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Comment by bioemerl | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why Google isn't recognized widely as an IBM. They're a huge company that consistently has neat ideas that they cripple with mismanagement and are slowly looking to squeeze what they have harder and harder with time to keep up profit growth.

As they squeeze they will keep getting more hatred until something finally rises to fully replace them.

YouTube is slowly turning into an almost television like experience in terms of ad counts.

Google search barely works anymore.

Their AI division doesn't release much of anything on the back of morality concerns.

Their phones have all been pretty buggy. They have their place but total quality of their software has been crazy lackluster and nowhere close to competing with apple.

Google cloud is third fiddle to aws and azure

In the absence of growth they'll squeeze everything they can. Their customers and their employees, and they will slowly die.

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You clearly don't remember television. A 30 minute TV slot had ~7 minutes of unskippable ads, and that's not including the product placement inside the shows. YouTube will have more like 1-2 minutes of skippable ads for a 20-30 minute show, plus an ad inside the show you can fast forward past.

I agree Google search barely works anymore though. I've currently switched to yandex which is still broken in other ways, and I've had bad luck with brave search and DDG results.

TV ads were skippable too if you used a DVR, and also, they are a lot easier to ignore. I used to only watch things live when I really wanted to be part of the shared experience of having seen the premiere (and the associated discussions). By virtue of being further from the device, it seems like TV ads are less onerous on attention than youtube ads.

In the early days of cable, one of the benefits offered was few to no ads[1]. The idea was subscription fees would usually cover the cost of the programming, and advertising wasn't needed for revenue.

I definitely expect the cycle to repeat, personally.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

This is clearly and obviously a well worn trope and false.

Cable TV started as a method to rebroadcast broadcast TV with ads in places that could not get broadcast TV.

Then HBO came along. But was always a premium channel.

Then the Superstations came along that were rebroadcast of local channels nationally like TBS and WGN with ads.

Then cable channels like CNN, MTV, and ESPN came along - with ads.

There has never been a time that cable TV was ad free.

Yes, and if one reads that article--rather than just the headline--it's largely about how many viewers assumed that paying for cable would mean they'd have fewer ads but that wasn't actually happening.

To me the article read as if cable as it was at the time of writing had minimal advertising, but networks were planning to introduce more of them. I thought it fit the comparison with Youtube slowly ramping up ads really well.

Since most “cable” channels were just rebroadcast over the air channels early on, there was no reason to expect that there were going to be fewer ads. In fact, in the 80s, there was a lot more infomercials on cable TV than today. The only reason there were fewer ads was because cable channels were still trying to get companies to advertise.

I was referring to the premium channels specifically

Agreed. It's smart business to offer ad free to get people hooked, then ramp up the monetization once you have dominance.

If people will continue to pay and get ads you are leaving money on the table as a business.

Have you watched YouTube much in the past week? They've overhauled their ad frequency. Videos are now starting with two unskippable ads and ads are now being displayed at a frequency of about every 5 minutes of content.

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the creator decide on the quantity and ad placements? I've seen hour long videos with one every 5 minutes.

I used to think that. I was watching a video from a guy (Rick Beato) claiming to not monetize the particular video I was watching (he's never claimed not to monetize any of his videos). He no more than said I'm not monetizing this video when it stopped for an ad. I watch a lot of music instruction videos and it's obvious the content creators are not in control of ad placements. Ads appear whenever Google damn well decides they'll appear, even if it's the most inopportune time for the video. In that way YouTube is actually worse than TV.

You have to have a certain level of subscribers before youtube will let a content creator decide how the ads work.

I agree here. I've started watching Kitchen Nightmares on YouTube and for a 40 minute episode there's usually 2 ads to start the episode and another 4 or 5 breaks for ads. The breaks are either 2 ads that can be skipped after 5 seconds or a single 15 second unskippable ad.

I subscribed to YouTube Premium a year or so ago after somebody mentioned it here on HN. It was worth it; YouTube is a much more pleasant experience without ads.

I was already paying for YouTube Music, which I’m not as satisfied with but have stayed with ever since Google Play Music ended. Adding Premium for videos increased the subscription price for me by just a few dollars a month.

> YouTube will have more like 1-2 minutes of skippable ads for a 20-30 minute show, plus an ad inside the show you can fast forward past.

You must be using different YouTube than the rest of us. Or you're trolling. Or you work for Google.

Most episodes of "hour-long" shows from ten to twenty years ago are 42 minutes long. That's because US television had standardized on 18 minutes of ads per hour. I don't think YouTube is quite there yet.

Maybe not the duration due to the "skip" button, but YouTube seems to interrupt way more frequently, and you watch the same ad way more often than you would on TV. And the interruptions are just right in the middle of a sentence.

This definitely has some nostalgia from the good ol’ days going on or something…

It was not uncommon to see the same ad in a single hour of content. I’d see the exact same ads for years when watching tv.

Did you forget when shows would stop running late at night and it’d be a 4 hour straight advertisement?

> Google search barely works anymore.

This seems a bit exaggerated. Can you provide some examples? Also for the problem you are encountering, what alternative do you use? I have no issues with Google search that I can think of.

> Their phones have all been pretty buggy. They have their place but total quality of their software has been crazy lackluster and nowhere close to competing with apple.

I can't speak for their phones, but the Android OS has been rock solid for me for years. I loathe the Apple experience - on both iPhone and Macbook Pro - so this idea that they can't compete with Apple is not something I can agree with. I'm not even sure if it's a fair comparison as they have different goals aside from the mobile experience.

I agree with everything else you said though.

I find myself using the `site:` keyword much more often than before when searching for quite obvious stuff using Google Search. The first page of search results always consists of some useless SEO-optimized shit or is simply missing relevant results.

A month ago or so, when I was researching some MS tech topics, Google Search results did not include any links to the docs.microsoft.com website. However, the results included some Chinese mirrors of docs.microsoft.com with weird names (blablahxyz321.GFWproxy.com or something like that). This never happened before, so something is really broken.

And it's just one example of many. I have to switch between three search engines thorough a day, and it's frustrating.

>I don't know why Google isn't recognized widely as an IBM. They're a huge company that consistently has neat ideas that they cripple with mismanagement and are slowly looking to squeeze what they have harder and harder with time to keep up profit growth.

Because they still pay at top tier levels so the hustle cult kiddies are still obsessed with it.

> Their phones have all been pretty buggy. They have their place but total quality of their software has been crazy lackluster and nowhere close to competing with apple.

There are things that can be improved in Android software, and some of those upstream problems, plus vendor add-ons, can cause phones to be buggy. But there are three billion active Android devices in use - buggy or not, it is in significant use.

It's also nice being able to compile AOSP (or in my case LineageOS), and sideload it onto my Motorola Edge 5G and be able to futz around with it.

In this case I'm thinking of the pixel series, where Google owns the stack and should be able to make a phone without issues, but has consistently failed to do so.

Not just pixel either. Their slate project had similar problems.

> I don't know why Google isn't recognized widely as an IBM.

Because they aren't?

> As they squeeze they will keep getting more hatred until something finally rises to fully replace them.

This will happen whether or not employees love them. Every company gets replaced. Very few have staying power. Id be shocked if <insert your favorite tech company> isn't replaced.

> Google search barely works anymore.

Oh? I've been able to find everything I'm looking for, and the new QA cards, leaving aside the ethical argument, actually saves me so much time. Not sure which google you're using.

> YouTube is slowly turning into an almost television like experience in terms of ad counts.

Hmm, on your version of youtube are you able to skip parts of the video you find boring? On your TV does watching certain videos serve up more videos in the same vein? If not, then they are nothing alike.

> Their AI division doesn't release much of anything on the back of morality concerns.

Maybe tensorflow doesn't mean much to you, but I bet others would be thankful for its release. Besides they have no obligation to release any new AI development to the public. This is just your personal expectation of them.

> Their phones have all been pretty buggy.

Every phone is buggy compared to Apple, but their own phones are significantly less buggy than 3rd party android phones. Have you used an Oppo or Xiaomi phone?

> Google cloud is third fiddle to aws and azure

Not sure this is relavant. This probably highlights more of the other two's strength's rather than GCP's weakness. Personally for new projects I use GCP over AWS for various reasons.

> In the absence of growth they'll squeeze everything they can. Their customers and their employees, and they will slowly die.

All companies die.

This seems really defensive and has a lot of misdirection.

Yes, all companies will die, but Google appears to be over that hill. That's significant.

Google should be able to make amazing phone hardware, not praised because they do better than cheap bottom dollar phone companies.

Tensorflow isn't a product. It's a very good library, but with Google's prowess something like stable diffusion wouldn't exist. Imagine Google search being able to generate the image you're looking for, for example.

And television is worse than YouTube, but they're slowly adding ads and it's getting more obnoxious over time. The natural endpoint is that there are so many ads people just leave the platform.

And Google is the biggest website in the world. They're failing to enter new markets. Aws and azure shouldn't be stronger than Google is, and it's a sign they aren't able to compete.

It's common practice to append reddit to Google searches to find what you want. That shouldn't happen either.

Failure and flaw after failure and flaw. You can't keep up that way forever, and I haven't seen signs that they are turning around

It's defensive in comparison to your initial diatribe. You equated them to IBM. Maybe they will be IBM in 10 years if things don't improve, but for now they are pretty far from it.

Not sure what misdirection you are referring to. Your reply right here primarily talks about how they haven't met your expectation. That's very different from declaring a company is on the verge of becoming a dinosaur.

> The natural endpoint is that there are so many ads people just leave the platform.

Assuming that no one on google is looking at their viewership data and don't notice the "leaving". If that happens I'm sure they days as a notoriously data driven company is over and they will in fact die on all fronts. But for now they still show signs of experimenting, however minor, in all the major products they have.

> It's common practice to append reddit to Google searches to find what you want. That shouldn't happen either.

This is for a extremely specific query type. I do it only when I am looking for people's opinions on certain things, and is certainly not something I do every day. I know lots of others who don't do this either, especially the millions of non reddit users.

> Aws and azure shouldn't be stronger than Google is, and it's a sign they aren't able to compete.

Yea, primarily because GCP has the worst corporate sales team. AWS and Azure routinely do conferences and meet and greets with dev communities and are constantly pushing their product. Azure especially. I would squarely put the fault there rather than the product itself. GCP has a significantly cleaner interface than AWS and can do almost anything AWS/Azure can do. Other than the "specialty" products of course.

> AWS and Azure routinely do conferences and meet and greets with dev communities and are constantly pushing their product

So you think its because of marketing. Not because of something else...

https://steve-yegge.medium.com/dear-google-cloud-your-deprec...

Disclaimer: I work at AWS in Professional Services and I’ve work with AWS and Microsoft (less so Azure) on the other side as a dev lead as a customer.

Cloud and the enterprise is very high touch and requires understanding the customer and meeting them where they are and not try to convince them of the “one true way”. It also requires respecting the customers business processes and understanding the politics of any large organization.

I have no opinions about GCP and even if I did, it would be gauche to criticize a competitor. I’ve never had a reason to have any dependency on anything Google as part of my work. Google itself doesn’t have the DNA that is required to work with the enterprise. Microsoft has been building those competencies since the mid 80s and AWS has first mover advantage.

It’s also the same reason that Google struggles with consumer products compared to Apple. Apple has spent decades selling to consumers, having human customer service, a network of Apple Stores, etc.

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