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Comment by harmmonica | Hacker News Reader

Even if Google's robotics technology (software and hardware) is leading edge does anyone think they'll actually be able to productize it? Seems similar to how they were the pre-product leaders in transformers and then fumbled any advantage they had to ChatGPT. It seems like something's missing from Google where they can't get from research to product effectively. Waymo perhaps a good counterexample if you think where they are today is product/market fit, but I can't shake the feeling that Google more often than not can't seem to get things to market or even if they do they give up on them before they take hold.

Just wondering if anyone has a strong feeling or, better yet, insight on this regarding their robotics efforts.

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I think the cautious faction of AI debate won temporarily inside Google, letting OpenAI take the lead. Lessons should be learnt from that experience. I do think Google will come out ahead in the end Gemini and Gemma are great models.

Let’s see what Google I/O shows of this year, product application matters now that they have caught up on the tech side.

Will be interesting to see if that lesson has been learned. There's no existing product they could cannibalize with their robotics effort (vs search with LLMs) so any caution they have launching a robotics product would solely come down to fears about quality/safety.

Waymo?

Good point. It took a while to get going, but the growth rate is starting to look really incredible now.

The growth rate is still very far from incredible. And they've made terrible decisions on platforms, giving up developing their own in favor of the i-Pace which is discontinued, then hitching themselves to a Chinese EV manufacturer subject to 100% tariffs (which, fun fact, were imposed by Biden).

Growth was well over 100% last year, with expansions in every market (Phoenix, San Francisco, and LA). In 2025, they've added Austin, Silicon Valley, and will soon be adding Atlanta and Miami as well. They've also partnered with Hyundai on vehicle production, though I do expect that they will eventually become supply constrained.

They went from offering 12,000 rides in August 2023 to now offering 200,000 rides per week.

This growth only doesn't look incredible because of how small the starting point was, but it will be hard to ignore by this time next year.

Waymo is the exception that proves the rule. Waymo feels more like "Google owned" than it feels like a Google product.

They are very much google through and through.

I agree. The current leadership of Google (especially Sundar) is mediocre and comes from a consulting background. They will fail at making a tangible product out of this, similar to glass or Inbox or a multitude of other examples. This is particularly sad, as I know a few remarkable engineers at Google that share this frustration. However, Google's leadership folded to Indian managers and is now run as a circus

Sundar Pichai got into IIT Kharagpur in the 90s (one of the toughest engineering/technical school to get into). So he has more technical chops than many self-proclaimed engineers that seem to diss on his McKinsey credentials

A school being tough to get into due to an abundance of population (too many applicants) means little. There has been not one significant person coming out of those institutions (compared to the many figures coming out of the US, despite a population 5x smaller). I would not hire Sundar as a junior engineer in my team. Of course, you might see something in Google's current leadership which I do not see. Time will tell how performant the company will be long term. Again, I believe skills that make one successful in consulting rarely translate to success in the engineering field.

> There has been not one significant person coming out of those institutions

Of the IITs?

Co-founders of Sun Microsystems, Flipkart, Ola Cabs, Infosys, Zoho, HCL

The only one significant is Khosla of Sun. The rest are... rehashes of Western companies without a shred of innovation or doing anything novel.

Look at the sheer number of institutions and people, and now compare it to any US institution (Maryland). Despite how much smaller the population would be, the accomplishments speak for themselves. I would take an engineer with a bs from any R1 university over a graduate with experience from those institutions any given day of the week. But of course, there will be exceptions. I was responding to a defense of Sundar which rested on the institution he went to

> The current leadership of Google (especially Sundar) is mediocre and comes from a consulting background.

That was what you asserted. So the GP just simply pointed out that you were wrong. You were wrong because Sundai didn't come from a consulting background. A lot of people from consulting companies have engineering background.

So you could rephrase your original comment: "not one (of course with multiple exceptions)"

Seems doubtful. His entire time at Google was doing project management stuff, so that is probably where all of his skills lie.

Can anyone with access to google3/ tell us if there is even a single commit by sundar@?

No, you can only access google3 by default if you are a T ladder FTE. This rules out almost everyone who isn't a SWE, SRE, PM or other affiliated technical role. There are exceptions, but ... they're exceptions.

In my bubble it's general consensus that Google - as we knew it - is done.

Sergiej and Larry phased out and what is left is more of less a headless chicken, too big too fall, but without any clear direction and goal.

At least you are aware that this is a bubble.

Didn't Sergey become active again with the latest AI efforts?

Yes, and there was a leaked memo from him recommending that everyone at Deepmind work 60 hours a week and stop building "nanny products"[1].

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/command-line-newsletter/622045/goog...

Is this actually true about Larry and Sergei? A substantial amount of their net worths is still tied up in Google stock. I realize not all centibillionaires are cut from the same cloth, but still find it hard to believe they wouldn't be majorly involved since the downside of a major stock drop would impact them disproportionately. That said they could be the types of billionaires who actually think they have enough even if their net worths were "only" in the tens of billions (a long ways to go down from where they are today).

As for headless chicken, I feel similarly, but then I sort of see a path where they have defensible businesses in YouTube and maybe GCP, and then Waymo and robotics as green field upside, so that even if they don't end up with material market share with the "software-only" side of AI, and search gets further and further eroded, they could still be a formidable player.

Ultimately I do think their best days are behind them largely because they can't seem to turn the work of their talented engineers into great new products.

> they can't seem to turn the work of their talented engineers into great new products

I think about this a lot. The most famous example in tech world is obviously Jobs and Apple. And it's a great example because it's a borderline scientific experiment where you can directly compare three different phases.

But I think about it in a broader scope - like how many companies can last generations and remain relevant? There are plenty examples outside of tech, like banks but that's basically the same product and it's not that easy to launch a direct competetior to Bank of America or BMW, wheras software constantly evolves, people iterate on exisisting ideas I can I think of, from top of my hand, handful of examples of software that was really impactful but is not anymore.

Realistically person need just some XXXM to cover 99% of luxury lifestyle, and even stock drop 20x they will still have those money.

Also, Larry has some sickness, maybe his thoughts currently not about money at all.

What is your bubble?

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