Google is the new IBM::Years of being one-upped on AI and cracking down on innovation turned the poster child for Silicon Valley cool into a dinosaur.
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I mean, excepting that google isn’t even really the main offering when it comes to institutional compute (that’s Microsoft/ azure).
Like IBM had mainframes and legacy infrastructure on lock.
The only thing google really has on lock still is gmail, but honestly, take it or leave it.
They had search, but I get better answers asking a space heater to hallucinate a couple hundred characters for me these days.
:Android stares intently: “Am I a joke to you?”
Considering Android hasn’t fully implemented DHCPv6? Yes
i left it, tyvm
youtube is the only product of theirs i use regularly.
and android if you count lineageos as “theirs”
ChatGPT is nowhere near being able to replace search, and even if it was remotely similar, many people don’t even really know what it is, whereas Google is ubiquitous with search.
To say they only have a lock on Gmail is doing them a huge disservice. They own a huge part of online advertising and search.
For Gmail if you mean a lock on consumers who generally don’t pay for the product I would agree, but I have done more g-suite to Office 365 in the past 12 months than I have in the past 5 years. It is too bad because we could really use some competition and different ideas in the office productivity space.
What can you expect from a company that in 2024 does not yet have a Linux client for Google Drive?
https://abevoelker.github.io/how-long-since-google-said-a-google-drive-linux-client-is-coming/
Do you need it though? i feel like the linux userbase is already fairly low, and the intersection of people who cant do a RW mount with rclone ans uses linux is even lower.
You would be pouring a bunch of money into a development for the 0.001% Userbase
I recently did this, and it was fucking annoying to create the app in Google’s Cloud. Incredibly laggy (5-10 seconds until clicks register), loading times of up to a minute between navigations.
This was on a very beefy PC, I suspect the issue is that I used Firefox.
Even if what you said was true, i think the better choice would be to go in the direction of simplicity, not the direction that favours segregation.
I’d compare them more with Microsoft from 10 years ago.
So does this make the old IBM the new Novell?
I’m glad to see that something I’ve been raising for about 18 months now seems to be coming true.
IMO this is happening all over the tech industry. I work for a competitor, and the shift over the last year or two has been seismic. Back when Google was the king, new engineers wanted to build “the next Google”, and startups were where the magic happened. The big tech companies saw this, and they hired the best and brightest en-masse to work on moonshot ideas. For the last 5-8 years, you could work for Google, Amazon, Apple, any of the big tech companies in any number of industries - if it worked out, your career would be solid, if it didn’t you’d move on to the next thing while keeping your job. All of this was secured with great salaries, freedom of movement to live/transfer wherever you want, and job security (assuming you’re not at Amazon).
Now, not only are the moonshots gone, but also the following:
- Scrutiny for all hiring, with established teams struggling to secure any headcount to improve, or even maintain due to previous layoffs.
- A push to do more with less, often resulting in obvious enshitification to boost metrics or make more profit at the expense of users.
- A focus on speed over completeness - with companies favouring technical debt, hiring externally to get people in seats fast, etc. You could be a strong performer internally, and you’d be overlooked for an internal role because someone with far fewer credentials can be brought in immediately from outside.
- Zero job security. Layoffs have been rolling for over a year now, and with companies that PIP, you’ve got the worry of both being laid off AND being one of the 5-15% of people that are fired to meet performance quotas.
- Leaders taking zero ownership, or skirting the culture and rules of the company, like with Amazon going on CEO “gut feeling” while expecting others to use data, or Google basically shifting towards being “ungoogley” and “evil”.
Outside of pay, the benefits of working for a big tech company are gone. The innovation is happening elsewhere, and these companies have purposely bled talent to appease shareholders. Students don’t want to prep for months for a job that’ll fire them months later, especially when opportunities are limited. Finally, no one wants to work on things that don’t generate profit - especially when whole orgs are laid off or shut down, all while the leaders that set the direction to fall off a cliff are parachuted into roles elsewhere in the business. That last one is key, because tech employees now look at VP+ level moves as a sign of them losing their job, another distraction from being able to do your job or caring about your output.
So yes, Google will be the new IBM, and I don’t think there’s a way back for any of the FAANG tech companies. They either course correct through new leadership and focusing on their talent/prouct again, or they become relics of the 2000’s and crumble when their share price inevitably drops.
MS the new IBM
The new who?
