Technology

it's pretty depressing to have watched Google grow from this supposedly amazing company that was willing to develop any amazing idea into something to only caring about how to inject ads into your brain and monetize every shred of data it can harvest from you by any conceivable means.

I'm willing to argue it's the sole reason Stadia failed. I never heard anything bad about the service from people who actually used it. It just never got enough users because Google can't be trusted anymore. Sundar has destroyed the brand.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that this is also something that would affect their ability to attract good talent.

I got the the Foobar Challenge last year. I did the first few levels within a couple days (you get about a week or so to do each one), and then realized I don't want to work for Google.

10 years ago? Absolutely. 5 years ago? Sure. Now? No way.

Edit: forgot a word

google has a dumbass @ the helm

It was hilarious when the Stadia head tweeted that it wasn't going anywhere and then a month later it was announced that it's being shut down lol

Yep, I don't think badly of Google mostly because I don't think of them at all. While I was deleting my Reddit account a decided I'd try moving off of big tech companies products as much as practical and even after almost 20 years with GMail as my primary mail host I just don't have anything else left in their ecosystem. Over the years I've used a lot of their products, but they kept killing them off (Picasa, Google+, Code, Reader, various chat clients), so I've found mostly self-hosted alternatives.

I guess they're still making money hand-over-fist so whatever they're doing it must work for them, but none of it is useful for me.

I was already on the way to it but Stadia was the thing that finally pushed me all the way out of Google services. I wouldn’t invest any time into any of their products at this point. Especially on the business side, I just can’t fathom choosing Google for anything.

I love this.

That, or creepy "uncanny valley" cartoon avatars with no legs. Could go either way.

AR Laser-Tag with your friends. They have health bars and when you shoot them, the damage displays like in borderlands.

You're right though. Every example I've seen demoed is something that teleports you somewhere else. Your own theater. The cockpit of a car, somewhere other than where you're at. Apple and Microsoft has some Rudimentary floating windows/workspaces, but to me that's just like looking at a screen anyways. If AR worked like it does in video games, combined with strong image and facial recognition and object detection, giving real time contextual useful information, it could be so ubiquitous that people end up feeling like it's just another natural part of their interactions with the world around them and others.

They literally "invented" the method used by chatgpt. They are still ahead with AI research. Their main problem is bringing the value to the market. But that is a management problem. Management has no clear vision unfortunately. But it might takes just few changes at the highest management level to completely change the game. Google has still the best r&d in the tech world, they must return to use it properly

Graphene is growing fast. They might sell hardware only in the future, but they'll likely screw that up too. The best android experience is the one without google.

People underestimate google and the commercial side.

Google bard and the AI platforms behind it have been in progress for a decade. Their ability to separate language models for custom uses is perfect for large scale custom operation and direct cloud integration.

So true. If a Google team cannot show a believable path to a $1 billion ARR business, your team’s project gets shut down. Unless it falls within strategic priorities which are pretty much just search and ads (eg. this is why Android continues to get support - because it represents mobile defense of Google’s lead in search and ads, not because the phone business on its own is worthwhile to Google).

See https://killedbygoogle.com/

FWIW I don’t think this is necessarily a bad way to run a company. Focus resources on your core competencies. But it really sucks as a user of their non-search-related products.

We get surprisingly little information from within these companies as far as how they operate. But their products have big implications for the public. So when a major exec at a big company publicly criticizes them on the way out, that's notable, and part of a longer story that I find interesting.

next multi-billion dollars blowout tech

From what I can see, other than building a slightly better mouse trap, there's not much on the horizon. AR/VR is only just kinda cool and AI hype is starting to fizzle. What's left?

That may be true, but that doesn't excuse the half a dozen different abandoned efforts they've put into this space

The standalone VR units feel like something that can be a longer term product niche. That said I sure as hell can't buy one made by Meta. 😵‍💫 I miss Daydream VR.