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Comment by curiouscat321 | Hacker News Reader

At what point is Google going to officially become a consulting company?

Right now, they seem to be playing arbitrage with engineering talent. They buy up engineers with large salaries and fancy perks. Those people, who now span almost every industry, are then used on projects like these. This has nothing to do with Google's core business or any branch of it at all.

It seems like Google is designing all sorts of products outside of its core competency (medicine, cars, now this?) with the hopes of either spinning it off, selling to the highest bidder, or...? I can't see shareholders liking Google trying to enter every market in the world.

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I think Page and Brin can do lots of (relatively at Google scale) small-stakes things just because they want to, as long as the money keeps rolling in.

For example, the self-driving cars are a genuine passion of Page's as I understand it, and came about from his relationship with Thrun. They really do want to make the world a better place by preventing thousands of deaths and many more injuries a year, among other benefits.

I don't think that is hopelessly naive of me. These are youngish, bright billionaire geeks who have made a lot of people very good money. They can do things just because, at least while the gravy flows.

That doesn't mean that these projects are not good strategic business, just that they can be risky since the organization is prepared to tolerate a loss.

> I can't see shareholders liking Google trying to enter every market in the world.

Maybe the shareholders aren't investing in an advertising company and app store, but they're investing in the company that succeeds to a higher degree than it fails.

But maybe they like Google's brand power and unique company ethos?

How many other companies worth $350Bn+ with 50k+ employees have Google's operating style?

> Right now, they seem to be playing arbitrage with engineering talent.

I think the actual problem is that very few other companies know how to make appropriate use of engineers.

"Robert, you said this sprint that you would move the logo image 2 pixels to the left. Can you PLEASE come to the morning stand-up, listen to 26 people report their status, and then tell us if you have any roadblocks? kthx."

I laughed really hard at this. Have been in some hour-long "standups." :) IRC standups are pretty nice.

My impression is that the fraction of Google that works in these types of ventures is tiny. I don't mean to suggest they won't produce anything of value. These small ventures that Google launches are all about having a big impact with a (relatively) small investment. In terms of headcount, though?

I don't think shareholders of Google should be concerned about this; they should stick to being interested in ARPU, CPC trends, etc.

That depends how you define Google's core competencies. Some of their main core competencies(where they lead the world probably) are AI/machine-learning and high-speed software development. Those skills are now the core of every business("software is eating the world"), so Google has lots of options. Another core competency is long-time investment in high-risk projects - which basically nobody does.

Also one criteria of choosing projects for X - is projects in areas where there's little competition. Once you start from that point, maybe the analysis framework of "core competencies" is less useful.

"At what point is Google going to officially become a consulting company?"

That could happen. It happened to IBM[1] and HP[2], both of which were once product companies.

[1] http://ibm.com/consulting [2] http://www8.hp.com/us/en/business-services/it-services/it-se...

I think you are buying into the marketing/PR hype. The majority of headcount actually works on core products like advertising & search. The headcount in fringe areas like things like X is a very small % of total engineers. This basically is a huge boost for recruiting because every engineer hopes to work on these moonshot teams.

I don't see how Google designing "outside of its core competency" is a problem, though. Lots of companies span large numbers of only tangentially-related verticals-- go take a look at Hitachi or Sony or Samsung, for example.

> selling to the highest bidder

Have they ever done this? Or even shown any interest to sell a business unit they own?

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