Comment by etruong42
16 hours ago
> When you work for stablished company most of the work is refinements
At what point is a company established? I recall that the early years of Google, it produced not only Search but also Gmail, Maps, Translate, Android, and Chrome. That was all between 1998-2008. At what point did most of Google's work become refinements?
My point being, it is a culture issue. Google could have become "established" and focus on "refinements" after Search. Or Gmail. Or Maps. Or Translate. But each of those times, it did not.
In the years since, Google has spun up GCP from nothing, built the foundations of the current AI boom, designed its own chips (TPU), rolled out self-driving cars, etc.
It's possible for both things to be true at once: a huge company can contain pockets of innovation, pockets of people doing nothing, and a lot that's somewhere in between.
Android and Google Maps were both acquisitions, and Chrome was initially based on WebKit. I don't know when exactly Google started focusing on refinements, but I think it was before 2008.
That is not to say that nothing since then has been impressive, but I do think it's fair to call just about all of it incremental.
In August 2006, Google's then CEO Eric Schmidt joined Apple's board.
Andy Rubin, the founder of Android had already made a name for himself in mobile technology. In 1999, he co-founded Danger Inc. Microsoft bought Danger in 2008.
Google acquired Android in 2005, before the iPhone was unveiled in January 2007.
The rumor here is Eric was shown an early iPhone product, and saw how much better it was than the then-current beta builds of Android. https://betawiki.net/wiki/Android_1.0_April_2007_build
Chrome was based on WebKit, which was based on KHTML, the browser engine from KDE. The only reason we have WebKit as an open source engine is because Apple had to open source it. https://blogs.kde.org/2007/10/26/web-diplomacy/
They released "just" enough of it that WebKit could be replaced in Safari. That's it. Their patch would not compile or run on Linux. It would be _years_ before KDE had a WebKit browser. KDE took months to implement many changed from WebKit into KHTML.
Sequoia Capital introduced the Where2 team to Google. https://www.smartcompany.com.au/technology/neural-notes-how-...
Sequoia were freaking out. They had signed a term sheet with the Where2 team, and backed out because Yahoo! just released a map product. Yahoo was involved in both Google's early history and the events that led to Google Maps. Yahoo had an early opportunity to license Google's search technology, rather than acquire Google outright. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were introduced to Sequoia investor Michael Moritz through Yahoo co-founder David Filo.
Yahoo CEO Terry Semel reportedly offered around US$3 billion to buy Google, but Page and Brin declined.
Sequoia withdrew its proposed investment in Where 2 in 2008. Thinking Yahoo would dominate the market, and it was not a safe investment.
Sequoia then introduced Where 2 to Google. CIA, Keyhole, it's all a fun little rabbit hole :)
When you start hiring former management consultants into leadership positions