[chubot]

From 2012, to 2016, to 2020, google bled an incredible amount of key talent

I think that was kinda known in the valley, but not sure any media really covered it

Honestly a lot of the blame goes to Larry Page for turning the company toward G+, pushing top people toward Gundotra, the product failing quite badly, and Larry stepping back as CEO

My view of Eric Schmidt is pretty neutral, but it was a little weird how Larry pushed him aside and ushered Sundar in, then formed Alphabet, etc

This was very chaotic and people got used to neglecting things like search quality and spam in that time

[lern_too_spel]

Google management has always been incompetent. It's just that now that economic conditions have forced them to make more drastic decisions that their incompetence is even more obvious.

[code_biologist]

Eric Schmidt seemed very competent, given how much of the famed old Google culture was built during his tenure. I was at Google during the Larry Page era and contrasting him with Schmidt was not favorable.

[lokar]

All the early Eng VPs were also great

[gumby]

Actually I think Schmidt was quite good. Sadly he's the only CEO the company has ever had.

[eftychis]

And Schmidt was forced on them.

[gumby]

Yeah, I'd never heard of investors threatening to take their money back, either before or since. I've never had such a clause in any financing docs I've signed.

[HWR_14]

G+ wasn't a bad product, but it's hard for me to conceive of a worse rollout plan.

[eitland]

Google+ is still the best social network that the world has seen.

But, yes, from what I understand they could hardly have botched it more if they tried.

I'm thinking of details like using the opportunity to latch onto Facebooks "Real Name policy", and using the same name as their deeply unpopular single sign-on solution + killing their existing social network at the same time.

[danielrpa]

There was no reason for the average user to switch from Facebook. Arguably, it was worse than Facebook due to poor UI: I could never make my wife understand the value of circles, it was simply not the way she thinks about her contacts.

[xnx]

No ads was nice