what the reality is regarding Pixel's success; they lost me as a customer this year after it turns out the "free" Pixel 2 watch is mostly a paper weight because Fitbit and its new unified Google account requirement doesn't support Workspace custom domains. I pay for Workspaces, I paid for the device(s), but the penny has finally dropped in regards to their real motivations, they can't allow Workspaces to mingle with the private data regular accounts give them access to when it comes to Fitbit. Hopefully this will finally give me the motivation to wean off Google completely.

Pissed me off when I realised you could use not Nest cameras nor doorbell if you have a Google Workspace account. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Cannot use them with a Google workspace account? Or cannot use them if you merely have a workspace account?

The former seems like it might be reasonable (and I wouldn't want to lock a piece of home infrastructure to a workspace account anyway); the latter seems utterly insane.

For Nest Protect (the smoke alarm), if you try logging in with a workspace account it just won't let you. Had to resurrect a very old, unused Gmail account just for that.

Google marketed Google Workspace (called “Google Apps” at the time) as a solution for individuals and families with custom domain. People still have these accounts and there is no way to migrate (e.g. purchases on Google Play, reviews on Google Maps, notes in Google Keep, etc.).

Not a work workspace but our family workspace, so very unreasonable. They forced us all to migrate to that...

For many years Google Home with all the Nest speakers and displays have worked fine. But you are not allowed to use the nest cameras, thermostats, doorbells, etc with workspace accounts. Hence I regret buying those.

And now I can't upgrade my storage or share my YouTubeTV account from my old family Workspace account. And migrating off is basically impossible, it's so frustrating.

I can confirm - it’s both utterly insane, and true. A number of the individual problems have been fixed over the years, but then new ones pop up due to rushed backend integrations.

Microsoft has a similar issue with their ‘personal’ vs ‘work’ logins.

God help you if you try to use the store to buy some things on a work account, or login to some services using a work account.

You will regret it.

It is the former.

I have a workspace account that is my main email and such. With the Pixel 2 watch I had to use a @gmail.com account in order to use it. Not a huge deal, but annoying for sure.

Would be the same issue for someone who doesn't have an @gmail.com account at all. They would have to create one in order to use the Pixel 2 watch.

FWIW the non-workspace Google account doesn't actually have to be @gmail.com - you can bring your own email when setting one up.

The Nest Speaker also pisses me off. It requires a Google account for activating the Bluetooth functionality.

I got one as a gift. It is a good looking door stop, though.

I was in the same boat. Kind of annoying, but I just used my @gmail.com account to use the Pixel 2 watch.

Google is increasingly treating Android as an iOS alternative for the developing world and outsourcing core Android development to its Indian offices.

The reason they are doing this is probably because the non-tech management MBAs running Google are all using iPhones.

Were you like I have nothing useful to add, but while I'm driving by why don't I just fart on India...

The market share speaks for itself.

For what it's worth, India with over a billion people is a large market for Android.

Anyway, the iOS market share seems to be increasing rapidly in India. See https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/devices/ip...).

> non-tech management MBAs running Google are all using iPhones

That's a kiss of death. I remember while working at Windows Phone team at Microsoft, a lot of program managers and designers were using iPhones and Macs. Unsurprisingly their own product never got off the ground because they failed to develop a vision for it. Android at Google is in a slightly better position, but this kind of attitude of not using your own product but preferring a competitor's one leads to inevitable decline.

I recall around that time reading a story where if Steve Ballmer would catch you using an iPhone on the MSFT campus he would blow up. At the time, comments were "make a better phone" but I agree with your position. It's surprising though, eating your own dogfood is one of the golden rules of development. Such a pity Microsoft didn't stick with Windows Phone.

There are continuous internal wars that we don't often see. You can get a glimpse of those in most of Google's hardware products (from Pixel phones to hubs to tablets) when they seem to be randomly prioritised/de-prioritised/re-prioritised every year.

It seems that this year Pixel lost.

I'm a big fan of the pixel series, if they wind up dropping it or make upcoming hardware terrible its likely to drive me to iphone unfortunately.

The various third party android phones have severe drawbacks in their manufacturers tweaked android or inferior hardware.

I know fitbit is going down hill. A lot of paid features aren't working for a lot of people. My wife can't get the sleep stats to work anymore.

Has this ever stopped google from killing a product?

It is not like those pixel phone are hand made and tuned to exacting standards by highly qualified google engineers like Mercedes Benz does it on some of its expensive models.

It is a commodity gadget made at some cheap shop in Asia. So people worked pixel phone have not much to do with its growth or lack of it.

Google ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Google has been cooperating with Samsung very closely lately. Maybe there's a pressure on Google from Samsung and the other big Android vendors to scale down the Pixel effort.

Google sells approximately zero Pixel phones.

Every year they'll say "we're serious this time" and promise to dump money into marketing, but it really goes nowhere and carriers continue to push other phones.

Google has grown their marketshare a lot during the last few years.

They sell a lot of them, very very far from zero...

They sold one to me since OnePlus fell off.

I like my pixel. Guess I'm going back to Samsung, sad times.

Pixel phones are OK. They are just not priced competitively. They are priced like iPhones. But who are you kidding? Pixel phones are nowhere near iPhones.

Pixel phones actually take better photos than iPhones. See for example a recent test https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VRoTOE3FqT0

OTOH I browse JavaScript heavy websites on my phone and I believe due to single-threaded performance, Chrome on Android is noticeably worse than Safari on iPhone.

My point is, Pixels are better than iPhones for some use cases and vice versa.

I disagree, they have the best mid-range (300-500€) phone, and iPhone is not even proposing anything in this range

12% of phone sales in iPhone-heavy Japan are Pixels and Apple has fallen below 1/2 - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-28/iphones-s...

For people that care about vendor lock-in (which granted doesn't seem to be many), Pixels are great. They are supported on just about every network and you can root it if you desire.

I'm a happy Pixel owner.

Seems like a good news?

Maybe resetting the engineering department is the only chance of innovating, when the company is so big and the (maybe bad) culture is so pervasive?

Apple has fired Jony Ive, and nothing bad had happened (quite the contrary).

Google has fired the head of computational photography, and nothing bad had happened.

Yet everyone I know that owned a pixel despises it.

I've owned 3 generations of Pixels and they've all been great ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe the parent doesn't know you?

Do you ever really know anyone?

I've owned several Nexus and Pixel phones and they universally sucked. Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Pixel 2. I think that's all of them. I sent the last one to be fixed under warranty and they basically ignored me for six months (which I spent with no phone) until I threatened to get consumer protection from my country involved.

Yeah yeah, why did I keep buying them? I have no idea. I guess I assumed the rest of Android phones sucked more.

After what they did the the Nexus 6P, I jumped ship to Apple.

I've owned 3 pixel phones and have loved all of them. Wife has owned 4 different ones and they have been all perfect, no complaints.

I've owned 3 phones starting with nexus iirc. Looking forward to getting a refresh when current one gives out.

Count me as one anecdote that I love 'em! Best cameras I've ever used, paired with Google Photos means my wife is a happy camper and I get to look like a wizard fixing photos easily right on my phone. I can also install any .apk I want (hint: free youtube premium), why would I ever use a much more expensive, worse product like the iphone?

I've had very good experiences with all my Pixels. Only phone that was better was a high-end Samsung ($1000) and I sold that and replaced it with a cheap pixel.

(I've had various android phones going back to the T-Mobile G1).

I used to own a pixel phone and loved it. What made me move was the data collection, and to some extent lack of security updates on older models. Feature wise, I still like Android over iOS.

if it didn't spaz out while installing LineageOS on it, I'd still be using my Pixel 2 XL. it was probably struggling with some hardware failures (I dropped it a lot...) and wouldn't boot after.

Pixel 6s were on sale and I got one of those, no regrets. I am not enthusiastic about Google as a company, and I may consider an iPhone for my next cell, but I've been satisfied with the Pixel line so far.

I owned several Nexus phones as well as Pixel phones. I'd say that the Pixels were pretty decent; my main annoyance was with the fact that Google deliberately disabled some of the hardware features in that line-up to push their own proprietary solutions - most notably, there's no video output over USB-C nor Miracast, so that your only option is Chromecast.

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