[Okvivi]

I built those charts on Google Finance. At the time (10 years ago) there was no better alternative for building interactive charting in browsers.

After I left Google Finance I feel that the team has attempted a few times to remove Flash, but I don't know why they didn't succeed.

Others on this thread are probably right - finance is not enough of a focus for Google, only so many engineering hours, better spent on other parts of Google Finance (more, better and cleaner data) than on replacing something that works well enough.

[reagan83]

Thanks for building this 10 years ago. This was my first repo I looked at as a noogler earlier this year because I wanted to understand the effort req’d to replace flash charts. It looked a bit more complex than I was expecting but I still have it as #1 on my backlog for a multi-weekend project.

[yosyp]

Are Google employees expected to work on Google services over multi-weekends? Are you compensated or is this for fun? If you're working for free and your work is not open source it seems like you are being taken advantage of by your employer.

[reagan83]

I think about it a little differently: I don’t work on that product team, but I’ve benefited from using google finance for almost a decade and have the skillset + interest to help contribute back to that product.

[Okvivi]

Happy to hear that! :-)

Despite being a little bit more complex than I think it needed to be (I was a junior engineer after all, and this was my first project at my first job) I still think there's more complexity than meets the eye. Like anything that looks simple, there's tons of work behind it.

[chillydawg]

Why would you do it at the weekend?

[IBM]

The idea that Google has been spending engineering hours on other parts of Google Finance is ridiculous to me. I don't think there's been an update to it in over 5 years. They seem to be doing something to it finally, because there's a notice at the top of Portfolios saying that feature is being removed.

[jmh530]

My stupid work computer makes me re-install flash pretty much every time I use it. That instantly makes it way too annoying to use google finance's charts. Thankfully yahoo finance has gotten a little better recently and doesn't need flash. They both kind of suck though.

[52-6F-62]

You certainly set a standard with the interactivity and general functioning of the charts you built! Kudos

I'm curious as to why, if it's seemed so difficult to replace them, that Google hasn't gone with a rather wide-spread and capable library like High Charts?[0][1]

edit: Or am I missing the core problem. Not that it's difficult for Google to coordinate on an internal chart library, but rather that it's a problem of integrating a new display format?

And while we're on charting, I recommend having a look at: https://cryptowat.ch/ (Though it has a bit of a different purpose)

---

[0] https://www.highcharts.com/

[1] https://www.highcharts.com/demo

[Okvivi]

I don't know enough about HighCharts. Funny to see that they also copied / were inspired by the Google Finance Charts sparkbar (that's what we called the thing that shows you the summary at the bottom with the handles that you can drag).

I'd imagine is a combination of "not built here", pride (google engineers always feel that they can build everything better than the outside world), and performance (Google was investing, and I imagine continues to invest, vast amounts of engineering in speed).

[52-6F-62]

Oh I didn't know that was your invention! Well it is ubiquitous now!

That makes sense in terms of "built here" pride. Not at all surprised by that. Thanks

[csdreamer7]

Thankyou for your good work on the charts. Google Finance for a long time has been one of my favorite financial tools. (At least it used to be before the stock screener broke.)

[ipunchghosts]

I appreciate your effort in building these charts. I use them almost weekly. I only look at stock charts through your interface.

[Sir_Cmpwn]

Google probably has more engineering hours than any other company in the world. I bet they could manage it!

[katastic]

Google's issues these days are management and culture, not a lack of talent. Pretty much like every other big company that recently became big.

For a smaller (but worse affected) example, look at Wikipedia. The majority of their spending is on management, and "soft jobs" like "PR" and public events. They spend a tiny fraction on the one thing that matters: Hosting bandwidth and upgrading their platform where all of their content they provide comes for free. Till a few years ago they had (IIRC from last time I looked into their docs) like, only 2 or 3 full-time engineers in the entire company for a bulk of their growth until finally adding a bunch more--while adding plenty of other staff. If the majority of their money is coming from those banners, and not outsider backers, there is no excuse for them to spend so much outside their core technology. Universities spend big money outside the college (Football, and grant money)... but it GAINS far more in exchange, so that makes sense.

I would hypothesis that as a company employees more and more "assistants" and "assistants of assistants" and the proportion of administration to engineering/research staff grows, a company bogs down with people who don't really contribute as much as they debate (or do nothing at all) in the company. I've seen studies that show that same problem as one of the reasons University costs have risen so much. There's probably an existing term for it akin to the Peter Principle but I'm not aware of it.

Basically, Google is an amazing company full of amazing people. But while they're amazing in TECH, that doesn't mean they have equally amazing managers capable of stopping the stagnation and confusion that comes with large companies. Lots of their "open" ideas work well on small and medium scales, but do they scale up?

But of course lots of that is more vague than I'd prefer in a comment. So I'd like to emphasis my one real point, as the proportion of # administration to content producers grows, the efficiency of a company drops as it gets bogged down in communication issues and "the usual" office politics. Which I would also hypothesis the majority of politics come from low-end producers (possibly to feel like they're contributing?). We've all worked at companies (and often still do) where we can cite limitless examples of non-producers easily passing HR, but bogging down the content creators by distracting them.

Lots of the "leaks" about Google have happened and almost every single one has mentioned office politics, retribution, witchhunts, and blacklists. They could be false. But they seem to have those as common threads among them. ("Where there's smoke there's fire"?) It also goes in line with Google producing much less "world revolution" products and acquiring mass amounts of startups with new ideas. Kind of reminds me of the story of AOL.

[lenzm]

You're looking for Parkinson's Law. From wikipedia:

  Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". It is also sometimes applied to the growth of the bureaucratic apparatus in an organization.

He goes on to write about organization inefficiency, how adding more and more people make committees useless.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Parkinson%27s_law

http://sas2.elte.hu/tg/ptorv/Parkinson-s-Law.pdf

[toomuchtodo]

Serious question: what initiatives would you want to see Wikipedia taking on?

It seems like their editor for Wikipedia pages is "good enough", so a maintenance mode wouldn't be uncalled for.

[Sir_Cmpwn]

I'd like to see them sit on their money and run their network in maintenance mode forever rather than rashly spend it and risk the loss of one of the biggest core resources to modern society to overspending. Wikipedia certainly doesn't need to beg users for money with big intrusive banners, they just need to cut excess costs!

[ccarse]

The Craigslist model.

[OtterCoder]

An amazingly effective model, if unglamorous.

[imron]

> something that works well enough.

This will become less and less true over time, especially as Adobe plans to kill the Flash plugin by 2020.