

Jobs Told Google's Page to Cut Bloat to Avoid Becoming Microsoft - acak
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LTFP6U0YHQ0X01-3MTMRFEDTG0SB4L0HQ03662H25

======
5hoom
With the changes occurring at Google right now, could we be feeling the impact
of Page taking this advice to heart?

It seems Google are pruning a lot of stuff they must see as external to their
core business, and putting happy-safe bubble wrap around services like search
(see todays story about the + operator being depreciated to the dismay of
advanced users).

I suppose this is Google trying to improve themselves, lets just hope they can
execute as well as Apple when it comes to making super simplified products
that people want.

~~~
icki
Any decision that a company makes is an attempt to improve itself.

According to the article, Jobs recommended to Page that Google focus on five
services - I'm curious as to which services HN thinks are core to Google's
growth and success? Off the top of my head: Search, Android, Chrome, Plus and
YouTube.

~~~
ashishgandhi
Don't forget Apps: Mail, Maps, Docs, Translate, etc.

~~~
icki
This is exactly the rhetoric that Steve Jobs wanted Google to avoid, and
perhaps he was exaggerating. But really, while there are many excellent
products that Google has built, not all of them are capable of generating
revenue and/or adoption of other Google products. That is the fat that Jobs
was saying Google should trim.

------
cpeterso
Steve's advice to Nike:

"Nike makes some of the best products in the world. Products that you lust
after. But you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and
focus on the good stuff."

Dropping products, even crappy ones, that produce revenue is difficult when
investors demand non-stop growth, quarter after quarter, and your employees
are afraid of losing their jobs or political fiefdoms.

~~~
hboon
Here's what Steve Job's verbal answer to this is:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY#t=07m33s> till 9:20

~~~
6ren
BTW: In his answer 2 questions later, he presages iCloud ("NFS") and Apple
Stores ("distribution")
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&t=13m10s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&t=13m10s)
(13:10-21:00)

(And also demonstrates his reality distortion field, which his questioner
heroically overcomes.)

~~~
hboon
You'd need to append #t=13m10s instead of ?t=13m10s (I have no idea why they
did it this way).

So this is the URL you want:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY#t=13m10s>. It doesn't work with
the HTML5 version of YouTube though. Is it technically not possible?

~~~
6ren
Did you try my URL? Both forms work for most browsers, but only my variant
(with "?...&") works for some - including my browser.

Yeah, they're misusing the spec. If they wanted to be clever, and use "#" to
index the video instead of the page, they should have omitted the "t=", to
look like "#13m10s". At least that would make sense. But oh no, they had to
bastardize it into some hideous hybrid chimera of crossed specs.</grump>

BTW: it was a real question - did my variant work for your browser?

~~~
hboon
Yes, I tried yours and thought it didn't work in Chrome. I just tried again
and yes it works :) So yours is definitely better for me.

Both didn't work in Safari if it doesn't have Flash. I think it used to when I
had Flash installed, so it's probably only the HTML 5 version that wouldn't
work?

Which browser are you using?

~~~
6ren
Thanks! HN, where correcting someone can be educational ;-)

Yeah, sounds like a HTML5 bug; they'll probably fix it soon. Flash is a well-
established platform, so I'd be surprised if it didn't work in it. Does
youtube's HTML5 version work in Chrome?

FF2 in linux (long story for why I can't upgrade this machine)

~~~
hboon
Didn't work for me on Chrome. Switched successfully to HTML5 though.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&t=13m10s&...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&t=13m10s&html5=1)

After reading <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079>, I always expect to
be educated on HN :)

~~~
6ren
I'm surprised. Oh well.

BTW: Awesome thread.

------
krosaen
That's pretty cool that Jobs was willing to meet with Page, particularly given
how miffed he was about android.

One area where I hope Google doesn't follow Apple is in engineering culture.
For instance, isn't it true that most of the engineers who worked on the
original iphone literally never even saw one until it was unveiled to the
public? Whether or not the "bottom up" opportunities for engineers to
influence products at Google is as effective as a top down culture under the
likes of Jobs and Ives is debatable, but it sure seems like working at Google
is a lot more fun! (disclosure: I worked at Google, am basing my impressions
on what it's like to work at Apple on anecdotes and only a couple of direct
accounts from engineers who have worked there).

~~~
wooster
"For instance, isn't it true that most of the engineers who worked on the
original iphone literally never even saw one until it was unveiled to the
public?"

For the core team, my understanding is "no". The core team was very small,
though (<50 software engineers).

~~~
krosaen
Cool, I hope so. An account I heard described the engineers having had access
only to test boards, but perhaps that was earlier on before physical
prototypes were made.

------
ethank
I would have loved to see Jobs' comments about Yahoo. He likely would have
been so apoplectic he wouldn't be able to speak.

His meetings with record labels are kind of legendary for this very reason.

------
leejw00t354
'Avoid becoming Microsoft' I don't see how that's bad. Microsoft are the most
successful software company ever.

~~~
anonLSD
Microsoft has some wildly successful products, like Windows, Office, XBOX,
SharePoint, SQL Server, etc. That's great. But they also employ well upwards
of 100,000 people (including 'contingent' staff). It does not take that many
people to ship those products. Not even close.

So they productively employ some fraction of those people (I'd guess,
conservatively, less than half), and they pseudo-productively distract the
rest with poorly managed fool's errands. And don't think it's a case of "you
don't know until you try" - in most cases, everybody knows. General Managers
will seize on any misguided idea with enough plausible deniability in order to
build their fiefdoms.

It's like a bizarre kind of welfare system for the upper middle class. A few
people do amazing work and ship great products. For the majority, the most
significant thing they accomplished was passing the hiring gauntlet. But they
all get to live in big houses and drive BMWs.

An institution can work on the whole, but still be grossly inefficient.

~~~
lurker14
1\. Unless it's efficient to determine where the fat is, it's not efficient to
try to cut it.

2\. "welfare for the upper middle class" is a perfect description of middle-
management.

------
kevinalexbrown
Some simplified products are iPods. Some simplified products are Zunes. Just
sayin'.

~~~
eftpotrm
And I'd pay good money for a more complex iPod Classic. I need its space but
the software is simple in ways that regularly annoys me; I believe there's
significant room for improvement.

Apple isn't perfect.

~~~
kevinalexbrown
Agreed. In this sense I'm worried that google will lean more toward "Internet
For Dummies"(e.g. losing the + feature in favor of double quotes to make way
for G+), attempting to coral my internet use into certain patters the same way
Apple seems to (like removing the "Reader" link from the google bar to
showcase G+).

~~~
lurker14
How is a + sign so much smarter than a " mark?

quotation marks mean that you are making an exact quote, so you want an exact
match.

Consider:

1\. Hey, do you know anything about cars? Yeah, I have a fine automobile.

2\. Hey, do you know anything about "Cars"? Yeah, it was a cute movie.

------
latch
Forgive my denseness, but is "being larded with B players" a reference to
employees? I'm not disagreeing, it just isn't clear to me if he's calling out
Microsoft employees.

~~~
bdr
Yes.
[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=How_to_Hire_Insanely_Great_Employees.txt&topic=Recruiting&showcomments=1)

~~~
bishnu
Haha, some dude thought he was talking about set theory.

------
abbott
the Google Labs shutdown, might be an echo of this.

------
Qz
I couldn't help noticing that more than 50% of the web page layout for this
article is literally blank space.

~~~
kristopolous
To us unfiltered web viewers, they are actually advertisements.

