

Larry Page: one-year anniversary of taking over Google's CEO - tilt
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-04/googles-page-apples-android-pique-for-show

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martythemaniak
My view on this is pretty simple: Larry should keep doing what he's doing and
let the haters keep on hating.

Before G+, people made fun of Google for not doing social and now that they
have a good product, they are made fun of because they didn't kill facebook 6
months. People moaned and complained how no two Google products were alike or
connected, and now that they complain that they work well together. And of
course, Android's been hated forever, even as it takes over the market and iOS
starts lifting its major features from Android.

So, Larry's focus and determination will probably result in a very productive
reign, despite all the hate from the Valley folk and HNers

~~~
gms
They don't have a good product (yet?). No one uses Google+ besides nerds and
people who work at Google.

It makes it all the more irritating that they are forcing a non-compelling
product down the throats of everyone. The only happiness generated from this
is in their own egos.

~~~
duaneb
While I agree that few people use Google+ - certainly nobody I know - I think
it's a much better site than facebook is.

~~~
gms
Fine, but your opinion is in the extreme minority. The majority of people not
only don't think it's better than Facebook - they simply don't care.

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dude_abides
I miss the Google run by Eric Schmidt. What Larry Page is doing to Google
reeks of what Ballmer did to Microsoft. It is no doubt a profitable strategy,
at the cost of "coolness" that Google has always been known for. History books
might remember Google Plus having displaced Facebook similar to how IE
displaced Netscape.

~~~
melling
He's trying to run the company more like Apple, which is what Steve Job's
recommended that Larry do. It comes down to doing a few things well and
focusing. Probably a lesson that we all need to learn.

~~~
gdubs
How is that what they're doing? I personally miss the simple search engine it
used to be. Didn't PG write something similar recently? Google has become a
frustrating user experience. Everything is constantly moving around, it feels
cluttered and I frequently lose interesting search results pages due to
strange glitches, probably resulting from key mappings that I'm not aware of.

~~~
melling
They are killing off lots of other projects and focusing on far fewer. What
you wrote is a tangent from what I wrote. You are complaining because by
focusing more on search they are making it worse. Whether search is better now
can be debated, and I don't have an opinion, but they are certainly focusing
on it.

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hsuresh
Bit off topic. But i seriously don't understand the negative sentiment
anything related to Google of late. It used to be Facebook a while back, and
it seems to be Google's turn right now. There must be some sort of group
behaviour explanation to this.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
They killed my fantastic google reader experience, and forced the "social"
aspect of it into G+. This might seem shallow on my side, but I am still livid
about this. They completely ruined the reader experience for me. They tried to
mesh too much social into one product. Too many generalities, not enough
specialization. Even with their "circles". Now I don't even use reader, when
it used to be my crack fix.

Also, I added the Hacker News circle on G+, and all of the sudden I have
1704395784390582430 contacts in gchat. mother eff.

Also, I had a perfectly one off custom color scheme in gmail, and I couldn't
transfer it over to the new style. now I'm just bickering. I'm really only
legitimately pissed about reader.....

~~~
FaceKicker
> Also, I added the Hacker News circle on G+, and all of the sudden I have
> 1704395784390582430 contacts in gchat. mother eff.

While it's semi-annoying that people in your G+ circles get added to gchat by
default, you can easily disable this. <https://plus.google.com> -> click the
arrow by your name in contact list -> privacy settings -> change to "custom"
and disable any/all circles you don't want on your gchat list.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Thanks. I've been muckin around the settings in gmail a little, and was able
to fix it a bit, but this seems a much more complete solution.

------
bambax
> _Is there an Android tablet you’re happy with?_

> _I really like using my Samsung tablet. I previously used the Motorola Xoom
> for a while and liked that._

He liked the Xoom? It's sad. Like Bill Gates before him, for all his success,
all his money and all of his intelligence, he can't use an iPad in public.

~~~
cryptoz
I have a Xoom and love it. Why is that sad to you? I deal with iPads at my job
and hate the experience. I'd prefer my Xoom to any iPad without hesitation.

------
beatle
_Producing the best thing we possibly can for users is our paramount thing. I
think we have demonstrated that over a very long period of time with a whole
variety of different issues we’ve faced around the world._

Hilarious. Lately, Google's wannabe products/services are knee-jerk reactions
to existing products. Google is driven by envy, not by the desire to innovate
or create a better product or service.

Android = iOS

Android tablets/ICS = iPad

Motorola Acquisition = iOS

Google+ = Facebook

Google Offers = Groupon

Google Places/Hotpot = Yelp

Chrome = IE/Firefox

Google Docs = MS Office

so on...

~~~
Zikes
Android was purchased by Google two years prior to the release of iOS [1][2]

Tablets are the natural progression of mobile platforms, and existed prior to
the iPad.

The massive contention about Android fragmentation and update/upgrade paths
has steadily grown to the point that controlling an additional choke point in
that process could significantly improve the ecosystem. By purchasing Motorola
and operating it separately they can produce phones with shorter wait times
between Android version releases and updates, and set precedents for other
manufacturers to follow.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a myriad of other platforms have proven that
social is a huge market. Google+ was late to the party, but they would be
stupid to ignore it altogether.

Google Offers is a natural tie-in with a mobile payments platform (Google
Wallet), which they were essentially first to market with in the US despite
having not yet gained significant traction.

I'm not very familiar with the Google Places, Hotpot, or Yelp services, but it
seems like a natural tie-in with their existing Maps service. And sure,
MapQuest was around first, but it still is, and I don't know anybody that
prefers it to Google Maps.

Chrome may seem "me too" at the moment, but when it first released it was a
pretty big deal. They proved that browsers could be minimal and functional,
and as they said themselves it only made sense for them to contribute to the
web at all points, from server to client.

Google Docs took Office products into a completely new space, one which
Microsoft is now having a knee-jerk reaction to with their Office 365
platform.

On top of that, there's plenty of originality to be had still. Their self-
driving cars project is really taking off, just a few short years ago nobody
would ever have dreamed it would be possible to have a street-level view of
nearly every road in the US (and tons of other countries now), their single
account/sync structure is undoubtedly the inspiration for iOS's recent iCloud
service, and they're in the process of revolutionizing internet connectivity
itself right now with end-to-end fiber connections at reasonable consumer
pricing in Kansas City.

Maybe there is a bit of envy in there, but who hasn't looked at something and
said to themselves "I could do better"? I'd say that, for the most part, they
have.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)> [2]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_(Apple)>

~~~
beatle
>Android was purchased by Google two years prior to the release of iOS

-Steve Jobs started planning the development of the iPhone in 2002.

-Apple's collaboration with Motorola to produce the Rkr E1 started in 2004.

\- Official Development of the iPhone started early 2005.

-Google bought Android in Aug 2005

------
pinaceae
fuck the new google.

seriously.

i am not an android user. google, you know that. why, oh why, do i suddenly
have a google play link in my now even more so useless google menu/top bar?!
why are my picasa albums suddenly less relevant than circle's photos? the fukc
do i need circles for? to be reminded why i went off facebook?!

pushing google services at every turn is really, really annoying. i like
search, gmail, maps and docs to some extent - can i PLEASE disable the fucking
rest, once and for all?

i grew up, internet wise, with google search. as it came out, it rocked my
world. a super simple search box, with perfect results. my god, was it
glorious. now it is turning into yahoo.

~~~
trb
Could you please offer an argument instead of an opinion? Why should Google
fulfill any of your demands, aside from you wanting it?

Could you please outline how google.com is turning into a web portal like
yahoo.com?

~~~
pinaceae
play, circles - google is pushing those things onto me, hereby cluttering up
the rest of their products. yahoo, for me, always was the definition of
clutter, whereas google had focused clarity.

that clarity is gone, under the helm of larry page. it is becoming more and
more obvious just how great the performance of schmidt was.

