Comment by DonnyV
2 years ago
This is so crazy. Google invented transformers which is the bases for all these models. How do they keep fumbling like this over and over. Google Docs created in 2006! Microsoft is eating their lunch. Google creates the ability to change VM's in place and makes a fully automated datacenter. Amazon and Microsoft are killing them in the cloud. Google has been working on self driving longer than anyone. Tesla is catching up and will most likely beat them.
The amount of fumbles is monumental.
I was at MS in 2008 September and internally they had a very beautiful and well functioning Office web already (named differently, forgot the name but it wasn't sharepoint if I recall correctly, I think it had to do something with expense reports?) that would put Google Docs to shame today. They just didn't want to cannibalize their own product.
Microsoft demoed Office Web Apps in 2008 L.A PDC it seems: https://www.wired.com/2008/10/pdc-2008-look-out-google-docs-...
Don't forget they also invented XHR (aka fetch) in 2001. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest
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Funny, I asked Google Bard to guess what the actual product name was from the comment.
"It was probably Office Web Apps. It was a web-based office suite that was introduced in 2008. It included Word Web App, Excel Web App, Powerpoint Web App, and OneNote Web App. It was not SharePoint, but it was based on SharePoint technology."
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Don’t forget that McAfee was delivering virus scanning in a browser in 1998 with active x support, TinyMCE was full wysiwyg for content in the browser by 2004, and Google docs was released in 2006 on top of a huge ecosystem of document solutions and even some real-time co-authoring document writing platforms.
2008 is late to the party for a docs competitor! Microsoft got the runaround by Google and after Google launched docs they could have clobbered Microsoft which kind of failed to respond properly in kind, but they didn’t push the platform hard enough to eat the corporate market share, and didn’t follow up with a share point alternative that would appeal to the enterprise, and kind of blew the opportunity imo.
I mean to this day Google docs is free but it still hasn’t unseated Word in the marketplace, but the real killer app that keeps office on top is Excel, which some companies built their entire tooling around.
It’s crazy interesting to look back and realize how many twists there were leading us to where we are today.
Btw it was Office Server or Sharepoint Portal earlier (this is like Frontpage days so like 2001?) and Microsoft called it Tahoe internally. I don’t think it became Sharepoint until Office 365 launched.
The XMLHTTP object launched in 2001 and was part of the dhtml wave. That gave a LOT of the capabilities to browsers that we currently see as browser-based word processing, but there were efforts with proprietary extensions going back from there they just didn’t get broad support or become standards. I saw some crazy stuff at SGI in the late 90s when I was working on their visual workstation series launch.
Google Apps have several other problems as well.
1. Poor Google Drive interface makes managing documents difficult.
2. You cannot just get a first class Google Doc file which you can then share with others over email, etc. Very often you don’t want to just share a link to a document online.
3. Lack of desktop apps.
NetDocs was an effort in 2000/2001 that is sometimes characterized as a web productivity suite. There was an internal battle between the Netdocs and Office groups, and Office won.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/netdocs-microsofts-net-poster-...
https://www.eweek.com/development/netdocs-succumbs-to-xp/
>I was at MS in 2008 September and internally they had a very beautiful and well functioning Office web already
So why did they never release that and went with Office 365 instead?
They did, it was called Office Online with Word, PowerPoint, Excel and SkyDrive (later OneDrive). Everything got moved under the Office 365 umbrella because selling B2B cloud packages (with Sharepoint, Azure AD, Power BI, Teams, Power Automate) was more lucrative than selling B2C subscriptions.
Classic innovator’s dilemma!
Interesting how it seems like MS may have been right this time? They were able to milk Office for years, and despite seeming like it might, Google didn't eat their lunch.
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More like the Acquirer's dilemma.
Google Analytics - acquired 2004, renamed from Urchin Analytics
Google Docs - acquired 2004, renamed from Writely
Youtube - acquired 2005
Android - acquired, 2005 (Samsung have done more to advance the OS than Google themselves)
Google doesn't know how to do anything else.
A product requires commitment, it requires grind. That 10% is the most critical one, and Google persistently refuses to push products across the finish line, just giving up on them and adding to the infamous Google Product Graveyard.
Honestly, what is the point? They could just maintain the core search/ads and not pay billions of dollars for tens of thousands of expensive engineers who have to go through a bullshit interview process and achieve nothing.
If they tried to focus on ads, then they wouldn’t have the talent to support the business. They probably don’t need 17 chat apps - but they can’t start saying no without having other problems.
They only hire some talent to prevent other companies to hire them.
It's a way to strangle the competition. But also not good for the industry in general.
While it is crazy, it's not too surprising. Google has become as notorious for product ineptitude as they have been for technical prowess. Dominating the fundamental research for GenAI but face planting on the resulting consumer products is right in line with the company that built Stadia, GMail/Inbox, and 17 different chat apps.
>Google Docs created in 2006
tech was based on an acquired company, Google just abused their search monopoly to make it more popular(same thing they did with YT). This has been the strategy for every service they've ever made, Google really hasn't launched a decent in-house product since Gmail and even that was grown using their search monopoly as free advertising
>Google Docs originated from Writely, a web-based word processor created by the software company Upstartle and launched in August 2005
> Google really hasn't launched a decent in-house product since Gmail
What about Chrome? And Chromebooks?
Sorry if this was a joke and I didn't spot it. Chrome was based on WebKit which was itself based on KHTML if memory serves. Chromebooks are based on a version of that outside engine running on top of Linux which they also didn't create.
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Chromebooks are worse version of the netbooks from 2008, which ran an actual desktop OS. Chromebooks are OLPCs for the rich world, designed with vendor lock-in built in. They eventually end up at discount wholesale lots if not landfills because how quickly they go obsolete.
mmm, WebKit?
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You bring up fumbles, but they still have the more products with more than a billion users than any company in the world.
This is what Google has always cared about. Bring application to the billions of users.
People are forgetting Google is the most profitable AI company in the world right now. All of their products use ML and AI.
So who is losing?
The goal of Gemini isn't to build a chatbot like ChatGPT despite Google having Bard.
The goal for Gemini is to integrate it into those 10 products they have with a billion users.
This is like critiquing Disney for putting out garbage and then defending them because dummies keep giving them money regardless of quality. Having standards and expectations of greatness is a good thing and the last thing you want is for mediocrity to become acceptable in society.
> People are forgetting Google is the most profitable AI company in the world right now. All of their products use ML and AI.
> So who is losing?
The people who use their products, which are worse than they’ve been in decades? The people who make the content Google now displays without attribution on search results?
Sure, but I think Google's commanding marketshare is more at risk than it has been in a long time due to their fumbles in the AI space.
> All of their products use ML and AI.
Is that supposed to be a vote of confidence for the current state of Google search?
I demo'd a full browser office suite in 1998 called Office Wherever (o-w.com). It used Java applets to do a lot of the more tricky functions.
Shopped it around VCs. Got laughed out of all the meetings. "Companies storing their documents on the Internet?! You're out of your mind!"
Some things are just too ahead of their times.
Globe dot com was basically Facebook, but the critical mass wasn't there. Nor were the smartphones.
Im curious if the code would be available somewhere? I have to admit I'm curious how it worked!
Netscape had a feature called LiveConnect that allowed interaction between Java and JavaScript. See http://medialab.di.unipi.it/web/doc/JavaScriptGuide/livecon.... for some examples of how it worked. Even though AJAX wasn't available yet in 1998, I think you could have used LiveConnect to achieve the same thing. Java applets had the ability to make HTTP requests to the originating host (the host that served the applet to the browser).
Long lost! Unless Internet Archive has a copy of the site? Never checked! The main domain was officewherever.com.
I agreed until the last bit. Waymo is making continuous progress and is years ahead of everyone else. Tesla is not catching up and won't beat anyone. Tesla plateaued years ago and has no clue how to improve further. Their Partial Self Driving app has never been anywhere near reliable.
I say it again and again: sales, sales. Money is earned in enterprise domains.
And this business is so totally different to Google in every way imaginable.
Senior Managers love customer support, SLAs - Google loves automation. Two worlds collide.
Google customer support says "Won't Fix [Skill Issue]"
Google Workspace works through resellers, they train less people, and those people give the customer support instead. IMO Google's bad reputation comes from their public customer support.
If you want the kind of support that, when there is a fault with the product, can get the fault fixed - then unfortunately Google Workspace's support is also trash.
Good if you want someone else to google the error message for you though.
> IMO Google's bad reputation comes from their public customer support.
Garbage in = garbage out.
If Google cannot deign to assign internal resources and staffing towards providing first-party support for paid products, it's not a good choice over the competition. You're not going to beat the incumbent (Office 365) by skimping on customer service.
They are an ads company. Focus is never on "core" products.
Sundar Pichai should have been out of Google long ago.
> Google Docs created in 2006
Word and Excel have been dominant since the early 1980s. Google has never had a real shot in the space.
You mean 1990s? I don't think Word and Excel even existed until the late 80s, and nobody[0] used them until Windows 3.1.
[0] yes, not literally nobody. I know about the Windows 2.0 Excel or whatever, but the user base compared to WordPerfect or 1-2-3 was tiny up until MS was able to start driving them out by leveraging Windows in the early-mid 90s.
It's reassuring that the biggest tech company doesn't automatically make the best tech. If it were guaranteed that Google's resources would automatically trump any startup in the AI field, then it would likely predict a guaranteed dominance of incumbents and consolidation of power in the AI space.
Isn't it always easier to learn from others' mistakes?
Google has the problem that it's typically the first to encounter a problem, and it has the resources to approach it (from search), but the incentive to monetize it (to get away from depending entirely on search revenue). And, management.
I don't know if that really excuses Google in this case because it's a productization problem. Google never tried to release a ChatGPT competitor until after OpenAI had. OpenAI has been wildly successful as the first mover, despite having to blaze some new product trails. Even after months of watching them and with near-infinite resources, Google is still struggling to catch up.
Outside of outliers like gmail, Google didn’t get their success with product. The organization is set up for engineering to carry the day, funded by search.
An AI product that makes search irrelevant is an existential threat, but I don’t think Google has the product DNA to pull off a replacement product for search themselves. I heard Google has been taken over by more business / management types, but it is still missing product as a core pillar.
Considerng the number of messaging apps they tried to launch, if there's at least one thing that can be concluded, it's that it isn't easier to learn from their own mistakes.
It's the curse of the golden goose.
They can't do anything that threatens their main income. They are tied to ads and ads technology, and can't do anything about it.
Microsoft had a crisis and that drives focus. Google... they probably mistreat their good employees if they don't work on ads.
I was with you until the Tesla hot take. I'd bet dollars to donuts that Tesla doesn't get to level 4 by the end of the decade. Waymo is already there.
I agree, but I also bet Waymo doesn't exist by the end of the decade. Not just because it's Google but because it's hard to profit from.
I could see that in the coming years the value of Waymo for Google is not actually in collecting revenue from transportation fees but to collect multi modal data to feed into its models.
The amount of data that is collected by these cars is massive.
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None of that matters. They'll still make heaps of profit long into the future unless someone beats them in Search or Ads.
AI is a threat there, but it'd require an AI company to transform the culture of Internet use to stop people 'Googling', and that will require two things: something significantly better than Google Search that's worth switching to, and a company that is willing to reject whatever offer Google makes to buy it. Neither is very likely.
I would love to see internal data on volume of search at google. Depending on the interpretation of them chatGPT can meet both of your requirements. Personally, I still search instead of chatGPT mostly, but I have seen other users chatGPT more and more.
Also "interesting" to see the if results being SEO spam generated using AI will keep seo search viable.
The difference seems to be the top leadership.
Nadella is an all time great CEO. Pichai is an uninspired MBA-type.
Nadella is as much of an MBA type as Pichai. Their education and career paths are incredibly similar.
The difference is Nadella is a good CEO and Pichai isn’t.
Part of it could also be a result of circumstance. Nadella came at a time when MS was foundering and he had to make what appeared to be fairly obvious decisions (pivot to cloud…he was literally picked because of this, and reducing dependence on Windows…which was an obvious necessary step for the pivot to cloud). Pichai OTOH was selected to run Google when it was already doing pretty well. His biggest mandate was likely to not upset the Apple cart.
If roles were reversed, I suspect Nadella would still have been more successful than Pichai, but you never know. I’d Nadella introduction to the CEO job was to keep things going as they were, and Pichai’s was to change the entire direction of the company, maybe a decade later Pichai would have been the aggressive decision maker whereas Nadella would have been the overly cautious guy making canned demos.
>>Google Docs created in 2006! Microsoft is eating their lunch.
Of all the things, this.
I use both Google and Microsoft office products. One thing that strikes you is just how feature rich Microsoft products are.
Google doesn't look like is serious about making money.
I squarely blame rockstar product managers and OKRs for this. Not everything can be a 1000% profitable product built in the next quarter. A lot of things require small continuous improvement and care over years.
Microsoft’s killer product is Excel. I didn’t realize how powerful it was until I saw an expert use it. There are entire billion dollar organisations that would collapse without Excel.
Engineer-driven company. Not enough top-down direction on the products. Too much self-perceived moral high ground. But lately they've been changing this.
Uhh, no, not really; quite the opposite in fact.
Under Eric Schmidt they were engineer-driven, during the golden era of the 2000s. Nowadays they're MBA driven, which is why they had 4 different messaging apps from different product managers.
Lack of top-down direction is what allowed that situation. Microsoft is MBA-driven and usually has a coherent product lineup, including messaging.
Also, "had." Google cleaned things up. They still sometimes do stuff just cause, but it's a lot less now. I still feel like Meet using laggy VP9 (vs H.264 like everyone else) is entirely due to engineer stubbornness.
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The golden era of the 2000s produced no revenue stream other than ads on Google Search.
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My engineer friend who work at Google would strongly disagree with this assertion. I keep hearing about all sorts of hijinks initiated by senior PMs and managers trying to build their fiefdoms.
Disagree with which part? The hijinks are there, no denying it. Kind of a thing at any company, but remedied by leaders above those PMs taking charge.
> Google has been working on self driving longer than anyone. Tesla is catching up and will most likely beat them.
I agree with your general post but I disagree with this. Tesla's FSD is so far behind Google it's almost negligent on the part of Tesla despite having so much more data.
I can tell you exactly why. It’s because they have a separate vp and org for all these different products like search, maps, etc. none of them talk to each other and they all compete for promotions. There is no one shot caller same thing with gcp. Google does not know products.
A lot of companies have this structure. You have the Doritos line, the Pepsi line for example etc… maybe you find some common synergies but it’s not unusual.
What would the ideal setup in your opinion?
Big companies are where innovation goes to die.
There is little to no inertia inside google to build and invent stuff. But there is a massive bloat to ship stuff.
Tesla will not beat them at self driving simply due to hardware at the very least
Errr sorry what’s the innovation of google docs exactly ? Being able to write simultaneously with somebody else? Ok, so this is what it takes for a top notch docs app to exist? Microsoft been developing this product for ages, Google tried to steal the show, although had little to no experience in producing and marketing office apps…
Besides collaborative reuniting is a no feature and there is much more important stuff than this for a word processor to be useful.
Microsoft eating Google's lunch on documents is laughable at best. Not to mention it confuses the entire timeline of office productivity software??
Is paid MS Teams is more or less common than paid GSuite? It's hard to find stats on this. GSuite is the better product IMO, but MS has a stronger b2b reputation, and anecdotally I hear more about people using Teams.
Nobody pays for Teams, but everyone pays for Office, and if you get Teams for free with it ...
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Does anyone use paid GSuite for anything other than docs/drive/Gmail ? In all companies I've worked at, we've used GSuite exclusively for those, and used slack/discord for chat, and zoom/discord for video/meetings.
I know that MS Teams is a more full-featured product suite, but even at companies that used it, we still used Zoom for meetings.
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I worked at many companies in my times and all of them used teams except from one that used slack but all used MS products, none used googles.
Gsuite is clearly a lot better product than Office365. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I see many institutions make the wrong choice here.
I base about 50% of my choice of employer on what they choose in that area.
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Teams will likely still be around in 20 years. I doubt gsuite will exist in 5... or even 1.
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> Microsoft is eating their lunch.
Well, that is trully shocking.
Also hard to say it’s really true. OpenAI is certainly, is Microsoft without OpenAI’s tech eating Google’s lunch?
Given MSFT's level of investment in OpenAI, and all the benefits that accrue from it, they're one and the same.
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