Google CEO Larry Page invokes Steve Jobs in interview, defends ambitious Google X projects

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 83
    timt999 wrote: »
    I'm surprised that Larry Page invokes Jobs so often. He seems to have so little insight into what made Apple successful. And of course the different approaches to product development are quite revealing. Apple going over each new product again and again for years until it is ready for Prime Time. Google going off in a thousand directions, some useful, some half-assed, and wasting far too much of their creative resources.

    Google Glass is a perfect example. Hey kids, let's introduce glasses as wearable tech -- without having figured out the privacy issue first. And now a technology with potential is a joke because they didn't plan for situations in which the glasses could intrude on the personal space of others. You can't just come up with good ideas. You need to build in the product's inherent greatness from the start.

    I'm amazed how many people in the Valley (heck, in general) just don't get Apple. At all. It's not hard, but it's almost like they literally can not understand how they work.
    I've heard it called the "two of everything strategy." It's not that Apple doesn't use that internally--for example, setting Scott Forstall's and Tony Fadell's teams to come up with competing OS strategies for the iPhone, but Apple chooses ONE solution before selling it to the public.

    Well, I guess since we're Google's product, it makes sense we do the testing as well. Either way, it's a mess.

    Google's advanced research is essentially useless. Microsoft's research guys do a lot of amazing work that is basically impossible to ever bring to market. Some of their stuff is commercializable (like their Hyperlapse tech, which is way better than the lame Instagram ripoff), but things like Surface (the table), Illumiroom, etc? All dreaming that's way too expensive for the average consumer.

    IBM seems to be able to commercialize their big ideas though.
  • Reply 22 of 83
    shsfshsf Posts: 302member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    "It's unsatisfying to have all these people, and we have all these billions we should be investing to make people's lives better. If we just do the same things we did before and don't do something new, it seems like a crime to me."

     

    Yes, Larry you should be, you bloody well should be... then why aren't you?

     

    How about making a start by not scanning everyones effing email?

     

    Then try coming up with a actual product that's not someone elses intellectual property, and make it "just work" and enable peoples lives with it. 

     

    Then show some common curtesy to your 3rd party developers via insuring that your copycat OS (fun times ahead btw, when Larry Ellison starts taking you to the cleaners for yet more ip theft) provides a safe marketplace for them to sell their hard work instead of having it cracked and stolen. 

     

    And while you are at it tell your employees over at google support forums that it's not kosher to upvote their own support replies as "best answers", and they look like utter fools when they end up being the only ones having upvoted said reply. 

     

    Lastly, idealist Larry, it's also in really, really, really bad taste to reference a visionary who's passed away, and one who talked to you as an equal, as a marketing ploy to promote the idea that you are all so focused on making people's lives oh so much better, and you generously spend all your billions in exploring new technological horizons to benefit mankind while Steve's Apple was just out to make "products". Show some respect, prick. And for a change start listening and learning from your elders, it's about time. Bill Gates, who I am certainly no fan of, has spent half his fortune and has dedicated his life to helping relieve human suffering and disease. What the f. did you ever do Larry, other than looking like and idiot with your google spy glasses on your own wedding.

     

    Contrast and compare:

     

    Class

     

    Ass

     

    And in case, any google affiliate thinks I picked and chose the image to make him look like an idiot, there are plenty more from a quite fitting rag: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2365942/Larry-Page-wears-Google-Glass-altar-glitzy-wedding-Croatia.html

  • Reply 23 of 83
    quinneyquinney Posts: 2,528member
    cali wrote: »
    "It's unsatisfying to have all these people, and we have all these billions we should be investing to make people's lives better. If we just do the same things we did before and don't do something new, it seems like a crime to me."

    So lets just copy Apple's products. Now that's something "new" and makes people's lives better!!


    and seems like a crime to me
  • Reply 24 of 83

    Google being held up as an example of innovation and deriding Apple for not investing enough in R&D speaks to the masses' unfortunate tendency to get carried away with hot air. It's one thing to dream up ideas. It's another thing to actually execute them. On forums regarding Apple vs. Google as an investment, people trumpet Google's work in self-driving cars, modular phones and others as reasons that Google is the "story of the future" and that Apple has nothing going for it beyond the iPhone. What people refuse to consider is the chances of Google successfully executing on any one of those projects. Google has limited focus. They unabashedly take the "throw mud at the wall, see what sticks" approach. With product after product, we've seen Google release it to great fanfare and trumpet it as the next big thing only to never hear about it ever again. We then speculate about that product's fate until Google quietly cans it. This is the story with product after product. Google has no cash flow generating machines besides search. Even Android, for all the press about world domination, has meant little to Google's bottom line. The fact that Google's stock hasn't dropped off a cliff in response to Google's creation of a new class of voteless shares never ceases to amaze me. The fact that Google commands a higher multiple than Apple amazes me even more. 

     

    The bottom line is that for all the grandiose talk about "moon-shots" and "making the world a better place," there is little to show other than the title of media darling. The latter part about wanting to benefit humanity is complete BS. Google is in this to make money as much as the next company. It's just that Google's business model is to give everything away for free and make it up on ads. In the process, they get to spout malarkey about making the Internet accessible to everyone. 

  • Reply 25 of 83
    gtrgtr Posts: 3,231member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by TimT999 View Post

     

    Google Glass is a perfect example. Hey kids, let's introduce glasses as wearable tech -- without having figured out the privacy issue first. And now a technology with potential is a joke because they didn't plan for situations in which the glasses could intrude on the personal space of others. You can't just come up with good ideas. You need to build in the product's inherent greatness from the start.


     

  • Reply 26 of 83

    If it weren't for mole, moron Schmidt that can't keep his mouth shut, they wouldn't have an Android business. Google and Samsung are Microsoft. They better realize that. Samsung is already where Microsoft was 5 years ago.

  • Reply 27 of 83
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    What a piece of shit, bringing up the dead SJ in a negative way.

    So Google Glass was supposed to "make people's lives better"? I love how Google got a bunch of sycophants to pay a fuckload of money to beta test the product and shill for it, then after all the hype they gave the damn thing a silent release, with no hardware improvements beyond the 1st prototype unveiled, and at the same price as the prototype. Remember when Larry Page was wearing Google Glass everywhere, including all his keynotes? What happened, and why does he not wear it anymore?

    Apple would have been absolutely massacred if they had such a ****-up like Google Glass, hyping a product for 2 years and then being like "eh, **** it", and moving to something else. But Google gets a pass, like they get a pass with everything. But its ok, they got people talking about how "innovative" Google is compared to Apple, cause they wanted everyone to strap a camera on their face.
  • Reply 28 of 83
    Hilarious. Google is a hodgepodge of tech mess masked by a fine search engine and ad business.

    Apple literally does everything better than google. From the traditional core business such as hardware, operating systems, applications, etc., to the cloud. Email, calendar, office apps, etc. (not to mention video codecs that are actually worthwhile) and they seem to figure out how to do things that actually make a HUGE PRACTICAL difference in people's lives. I remember visual voicemail just coming out on iPhone. Made VM so easy. iTunes completely solved the entire online issue ith relation to media. Apple Pay is elegantly simple and fixes the credit card system privacy issues while simultaneously creating a seamless online vs brick and mortar experience. iWork in the cloud and on iOS and Mac is just plain sweetness.

    Googles projects are just that. Like the guy who tinkers with "restoring" old cars. He ends up with an impressive collection of junk. But no real show car for his troubles.

    So Google did great with search and ads. Then they blatantly steal the iOS /android idea from apples boardroom and now want to criticize Steve jobs for running a lean success/life improvement machine? Meanwhile Google bleeds money with android and all its other projects not related directly to search. No wonder their stock tanked a while back.

    Bad business practice married to bad business ethics, coupled with executives who can't keep it in their pants at the office, and it's going to be time for popcorn very soon. Google has gotten very big and has lost direction as well as respect for the environment that surrounds them... Kind of like the Titanic...
  • Reply 29 of 83
    shsfshsf Posts: 302member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by vvswarup View Post


    It's one thing to dream up ideas. It's another thing to actually execute them.

     

    And if he's that much into Steve, he owns damn youtube, he should google his lost interview where he says exactly that, and that was circa 1988 or so if I remember correctly, about a quarter of a century ago. 

     

    On second thoughts, here you go Larry:

     

    Put it on repeated, repeat. Steep yourself in it for a couple of weeks or so and maybe you 'll "get" the greatness, or most probably not. 

     

    (It's really a such wonderful interview, in the full sense of the word, with a great and very inspiring ending. Despite the sadness that wells up that Steve's no longer with us, though I am quite sure he's still around, and not just via his legacy. And since he liked to think of his life with either a Dylan or a Beatles lyric, it's fitting to quote the last beatles song: "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.") RIP Steve, you are very much missed. 

  • Reply 30 of 83
    joshajosha Posts: 901member
    Apple's designing and manufacturing leading edge hardware and software, is a lot more difficult than Google doing mostly just software for spying on a best efforts basis.
  • Reply 31 of 83
    robmrobm Posts: 1,068member
    This POS announcement is just to keep the Goog name in headlines while Apple announces success.

    It's a fop from the Head Glasshole himself.
    Jeez what a lowlife - to mention billions, SJ and then allude to some altrustic sense of doing better for humanity.
    (The order isn't important, the sound bytes the press will skew because there's no substance)

    Scumbag of the highest order.
    Hey how about Goog refrains from advertising for a year, or better forever - that would save the world untold gigabytes of needless bandwidth in your pos ads that do NOTHING for anybody..
  • Reply 32 of 83
    I understand this is a niche site, and I thought I was an apple fanboy, but dam the bias here is through the roof. As much as you all hate google, its a fact that they innovate. Apple takes the good ideas and brings them to the consumer in a viable form. Without each other, there would be no competition to push the other to do better. Face it. Without google as competition apple may not innovate as much with control of the market. Common sense. Apple needs the competition to continue to shine
  • Reply 33 of 83
    shsfshsf Posts: 302member

    Steve has gone thermonuclear on them from beyond the grave due to the talent he left at apple, the great leader of apple he left to run the company and the great exec team, the essence of what he stood for permeating most everyone working at apple, and the developers outside of apple, because he was a true one of a kind, he inspired people and brought out the best out of them... and they can't f..ing handle it at goole and they are running amok, and stooping to the level of tarnishing his company and his name.

     

    This comes on the hills of the announcement that the head of android has exited the google auto driving car (impending legal action?), Samsung is getting its ass kicked about with their non business model, Schmidt fumbled some lies together after Cooks privacy announcement, and Larry is running amok, so cue in lies of his do no evil crap, and using his billions to make the world a better place and still just some half arsed web apps, no desktop os whatsoever that's worth it's salt, no ecosystem, amazon delivering a much better all around proposition, glasses, auto driven cars and assorted horse manure. They managed to be 100 times more despicable in their tactics and business practises and more universally unliked than MS ever was circa 1985-2000. Kudos to them, they deserve it. 

  • Reply 34 of 83
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post

     

    And they didn't ask him why Andy "Android" left?


    Same reason why Simon Prakash, David Tupman, John Theriault, Dag Kittlaus, Ron Johnson, Benjamin Fay, Andy Miller, Bertrand Serlet, Sarah Brody, John Herbold, etc. all top executives, left Apple, to pursue other interests, there is no conspiracy here, happens all the time.

  • Reply 35 of 83
    I don't really like any of Googles products, don't even use the search engine. But I dont disagree with the quote of what he said.

    Tech companies should invest in a variety of stuff. What they make may not come to anything but there's a bigger picture of what it can lead to. I don't like android but there's elements that are now in ios.

    A company releasing there ideas to the world gives the opportunity for someone else to build in it. Internal projects are great for protecting you're ideas and I don't blame Apple for working in that way. But who knows how many ideas have been lost because they decided they would get the return they wanted.
  • Reply 36 of 83
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by 9secondko View Post

     

    No wonder their stock tanked a while back.

     


     

    Tanked, I wouldn't go that far, they fell a little but regained quickly, like it or not Google is still a good stock to invest in, I've personally made an enormous amount holding there stock for over 8 years, I started with only 500 shares and have increased that number slowly over the years to a little over 9,000, though I own a lot more of Apple, especially after the 2 for 1 spit and than the 7 for 1, I still believe Google is a worthy investment.

     

  • Reply 37 of 83
    Google, like Nvidia, tells everyone what it plans to do, exciting the fan base with futuristic ideas. Everyone knows that Google is working on driverless cars. Fewer people realize that every car maker and lots of other companies have been working on the same things, and are likely in a better position to monetize their work.

    Just look at phones, tablets, TV boxes, and everything else Google has tried to duplicate, with resounding failure. It's trying lots of things but has very little to show for all this. It still makes the majority of its money from desktop advertising, the same thing it was doing in 2005.

    Apple's few new things have each turned into massive new businesses. The iPhone is a $100B business, but iPad is now a $30 billion business just 4 years after it was introduced, iTunes and the App Store are an $18 billion business, Apple TV and accessories are a $6 billion business, and Apple is launching Apple Pay and Watch as entirely new business segments.

    Google sells $55 billion of ads and invests in a lot of things that haven't really taken off or have completely flopped. It's all beta concepts that never take flight.
    I agree. And I would also add that Apple probably tries as many new things as any other company. They just do it in secret. Apple's market research is done in private, and ideas that don't have the promise of success are shelved.

    Google's product betas may be successful than you realize, though. Although Google may fail at producing a product, he betas themselves are market research and not necessarily geared toward product testing. Unsuspecting users share data with Google under the guise of helping to improve the product, but they are really helping to improve Google's data repository--thus the perpetual beta. Hell, Google could even intentionally write in a bug to trick beta users into making a decision so that Google gets to see see the reaction. Some of this may be tinfoil hat stuff, but I don't put it past Google.
  • Reply 38 of 83
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by 9secondko View Post



    Hilarious. Google is a hodgepodge of tech mess masked by a fine search engine and ad business.



    Apple literally does everything better than google. From the traditional core business such as hardware, operating systems, applications, etc., to the cloud. Email, calendar, office apps, etc. (not to mention video codecs that are actually worthwhile) and they seem to figure out how to do things that actually make a HUGE PRACTICAL difference in people's lives. I remember visual voicemail just coming out on iPhone. Made VM so easy. iTunes completely solved the entire online issue ith relation to media. Apple Pay is elegantly simple and fixes the credit card system privacy issues while simultaneously creating a seamless online vs brick and mortar experience. iWork in the cloud and on iOS and Mac is just plain sweetness.


     

     

    Google has:

    #1 Browser (1+ billion active users)

    #1 Video Site (YouTube)

    #1 Mobile OS, Android 

    #1 Email Service (Gmail, closing in on a billion users)

    #1 Mapping service

    #1 Search Engine

     

    Apple's cloud services are toys in comparison, they can't even live stream their own keynotes. (Apple didn't invent H264 either, so quite weird to see someone trying to add credit for that) iWork in the cloud is a joke compared to Google Docs or Office 365.

     

    To say that Google Search or Maps didn't change peoples lives is being flat out disingenuous. Yes, before Google, there was search engines and maps, just like before Apple there were smartphones, but Google executed radically better, and the difference was so life changing they completely destroyed the existing players virtually overnight, the same thing Apple did to mobile in 2007. If you can't honestly credit them for that, you're basically blind.

     

    And to the person who claimed Inbox is designed by NeXT guys, you don't know what you're talking about. Inbox by Gmail has been in development for years, the lead designer is Jason Cornwell, the PM is Alex Gawley, neither of whom have anything to do with NeXT or Apple, and the technologies used have zero to do with the NeXT.  The core technology backing Inbox is machine learning for clustering, task assistance, and mail summarization, again, zero to do with competing solutions.

  • Reply 39 of 83
    ifij775ifij775 Posts: 470member
    I hope they get the self-driving car right. That will save lives and I really want one
  • Reply 40 of 83
    noivadnoivad Posts: 186member
    If you definition of %u201Cimproving people%u2019s lives%u201D is shoving countless megs of ads and tracking scripts down people%u2019s (sometimes metered) bandwidth and eroding privacy in the name of convenience%u2026 then yes, Steve didn%u2019t do enough.

    As an experiment a few months ago, I cleared my cache and loaded the Google search home page: over 3MB. I then loaded Duckduckgo%u2019s homepage: 300KB%u2026

    So, if you are on a metered account use DDG. In fact just use DDG anyway since it does track nor bubble you either and only has 1 ad on the results page.

    BTW: if you use Ghostery, you will notice on this very page 3 of the 11 extra widgets: social, advertising and trackers are Google%u2019s%u2026 Technology is a tool, and can be used for the benefit of a few in control or the benefit of everyone. This tool is obviously in the former category.
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