

Google’s Chief Works to Trim a Bloated Ship - zt
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/technology/googles-chief-works-to-trim-a-bloated-ship.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

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AngryParsley
This is off-topic and doesn't address the actual content of the article,
but... "Trim a Bloated Ship"? That metaphor could use some work. How does a
ship bloat? And wouldn't a bloated ship float pretty well? If you use the
common meaning of trim (honestly, how many mariners read the NYT?), isn't
cutting bits off a ship a bad thing?

I guess it could be worse. I'll give thanks that Thomas Friedman didn't write
it.

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spodek
It means it has too much pork. They should trim the fat so they don't have as
much red tape. Once they're on track, it'll be full steam ahead and smooth
sailing.

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jsz0
The risky part is driving people away from Google products and services via
uncertainty. Is now the time to put all your eggs into the Google Voice
basket? Buy a bunch of Chrome PCs? I understand why they have to do it but it
will definitely cause some people to adopt more of a wait-and-see approach.

~~~
nikcub
This is what Microsoft understands that Google doesn't. Your platform users
come first, before anything else. Microsoft assured that their platforms were
good because they used their own platforms themselves. For eg. all Microsoft
windows software would use the same API's that third-party developers would
use.

You look at Google and for them the platform and developers are secondary.
API's are not only an afterthought (such as in Google+) but they are something
that other people use, not Google.

They kill services and API's because they don't need them and it doesn't
effect them - but it does effect the users. I can still run SimCity or Test
Drive on Windows 7, which makes me, as a user, confident that Microsoft will
never throw me under the bus. This means that if you are an IT manager, you
can make multi-million dollar purchasing decisions knowing that the technology
will still be around and supported since Microsoft use it themselves.

Google could kill any API, and they have, and it doesn't impact themselves
because they don't use these API's themselves, but they are asking developers
to.

Google will never become the Microsoft of the web until they start using their
own API's and until they start respecting their customers with long-term
support.

~~~
yeggeyegge
Yegge, is that you?

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GBKS
This could mean a lot of potential opportunity for start-ups. If Google is
shedding products because they don't fit with their core mission or business
requirements, those might be some great areas to get into for
different/smaller companies.

In the end, they will probably focus on general purpose products with super
large user bases (docs, maps, email, android, social network, offers, payments
etc). Around those, will still be a big ecosystem for other companies.

I'm curious if products like SketchUp, Picnik, Desktop and Orkut will also be
sunset soon.

~~~
abraham
I think SketchUp is too important for getting 3d buildings into Maps. Picnik
is being used for photo editing in Google+. Desktop has already been killed.
Orkut...No idea. My guess is Orkut will be around in the short term but will
get replaced with Google+ in the next couple years.

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skurry
"Trimming a bloated ship" made me immediately think of layoffs. Then I read
the article, and the tone was quite different, it looks like he's just re-
focusing efforts and killing unpopular projects.

IMO, "Me Too" products only make sense if you have the valid hope to be able
to offer something better than the existing products. Gmail for example was
vastly better than any existing popular browser based email client. Facebook
is sufficiently "good" and hard to improve further, so I'm afraid Google will
have a hard time coming up with something that will convince people to make
the switch.

~~~
willy1234x1
Speaking personally as an avid Google+ user, I think that while it's fair to
compare the two (Google+ and Facebook) I think they're approaching the same
problem from two different angles. Google+ is becoming my source for
meaningful posts, I see a lot more worthwhile content on Google+, whereas
Facebook has become something I use a lot less because it's filled with the
mundane comments of someone's day to day life. I think there's room for both
types of posts and with Google+ focusing on the circles and who you share your
posts with it allows you to filter out the noise and see what you want to see.
Google+ right now, is in its infancy and I think it's unfair to dismiss it
completely (you didn't but I often see people here on Hacker News doing so) as
the uses of Google+ are still being fleshed out. Right now I would say Google+
is like Twitter without any character limits, but also like Facebook in that
it has more of a focus on socializing. It's an evolution of online social
networking in my opinion and as its use spreads into more groups of people it
starts to really shine. For example, I keep a circle called "Tech People" in
it are various people related to technology, some I know personally others
notable tech celebs and developers. What I love about this circle is how I can
open its stream and see various posts from people like Guido Van Rossum to Tim
O'Reilly where they discuss issues in technology, their careers, development,
etc. Then at the same time I have a circle dedicated to Art (I didn't want to
make it too specific to something like photographers or anythingf) where I can
turn to it to see posts on new photos from people like Trey Ratcliff, or
interesting music from another user. The point is, Google+ has become a way
for me to organize my interests and notable people that share these interests
while also allowing me to socialize with my friends from my hometown by
keeping a circle for them. Facebook may have groups, but Google+ makes circles
a key feature of the network and that's where I think the true distinction
lies. Google+ lets you segregate your various connections in life into circles
and hinges on this fact, Facebook has groups as an afterthought and that's
what I truly think divides the two.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Fyi, comments that big are hard to read without separating them into
paragraphs.

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staunch
> _“We don’t want to be left with a complicated array of good-but-not-great
> services.”_

Sounds like Steve got his point across.

~~~
kylemathews
As much as we all like Steve, I kinda doubt he was the only one with that
insight.

~~~
staunch
From the biography:

 _Page came to Jobs for advice on how to be a good chief executive officer,
and while Jobs’ immediate reaction was to say “f-you” to Page, he remembered
how HP co-founder Bill Hewlett advised him in his younger days.

“Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up. It’s now all over the
map,” reads the biography’s account of Jobs’ interaction with Page. Later Jobs
came to Page with a sharp advising tone, warning Google was making products
“that are adequate but not great. They’re turning you into Microsoft.”_

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SoftwareMaven
Moving from an engineering/technology company to a marketing/product company.
It needs to happen, or your companu becomes schizophrenic (like Google has
been). But doing so without killing the technology culture is hard (I can't
think of any successes changing this late off the top of my head). I hope he
succeeds.

I do like Page's focus on "sit down and work it out in person". So much time
wasted trying to do that over email.

~~~
mahyarm
Apple somewhat with the transplant of objective-c and next step into apple?

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SoftwareMaven
I thought about Apple, but I'm not sure it fits. The company Apple is today is
the company that Jobs kept trying to build for 40 years. Proportional fonts
and rounded buttons are the result of products, not technologies.

Had he had a weaker personality and Woz a more assertive personality, then I
think Apple would have needed to make that shift.

~~~
philwelch
Well, I think the transition from the Apple II to the Mac was a little like
that.

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joelhaasnoot
Reading this article while I'm reading Stephen Levy's "In the Plex" is
interesting. Stephen argues this is all part of Google's nature and that Page
and Brin are convinced the "montisorian way" will figure it out one day...

I think he's right in many ways, Google definately doesn't work anything like
Apple does, it'll just be interesting how Google comes out the "midlife
crisis"

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brown9-2
Excellent point - if Page had a certain amount of power when a triumvirate
ruled Google, what has really changed now that he is the sole CEO? Does he
suddenly have immense influence now where he had none before?

It sounds just like a nice PR push really.

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bane
In theory it's great since it _should_ result in products that are more
complete instead of the continuous stream of promising, but I got bored
developing the tedious bits half-assery that has tended to come out of Google.

In practice, for every Buzz that gets rightfully killed, we lose an invaluable
resource like Code Search.

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hessenwolf
And why the half-assery that is google docs? That is something that with
nothing but hard slog-work could be awesome... but it's like an awkard
notepad.exe + features.

So far, the only thing they have succeeded in is search. Analytics is the best
free analytics service out there that I know, with an interface like
spaghetti. Adwords? Ugh... it's hideously banal to work with. Rant over.

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MahmoodM
Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.

