Thank you Sundar for getting rid of the frivolous, Silicon-Valley-esque things like coding competitions for kids, extricating all of the humanity and decency that made Google so inefficient with money, and for doubling down on your focus to turn Google into the next iteration of Cisco, Oracle and IBM. It's exactly what this world needs, so you are the perfect leader for this.
If you spend a million dollars on Oracle hardware they at least give you a human being who is authorized to fix things for you and diagnose your problems.
Meanwhile in google land, you can literally be bring in millions of dollars worth of advertising revenue on your channel and asking for help from your dedicated Youtube contact/representative can get your entire channel retroactively demonitized
If you watch the video, they explain how 1) none of the videos that they pulled clips from to make the highlight reel were age restricted, 2) this exact situation occurred last year, and the youtube rep assured them this was a mistake and it wouldn't happen this time, 3) the Youtube rep once again reassured them that this was absurd, 4) after reaching out to the rep and being told their complaint was being reviewed, videos that were years old suddenly became age restricted, 5) the rep apologized and explained that the new age restrictions were as intended.
This means that even if you have 2 million subscribers and a youtube rep for support, asking google for help is just as likely to ruin you as actually fix anything.
He says "My entire channel is being age-restricted and demonetized." That's not the case now, but I don't know if he was exaggerating, he misunderstood, or YT reversed course.
In any case it didn't ruin him. He's still making videos for YT.
Sundar is the Steve Ballmer of Google. And that's fine! Ballmer was a competent if uninspiring CEO: Microsoft under his leadership missed many new opportunities, but still made lots of money.
Most importantly, Ballmer's tenure is what made it possible for Satya Nadella to pivot Microsoft into what it is today. Realistically, Windows Phone was never going to beat Apple, Bing was not going to beat Google, Yammer was not going to be the next Facebook, but Microsoft had to try and fail in order to learn those lessons.
The real question is who- if anyone- will be the Satya Nadella of Google, bringing the company back for a third act in the post-AI world. And maybe, in this new world, the limiting factor of human progress is not the number of CS grads who can solve coding puzzles.
Fully disagree with windows phone. It never reached enough maturity to be a true competitor to ios, but it absolutely could have won over android. the gui was truely innovative (with the « tiles » system), and the general feeling and smoothness was absolutely better than android. Microsoft missed a huge opportunity there. It never was a technical problem, MS knows how to make operating system. It was only a strategical one. Ballmer is 100% to blame for that.
Google is the web monopolist, and would never build apps like YouTube or Maps for a Windows phone product, since it would compete with Android, and not have the market share of the iphone.
Microsoft tried making their own YouTube app, which Google had taken down. Without access to the Google web products, a new phone ecosystem is going to be dead on arrival
In terms of UI, Windows Phone was so far ahead of Android and iOS at the time (and in many areas still beats both of them. Android is still a mess). The Nokia Lumia series of phones also were solid with great cameras in an era of plastic Android phones.
I agree Microsoft flubbed the strategy, same with Zune where they had a technically superior product but no commitment.
Platform reboots killed any developer momentum they built - Windows Phone 8 apps were not backwards compatible with Windows Phone 7 which itself was a clean break with Windows Mobile. A lot of trending apps like Instagram and Snapchat never released apps on the platform, so you had to use third party knock-offs that chased private APIs. Microsoft did build some great social media integrations that tied your contacts into a single local profile across platforms (Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook).
They also kept rebranding and shuffling services on the phones - for example Zune became Xbox Music became Groove.
Windows phone was kneecapped by Sinofsky who abandoned .net for windows 8 app development for windows 8.
There were 200K apps in the windows phone store, that would have run on day one when windows 8 released. Instead Sinofsky wanted to kneecap devdiv, and created windows rt API, which was a C++ mess that led to developers completely abandoning the windows platform.
All app development on windows phone stopped when windows rt for windows 8 was announced. Windows phone was miles ahead of Android at that point. In terms of apps they had 200K in comparison to Androids 500-800K apps.
No. It's not. Which is to say, why do we value "CEO makes money?" That's NOT valuable to me. Microsoft doesn't pay me, therefore the pure question of whether or not they make money is literally meaningless to me, and should be meaningless to you if you are not in their employ. I'm not saying it's bad either, but it's such a weird gut reaction.
Which is to say -- if you find out the CEO is making the company more money, you still do not yet have enough information as to whether they're good...
Well, millions of Americans are one of them, either directly or through their index funds, retirement funds, etc. When you said "I don't care", I assume you meant "I" as a representative of some larger public class.
Surely you understand that jrm4's interests, specifically, don't factor much into corporate/national decision-making?
1. The windows phone was actually well put (and I liked metro UI, as an apple person!), but suffered horribly from low population + tons of shit in their "app store" - iE: it was actually hard to find a non-scam facebook app!
2. Microsoft has an actual enterprise business that is stable and not prone to disruption, they can swallow huge projects that fail easily without endangering their cashflows. This is NOT true for google, search (their core channel for ads) is getting grilled in the new future by ChatBots + SocialCommerce + non-existing customer support + known to launch stuff only to kill it shortly after + many people hate/ignore google alltogether. It doesn't matter if they can build a better Bot on their own, these huge margins are gone now, innovators dilemma.
3. "post-AI world" for me means achieving technical singularity, and what comes afterwards is strictly not predictable, including the fact if humans continue to exist at all, let alone the concept of "programming jobs"
Microsoft had a diverse set of revenue sources through that period. Google makes 90% of their revenue through ads.
Microsoft could have very easily found another Ballmer instead and ended up very different today. Main takeaway is they aren't really comparable and we still don't know where the winds are blowing for Google.
I was stating my personal opinion in an (attempted) humorous way. I doubt anyone seriously thought I was summarizing anyone else. I truly apologize for being unfunny here.
There are two possible outcomes for a publicly traded company that has figured out how to make a lot of money over a long period
1. Continue to accrete new revenue sources and pivot slightly forever until you eventually do a bit of everything, "diversifying" to the point where you become in effect a small nation
2. Stick to your plan and go out of business
These are the two possible outcomes as a public company
They should merge IBM and Oracle and make Sundar the CEO. Apart from plastering ads in every nook and cranny and a stupid attempt to enter China, he has achieved nothing.
I'll be his scapegoat for a mere 10th of what he makes! You can blame me for anything you dislike that Google does.
As a matter of fact, I think we could crowdfund this. Watch this space for a link to my Patreon, where you can pay a mere $10 per month to blame me for things that upset you.
If you'd like to sign up for my special High Flyers VIP pricing, you can even call me and rant at me for the decisions of companies and governments that bother you.
Sundar is Leslie Nielsen when the pilots (Larry, Sergey, Eric) decide to get sick on dirigibles, parties, trying to become government tech czar, etc.
Nobody's flying the plane. It's on search ad autopilot and slowly crashing into the ground. Could make for one of the most catastrophic value destruction stories of our time.
He's such a bad CEO that I can't believe he's still in the seat. Just the way he let the employees revolt and embarrass him. If he had any dignity or pride he would have resigned then. He may know all the facts on how businesses should be run and is a good guy, but he has 0 leadership skills. Just an awful, terrible leader. The ChatGPT fiasco is further evidence the place has been mismanaged the last 8 years.
If a person is in a $200m per year job, they're primarily incentivized to keep the job for as long as possible. This one objective dwarfs any other consideration in every decision that the person makes.
And sure, 99% of his compensation is Google stock, but at those magnitudes the marginal utility of the dollar is zero. What's the difference between $100m and $200m anyway?
Agree 100%. This is what stifles innovation and kills companies, people moving into positions where they make more than they ever have before and their goal is look good to financial stakeholders and maintain their position as long as possible. Although difficult for other reasons, I think I prefer working with true visionaries.
Presumably sundar is motivated to remain CEO for as long as possible regardless of the specific motivations, right?
Whether he is motivated by earning a billion dollars over a decade or he’s achieved pure altruism and simply wants to make Google the greatest company in history doesn’t really matter. He can only achieve his goals if he remains CEO. And as a public company, that means keeping shareholders happy. No?
Every decision that we make factors in many variables that are weighed according to how important we perceive them to be. If one coefficient in that "equation" outclasses all others, to a rational person that would become the primary motivator.
>Whether he is motivated by earning a billion dollars over a decade or he’s achieved pure altruism and simply wants to make Google the greatest company in history doesn’t really matter. He can only achieve his goals if he remains CEO.
I don't buy this argument at all. For one, his goals are unknowable and might be what he plans to do with $200m/year, and he could justify anything to attain that $200m up to and including total destruction of the organization. Secondly, many people abdicate power if it's false power i.e. someone forces their hand in critical decisions. He hasn't done that presumably because $200m is more important to him than his pride or (Google) legacy.
To someone in the bottom 10%, I'm sure they think there's no appreciable difference between a $100k/y annual income and $1M annual income. How much rent and food can one person consume, after all?
As others in the thread are trying to explain, there is a huge stratification at those levels. A $1B net-worther has a very different ability to project his will onto the world than a $.1B net-worther, or a $10B net-worther. That matters to them.
It's ability to do things and have an impact on the world. You can afford to try out crazy projects that require enormous amounts of capital. Obviously no one needs this, but there are plenty of things to spend your money on that isn't buying 30 of the same thing.
Observably, quite a lot, considering these CEOs are dedicating so much of their life towards this when they could easily stop working now and be rich forever if they only cared about holiday homes and boats.
I think certain people a lot. As your wealth grows so do your ambitions for sone people. Self actualization is a pyramid onto its own. Power, influence, and legacy are attractive. Of course so is living a quiet life.
