Hacker News Reader

Comment by ilrwbwrkhv | Hacker News Reader

Google has never been a product company. The last and maybe only major product success they have had after search is gmail. Everything else they bought and sold. So I don't know why people are getting shocked now that when they suddenly have to innovate, they are falling behind. Google is great at algorithms and a huge amount of data processing etc but how to turn it into a product is extremely unclear to them.

View on HN

>how to turn it into a product is extremely unclear to them.

What according you takes something to turn an algorithm into a product? Google did try a lot of things, a lot of products but it didn't catch on so they had to shut them down.

> What according you takes something to turn an algorithm into a product?

Product needs to drive algorithm. Google hired a bunch of people who were into algorithms and so algorithms became > product.

Youtube? Android? Maps? All extremely succesfull platforms/products. But yeah, they are falling behind slowely.

Youtube and Android were bought.

Maps is the only one he's missing after Search and Gmail.

Google Maps first started as a C++ program designed by two Danish brothers, Lars and Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen, and Noel Gordon and Stephen Ma, at Sydney-based Where 2 Technologies. It was first designed to be separately downloaded by users, but the company later pitched the idea for a purely Web-based product to Google management, changing the method of distribution.

The web version was still developed in-house. I guess we can call maps "half-built, half-bought."

At the time android was bought they were building completely different thing and had like 3k lines of code

For Maps, they bought Keyhole:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps

and Brian McClendon was the head of Geo for a long time.

Keyhole and Where 2 Technologies.

Both had some crossover with ERMapper.

Right. BAM (as he was called) was the one who stuck, for a long time.

Maps was also bought

These are all acquired products.

So chrome and gcp are not products somehow?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com