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niketdesai

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still learning.

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Nadella I think brought focus on ideas and prioritization that complimented Ballmer's ideas. He doesn't need to launch new projects, but ensure they are managed into a place of relevance. In that regard, it really showcases the excellent people MSFT has in the chain and how they can help each other get to where they collectively want to go.

You capture the nuance by saying usually.

Many people, logically, would arrive to this conclusion. When the treatment starts, one is even energized. Then, in the middle a person regrets being so optimistic at all. They find their assumption of life being better than death more naive than they could have imagined.

It's not just the treatment. It is the wider picture of your life stopping. And within that context your body, deteriorating, is only one component.

This, too, has been my thinking.

That said, having worked at Google there are many folks who were there prior to this shift (and unwittingly assisted by doing nothing previously). I don't blame them for trying to correct course and actually hope they can do so while remaining at a workplace they have spent so much time and effort developing and integrating within.

The Paypal app was late, and didn't really support the seamless Venmo experience, because initially Venmo allowed you to sign up with a CC and ate the fees. Later, with enough momentum and usage, they moved people to direct deposit by adding the CC fee and giving some other incentives.

The company was acquired, along with BrainTree, by Paypal to bolster their mobile and API-driven payments in the present age.

I think having multiple approaches was the key here. Worse case scenario these teams converge, but the true best case scenario is discovery of different methods to solve Google's ambitions.

In some ways, the depth of the search team needs to be replicated by their AI-research groups. As you stated, what is unclear is if the investments will be obviously lucrative (as search has been).

SHL learns a ton from this, gets experience most executives don't have. Optimistic in his future either way.

To the GR team, your work is not marginalized by this speed bump. GR is really good and something people love.

I hope other people recognize that and snap up everyone into good places.

I'm a PM and feel this is the case as well. I've seen massive migrations as one type of 'maintenance' wrapped as a launch that led to promotions, but generally the best way to go about it was join a rapidly growing project (G+) with user-facing impact.

The same issues you flag are similar for PMs.

I don't recall it being pitched as Twitter, or even Alpha at the time.

I had read a lot about what Dalton believed and agreed with him. My $29 seemed paltry in the long view if he would succeed.

I'm saddened by the current state of affairs. But I am glad I helped give him a shot at something I was unable or otherwise unwilling to attempt.

It's not an individual that is making these decisions, it's a complicated set of groups, technologies, and directions.

Does that mean having bad user experiences is justified? No. But it's incredibly complicated to tie together such large projects (at a complexity most people won't fathom) and do it well.

I would look at it the other way and be amazed how good some of the things work.

I transferred to the Motorola division so I kind of have both perspectives while being at Google.

In some regard, a lot of Googlers don't even know how good they have it. What Google manages to do pretty well is pick the right people for 'the company' and then acclimatize them extremely fast to everything: process, tools, lifestyle and sometimes koolaid.

In doing so are we infants? Perhaps. But fundamentally this is no different than what all children go through (acclimatization to their environment).

I'm not sure working for some crummy company, or a startup means one life is better than the other - they are different. And if you're lucky enough to be able to choose that then that is awesome.

Google flights 13 years ago

Our friends have a concept called an Orblitz. You got to orbitz.com on Wednesday and search for the cheapest tickets out of the state to anywhere. Take a backpack for the weekend and no hotels book - figure it out there.

Has been a blast every time. I actually used the concept at a Noisebridge party once:

http://makezine.com/2010/10/13/noisebridges-3rd-birthday-par...

A lot of fun for the winner (who actually beat me in the rock paper scissors tournament on the way to 'winning')

This is pretty much the argument for the other side of the coin. Google probably designed the service understanding that situations like these would arise and would represent a small but acceptable amount of outrage.

Altruistically for Google it's probably better to not have support for non-ads-monetization (as in, a product that isn't interfaced with buying advertisers) products.

edit: some clarification.

I appreciate your view only because the skepticism is important as it draws attention to things optimists of the system like me will ignore.

There is a problem with some skeptics that purposely lead people on goose chases, but the true ones will attack key problems that we can then focus our efforts.

Yeah but this is the scenario many companies face. It's not like there are THAT many companies with Billions in multiple revenue channels that aren't effectively umbrella corporations.

Google funnels most of their diverse online product set back into the primary money generator. I'm sure we'll see less of that in the future as there are so many people that have pointed this out it's almost tiring.

Google Flights 14 years ago

This is a partial product still being built (as it's domestic at the moment and will obviously go international I'm sure).

But the speed and data quality is where they will win out. The faster the interface allows people to do what they want to do: many searches until an ideal candidate is found. Other sites appear slow and most of the information they bring back is useless (to the user) so speed is the name of the game.

Turns out Google is pretty good at that game. Just my thoughts.

Sorry, but even for a team of 6 people if you can't muster $300/yr (breaking down to $25/mo or $4/user-mo) you aren't bootstrapping. You're being inefficient, and perhaps even reckless with your endeavor. (Unless you're building a competitor).

Sometimes it's about the pennies. But other times, especially early, it won't be these types chunks of money that kill you. I used to go on CL and do user-studies for $50 a pop and resell the gift cards for cash or amazon credit. So it's hard for me to believe that what you are building can't spare an hour of work to fund baseline communication systems that are pretty well supported.

I think we should make judgement on the outcome rather than the email (since it's basically speculation anyways). Judge: Do these types of problems happen in the same amount and severity in 6 months? (or whatever time horizon you think is agreeable to see significant progress).

And there shouldn't be mockery for him fixing one account. Sure there are many to go, but before this account was in the same boat...so it's an improvement no matter how small. Whatever Andy said in his post really resonated to D. Marcus; now I hope it really is the catalyst for PayPal to improve.

edited shortened it up.