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Comment by burnt-resistor | Hacker News Reader

Google sucked/s at executive function because they completely lack appreciation for proper R&D and long-term investment and also kill things people use and love.

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Honestly a lot of the time they seem to be be in "what do humans want?" mode.

Yep. And rather than ask people, focus group, or look at the evidence, they just guess or do whatever they want. Not much leadership or community engagement appears to be involved.

I don’t think that’s an entirely fair characterization. They obviously spend a great deal of time focusing on what their (human) shareholders want.

Well, that's fair. Overpaid managers and principle engineers spun "secret projects" and products like Glass well to be an elitist experience for special people. But I won't forgive not letting Wave bake and mature.

Q: Do they have non-human shareholders I don't know about, or do they have shareholders who lack qualities present in most living human beings?

I’ve only met a few of their significant shareholders and based on that, I’d say the jury is still out.

I remember being excited by wave when the demo hit but never had a use for what it offered at that point in my career.

Hard to say what Wave could've become, but in Google fashion, they didn't really try and threw it away. Maybe it could've become a Discord-like meets Zoom platform but with more integrations.

Honestly, I'd like to see something like a hosted FOSS Hubot (bot) for Signal that can tap into zillions of IoT and cloud integrations.

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