
The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door - fromedome
http://www.recode.net/2016/8/29/12663630/google-x-alphabet-moonshot
======
flexie
I have been wondering if Google hasn't already lost the self driving race to
Tesla. Google still drives a few test vehicles around and has totalled some
2.7 million km:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-
driving_car](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car)

Tesla has more than 100,000 model S driving around and in just 7 months their
auto pilots have already surpassed the km driven by Google for the past 7
years by almost a factor 100 (roughly 200M km). That is real use in many
places, situations and weathers, not just test drives in California.

I realise it's not apples to apples and that Google's cars may be more
autonomous for now. But with the numbers stacked against it like that I doubt
it will be long before Tesla's auto pilot is vastly superior.

As I see it, given the lack of a Google car, they will have to team up with a
major car company to get enough cars out there. And that requires a more
elegant hardware solution than what they currently put on the rooftops.

[http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/231097-tesla-records-
its-...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/231097-tesla-records-its-first-
autopilot-fatal-crash-nhtsa-opens-investigation)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors)

~~~
samwillis
Tesla's auto pilot isn't at all comparable to what Google are doing. It
essentially the same as the adaptive cruse control (cruse control that adjusts
to traffic in front) and lane assist (auto stearing to stay in lane) you can
get from most other car manufactures as an option.

That's not to say that tesla isn't developing full automation it's just that
what they sell now is just clever branding on something you can get elsewhere.

~~~
jn1234
I believe that at some point in the future they will launch a joint-venture
for a fully automated Uber competitor with Tesla handling designing and
building the vehicles and Google providing cash, self-driving software and
building the actual app.

Musk is literally too good friends with Sergey Brin and Larry Page for this
not too happen.

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-and-larry-page-
ha...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-and-larry-page-have-the-
worlds-weirdest-friendship)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-secret-apartment-
elon...](http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-secret-apartment-elon-
musk-2015-5)

------
advisedwang
If Google is really aiming as high as it says it is, you would expect the rate
of successes to be fairly low. A true "moonshot" success - one that creates a
whole new industry - every decade would still be a phenomenal success. Maybe
we just need patience?

~~~
mdorazio
Many people (myself included) would compare X in intent and setup to PARC from
the 1970s. The latter managed the extraordinary feat of pushing out a major
innovation on average about once every 2.5 years from 1970 to 2000. That's
things like laser printing, OOP, Ethernet, etc. that went on to build
industries or take existing ones in new directions.

X, on the other hand, has been around for over 6 years now and as far as I
know, its only marginal success to date has been Glass. I don't think it's
unreasonable to say that X's success rate so far has been lower than many
people expected.

~~~
cageface
It may be true that it's harder now to make those kinds of leaps than it was
in the 1970s though.

~~~
gaius
Why?

I mean, everything is obvious in retrospect. I'm sure there were some PARC
guys bemoaning that all the fundamental discoveries were already made in the
1950s... Google today probably has bigger budgets than Xerox had then (tho'
that's just a guess on my part)

~~~
cageface
A lot of discoveries get exponentially harder. Compare the LHC to experiments
people were doing 100 years ago for an extreme example.

------
danvoell
The title feels like an oxymoron. I would assume the reason for spinning out a
"moonshot" division is that if some projects fail, at least they are not part
of the main division. Perhaps some of these projects are not the type that can
ship an MVP?

------
tkinom
One of the problem might be the incentive/motivations are not match between
Google and people who works in those moonshot projects.

* Even if the projects get 10, 100 millions $ in revenue / profit, it is meaningless compare to billions in profit from search. The folks in those projects are not likely to benefit significantly from it.

* The smart folks probably know it. If they join the project (self driving car), some of motives are to learn as much as possible using Google's resources, name, connections and set it up for their own next venture.

------
jobu
It seems obvious that it would be a struggle for them to ship products - they
are "moonshots" after all.

Reading this article makes me wonder if it was a good idea to put all of them
into one division though. Even when you go in knowing a project is a long-shot
it can be demoralizing when it fails. I can't imagine how hard it would be to
work in a whole division of mostly failed projects.

~~~
taprun
Isn't a venture capital firm (even a good one) a business investing in mostly
failed projects?

~~~
stingraycharles
The difference is that those projects are spread out across different
companies, as opposed to a single division in a single company.

------
nathan_f77
I think it would be so fun to work there, even with all this political stuff
happening. I guess it's sort of like Google's internal "Y Combinator", where
they try out a whole bunch of startup ideas and have practically unlimited
funding.

~~~
cardine
I think the fact that a project would receive unlimited funding is a negative,
not a positive.

Instead of getting lean startups that have to move quickly because of resource
scarcity you have bloated startups that feel no pressure to move quickly
because of the unlimited resources they are receiving.

------
jakozaur
Is not as bad as article suggests:
[https://www.solveforx.com/graduated/](https://www.solveforx.com/graduated/)

It just operates on hype curve. GoogleX takes projects from "technological
trigger" to "peak of inflated expectations":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
"Graduation" doesn't mean success. It seems to just mean "it moved out of X",
even though usually that's just to somewhere else in Google it makes no money
and sells no products.

\- Verify/Life Sciences is failing pretty hard and has failed to develop any
actual products. [https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/28/google-life-sciences-
exo...](https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/28/google-life-sciences-exodus/)

\- Glass is an absolute failure. I own one, I loved mine. It's still a
failure.

\- Gcam went to... Google Research? It went from moonshot R&D to normal R&D.
That's not success.

\- Google Brain... went to Research as well. And really, it is likely just a
rebranded version of whatever DeepMind was already doing when Google bought
them.

\- Project Tango went from Google's moonshot R&D to Motorola's R&D (ATAP)
which Google kept ownership of. That's also not success.

Android Wear, Flux, and Project Insight (Indoor Maps) probably all count as
actual successes for X, but that's about it.

------
alecco
> They say the issues at X aren't technical hurdles, but a combination of red
> tape and knotty internal politics

Unsurprising. The valley (and tech in general) is forgetting it's power
doesn't come from management and politics.

------
bbctol
This article frames it in part as due to the Alphabet reshuffle, but hasn't it
always been this way? Has X been decreasing in effectiveness recently, or were
they just always there to be Sergey's batcave?

------
karma_vaccum123
This feels like the type of operation better suited for a tier-one educational
institution like Stanford or MIT.

In a academic context, there is no subtext of creating products. Yeah,
churning out papers is as contrived...but I still feel like the timelines in
academia are more generous.

Google talks a good press event, highlighting their embrace of failure, their
desire to take on crazy moonshots etc...but its all in the context of
quarterly reports. Something has to give.

------
dragonwriter
> The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

Isn't the whole idea of a "moonshot", in this context, a project that has both
a long window before any payoff, and a high risk of failure. So isn't this a
very much "water is wet" story?

------
baccheion
Meh.

If you're familiar with the internals of Google (or have ever worked there),
then you wouldn't even be slightly surprised by the content of this article or
the ever present stream of product failures from Google. In fact, if you're
aware, then you know things are likely to remain this way until something is
done about all the BS present internally.

You see the "difficult to work-- FOR" and almost (or all out) sociopathic
leaders being outed to some extent in the last year or so: commonplace. That
is, Google likes to position itself as being above such stupidity, but if you
listen to what they say more carefully, you see this is their default/go-to
strategy. That is, they explicitly seek out such personalities (similar to
many VCs), as they believe (based on "data") that it's what's more likely to
lead to success.

Also, while it would be easy to believe Google is all about the "moon shots"
they like touting/hyping (especially given how much money they are dumping in
that direction), if you look at who they are putting in key positions, and how
everything is setup, you immediately realize that (regardless of what they are
doing) it will all likely go nowhere.

Something is very strange about that place. It's like they have no brain. It's
like they are just outright stupid. Which I suppose is hard to say (and have
believed), especially after years of hype (and supporting anecdotes) about its
exceptionally talented pool of employees.

Essentially, it often seems like a sea of INTJs who like to parade around as
though they know what to do with data (and are above bias and feeding into
their own BS, because they are "data-driven"), but that at the end of the day
are just going based on whim/gut, one which is more self-centered and out of
touch than "in tune with" and reflective of the world at large (or where it's
going).

I suppose if you spin around in your own shht enough, and surround yourself
with more of-- yourself-- then eventually, you'll fall into line believing
your own BS and that you must be right.

I remember when I was at Google for a short time in 2010. The place was a
source of endless annoyance and irritation. The field was wide open, and it
was all there for the taking, but then they just consistently and continually
kept making the dumbest decisions. And they'd defend those decisions as though
they were God almighty and immune to being wrong. It was the greatest
consistent stream of stupidity I had ever seen. And by the looks of it,
nothing has really changed. It's just been shht, then more shht, then more BS
trying to explain away the shht, as though shht isn't what it is.

It's not that they "fail often due to releasing more and sooner" or "see
something beyond the field of view of many;" it's that they just plain failed
and it was most likely due to stupidity/credentials (you heard what I said)
being heard over repeated statements of what made more sense (or of what would
be more likely to go somewhere). Also, that failure that looks like a half-
assed piece of crap likely was likely 2 years (or more) in the making, rather
than the 6-8 weeks it seems went into it.

It's just shht every time, and as soon as you step into realizing it, you'll
see that it's always just more shht from them. Their only successes (even in
their "main" business) have come from the competition "falling off" (F'ing
themselves over), rather than from them releasing things that are worthwhile
or better.

The place was extremely infuriating to me, and I couldn't wait to leave. I was
in silent shock the majority of the time I was there, and it seems that even
though 6+ years have gone by, not much has changed!

I'll say it outright and in plain English: the "almighty" Google-- the
almighty enterprise of innovation-- the almighty force for pushing the
web/world forward-- is completely full of shht! They couldn't put out an
innovative (or even just quality) product to save their lives! If anything
surfaces from them that's not more garbage, then it was likely from an
acquisition. And even then, it seems they are F'ing even those avenues up more
frequently as time goes by.

Google Photos: acquisition!

Google DeepMind: acquisition!

Google ATAP: acquisition!

Etc.

They've got nothing.

------
khnd
why does it matter if the moonshot factory is getting products out the door or
not?

~~~
wonkaWonka
Because everyone always has to be shipping and disrupting! Big Business!
Product! Sales!

Who's to blame?!

Attention, Decision, Interest, Action. AIDA.

We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all
know, first prize is a _Cadillac Eldorado_. Anybody want to see second prize?
(second prize is a set of steak knives.)

Third prize is you're fired.

These are _The New Leads_. These are the _Glengarry_ leads. And to you they're
gold. And you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you would be
throwing them away. They're for closers.

~~~
illicium
I realize that this comment is tongue-in-cheek, but the reality is that
Alphabet is a corporation, not a research university. Corporations by
definition need to ship and make money.

