Hacker News Reader

Comment by tlogan | Hacker News Reader

Good points.

Vaporware (Self driving cars. Glass.) is not what I'm considering innovative because these things are not in production. And IBM and MSFT are very very good at vaporware.

Maps are not innovative (they might be the best for some people but, on my iPhone, Nokia maps are actually better).

   There are few places that compare to Google.

I'm not disputing that. Google is definitely a great company. But the claim was "the most consistently innovative large-cap around".

View on HN

1) The self-driving cars are hardly vaporware - not only do they actually work, but Ford and other companies have large investments in the space too. Moreover, Nevada and California have already legalized robot cars.

2) Maps may no longer be the most innovative product in the space, but Google defined the tiled, online map, and they forced Apple to provide free turn-by-turn by doing so on Android.

Moreover, Google has made two press announcements (we made our own maps via StreetView, and then we made it free on Android) that destroyed the market cap of the major nav companies to the tune of double digit market cap percentage losses, which amounted to billions of dollars, in a day... twice.

3) As for Google Glass, I don't expect much from this project actually, but vaporware is not the right term for something that is already being worn and used.

1) & 3) Plenty of vaporware actually works and is invested in. Vaporware is defined loosely as stuff-we-talk-about-a-lot-but-you-can't-buy-today TM. When they release it, like Daikatana and Chinese Democracy, it ceases to be vaporware anymore.

And don't forget that vaporware does not imply non-innovation! Plenty of vaporware is innovative but fails for other reasons.

The iPhone actually uses TomTom maps, not Nokia. That said, no maps but Google maps has street view. Plus, they are moving into mapping shopping malls, parks, stores, and even tourist spots. On top of this, they use image recognition with their street view data to improve accuracy of their maps on several levels.

Don't forget the sheer amount of integrated information such as transit and traffic routes. Google maps has continually set the bar for mapping. They are so successful that people no longer even recognize that all these features were not commonplace prior to Google maps.

Edit: and if you define innovation to things in production, I straight up disagree. Innovation happens prior to production.

http://m.maps.nokia.com/

Nokia maps are accessible on iPhone without trouble.

no maps but Google maps has street view.

A similar feature to Streetview has existed in Bing Maps since 2009 [1]. Google was first, but others are chasing hard.

Plus, they are moving into mapping shopping malls, parks, stores, and even tourist spots

Bing Maps started adding malls and building maps in 2010. They also had birdeye view and 3D "photosynth" views predating Google's implementations [2] by 2 years.

[1] http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2009...

[2] http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2010...

Cars with 300K miles on them driving fully autonomously are vaporware? Seriously?

quoth wiki:

"Vaporware is a term in the computer industry that describes a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually released"

Self-driving google cars and google glasses nominally qualify.

I have two glass blocks tied to 6 pre-ordered glass units that say otherwise with regard to glass. Unless, nominally, something that is pre-ordered is vaporware until the minute it hits my hands.

There are also people outside of Google that already have Glass units.

Most of Google's special sauce in their datacenters isn't available to the general public. That doesn't mean its vaporware, nor does it mean it doesn't contribute to its business or consumer satisfaction.

Having worked at google in the past, I can assure you that both self driving cars and google glass not only exist but are in heavy use.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com