Quote:
Originally Posted by heltok
Bumping an old thread. Sold all my GOOG today, I have a feeling the diversity thingy is gonna blow up. Your thoughts on how this will influence the stock?
Google's culture has been on a downtrend for a long time and they've always mismanaged everything except their recommendation algorithms. I can't remember the last time I heard a positive personal anecdote about working at Google (including experiences from the X team).
I'm also more likely to think negatively of someone who has worked at Google than most other companies (with some very notable exceptions). That said, their algorithm focused teams still do seem to be as effective as they always have which is what they have
ALWAYS run on.
There's a modest downtrend in the value of traditional search but that's tempered by the power of Youtube continuing to lead the breakout in terms of advertiser value with video. I've seen very little to threaten that dominance, FB is at the very beginning of their journey to attempt this and they have multiple structural challenges to overcome. Twitch is certainly relevant but there's no clear threat (and may even be a positive for Youtube live). Youtube's engagement level is unique and their monetization platform I would call a persistent advantage.
Algorithmic recommendations still have a lot of value to be extracted and Google is the best at it. If they've managed to keep the libertarian minded elite dev up until this point I think it's very hard to quantify the systemic risk of a talent flight. In my experience most of the large tech companies have this culture to at least a degree and the hardcore tech teams tend to be left alone already (for example from what I hear the Zappos holacracy shenanigans never seriously impacted the dev team).
In terms of the egregious mismanagement, again it's very hard to quantify and especially at what scale it occurs. In my opinion it's never hit the foundation of why Google is where it is so is it really mismanagement or just noise around the non-critical areas of the business?
I've maintained a never bet against Google policy for almost 10 years and I've yet to see a compelling reason to change that position. They aren't the most compelling case of that in tech but the structural advantages they maintain + their consistency with the core business keeps them near the top.