Google investing in some eye-popping projects | Hacker News Reader

Google investing in some eye-popping projects

latimes.com

26 pointscharlief6 comments

I think some of this is par for the course for a geek-run successful technology company. Back in the late 80's and early 90's when programmers still controlled Autodesk it was involved in projects like Xanadu, AMIX and even created the Cyberspace Developers Kit. All of these were very cool projects but far from the core revenue generating product AutoCAD. If Google follows the trajectory of other major tech companies there will one day be a down quarter, Wall Street will scream bloody murder and management will release a memo about "refocusing the company on it core competencies." And on that day you really want to be working on AdWords where the money is and not on the cool projects.

Did that happen when John Walker was still running it? Because I could see Larry and Sergey saying screw you to Wall Street, and just going on doing what they have currently been doing. Outing successful founders is extremely risky and the investors know this (imagine what would happen to Apples stock price if Steve Jobs was fired tomorrow).

I believe Xanadu and AMIX were canceled when Carol Bartz took over as CEO in 1992. That may well have been the right business decision to make, but it wasn't a programmer decision. And yes, it seems that Apple is a carefully crafted corporate machine that needs a design-focused highly-opinionated control-oriented person at the top. It will be interesting to someday watch Apple transition to being a post-Jobs company. (full disclosure, I worked at both NeXT and Autodesk)

"And on that day you really want to be working on AdWords where the money is and not on the cool projects."

Alternatively, on that day, you can find another cool job at another geek-run successful technology company(if you are any kind of hacker, which you probably are if you are working on these cool projects). Once this happens, you probably don't want to keep working at Google and see a great company decline to yet another middle manager driven MegaCorp. (There is some debate on whether this process is underway there already).

They don't see the relationship between some of these projects?

Google consumes a huge amount of energy for their massive server farms. Is it surprising they are investing in solar and wind energy? I don't think it is much different than the airlines trying to hedge fuel costs.

Google's primary competency is software engineering. Is it surprising that they are working on cars that drive themselves? That is defintely a lucrative problem and they are well positioned to tackle it.

There are plenty of other companies with smaller market cap than Google and a wider portfolio - just look at Yamaha (musical instruments to small gasoline engines? really?) or even Microsoft.

I think it is a good thing, maybe the 21st century Bell Labs.

I feel as if projects like these, as eye-popping as they are, are considered a norm for Google. Also, of all the investments that cause "analysts" to scratch their heads leads me to believe that after all this time the world really doesn't understand tech. it's like Hollywood's inability to fathom why Zuckerberg would build FB just to build it

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