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Comment by kirinan | Hacker News Reader

This is insane. I can't think of an industry that google is not trying to compete in. Auto industry, space industry, internet of things industry (Nest), internet/media industry, cable/internet provider industry, automobile industry, robotics industry, software industry, smartphone industry, pc industry now the telecom industry. I'm starting to expect Google to launch an airline here pretty soon. How can they possibly compete in so many spaces and compete well? Isn't this how Microsoft started doing business and failed at? I just am at a lost of words at Google's diversification strategy. I don't want to be a hater, but do we really want a singular company being the market leader at everything if they do end up succeeding at everything?

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This looks to me like a pure "commoditize your complements" play. All of Google's products require great mobile internet everywhere. By getting involved in that market, they can help make it much more competitive (at the moment, cell reception is expensive and shit).

It's like Google Code. Google didn't particularly want to be in that business, but Sourceforge was complete shit, and the open source ecosystem was key to their business. So they competed, seriously improved on the status quo, and when something better came along (github), they backed away, job done.

So leading this market doesn't matter to google. If they got completely outcompeted, I'd say they'd be delighted.

I agree, and I always figured that's why they built Chrome. They needed the other browsers to step up their game, especially js performance so they could offer the kinds of web applications they wanted to.

And then .. no one did and now we're all stuck with Chrome.

Quite the contrary. The other browsers did greatly improve their game. However, Google got spoiled with their ability to add a new feature to the browser whenever a Google product would benefit.

The cynical take on this is that Google just wanted to increase lock-in to its own browser; however, I think it's more a case that Chrome is a runtime environment for Google products as much as it is a web browser.

Hmm, if this is true, then we should be able to expect similar changes in Chrome like the changes made in Acrobat Reader when Adobe thought they had complete lock-in in the PDF reader space.

Yes they did. Firefox, Safari, IE all stepped up their game. Mozilla is building Servo. Microsoft is building project spartan. The browser is incredibly competitive.

In fact that is their stated reason for developing Chrome.

The reason they built Chrome isn't just that - google pays/paid other browser vendors __hundreds of millions of dollars__ to be the default search providers ($300M to Mozilla per year for a while). Owning the web browser gives them tremendous power and saves them money.

I remember reading that they spent $100m on advertising chrome in one quarter, just in the UK. So I don't think $300m/yr really matters that much. I think with Chrome they were far more concerned about the risk of losing the default position for searches in Firefox (correctly, as it turned out!)

>>They needed the other browsers to step up their game, especially js performance so they could offer the kinds of web applications they wanted to.

The actual reason is they have to pay browser vendors like Firefox hundreds of millions of dollars for having Google search as their default search plugin. Plus, they are at the mercy of other companies if they decide to change the default search plugin. All this plus the mobile game, if you have a browser and that has a major market share you can be rest assured to send the traffic to your sites.

Same with android, as long as you have your stuff(OS, Browser) installed on other people devices, getting traffic from their is easier. Which is why they give it away for free. Have a big market share and you win by default.

Yes. See also Google Fiber. AT&T and Comcast are both scrambling to launch ahead of Google in my area.

Spot on. Google Fi/Fiber both seeks to improve network connectivity for as many people as possible by accelerating competition from the incumbents (AT&T, Comcast, etc). When that happens, everyone benefits, including Google.

Other projects in this space include Android One and Loon.

Same with the new Pixel. A device to inspire Chromebook makers to make better, more powerful Chromebooks. And they (Google) themselves said that they don't aim to sell a ton of Pixels and make a lot of money out of it. I think they do it fairly.

Wasn't that the case with Nexus phones as well? If I remember correctly, Nexus One was partially built to show other manufacturers that a top of the line device can be built and ran on Android.

That's an incredibly optimistic way of looking at what's going on.

Power corrupts...

They are not really competing in all of those industries, they might have a crazy project they are attempting, but they aren't really competition.

Auto industry? I'm assuming you mean self driving cars, which, at this point, are still in the concept phase. Space industry? Did I miss something, is Google launching rockets?

There are many other companies that are way more diversified than Google.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_Corporation

Plus, expanding into a wireless carrier makes way more sense for Google than any of their other ventures. One of the limiting factors of internet use in the first-world is terrible carriers with data caps.

> still in the concept phase

Multiple generations of prototypes and hundreds of thousands of miles driven is well past the concept phase.

This just comes down to your definition of concept. I consider a prototype as a concept car that exists to show the feasibility of the concept but it has a ways to go before it is ready for production.

That makes sense. I would consider a concept to be an idea or a plan, not a working product.

Unless it's raining

Well, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt are both involved in Planetary Resources[0]. They are actively doing stuff even now[1] (their product is the Arkyd in this case). Not quite officially Google, but I can see where people would assume so.

[0]-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources

[1]-http://www.miningweekly.com/article/planetary-resources-laun...

Satellite photography appears in Google Maps, so rockets are needed at some point.

Actually, they already launched a GeoEye-1 satellite on September 6, 2008 at 11:50:57 a.m. PDT.

"Google, which has its logo on the side of the rocket, has exclusive online mapping use of its data."

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoEye-1

Chaebol are a whole 'nother level of diversified. Samsung sells smartphones and theme parks and ships and insurance and ...

Doing stuff like this helps Google perpetuate their reputation as a company that's doing "cool things that matter" despite the fact that, financially, they're just a big internet ads company. By doing these types of things Google has developed has such a good employment brand that they can get as many CMU CS Masters and Harvard MBAs as they want. They don't need 53,000 of the best and brightest people on earth working on AdWords, so letting some of these people loose on other markets kinda makes sense. Better to let them do it under google's umbrella than someone else's. And besides, they might actually succeed!

They won't be a market leader in everything. What do they lead aside from search, ads, and mobile OS?

The really funny bit is that near the end of Steve Jobs's life (per the biography), Larry Page asked him for advice and of course he said "focus on doing a few things really well, cut out everything else."

Seems Larry decided he knew better.

> What do they lead aside from search, ads, and mobile OS?

Browser, email, self-driving cars. Lots of other stuff too...

> Browser

Leading in memory usage perhaps

Leading in security.

Nah, Internet Explorer takes the crown there.

Leading in self-driving cars is debatable. They surely have the most visibility, but some car manufacturers and academic institutions like VisLab also have some impressive prototypes, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNcyuApIlFw (the autonomous car is the one in front)

That advice led to the closing down of many Google services. Apple doesn't just produce a single device, either.

But they make a line of laptops, a line of mobile devices, and some software. There's no iSpaceship or Apple Submarine(TM) yet -- if you told me Google had a sub bouncing around San Francisco Bay, I wouldn't even question it.

Do barges count? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_barges

the barges are no longer in the bay area

not a sub, but there was/is? this http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/07/google-launches-...

Larry (and Sergey I believe) is an INTP, the business reflects that personality type.

> Seems Larry decided he knew better.

Apparently he did. In the same biography, Isaacson wrote that "asking for advice to run a company" was just a clever way for Larry to visit Jobs in peace, playing to his ego, so to speak, as Jobs still held a grudge against Android.

Google is a very different company from Apple anyway. At Apple, innovation runs top-down, from the likes of Jobs and Ive to Foxconn workers. At Google, innovation runs bottom-up.

I can't easily think of an industry that the internet or computing hasn't yet touched. Makes sense that the company who made a name for themselves making sense out of data would do very well in a data-driven world and have plenty of places to go.

Not that I'm convinced it's always for the best. Throw all that control into somebody's hands and even if they think they're doing what's best, they might make mistakes with far-reaching consequences.

They are in everything but they aren't a leader in everything. In some markets they actually accelerate competition, especially in ones where there have been long-time monopolists (Google Fiber).

*technology industry.

Despite its impact on our lives it's important to remember that tech makes up just one segment of our massive economy. I have yet to see Google get into Aluminum smelting, residential construction or toothbrush manufacturing.

You forgot healthcare [1,2], but point taken. ;-)

[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/introducing-our-smart...

[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-collect-data-to-define...

This is just another manifestation of software eating the world. What makes Google competitive in any industry? Its talent in software.

>What makes Google competitive in any industry?

Having a goose who lays golden eggs (search + adsense) to subsidize development?

Basically any new business needs capital, so not sure what you mean here. Where do you think VCs get their money, for instance?

It's about the cost of the capital, not the amount. VC capital is expensive since you give away equity.

you raise some really great questions. very rarely in history (or in the present) has a company entered so many spaces and be successful at it.

To be fair, there's a big difference between marketing a new MVNO that runs on existing networks and actually expending capital to build network towers. So far Google is only doing the former.

Use monopoly profits, provide a smart team and take risks.

They don't dominate every industry but they have to diversify in industries to keep their shareholders happy which in turn is good for everyone.

Also remember if the product is not successful they just dump it and move on. As a former google reader and code.google user it feels kind of bad.

Their strategy is simple: they are doing whatever it takes in order to squeeze the most dollars out of you. If that means engaging in backroom deals with wireless competitors and creating with technologically innovative/awesome solutions for you to always be connected at the most optimal speed possible, they are going to do it.

The Google is not a company.

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