
Google Philosophy - niyazpk
http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html
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aaronsw
I found the old version more amusing:

"Google does search. Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat.
... Google's entire staff is dedicated to creating the perfect search engine
and work tirelessly toward that goal."

[http://web.archive.org/web/20040603020634/http://www.google....](http://web.archive.org/web/20040603020634/http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html)

Oops!

~~~
TotlolRon
I found an old version myself smoking a cigarette. We all change. That's a
given. The question is - do we change for the better?

~~~
jiganti
I think the criticism would be that if their philosophy used to be focusing
solely on search, and now they are doing other things, these side projects
were never part of the "endgame". Perhaps they suffered from this.

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TotlolRon
There is no "endgame". Things just go on and on. That's a given. The question
is - each of these side projects - useful? needed? makes things better?

Lack of single-minded focus is NOT Google's problem. They have others.

[sent from my Chrome Browser]

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macrael
Do you really think it isn't a problem that Google is building and brining to
market two different competing operating systems? Google is pretty great at
most things they do, but I think that they are straying from "It's best to do
one thing really, really well." and that numbers among their problems.

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InclinedPlane
It's fantastic that Google is developing 2 different operating systems. Even
more so that they might compete in the market with each other. That's healthy.
That's a company that has refused to impose strategy tarrifs on itself, a
company that doesn't view itself as an empire but as a bustling hive of talent
and opportunity.

Which is better: the market telling Google which (or both) of its two
operating systems are viable or some VP making that decision?

The empire complex ruins big companies. It's the biggest threat to google's
ability to remain a vital, innovative company in the long-run. It's good to
see they haven't succumbed to it yet.

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WalterGR
_Since the beginning, we've focused on providing the best user experience
possible. Whether we're designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the
look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately
serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line._

Google's support for their free products is terrible. While they may take
great care to keep the user in mind while _designing_ products, and take care
to optimize for the variables they track, their claim above rings hollow in my
experience.

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johnfn
> It's best to do one thing really, really well.

Really? True, Google does search really well, and it makes sense that this
would have been their philosophy at some point in the past. But now it seems
like they would be more for something like "Do one thing really well, and once
people appreciate it, do a thousand other little things."

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andreyf
"Having received a number of queries about our evil scale, we present an
explanation here": <http://www.lot49.com/evil_scale.html>

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skurland78704
Google's results for telephone number search used to be a lot better than they
are now.

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zeynel1
''Since the beginning, we've focused on providing the best user experience
possible. Whether we're designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the
look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately
serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line.''

this may be true for search but not true for instance in the case of google
news <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1528216> \- google news was changed
to serve not the user but internal google goals - it was a change to display
new technology - because they can they changed it

