[m0zzie]

Heh, yours and other comments here disparaging I/O as "business" or "corporate" talk these days come across as quite ignorant - and I don't mean this in a nasty way, more in a literal way. It seems perhaps you're missing the fact there are many different styles of talks for many audiences.

At every I/O there is a "keynote" and a "developer keynote", and similarly there are business / product talks and developer-focused talks. In fact, they even create entirely separate playlists on YouTube for the dev/non-dev talks.

As a Staff Eng who leads and mentors engineers who live in a world where they have no choice but to use Google SDKs and services, I find many of the developer-focused talks invaluable for getting others in my team up to speed on what's new and what's coming soon. Most of these talks are given by engineers and involve concise code examples which quickly convey the gist of new functionality.

[devjab]

> live in a world where they have no choice but to use Google SDKs and services

Which world is this? I’m genuinely interested not trying to be rude.

[m0zzie]

No problem! My team is a small subset of engineers in a 10yo+ startup, and the organisation chose to go all in on many Google services long before any of us joined the company. I have my issues with Google and some of their services but the GP stands out as an odd comment to me because it's at odds with my own experience of keeping up with I/O talks.

[criddell]

Is it still a startup after a decade? Isn’t it just a company at that point.

[tnel77]

Related: It drives me bananas when a mega-corp makes a small R&D team and the job req says “we are a small startup in a big company.” The benefits, bureaucracy, speed of innovation, and equity all fit the usual mega corporate shoes, so it’s probably still a traditional role.

[hn_go_brrrrr]

I was in one of these. We got equity and benefits, but we were explicitly exempted from normal bureaucracy. Our exec sponsor (and nominal manager) asked that we tell him before we launched or signed a big customer, and that was about it. Otherwise, we could do whatever we wanted with basically no oversight.

I'm pretty sure we could have gotten away with spending most of our time playing video games on the company's dime, if we had wanted. We probably would have been fired once someone found out, but that's pretty universal.

[int_19h]

It does actually work out sometimes. I had the luck to be on one such team at Microsoft in the past, and we absolutely did have the benefit of cutting through much of the usual red tape etc, while still having access to megacorp resources.

But the only reason why it worked out the way it did is because the "owner" of the team in question 1) sincerely believed in this approach, 2) had enough clout with the top management to make it stick.

[steve1977]

It’s still a startup if it’s not profitable yet ;)

[latchkey]

I built a business that did $80m of (profitable) revenue, in the first year. We were profitable after 3 months. Is that not a startup?

[codethief]

¬A (not profitable) => B (startup)

does not imply

A (profitable) => ¬B (not a startup).

[neodypsis]

Your company was new. But the situation you describe is not typical of a startup as commonly understood.

[mitchdoogle]

Startup is just another buzzword for a business. It's never been anything different than that. I wouldn't make any assumption about it based on the term, not the age, size, market, etc

[ihaveajob]

I've heard some folks (angel investors!) refer to Telefonica as a startup, so...

[ihateyouall123]

Yeah but who are you?

[fnfjfk]

anyone that wants to ship a mobile app?

[diceduckmonk]

Maps ?

[jeanlucas]

Really disappointed that most replies to this comment are just people attacking the person.

[AtlasBarfed]

I'm too lazy to go through the previous agendas of I/O, but it would be interesting to see the burnt out remnants of google's various abandoned projects.

I saw this headline and eyerolled. In 2010, I read the schedule/agenda and hype about what might be given to attendees. ALMOST signed up for the lottery.

As I addended to google's IoT with respect to other IoT vendors:

"It's just that Google adds completely rudderless leadership, its world famous utter disregard for customer support, and complete lack of commitment to the recipe."

Google I/O was cool when you could get early access to google glasses.

What do you get these days? Anything interesting? Or the latest Pixel (god, don't get me started, I am NEVER EVER EVER dropping more than $300 on an android phone again).

Anyway, back to the eyeroll. Wow, 10 years. Android is buggier and its app store laden with malware, copycats, predatory addictware, and bureaucracy. Android hardware is arguably even buggier than it was. Search is FAR FAR worse. Their self-driving is still a non-starter. The internet has turned into a dystopian wasteland and they are a not-insignificant party to it. No longer open, no longer even trying to not be evil.

Everything about google is worse today than it was 10 years ago. Does anybody actually want to work there for any reason besides money and resume eyecandy? Google the search is far worse than it was 10 years ago with maximum monetization policies. Advertising / information hoovering is a threat to democracy and perhaps human existence. The fourth estate / newspapers / journalism has been utterly hollowed out. It has directly enabled cartel and monopoly market consolidation. It is the shining example of locking out someone from the internet and providing no human contact for resolution. If it fails to dominate something with its horrid customer service and big brother creepy dominance, it strands people with little warning.

Anyway, have fun at Google I/O 2023 everyone!

[ihateyouall123]

Which world is this? I am genuinely interested and trying to be rude

[surgical_fire]

Fitting username. Have an upvote.

[echelon]

Google can pretend they're not IBM, but that doesn't make it true.

Google no longer innovates or launches products of note. They throw ideas at the wall, like spaghetti, and hope things stick.

Perverse incentives create competing products, dead end projects, and invariably everything created winds up getting cancelled.

Google got drunk off of easy search ad revenue. Their founding leadership went off to do zeppelins and politicking. Now that golden goose looks like it may be cooked.

Google had the Bell Labs of AI research, but their ability to build product around it looks a lot more like IBM Watson.

Over the next half decade, their top tier talent will leave and get venture funding to do their own things with their own equity.

[lxgr]

> They throw ideas at the wall, like spaghetti, and hope things stick.

Yes, and whether they stick or not, they tear down the wall after 2-3 years because they seemingly still haven’t figured out how to internally incentivize KTLO/running stable products (other than a few flagship ones) rather than building shiny new things.

[m0zzie]

Did you mean to reply to a different comment? I'm not sure what relevance this has to my comment which you're replying to?

[echelon]

I meant it in response to your comment.

> As a Staff Eng who leads and mentors engineers who live in a world where they have no choice but to use Google SDKs and services, I find many of the developer-focused talks invaluable for getting others in my team up to speed on what's new and what's coming soon.

This sounds identical to IBM developer outreach. Or Ballmer-era Microsoft. Similar straightjackets, captive audience.

We'll see if Google can excite people about AI here, but I'm doubtful.