Jobs Told Google's Page to Cut Bloat to Avoid Becoming Microsoft

http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LTFP6U0YHQ0X01-3MTMRFEDTG0SB4L0HQ03662H25

by acak • 15 years ago

112 64 15 years ago

news.businessweek.com

cpeterso• 15 years ago

Steve's advice to Nike:

"Nike makes some of the best products in the world. Products that you lust after. But you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff."

Dropping products, even crappy ones, that produce revenue is difficult when investors demand non-stop growth, quarter after quarter, and your employees are afraid of losing their jobs or political fiefdoms.

yuhong• 15 years ago

Fortunately, Google don't play the quarterly earnings game.

hboon6• 15 years ago

Here's what Steve Job's verbal answer to this is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY#t=07m33s till 9:20

6ren4• 15 years ago

BTW: In his answer 2 questions later, he presages iCloud ("NFS") and Apple Stores ("distribution") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&t=13m10s (13:10-21:00)

(And also demonstrates his reality distortion field, which his questioner heroically overcomes.)

queensnake• 15 years ago

'just buy more stock'? Doesn't have much to say on the topic of keeping only the highest-quality products.

latch• 15 years ago

Forgive my denseness, but is "being larded with B players" a reference to employees? I'm not disagreeing, it just isn't clear to me if he's calling out Microsoft employees.

bdr• 15 years ago

Yes. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...

bishnu• 15 years ago

Haha, some dude thought he was talking about set theory.

ethank• 15 years ago

I would have loved to see Jobs' comments about Yahoo. He likely would have been so apoplectic he wouldn't be able to speak.

His meetings with record labels are kind of legendary for this very reason.

abbott• 15 years ago

the Google Labs shutdown, might be an echo of this.

5hoom• 15 years ago

With the changes occurring at Google right now, could we be feeling the impact of Page taking this advice to heart?

It seems Google are pruning a lot of stuff they must see as external to their core business, and putting happy-safe bubble wrap around services like search (see todays story about the + operator being depreciated to the dismay of advanced users).

I suppose this is Google trying to improve themselves, lets just hope they can execute as well as Apple when it comes to making super simplified products that people want.

lacker• 15 years ago

I doubt the + thing is "happy-safe bubble wrap" - more likely they are deprecating the previous functionality in preparation for more Google+ integration into search.

Joakal• 15 years ago

I think Google will attempt +<person> to make it easier to search G+ for them.

jsnell• 15 years ago

Hard to say, since the advice from Jobs was seemingly also to keep the number of employees down. It's been the reverse on Page's watch, with mad headcount growth.

cmelbye• 15 years ago

I think the wind down of Google Labs and several small Google products, APIs, etc is definitely reflective of that advice. Very cool to know where they might have gotten the inspiration to do that.

chugger5• 15 years ago

Motorola's acquisition will go down in history as one of the top 5 dumbest business decisions of all time. I won't be surprised if Larry Page is replaced as CEO within 3-5 years.

icki2• 15 years ago

Any decision that a company makes is an attempt to improve itself.

According to the article, Jobs recommended to Page that Google focus on five services - I'm curious as to which services HN thinks are core to Google's growth and success? Off the top of my head: Search, Android, Chrome, Plus and YouTube.

ashishgandhi• 15 years ago

Don't forget Apps: Mail, Maps, Docs, Translate, etc.

crowsfan85• 15 years ago

According to this April 2011 LA Times article [1], six senior VP's now oversee these areas: mobile, social, Chrome, YouTube/video, search, and ads.

[1] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/04/exclusive...

0x12• 15 years ago

Why would you take advice from a competitor, especially one that is suing you over exactly the subject matter of their advice?

Really, Apple telling Google to concentrate on services is like Google telling Apple to concentrate on hardware.

Google was iirc at some point involved in developing a little phone operating system that competed directly with one of Apple's cash cows. Naturally it would be great for Apple if google forgot about phones, Android and whatever else would cause them to one day run in to Apple in the marketplace.

If google would concentrate on search then that would be great news for Apple indeed.

Android is not a service, Chrome is not a service.

Search, YouTube and Plus are services.

jroseattle3• 15 years ago

Good observation, I think that's exactly what we're seeing.

It's an interesting balancing act that can sometimes go against the very grain of tech companies, especially one the size of Google. Everything we as mere mortals in the tech business are taught is to try things, fail quickly, iterate.

Jobs approach was to do a few things and do them well. Indeed, he felt the most important thing one could do, as an agent of change in that type of role, was to learn to effectively say no. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE

Page has always been very smart and a phenomenal software engineer, but his new role is different. I believe Page finds himself in a somewhat similar position to Jobs in 1997, and it will be very interesting to see how he does as a technology leader.

willifred2• 15 years ago

What are the similarities in position between Jobs/Apple in 1997 and Page/Google now?

contextfree• 15 years ago

So to avoid becoming like Microsoft they're pruning initiatives deemed non-core and trying to focus on a smaller number of big bets, which ... is more or less what Microsoft has been doing for the past year and a half or so, for better or worse. Curses, foiled again!

Qz• 15 years ago

I couldn't help noticing that more than 50% of the web page layout for this article is literally blank space.

kristopolous• 15 years ago

To us unfiltered web viewers, they are actually advertisements.

kevinalexbrown2• 15 years ago

Some simplified products are iPods. Some simplified products are Zunes. Just sayin'.

eftpotrm2• 15 years ago

And I'd pay good money for a more complex iPod Classic. I need its space but the software is simple in ways that regularly annoys me; I believe there's significant room for improvement.

Apple isn't perfect.

cbs• 15 years ago

Look into rockbox (rockbox.org). Its an opensource replacement firmware. I take listening to my music seriously enough that I need a dedicated device with good software. Since I found rockbox I haven't bought a mp3 player unless they were already on the supported hardware list.

The rockbox UI structure can be a bit cumbersome to learn because there is a lot of functionality there, but I've never found anything else that comes close.

kevinalexbrown2• 15 years ago

Agreed. In this sense I'm worried that google will lean more toward "Internet For Dummies"(e.g. losing the + feature in favor of double quotes to make way for G+), attempting to coral my internet use into certain patters the same way Apple seems to (like removing the "Reader" link from the google bar to showcase G+).

krosaen2• 15 years ago

That's pretty cool that Jobs was willing to meet with Page, particularly given how miffed he was about android.

One area where I hope Google doesn't follow Apple is in engineering culture. For instance, isn't it true that most of the engineers who worked on the original iphone literally never even saw one until it was unveiled to the public? Whether or not the "bottom up" opportunities for engineers to influence products at Google is as effective as a top down culture under the likes of Jobs and Ives is debatable, but it sure seems like working at Google is a lot more fun! (disclosure: I worked at Google, am basing my impressions on what it's like to work at Apple on anecdotes and only a couple of direct accounts from engineers who have worked there).

wooster• 15 years ago

"For instance, isn't it true that most of the engineers who worked on the original iphone literally never even saw one until it was unveiled to the public?"

For the core team, my understanding is "no". The core team was very small, though (<50 software engineers).

krosaen2• 15 years ago

Cool, I hope so. An account I heard described the engineers having had access only to test boards, but perhaps that was earlier on before physical prototypes were made.

chugger5• 15 years ago

wrong.

leejw00t354• 15 years ago

'Avoid becoming Microsoft' I don't see how that's bad. Microsoft are the most successful software company ever.

masklinn• 15 years ago

In Jobs's optics, Microsoft tasteless and became absolutely bloated and unworkable. In the last decade, it's become a replacement for what IBM was in the 80s.

They seem to show some improvement lately, but Microsoft still looks very much like middle-management realms, a tentacular corporation with little movement and even less focus.

justincormack• 15 years ago

Also he is saying Microsoft is outside the Silicon Valley culture, without the same values.

anonLSD• 15 years ago

Microsoft has some wildly successful products, like Windows, Office, XBOX, SharePoint, SQL Server, etc. That's great. But they also employ well upwards of 100,000 people (including 'contingent' staff). It does not take that many people to ship those products. Not even close.

So they productively employ some fraction of those people (I'd guess, conservatively, less than half), and they pseudo-productively distract the rest with poorly managed fool's errands. And don't think it's a case of "you don't know until you try" - in most cases, everybody knows. General Managers will seize on any misguided idea with enough plausible deniability in order to build their fiefdoms.

It's like a bizarre kind of welfare system for the upper middle class. A few people do amazing work and ship great products. For the majority, the most significant thing they accomplished was passing the hiring gauntlet. But they all get to live in big houses and drive BMWs.

An institution can work on the whole, but still be grossly inefficient.

lurker143• 15 years ago

1. Unless it's efficient to determine where the fat is, it's not efficient to try to cut it.

2. "welfare for the upper middle class" is a perfect description of middle-management.

Jobs Told Google's Page to Cut Bloat to Avoid Becoming Microsoft

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