Comment by sytelus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sytelus | Hacker News Reader

Another arm-chair pundit trying to fit present to past anecdotes and predicting future... In 10 years of time Google might be self-driven car company which has search as side business or a company selling robots which walks and moves like humans quickly taking on cheap labor jobs. The strength of Google, in my view, is not its current products but ability, desire and enablement to innovate and take risks. This in part comes from its leadership and the culture. How many other companies take on the expensive product developments such as Fiber, city-wide wifi, online office, gmail, Android, home delivery etc - without a definitive business plan? During Bill Gates era, there was a saying in Microsoft that your product pitch would fail if you can't convince executives that your idea would yield another billion dollar business because they thought it simply wasn't worth their time. Even at the peak nobody thought IBM would take risks to start home delivery system or experiment with balloon based radio systems.

> Even at the peak nobody thought IBM would take risks to start home delivery system or experiment with balloon based radio systems.

So balloon based radio > IBM Watson?

I think what he is saying is that the willingness to have multiple failed experiments is what makes Google.

He mentioned a ton of other experiments including self driving cars, Google is so large that they continually create two or more internally competitive products because no other company can compete with them.

Sometimes the most important thing about a new product isn't the product, it's the go-to market strategy. Google hasn't proven it can conquer that last hurdle.

Here's Steve Jobs talking about the challenges with Apple TV and it's go-to-market strategy: http://youtu.be/-pSfOKMEbG0?t=31s

I would suggest that rarely is the 'most important thing about a new product' the go to market strategy, particularly if you're google. Maybe start-ups have a single shot at getting to market, (but then, what's all this talk about pivoting??), but google certainly has multiple chances to go to market. Look at Android, they didn't go to market once, see it fail, and then give up. Look at Microsoft, with many of their product lines, you have the first and second iterations flop, only to have the third or fourth go on to be wildly successful.

completely disagree.

a company is measured by its profits, any new venture needs to have a business behind it. xerox parc, ms labs - great hobbies, no monetization. google x? nothing so far. glass is cooling off. car has driven 400k miles - on the same, tightly controled circuit. no commercial products in sight.

i personnally have had discussions with google execs about new business areas where google could easily transform established industries - to be shut down with the phrase "we don't touch any market below 1bn". and that was 3 years ago.

kids these days don't give a shit about google. search happens in the browser url bar, not google.com. search is a commodity. how exactly is google still relevant?

"search happens in the browser url bar, not google.com. search is a commodity. how exactly is google still relevant?"

Exactly his point and the one you are missing. Google had the foresight to invest in chrome, android, gmail, and Chromecast years ago.

At the same time people like you thought they were silly for pursuing products that had no short term revenue or ecosystem benefits.

that's a single platform. this is not the case on iOS and China Android (AOSP). iOS in the US is growing vs. Android.

same for PCs, Search is moving out of the browser (Win8, OSX), just something you type or say (Siri, Cortana).

yes, Google has Now, etc. but it has competition now and has not launched any new blockbuster since Android - and that one does not rake in huge profits. for that, they only have ads, embedded in search.

>kids these days don't give a shit about google. search happens in the browser url bar, not google.com. search is a commodity. how exactly is google still relevant?

How about "search quality" for starters?

kids these days don't give a shit about google. search happens in the browser url bar, not google.com. search is a commodity. how exactly is google still relevant?

Snapchat is not a company that is even remotely comparable to Google, you know.

Gmail. Search. Chrome. Maps. Docs. These are all hugely popular products with young people, and the user base is vast.

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