[adverbly]

> To get promoted beyond a certain level, you must have brought some new product over the finish line

This always confused me. It looked from the outside like Google does so many things right on the innovation front, but after some early success they have had a rough streak.

I'd argue that one thing that Google is doing wrong is gatekeeping promotions based on (overly) well-defined criteria such as new products. Goodhart's Law applies to this situation: you're sure to see lots of new products if its highly rewarded - a lot more than you'd see naturally. As the author mentioned - this might still be desirable depending on the market conditions, but there is a lot more to this discussion, and it's not entirely clear that Google has it wrong.

I'd argue that they emphasize comparability of assessment results(e.g. being able to quantify someone's output like a percentage grade in a course) over the actual relevancy of the assessment criteria/work/kpi to the company's bottom line(e.g. does the course's test actually prepare students for the real world). This probably comes as a by-product of the organization's heavily academic-focused staff - so it might actually be the best culture choice for them given that context - but it might also lose to companies that can successfully put a bigger weighting on the right "intangibles".

[immibis]

You would think that. I would think that. But can you actually name more than a handful of things Google created that were good? Because I can't.

There's search, obviously. Gmail, if that wasn't an acquisition.... What else?

[adverbly]

You're kidding right? Maps, android, camera, calendar, hangout, pay/wallet, docs, sheets, slides, voice to text stuff, YouTube, chrome/debugger, kubernetes, grpc, Gmail, music, ads... Pretty ubiquitous suite of products both consumer facing and business facing... I don't think you can question that Google has been successful at innovation. You can question if they could be doing it better but impossible to say they aren't having some success doing what they're doing...

[immibis]

Acquisition, acquisition, basic OS feature (and therefore part of the Android acquisition), Google EEE of thing you could already do (and developed by an individual Google developer without the approval of Google management), Google CADT, Google EEE of something you could already do, acquisition, acquisition, actual Google creation, don't know, Google EEE of something that already existed (Firebug was first), not good, too trivial to count, actual Google creation that I already mentioned, don't know what you mean, not good.

[adverbly]

Fun! Flights, shopping, scholar, trends, tensorflow, Go, recaptcha, pixel, Chromecast, firebase, translate...

Re "too trivial to count"? We're commenting on a thread that involves an award given out for someone who wrote an excel script...

Re "not good": From whose perspective? If it makes company more profit then it's hard to say that it's a bad thing...

[p_l]

Flights were acquisition and to this day are a bit of unlikely island internally (AFAIK QPX engine is still in use, and it's written in language otherwise verboten at Google)

[orf]

What a totally braindead take.

Dismissing something innovative and hugely impactful as “kubernetes” as “not good” says all you need to know about the quality of this comment.

Also your point that none of the acquisitions have been innovated on since their acquisition? Android was originally an OS for a handheld camera.

Or are you going to bundle all the innovation into your clearly ignorant “not good” bucket as well?

[mdorazio]

Ones I personally use because they are/were good: Maps. Android (+ Auto). Chrome. Docs/Sheets. Translate.

The issue is that most of these originated a long time ago and recent Google creations, like Bard/Gemini, tend to be mediocre copies of other things.

[saulpw]

Google Maps: acquired in 2004

Android: acquired in 2005

Google Sheets: acquired in 2006

Translate: launched in 2006

Chrome: launched in 2008

So only 2/5 of the ones you mentioned were started in-house, and all were pre-2010 (pre-Sundar) creations.

edit: Sundar joined Google in 2004 and apparently led Maps, Chrome, and eventually Android before becoming CEO. So "pre-Sundar" is technically incorrect.

[mdorazio]

This characterization is pretty misleading. For example, the Google Maps that was acquired was a C++ desktop application. What most people think of as Google Maps (the AJAX web app) was built and launched by Google.