[serial_dev]

It feels like a large bundle to me, so they probably want to go for selling phones and computers much more heavily? Sounds interesting if you are okay with going all in with Google stuff, I'm not sure it's good news if you are using Android or Chrome otherwise.

Also, it feels like this merger will lead to a similar article to Hixie's in about 5 years:

> A symptom of this is the spreading contingent of inept middle management. Take XYZ, for example, who manages the department that somewhat arbitrarily contains (among other things) Flutter, Dart, Go, and Firebase. Her department nominally has a strategy, but I couldn't leak it if I wanted to; I literally could never figure out what any part of it meant, even after years of hearing her describe it.

https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373&count=1

[caleb-allen]

I attended the Android Dev summit a few years back, shortly after Flutter had made some public noise.

During a Q&A, I was literally laughed at when I asked the head of Android whether developers should take Flutter seriously. His eventual answer equated to "well Google is really big so we can't say".

I think that was the moment I understood just how deep the mismanagement at Google actually is. Just shocking.

[loudmax]

None of this reorganization matters as long as the executive suite remains the same. Google's problem is top-down. This rearranging the deck chairs isn't going to cut it.

Much of Google's value proposition was in their ability to innovate. The current leadership has proven catastrophically inept at this. Without fresh leadership, Google is on its way to becoming some mid-tier ad placement agency at best. Engineering excellence won't save them as long as the top leadership is incapable of adjusting to circumstances.

There's still time for Google to leverage its competence at managing large infrastructure to regain its position as a leading technology company. But the window of opportunity is shrinking. Alphabet's board of directors needs to fire the executive suite, that's the easy part. The harder part is finding a replacement CEO and executive suite who will make the deep cuts and rearrangements necessary to get Google back on track. The longer they put that off, the less chance for Google to be relevant in the future.

[kranke155]

Who could be good for this? Demis Hassabis maybe?

[UncleMeat]

It remains to be seen, but I don't really see it this way.

To me, this feels like Hiroshi went to Sundar and said that he wanted to step down or wanted to do something else or whatever. Sundar then had to choose whether to elevate one of Hiroshi's reports or elevate one of the other SVPs to lead two orgs together. Sundar chose Rick.

This feels more like a question of upper management politicking rather than mission change.