[ravenstine]

It's an even worse form of the "we need new features" culture at most mature companies. Adding new features all the time is one thing, but always building new products is overly ambitious.

> Ruth and Sundar need to be fired or else Google/Alphabet will suffer the same exact fate as every other company that focuses on cost cutting over innovation and supporting future innovations.

Although I wouldn't be sad to see them go, I'm not sure it will make a difference anyway. The vast majority of companies, especially those that built themselves on the foundation of being "innovative", will see an inevitable decline. The greater the rise, the sooner the fall. The reason is that successful businesses reach what I call the "cash cow" phase where enough individuals depend on the business's cash flow that risk-tolerance goes out the window. It's nearly impossible to do a rewind from the cash cow phase without firing almost everybody, and especially those at the C-level; even then, the chances of replicating former glory are not good if all the original founders are long gone and not coming back. The Google will of course always be in business, but it is on the fast track of being the IBM of the Zoomer generation.

[ajmurmann]

I wonder if building new products is preferably over always building new features. Some products are done from a user perspective, but keep getting tinkered with because it's growth or death and eventually the beloved product is unrecognizable. Maybe the ideal scenario is to put those products into maintenance mode instead and move investment to new products. Google's problem is that they are so extreme on only investing in new products and don't make incremental improvements.

Is bizarre that this and how it's tight to the way they do promotions has even evident to people outside Google for years and nothing changes.

[ravenstine]

That philosophy may have emerged in The Google initially because new products are far less entangled with existing tech debt than new features. There's certainly a logic to it when you're a startup or even mid-size company. On the other hand, I struggle to imagine how it can be sustainable alongside the growth mindset at a very large firm.

[themerone]

In the 15 years between the iPhone and Vision, all major Apple innovation has been limited to scaling their cash cow iPhone to tablet and desktop form factors.

The Apple business model is near impossible to replicate, but it is proof that it is possible to ride a cash cow indefinitely.

[ravenstine]

Yeah, it's certainly possible. In Apple's case, I think their advantage is they are ultimately a hardware company. When I was doing work for them, there was definitely an understanding that hardware along with macOS and iOS came first, and everything else was side dressing, more or less. They also focused on interoperability and long-term viability of their features and products. In contrast, while The Google does have hardware products, they are in no way as prolific as Apple's. Rather, they've focused on software products that not only were built with the explicit mindset of competing with other companies, but competed with their very own products. Apple isn't a perfect company, but their modus operandi is evidently far more stable long term as a cash cow corporation than The Google. Outside a narrow window of products, it's completely unclear whether The Google's services as a whole provide enough value that they can continue to eat themselves by their own tail.

> indefinitely

Right. Indefinitely, just not infinitely. We've yet to see a company like Apple remain on top for hundreds of years.

[pintxo]

15a != Infinity

[bushbaba]

Investors would also prefer cash be returned so the investor can decide which bets in highly under valued areas to make.

[hinkley]

I hate feature factories so… much. It it the… flame. Flames. Flames, on the sides of my face.