[nemothekid]

I really don't understand the Apple hate boner. Apple may have single handedly jump started the mobile industry, and is the godfather of huge apps like Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram , Snapchat, Uber, Square, Candy Crush, the last few that have been causing major problems for major incumbents.

Now what platforms has Google built that is changing the game for everyone else? You have YouTube and thats pretty much it. Android is a me-too product, Chromecase is a me-too product, Chrome is a me-too product. I won't lie Maps, and Translate are amazing services but hardly worth deity status. Plus has been a spectacular flop, and my father (who isn't in tune with tech) is completely confused as to why people by their cloud machines from Amazon.

Lastly, Google isn't putting anything on the line. 95%+ of Google's revenue is advertising. If Ford started work on an autonomous car that would be putting it on the line. What Google is doing is the equivalent of a rich kid buying fancy toys. Google X gets a lot of PR, but thus far it isn't all that much different from Microsoft & IBM Research.

I'm not going to say what Google is doing is wrong, I think its great actually. However we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves by saying Apple is doing nothing. That company is focused on building amazing products on what pretty much amounts to yesterdays technology. Every phone today has a capacitive screen but how long has that been around? Retina displays? How long did we suffer with 1368x768 laptops?

So while Google is not reliving the 80s "household of tomorrow" pipe dream, It doesn't seem wise to say Apple just builds "only phones and tablets." given that those phones and tablets have been the center of current tech industry and are out now rather than "just 5 more years!"

[dlitwak]

Candy Crush, we're holding that up as a development that Apple is responsible that we want to be proud of, seriously? Regardless, an app store wasn't groundbreaking. They executed much better on what Blackberry was already doing with smartphones.

The point isn't necessarily what has come to pass yet, it's the focus on things that don't necessarily have a path to revenue yet. Everything Apple does is product and revenue focused. That is not the case with Google.

You are right that 95% of their revenue comes from Adwords . . . but 95% of their efforts aren't on optimizing Adwords, and that right there is my point: Apple is focused on executing where their revenue is, Google is definitely MORE focused on finding new revenue opportunities, and is more willing to look into unorthodox industries and ideas.

[nemothekid]

Yes, Candy Crush, especially when King is apply major pressure to Nintendo, a 30 year incumbent, on their home court[1]. I understand most people don't understand the video games industry.

Second, don't take execution lightly. Execution is everything. Again, the last few major tech products in silicon valley aren't moonshots. Most of the them are ideas that could have built 2001. Square could have been released on Windows Mobile 6.

What I'm simply trying to argue is that Google Research isn't inherently better than Apple's workshop. Moonshots are great yes, but its a bit too early to be sounding the bells. Microsoft Research had a similar position in the past and everyone thought they were ushering the new age, but it turned out to simply be PR. "The World of Tomorrow" at Disney Land (which probably hasn't been touched in 5-10 years) is chock full of a Microsoft Research moonshots that never caught on or weren't really practical. I see Google Glass heading a similar direction.

[kayoone]

But thats the point. MS and Google are trying, Apple is more or less only making safe bets, combining existing technologies and executing extremely well on improving those. Thats great, i love my Apple products, but its still a different philosophy.

[nemothekid]

>Apple is more or less only making safe bets,

Again, you don't know that because Apple doesn't use Research as a PR platform. Apple tinkered with something like the Glass.[1] It would be naive to think Apple R&D isn't tinkering with similar ideas. However Apple's marketing approach is very different and Apple on recent doesn't try to sell you on ideas that are 5 years away. Which is entirely why I'm hesitant to say "Apple isn't doing anything and Google is flying to the moon." In reality both companies are looking into very interesting products, the difference is while Google is telling the world, Apple would crucify anyone who leaked a blurry photo.

[1]http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/10/4714680/apple-developed-go...

[mcintyre1994]

Candy Crush is fundamentally built on Facebook's platform. If you want to say Apple are great for providing APIs that Candy Crush could use to produce its app (if it's native), why aren't Google great for providing APIs to allow the same for many more devices (if it's also native)?

[doe88]

> it's the focus on things that don't necessarily have a path to revenue yet. Everything Apple does is product and revenue focused.

You don't know that. It's widely reported that the iPad (tablet) project was started even before the iPhone project then shelved a few years. Of course the iPad is the past but it should serve as an example of what was developed in the early-mid 00' you only discovered its existence in the late 00' therefore it is not unreasonable to extrapolate that you will only able to tell the story of the current projects in a few years from now. Sorry to break your narrative. It's not because you don't see any press release that there is nothing going on in Cupertino.

[philwelch]

Blackberry was going to do away with hardware keyboards and ship something with capacitive multitouch in 2007? They were going to use their massive economy of scale to rush out ultra-high-resolution displays in 2010?

New revenue opportunities? Google's #1 revenue source in 2000 was AdWords and their #1 revenue source in 2013 is AdWords. Apple's #1 revenue source in 2000 was Macintosh, in 2005 it was iPod, in 2010 it was iPhone. AppleTV is a "hobby", but by that standard, everything Google does other than AdWords is also a "hobby".

[angersock]

"is the godfather of huge apps like Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram , Snapchat, Uber, Square, Candy Crush,"

Um, no?

[kayoone]

Apple has extreme market influence and has been able to accelerate some developments (smartphones, retina displays, tablets, really small form factors etc) but those things would have been there anyway, maybe a couple of years later. They won't risk a flop product like Google Glass which is ahead of its time and dont really have a research program.

[millstone]

Product flops have real consequences. They scare investors off of similar projects, and set the industry back.

[lelandbatey]

    > Now what platforms has Google built that is changing the game for everyone else?

I don't know, maybe search? The Web as we know it functions because we have Google providing a reliable search function for all of it. I wouldn't be the person I am without Google. In that sense, Google's meant far more to me than the advent of a popular device or another medium of entertainment like Facebook.

[cargo8]

Google is probably one of the biggest single contributors to pushing the web platform over and has been the largest contributor to the webkit project until they recently forked it into Blink.

Apple is great and all and probably everyone will agree they have far and away the best hardware and products, but Google pushes technology in ways just to get the world thinking of what is possible.

[pcwalton]

Let's not minimize Apple's contributions to WebKit. Google may have been the top contributor in terms of commits to WebKit in the months leading up to the fork, but Apple did enormous work to bring KHTML up to speed long before Chrome existed.

[asmman1]

Don't forget to Clang.

[dchichkov]

How many researchers are working at Apple Research? Like zero? Because there's no Apple Research? How many researchers are working at Google Research? Like a thousand?

I'd say that makes all the difference.

[nemothekid]

Don't you think its little hard to believe that a 500B publicly traded company doesn't have an R&D team? I think you should rethink your post. Just because Apple doesn't advertise their research division doesn't mean they don't have one.

[jasomill]

Apple shuttered the Advanced Technology Group, its research division, as a part of Jobs' consolidation and refocusing in the late '90s, and, as I understand it, research as an activity separate from product development hasn't really been part of the corporate culture since then. This does not mean lots of product-focused R&D doesn't go on throughout Apple, of course.

[dchichkov]

As far as I know Apple Research department was closed by Steve Jobs at some point, around ten years back. And have not been reopened. I have not seen any Apple employees recently presenting at academic conferences or collaborating with other researchers. Nor have I seen any publications.

[objclxt]

Yeah, all that custom silicon Apple produces just gets magically pulled out of thin air. No research there at all. Nope.

Or all those patents we see coming out of Cupertino that frequently have nothing to do with products currently being produced. Definitely no research there.