An article on the slow death of Google by Lauren Weisman

[wraith808]

Love him or hate him, I think that Lauren Weisman says some pretty compelling truths in this article.

Google is dying. It may be possible to save the patient, but it’s also quite possible that Google has already passed the point of no return, especially with the array of forces now attacking it from all sides and from within. Since this situation has been largely enabled by unforced errors committed by Google itself, the prognosis can only be described as bleak.

Unfortunately, I have strong doubts that Google is capable at this time of making the kinds of “lifestyle changes” that would be required to truly save themselves. I would love to have these doubts proven to be incorrect.

A company named Google and its parent Alphabet will continue to exist for the foreseeable future, but for all practical purposes the Google that we all know appears to be in a kind of terminal decline, even as the money continues rolling in for now.

more at https://lauren.vorte.../the-death-of-google

[rgdot]

I don't know about the bleakness of the article but one example of change without regard for quality but only with regard to change and adding 'features' is the new gmail that was forced unto users last month. I am seeing issues like this and for something as basic as email, gmail no less, this is frankly crappy and ridiculous (attached is taken from tweet to @gmail)

If dumping G+ frees up resources for realistic (G+ was never going to be a FB killer) projects it is a good thing, not that it will but one can hope.

An article on the slow death of Google by Lauren Weisman

[IainB]

The seeds of this "failure" were probably germinating and detectable in the Google Wave Developer Preview at the Google I-O 2009 presentation.
I recall reporting that I had analysed the transcript of that presentation and counted all the instances of the signature meaningless BS/buzzwords in it and it didn't look good:

In the transcript there are a number of what I refer to as BS/buzzwords, clichés and alarm triggers, including, for example:

Word/cliché excited unbelievable great cool [laughs] amazing

No. of occurrences       6       2       5     10     24       5

-IainB (July 02, 2013, 10:03 AM)

Google were presumably paying exceedingly good money to the actors responsible for that abortive software development and for making that empty presentation. The audience obligingly applauded on queue.
It was déjà vu for me and the actors were history - apparently all gone.
But, for that to happen at all in the first place, you arguably really needed to have been making/tolerating serial execution errors somewhere upstream. That - to my mind - would have been representative of some kind of endemic corporate systemic failure. Never mind the quality, feel the width. I think that's often likely to be a sign of out-and-out desperation.

[Shades]

As a concept Wave was more interesting than Google+. At least in my mind it was.

Still, solutions like Slack "borrowed" more from Google Wave than most will like to admit.

With Wave Google experienced the Microsoft "curse"...having the right idea at the wrong time, accompanied by a sub-par implementation/API/etc.

[wraith808]

But, it's not just G+.  It's endemic to the way that they do everything now.  It reminds me of Yahoo right before its fall.  Yahoo had it all to lose but did because of several factors and similar unforced errors.

[cyberdiva]

...one example of change without regard for quality but only with regard to change and adding 'features' is the new gmail that was forced unto users last month. I am seeing issues like this and for something as basic as email, gmail no less, this is frankly crappy and ridiculous

-rgdot (October 08, 2018, 11:15 PM)

My thoughts as well. 

[wraith808]

I don't know about the bleakness of the article but one example of change without regard for quality but only with regard to change and adding 'features' is the new gmail that was forced unto users last month. I am seeing issues like this and for something as basic as email, gmail no less, this is frankly crappy and ridiculous (attached is taken from tweet to @gmail)

If dumping G+ frees up resources for realistic (G+ was never going to be a FB killer) projects it is a good thing, not that it will but one can hope.

-rgdot (October 08, 2018, 11:15 PM)

They aren't dumping to free up resources.  They're dumping because they were caught out.  And dumping didn't even save them the scrutiny that they feared.  Also, glad to see that I'm not the only one that dislikes the new changes to the interfaces.   I hate the fact that once I scroll to the bottom of my labels, there's now no way to get back to the inbox other than to scroll all the way up.

[TaoPhoenix]

Okay, borrowing from anothrer thread, hi!

I *have* been in a time warp!
Lots of ugly events in my life, which VERY nearly crushed me! I'm wiping out just clawing myself back to something approaching coherence!

So let's see which parts of this I care about:

1. Ever since I watched first Wave, then bunches of other things get "tried, then shelved undercooked", that aspect of Google never bothered me exactly. Certainly it helped that by style of interests none of their stuff was Make-or-break level for me.

2. "...A company named Google and its parent Alphabet" ... uh !? Google is (was?) one of those Big Animals, it (insert verb tense here) doesn't/didn't have a "parent!" It's like saying "Facebook's Parent" ... I think... Microsoft's Parent? Apple's Parent?  Too confused to say more! For reference, I went "Rumpelstiltskin" about 2015...

3. "... I was a rather intense critic — various of their early data collection and privacy practices seemed to be driven by a cavalier attitude that I viewed as unacceptable."

First of the big "conceptual" concerns I have about Google. They along with Facebook (Apple and MS I'm too tired to think aboiut tonight!) are the Big Animals grinding the 30-40 year internet culture of handles and partial anonymity on the web into Real Names Because Reasons "Spin the Wheel to pick one for today!"

I settled down to "fine, be REELY careful on YouTube and a few other places and then the rest is at least 1 level harder for anyone to find your Rage Blunders! I've been out of work for a while, but I've never had delusions thats I am hidden for anyone who can do more than three commands, but my main goal was not to have (how many posts do I have here?) entries to show up to Monkey Assistants to Pointy Heads if they type my name in. I should check again next year but I almost accomplished that.

Then this line showed up:
"...Google has become a world-class leader in privacy".  Unlike my (now prob On-Tilt from the past and not repaired either) view of Microsoft, Google wasn't supposed to be "clueless". Just the shift from Do No Evil to Vegas-Dealing your info everywhere, yuk, but fine. So ... "world class leader in privacy..." - to me it doesn't count if they're still sending paper airplanes of your data to anyone that wants it! So, new Legal Defense:
"I plead Rumpelstiltskin". I don't know what to think. So I'm not going to try tonight.

4. "...there were some terrible executive decisions made along the way — perhaps mostly notably an ultimately abandoned integration of G+ and the YouTube commenting system, which cross-contaminated completely different spheres of interest with disastrous effects. I advocated against this both publicly and internally, but even though it was ultimately rescinded the damage was already done."

Exactly, see my notes above, I took a few ant-sized prevention steps and called it a day. So I lost track if they in fact officially abandoned it, but I want to start carving a distinction. Starting/cancelling projects and botching features to me are "in house thingies as them just Doing Stuff". But Google (and FB) to me always bring to mind what to me is the signature Problem (stop calling them Issues!) of the internet symbolically from about 1998's Eternal September and let's give it until 2030. And YouTube was that place you just went to view stuff, sometimes a bit more. Real Names, searchable, Nope! Not having that! So if they aborted THAT, well, **HALF BROKEN DATA PRACTICES** is a very real risk to me!

5. "...But it won’t be the same Google. It will have become the “conventional company” kind of Google, not the firm of which so many Googlers are so rightly proud, and that so many users around the globe depend upon throughout their days.

The Google that we’ve known will be dead. And with its passing, we’ll be entering into a much darker phase of the Internet that many of us have long feared and have worked so hard to try prevent.

And that loss would be terrible for us all."

No, I'm not "proud" of Google. In the "slices of the internet I inhabited", the mood went to "Google was supposed to Do No Evil, now they're Evil, I'm upset, but nothing I can do about it".

So in a way, this article to me ends on a Bait Switch. They Started Going Evil say about 2010 and "Stayed there". "Google Dying" to me does invite callbacks to Yahoo far more for me than those other examples, but I assumed Google's core money flow was as crispy as ever.

So that's where I am tonight.

[wraith808]

If you look up Alphabet, you'll see that it is the parent company of Google.

https://en.m.wikiped...rg/wiki/Alphabet_Inc.

In 2015, Alphabet was created as a tech holding company by the founders of Google, and one of their most prominent holdings is Google.

I will also point out that he never said anything about cash flow; the others that he spoke of held on for interminable periods, seemingly in good financial health. The rot for many companies start on the inside.  And that rot presaged their fall in retrospect.

[TaoPhoenix]

If you look up Alphabet, you'll see that it is the parent company of Google.

https://en.m.wikiped...rg/wiki/Alphabet_Inc.

In 2015, Alphabet was created as a tech holding company by the founders of Google, and one of their most prominent holdings is Google.

I will also point out that he never said anything about cash flow; the others that he spoke of held on for interminable periods, seemingly in good financial health. The rot for many companies start on the inside.  And that rot presaged their fall in retrospect.

-wraith808 (October 13, 2018, 09:58 AM)

I'm agreeing that the Alphabet arrangement exists now, just that it was a note of surprise when I read the article, and right about the period I remarked I dropped off following tech news.

But since Yahoo is 15 years of collapse ahead of them, I am also noting I don't fathom any concept of Google joining Yahoo as a "rotted former search&mail&(your choice of stuff here) company.

What *new* entrant is going to be in the "2025 post-healthy Google world?"

For a decade, the top rung of the ecosystem has felt untouchable-ish.