I also think the presence of Sergey Brin has been making a difference in this.

refulgentis 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Ex-googler: I doubt it, but am curious for rationale (i know there was a round of PR re: him “coming back to help with AI.” but just between you and me, the word on him internally, over years and multiple projects, was having him around caused chaos b/c he was a tourist flitting between teams, just spitting out ideas, but now you have unclear direction and multiple teams hearing the same “you should” and doing it)

	▲	pstuart an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That makes sense. A "secret shopper" might be a better way to avoid that but wouldn't give him the strokes of being the god in the room.
	▲	LightBug1 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Oh ffs, we have an external investor who behaves like that. Literally set us back a year on pet nonsense projects and ideas.

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hungryhobbit an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Please, Google was terrible about using the tech the had long before Sundar, back when Brin was in charge.

Google Reader is a simple example: Googl had by far the most popular RSS reader, and they just threw it away. A single intern could have kept the whole thing running, and Google has literal billions, but they couldn't see the value in it.

I mean, it's not like being able to see what a good portion of America is reading every day could have any value for an AI company, right?

Google has always been terrible about turning tech into (viable, maintained) products.

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vinkelhake an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Is there an equivalent to Godwin's law wrt threads about Google and Google Reader?

See also: any programming thread and Rust.

	▲	scarmig 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'm convinced my last groan will be reading a thread about Google paper clipping the world, and someone will be moaning about Google Reader.

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burgreblast an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I never get the moaning about killing Reader. It was never about popularity or user experience.

Reader had to be killed because it [was seen as] a suboptimal ad monetization engine. Page views were superior.

Was Google going to support minimizing ads in any way?

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DiggyJohnson an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How is this relevant? At best it’s tangentially related and low effort

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jamespo an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Took a while but I got to the google reader post. Self host tt-rss, it's much better