
Larry Page ignored Steve Jobs’ advice, and Google is doing great - petrel
http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/01/12/larry-page-did-well-to-ignore-steve-jobs/
======
lifeisstillgood
The premise of the article is jobs told page to focus Google, and Page ignored
that but succeeded anyway

However IIRR Page shut down dozens of projects (wave being a big example).
Just because a large company is doing a lot of things does not mean they are
not focused - I expect Page has a list of 5 things and thinks its all focused
quite well

~~~
masklinn
> However IIRR Page shut down dozens of projects (wave being a big example).

Indeed:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discont...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_services)

And partially gutted some, forcefully shoving G+ in them (e.g. Reader)

~~~
Shooti
On the contrary, Google Reader has barely any G+ in it. The major complaint of
the redesign is that it stripped Reader of its social features without
replacing it with anything. If G+ integration existed which provided the same
use cases, people would be happy with it.

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nhangen
Whether or not the premise is true, can't we stop abusing the death of Steve
Jobs to generate page views?

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SoftwareMaven
What a lame article. If you compare Google now to Google a few years ago, the
difference is _marked_. I know think of Google in ters of a handful of
products today; that was not the case then. Google has definitely put its wood
behind fewer arrows.

The bigger question is did Steve Jobs have anything to do with it? It would
surprise me if Page wasn't going to go down this path either way. Maybe a
nudge of encouragement rather than a massive course correction.

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spiralpolitik
But Page did focus Google. He focused it on Google+. Compare the current
everything integrated around Google+ company and the company of two years ago.
The difference is astounding.

I actually think Page's biggest test is to come over the next several years.
With declining per ad revenue and potential competitors (in Amazon and
Facebook) Google runs the risk of having its core revenue stream reduced
significantly, while over in the OS space it has to deal with the death thrash
of a Microsoft that knows its do or die time and several minnows (RIM, Ubuntu)
that may slice off small chunks of market share and a whale in Samsung that
may just walk off with the rest.

If Page can navigate all that then it will be worth writing articles about.

~~~
Joeri
The mobile market is still growing, there's sufficient room for competitors to
share the market with google. Also, samsung does not pose any threat, because
samsung is bad at software development. The weakest part of samsung's products
is the software. I don't think they're capable of developing a successful
competing OS to android. As long as they're getting android from google,
google is the one with the power.

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dgregd
> continues to be wildly and purposefully unfocused

Unfocused? Last two years Google killed tens of products. They even killed
Google Wave. Moreover, they unified UI across many products.

In my opinion Larry is doing exactly what Steve advised.

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adjwilli
This is a fluff piece. Weren't all of those products in production or
development when Jobs passed away? And hasn't Page continued to cut and EOL
products since then too?

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nicholassmith
What is it with blogs getting more and more clickbait-y with titles at the
moment, even The Verge has gone that way.

Page smoothly managed Google into a position where they have _many_ projects
ongoing, and the _core_ business is incredibly focussed. Saying he ignored
Jobs' advice to focus is incredibly stupid, as he did bring a level of focus
back into the business and it's working incredibly well for Google.

You can have multiple projects, and multiple exploratory avenues and these are
healthy things, but Google for a period was throwing everything at the wall to
see what stuck.

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Camillo
> Shortly after Larry Page re-took the reigns as CEO of Google

He re-took the what? You don't take the reigns, you don't give free reign, and
you don't loosen the reigns. It's REINS.

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Tycho
You could argue that Google is using a barbell strategy. Play it safe with the
core business (search has hardly changed in all these years, just a few minute
layout changes and algorithm tweaks. The biggest change, real-time results
from Twitter, was rolled back. They have also been very aggressive about
protecting search from threats/substitutes, hence vast sums spent on Android
and Chrome to protect the visibility of their search ads), then have lots of
small-scale dabbling in diverse, blue-sky projects.

------
smackfu
I'm sure Steve Jobs though Apple should do hardware, Google should do web
software, and as long as they both stuck to their sides of the line, they
would both dominate.

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khalidmbajwa
Google’s Product Bloodbath: The Full Rundown
[http://gizmodo.com/5837043/googles-product-bloodbath-the-
ful...](http://gizmodo.com/5837043/googles-product-bloodbath-the-full-rundown)
Ignored the advice they said.( _chuckles to himself_ )

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general_failure
Steve jobs. Larry page Both mentioned in same title Who wouldn't click?

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taligent
This article is a little fanboyish. Google hasn't actually invented anything
either. Google Now, Glasses, self driving cars, Google+ have all been done
before many years ago.

What Google is doing is simply executing them in a far more polished and
integrated way. Similar to what Apple does.

I personally believe that the real raw innovation in the industry is
surprisingly coming from Microsoft.

~~~
jfoster
When you say self-driving cars and Glasses had been done before many years
ago, you must mean experimental prototypes that never made it to market,
right? Making a self-driving car that "kindof, sort of" works along some
desert route as part of a competition is so different from bringing one to
market that successfully completes hundreds of thousands of miles in traffic,
obeying road rules, and along a less predictable route.

Bringing something like Glasses or autonomous cars to market and making it
work well enough to be a success counts for more than creation of prototypes
that are never more than a cool experiment, in my opinion.

~~~
Someone
Did I miss the news that Google brought Gogole glaass/autonomous cars to
market, and that those products were successful?

IMO, autonomous cars will be a success at some time. Who will be the first to
sell them is anybody's guess, but Idonit think it is a given it will be
Google. Car companies such as Volkswagen and Toyota have the advantage that
they already can build cars.

Glasses? They might sell at some time, but IMO, the call is out whether these
will be niche products or not. I think something must be done on the 'when not
in use, they obstruct my view; when in use, they are so tiny' problem before
such products can become mainstream.

~~~
michaelt
Did you know that the team that won the DARPA Grand Challenge[1], was run by
Sebastian Thrun [2] - who went on play a big part in the creation of Google
Street View?

And did you know the Grand Challenge winning cars made use of LIDAR and
machine vision to identify road features and obstacles, high precision GPS,
and inertial navigation? And that very similar sensors can be seen on Google
Street View?

If you wanted a test data set, to refine your self-driving car by simulating
driving every road in the developed world, you could scarcely do better than
Google's data. This could be valuable in advancing from a car that works well
on wide, well maintained freeway to a car that can work well around towns and
cities.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoiJeIb0wBA#t=21m50s> [2]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Thrun>

~~~
Someone
Did you know that that Stanford team only came second in the Urban Grand
Challenge, a likely more relevant measure, as far as succesfully bringing
autonomous driving to market goes? Did you know that in both challenges, the
relative time differences between the top 3/4 competitors were so low that
they may not tell anything about the quality of their software? Do you know
why, in both competitions all teams were US based (my guess would be that
large external players such as Mercedes-Benz and Toyota do not want to give
away too many secrets for little gain. US competitors who do well there stand
a chance of getting orders from the US military, but non-US ones? Unlikely.)
Do you know that Mercedes-Benz claims that this year's S-class model could
ride autonomously, if laws permitted it
([http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/its-the-dawn-
of-t...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/its-the-dawn-of-the-
robocars/story-fnb64oi6-1226540648529))?

Do you know none of that has anything to do with the issue at hand (the OP
lauding Google for bringing successful products to market, while they didn't
even bring them to market yet?)

~~~
michaelt
I'd certainly agree that all the teams that completed the Grand Challenge did
a good job, whether they finished first or fifth.

Although DARPA rules require that the team have an American representative,
teams like Team Berlin [1] and CarOLO [2] were run by German universities. I
certainly agree that universities produced a lot more entries than the vehicle
industry did - but I don't know if that means Mercedes and Toyota had secrets
they didn't want to give away in 2005, or if it means they didn't have
anything worth showing off.

Of course, we'll know much more when companies actually start bringing these
products to market, and we shouldn't count Google's chickens before they've
hatched. But by my reckoning they got a pretty good head start - I certainly
wouldn't bet against them.

[1] <http://archive.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/Teams/Teamberlin.asp> [2]
<http://archive.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/Teams/CarOLO.asp>

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michaelochurch
Google has some really strong engineers, and has some incredible internal
tools. Its build system (Blaze) is world class. As I get older, my admiration
for its engineering culture (and emerging courage in product vision) only
grows.

Its problem is its decrepit HR system. It needs to fire the people who came up
with the "calibration scores", the 18-month lockout, and the whole closed
allocation regime, yesterday.

If you make the error of thinking that technology is smart people stuff and HR
is stupid people stuff, you end up with stupid people writing your HR
policies, and disaster ensues.

If Google takes out the trash and reinvents itself as an open-allocation
company, it'll be a real powerhouse.

~~~
swah
Is there any place we can read more about their culture, or its something you
have to pick from the tidbits that leak on blog posts and the way they act
publicly?

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OGinparadise
_"Larry Page ignored Steve Jobs’s deathbed advice, and Google is doing great"_

First, they were competitors so take your competitor's advice with a grain of
salt, Jobs or no Jobs.

Second, there is a lot more to it than just saying "focus on a few things."

Third, Google has a lot of goodwill from way back, any potential downfall will
take years. That means that people could tolerate G+, the many ads etc for a
while even if unhappy.

Fourth, Maps, Gmail, Now etc can all be folded under one: "Mobile Apps" so
Google can say we're focusing.

