There's a ton of failed acquisitions as well.

Product Manager

Software Developer

Account Manager

LinkedIN, Gitlab, Activision by Microsoft .

Instagram is worth more than YouTube? 
 Eh?

Founder

Had no idea Google Maps was acquired, thought it was created in house

Software Engineer

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

Google is legendary

Google is legendary- Grapevine

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Any opportunity for QA Tester/Engineer in Google

Google

Software Test - QA

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I've seen many posts on products Google killed. What are some superior products/features by Google?

I'll go first: Bard AI for Google Workspace
(PS: don't say Google search :3 )

Google is 25 Y/O

Generalist

Lately, I have been thinking very deeply about my college days when the Flipkart story had inspired the entire lot of my batch at IIT-D. We were starry eyed college kids who wanted to do something innovative in India and break away from the "three" most popular moves after IIT:

1. UPSC
2. MBA
3. MS/PhD abroad

I proceeded to then work in various Indian startups and noticed an alarming thing. I began to realise a pattern across all my stints:

The initial founding team does exceptional work innovating, they excel at what Thiel calls "Zero to One", the act of creation. I will concede that although most founders fail to innovate by often copying what worked in the west but the initial founding team usually excels in execution. It allows for initial traction as it breathes a fresh breath in the\ space that they are operating in.

Almost always, when Product Market Fit is "achieved"(whatever that means), the founders begin to deploy insane amounts of funds into growth. 

By definition, Growth is not a bad thing. But, I have been noticing that across all startups I have worked at( all raised funds from the largest global funds) that it comes at the expense of product building. And during this era of hypergrowth, the product starts to stagnate while focus becomes marketing and sales. 

I often felt that this was temporary. That once we reach enough scale, we would start to innovate again. 
But time and time again, the ability to innovate atrophies over time.
Rather than building something that has enduring value by executing faster than anyone, the focus becomes achieving growth at all costs. 

This ultimately leads to two outcomes:
1. The startup cannot sustain this growth and retention begins to look dire. The churn becomes unbearable and the startup goes out of business.

2. The startup gets acquired by someone bigger, allowing founders and investors to believe that they created value where none existed in the first place.

I am completely dejected at this.

The Death of Indian Innovation: Why Indian Start Ups are failing to Innovate?

Growth Manager

Atleast not in the form it is now. Found a rare good post on LinkedIn via Twitter which lists the reason why i think so. Also, I was reading psychology of money and one of the chapters discussed how GE used to be the most valued company in 2000s and how within 20 years, everything went to manhole.

Google is seriously going through a leadership crisis. I hate Pichai from the gut. We Indians like him coz he's brown munda, but I have never seen such narrow minded CEO since Balmer.

Hot Take: Google will not exist in next 30 years

Many other xooglers raised these leadership issues earlier. 
 Meanwhile, tier2/3 kids are burning midnight oil to land up in Google to start YT channel

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

A paradise for rest and vest people on the right team
- Do under 40 hours and get normal rating
- System is self healing, you can break something and don’t care
- Deadlines are a joke
- No responsibility
- Can ignore pings and care about anything

A nightmare for career growing mindset people
- Tech island
- Hard work are all abstracted away
- Promo is too fucking complicated
- Overhired and slow growth equals to slow promo
- Politics growing everyday. Basically hunger game to fight for impact and projects

Google is not the same anymore, things are changing rapidly & soon it will be worse.

Google is..

Xoogler here. I echo this so much, and it's what made me leave (was in a tech role as well) 

Google really was my dream company through life, but 2-3 months in, things really became clear (luckily I was in a startup before Google, and that was crucial to understand what was wrong there). 

- You can't really do something great, it's just mundane things on repeat 
- After the first 6-7 months on the role, you're usually not learning, because of point 1
- People are amazing, but they're not as driven as you'd expect 
- Growth is stunted 
- Promotion is the main thing on everyone's agenda (without realizing there may be better work out there) 

Ultimately, I feel it's an amazing culture and company but people have become too comfortable to realize the flaws :(

Engineering Manager

Trying to see companies that people here have had the dream to join, but didn’t ultimately work out. Have you now grown over it?

Which company were you obsessed with joining, but never could?

For me it was McKinsey 
 It was the best job out of college, status wise. 
  
 Did well in college and made it to the final shortlist. Was obsessed with it, read books and all about The Firm. 
  
 Then the interviews happened, couldn’t convert. Was a downer.  
  
 But 5 years later, doesn’t matter much. I feel life taught me better things. And my fascination of consulting jobs has changed drastically since :p

Corporate Strategist

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👇🏽 who are some founders/leaders that you actually like and believe will be able to make great things happen. 

They don’t need to be famous.

🪡 Founders - who get it right?

Sriharsha from Swiggy. Doesn’t believe in personal pr, branding. Busy in building.

Head Of Growth

Insider first hand perspective from recently laid off “original” googler of 18 years.

https://social.clawhammer.net/blog/

Google turning into WITCH over years

Hi everyone,

I recently completed the final round of interviews with Google, and the recruiter mentioned that the feedback was positive and that a team mapping round would be next. However, I'm currently not receiving any responses from her. A few days ago, I tagged Google's candidate support team, and the recruiter replied that the hiring manager for the team I was being considered for didn't find me to be a fit. She said she would look for another team, but it's been two weeks since that update, and I still haven’t heard back. It’s been almost two months since my final interview.

Does this seem normal? Any suggestions on how to proceed?

Thanks!

Google team mapping

My father worked as a peon when I was a kid. I barely had any friends and could not afford any toys. He used to work really long hours everyday. He was sleeping when I went to school and I was sleeping when he got back from work. So we never really talked. I was not good at studies during school, later I got to know that I had severe ADHD. My teachers used to say that I am good for nothing and very talkative all my life which gave me a lot of anxiety.

I got into a CSE at a Tier 2 college. This was with the help of my cousin sister who used to tutor me after school and taught me how to think from fundamentals. 

In college my seniors used to do a lot of ragging and make us not have food in the hostel mess. I lost a lot of weight and ended up with jaundice. This was the reason why I had a very bad CGPA in first year, <6. Slowly over the years I was able to bring it over 7.

I got into a service based company after college with a CTC of 3.75 LPA. I did not have any offers and I did not have anyone for guidance in my life. That is when I started to pick up some freelancing gigs and talked to people from other countries and cultures which educated me about top tech companies. So I started preparing for that.

I was rejected a total of 4 times by Amazon which completely broke me from the inside. Meanwhile my father got stomach cancer and he passed away. To this day my deepest regret is that my father did not see me finally achieving success in my life and till his last moments I am sure he thought of me as a failure son.

As I moved through my career I made a goal of reaching Google. I prepared very hard for an entire year with a lot of studying and preparation. Finally I got into Google. My family became very happy for me as I was the first person in my entire extended family to get such a package. After a lifetime of struggle I was finally content with where I am.

My only wish is that my father was here and his struggle for providing me with the best was not wasted.

Reached Google as a lifelong failure student 👨🏻‍💻

Glad to hear this man. My father also passed away because of stomach cancer. Cancer sucks but he's smiling down on you from heaven and your family is lucky to have a person like you with them! 
  
 Keep on achieving your dreams my friend!

Strategy & Operations

GEMINI beats GPT-4

Name worst projects with poor management in Deloitte USI

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- ChatGPT has reshaped global information-seeking since its 2022 debut, popularizing AI chatbots.
- Despite fears, Google Search remains dominant, with a 91.1% market share in June and rising ad revenue.
- Analysts credit Google's AI integration, particularly Gemini, for boosting search query growth and product performance.
- Google faces antitrust scrutiny, with ongoing cases accusing it of monopolizing the digital search and advertising markets.
- A ruling on the Department of Justice's antitrust case against Google is expected in late 2024.

ChatGPT's Rise Doesn't Dethrone Google Search

Journalist

Google products reviews are insane

Welcome to Business Roles's Private Community

Waze Map got acquired by Google for $1.3 Bn in 2013. 10 years later, Google's decided to cease Waze’s ad platform in favour of Google Ads technology. 

Waze advertising was more than just ads; it’s about creating connections. Users enjoy relevant, location-centric promotions, while businesses connect with potential customers right when they’re most likely to visit. It’s a model that turned every drive into an opportunity – both for businesses to grow and for users to discover.

Wrote about it here:

https://talesofss.com/google-waze-advertising-changes/

Waze advertising killed by Google

My friend got an offer from Google and he also landed offers from LinkedIn, Meesho, Amazon and a few more. 

Is google still a big deal like it was 5-10 years back? Or is everything stagnant and full of politics inside Google? 

Googlers please show some light.

Google is legendary

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