Hacker News Reader

Comment by lawdawg | Hacker News Reader

This is because Google has started optimizing for the 99% use case, which most HN'ers usually don't fall under. They originally optimized for what most Googlers like (who are generally the 1%) and have since learned that you can't run a business just pleasing the elite and whiny ones.

View on HN

Surely it can't be the case that Google was serving the 1% till recently. Their products - Gmail, YouTube, Android, Search, Maps etc. - are all leaders in their categories. So the 1%-to-99% argument doesn't quite hold.

I personally think Google held itself back from OTT monetization strategies all these years as it waited for (a) its individual products to become undisputed market leaders, and (b) a unified privacy/social glue across all its products.

Now that the majority of users are locked in to Google - to specific products and across their entire suite of products - they are lifting their self-imposed restraints on privacy/aesthetics/advertising.

That's the wrong way to look at it. They served the whole 100%, and now they are starting to optimize for the 99% at the expense of the 1% of power users. (My guess would be more like 95% / 5%, but I may have a biased view myself)

That's the only explanation to the whole set of stupid decisions they've been taking lately (reader, yt UI, gmail compose, ...): they make more cash by doing so.

Personally, I have noticed a multi-year trend towards serving that 95% at the expense of the 5%.

I'm usually flamed or attacked for suggesting it in most forums, so it's very nice to see people experiencing the same thing with Google

Hangouts is the perfect example. Instead of an easily sortable, easily curatable list of contacts with an easy way to see if they're available or not... now the whole product is shiny, with flashy animations, very little user control of any part of the software, and a whole bunch of Google's "we know best" design ideas like a "special mix" of "recent*" contacts that you cannot alter in any way without actually removing a contact from Google entirely.

> They originally optimized for what most Googlers like (who are generally the 1%) and have since learned that you can't run a business just pleasing the elite and whiny ones.

Well you can - you just can't offer the service for free.

Quarter after quarter Google needs to monetize more. In their earnings announcements, they love to mention it's only a fraction of what Google can achieve. But their heavy monetization of web assets makes me think, they are at the beginning of the second half of their post IPO life. Of course the Glass, the Car, the Hardware may change everything. That final argument is valid for any company, even for startups and even more for YC startups.

I think you can even do that. What you can't do is build a $300 billion company that way.

I'm a bit confused about that. Doesn't their algorithm take the user's profile into account?

>Youtube UI gets worse every time they update it. They cancelled the RSS reader. The email UI keeps getting worse and featuring more ads.

Those concerns are completely unrelated to their algorithm. I doubt they want to maintain many Youtube UIs.

Some of their algorithms, yes. But that doesn't mean that users who fall into the "elite and whiny" bunch get the privilege of using the service ad-free and in a format that doesn't work as well for their business.

I'm not in any way affiliated with Google but a Google employee has strongly and empathetically suggested to me that the ad people (and algorithms) have absolutely no access to user account data.

That is the reason why AdWords location targeting is kinda broken currently (at least on non-mobile devices it relies on IP geolocation). If one day AdWords start serving geographically correct ads for everyone, that's the day when the ad people got access to account data.

Data shows differently.

Google AD CLICKS increased by 22% and PPC went down 4%-8% so Googe made it up on volume. If showing more ads and/or making ads better than organic search is "optimizing for the 99% use case" then you aright.

But as shown on a few comments below Google in many cases shows only ads on the first browser screen. Terrible for users and terrible for Google long term. They should enjoy the steroid boost while it lasts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com