I have been wondering if Google hasn't already lost the self driving race to Tesla. Google still drives a few test vehicles around and has totalled some 2.7 million km:
Tesla has more than 100,000 model S driving around and in just 7 months their auto pilots have already surpassed the km driven by Google for the past 7 years by almost a factor 100 (roughly 200M km). That is real use in many places, situations and weathers, not just test drives in California.
I realise it's not apples to apples and that Google's cars may be more autonomous for now. But with the numbers stacked against it like that I doubt it will be long before Tesla's auto pilot is vastly superior.
As I see it, given the lack of a Google car, they will have to team up with a major car company to get enough cars out there. And that requires a more elegant hardware solution than what they currently put on the rooftops.
> I realise it's not apples to apples and that Google's cars may be more autonomous for now.
I think that is an understatement. This video shows why staying in your lane on a highway (what Tesla autopilot does) and dealing with city streets are two just completely different things: https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=8m49s
I think Tesla has a ton of catching up to do to compete with where Google is right now.
Tesla's auto pilot isn't at all comparable to what Google are doing. It essentially the same as the adaptive cruse control (cruse control that adjusts to traffic in front) and lane assist (auto stearing to stay in lane) you can get from most other car manufactures as an option.
That's not to say that tesla isn't developing full automation it's just that what they sell now is just clever branding on something you can get elsewhere.
Tesla may have an order of magnitude more kilometers, but the quality of data that Google is collecting is (IMO) more than an order of magnitude superior per kilometer.
Tesla (currently) has one radar, one camera and 4 short distance ultrasonic sensors. Google has LIDAR plus a lot more.
Tesla's suite may or may not be sufficient for operation. But for training, good data is critical.
It's not just going to be about straight miles driven, it's about the technology being focused on and what's possible with it. Both Tesla and comma.ai are focusing primarily on what the car can see and do with it's own sensors... Google's cars are only functional on roads excessively mapped far above the normal Google Maps level. Google's existing strategy for self-driving cars isn't practical at a national level because of that extensive mapping requirement, and it possibly never will be. (Google's cars may have driven x number of million miles, but it's all the same very small number of roads.) And while prices drop as technology develops, bear in mind that in addition to all of that, Google's sensor platform is the most expensive out there.
Additionally, I've read some really interesting articles about research other car manufacturers have done. For instance, Google has never tested in bad weather, but Ford has been working on self-driving cars that work in snow. And while Google just assumes the humans are meant to be 'along for the ride', Volkswagon did some really good UI work, in terms of figuring out how to make the car's actions predictable, and hence, less scary. (Essentially, the car indicated to the driver what it was about to do before it executed a maneuver.)
Google is really good at capitalizing on their self-driving car project for marketing purposes, but it's extremely unlikely it'll ever be a market leader.
If Google is really aiming as high as it says it is, you would expect the rate of successes to be fairly low. A true "moonshot" success - one that creates a whole new industry - every decade would still be a phenomenal success. Maybe we just need patience?
Many people (myself included) would compare X in intent and setup to PARC from the 1970s. The latter managed the extraordinary feat of pushing out a major innovation on average about once every 2.5 years from 1970 to 2000. That's things like laser printing, OOP, Ethernet, etc. that went on to build industries or take existing ones in new directions.
X, on the other hand, has been around for over 6 years now and as far as I know, its only marginal success to date has been Glass. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that X's success rate so far has been lower than many people expected.
This depends on the goal of the projects. If it's pure R&D that doesn't have a requirement to transition to commercial use, then you are absolutely correct. I don't think that's the case here. Some percentage of projects has to transition it's technology or research into commercial use, otherwise what is the point? Google is a publicly traded company, I wouldn't be a happy stockholder if I knew they were blowing $1 billion a year and with very little to show for it.
One thing did jump out at me in this article.
Mike Cassidy, who stepped down from Loon, ran the team “like a fire drill,” a former employee said.
I read this as, "Leadership likes to change its mind about direction and focus ... constantly". That's a recipe for disaster. Focus is key. You need to find the right direction as quick as possible, then execute.
Or maybe you can't just put people in a room and say "invent stuff".
It may sound hackneyed, but I believe necessity is the mother of invention and it doesn't seem there is that kind of motivation here...it feels forced.
The title feels like an oxymoron. I would assume the reason for spinning out a "moonshot" division is that if some projects fail, at least they are not part of the main division. Perhaps some of these projects are not the type that can ship an MVP?
One of the problem might be the incentive/motivations are not match between Google and people who works in those moonshot projects.
* Even if the projects get 10, 100 millions $ in revenue / profit, it is meaningless compare to billions in profit from search. The folks in those projects are not likely to benefit significantly from it.
* The smart folks probably know it. If they join the project (self driving car), some of motives are to learn as much as possible using Google's resources, name, connections and set it up for their own next venture.
It seems obvious that it would be a struggle for them to ship products - they are "moonshots" after all.
Reading this article makes me wonder if it was a good idea to put all of them into one division though. Even when you go in knowing a project is a long-shot it can be demoralizing when it fails. I can't imagine how hard it would be to work in a whole division of mostly failed projects.
I think it would be so fun to work there, even with all this political stuff happening. I guess it's sort of like Google's internal "Y Combinator", where they try out a whole bunch of startup ideas and have practically unlimited funding.
I think the fact that a project would receive unlimited funding is a negative, not a positive.
Instead of getting lean startups that have to move quickly because of resource scarcity you have bloated startups that feel no pressure to move quickly because of the unlimited resources they are receiving.
It just operates on hype curve. GoogleX takes projects from "technological trigger" to "peak of inflated expectations":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle
"Graduation" doesn't mean success. It seems to just mean "it moved out of X", even though usually that's just to somewhere else in Google it makes no money and sells no products.
- Glass is an absolute failure. I own one, I loved mine. It's still a failure.
- Gcam went to... Google Research? It went from moonshot R&D to normal R&D. That's not success.
- Google Brain... went to Research as well. And really, it is likely just a rebranded version of whatever DeepMind was already doing when Google bought them.
- Project Tango went from Google's moonshot R&D to Motorola's R&D (ATAP) which Google kept ownership of. That's also not success.
Android Wear, Flux, and Project Insight (Indoor Maps) probably all count as actual successes for X, but that's about it.
This article frames it in part as due to the Alphabet reshuffle, but hasn't it always been this way? Has X been decreasing in effectiveness recently, or were they just always there to be Sergey's batcave?
This feels like the type of operation better suited for a tier-one educational institution like Stanford or MIT.
In a academic context, there is no subtext of creating products. Yeah, churning out papers is as contrived...but I still feel like the timelines in academia are more generous.
Google talks a good press event, highlighting their embrace of failure, their desire to take on crazy moonshots etc...but its all in the context of quarterly reports. Something has to give.
> The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
Isn't the whole idea of a "moonshot", in this context, a project that has both a long window before any payoff, and a high risk of failure. So isn't this a very much "water is wet" story?
If you're familiar with the internals of Google (or have ever worked there), then you wouldn't even be slightly surprised by the content of this article or the ever present stream of product failures from Google. In fact, if you're aware, then you know things are likely to remain this way until something is done about all the BS present internally.
You see the "difficult to work-- FOR" and almost (or all out) sociopathic leaders being outed to some extent in the last year or so: commonplace. That is, Google likes to position itself as being above such stupidity, but if you listen to what they say more carefully, you see this is their default/go-to strategy. That is, they explicitly seek out such personalities (similar to many VCs), as they believe (based on "data") that it's what's more likely to lead to success.
Also, while it would be easy to believe Google is all about the "moon shots" they like touting/hyping (especially given how much money they are dumping in that direction), if you look at who they are putting in key positions, and how everything is setup, you immediately realize that (regardless of what they are doing) it will all likely go nowhere.
Something is very strange about that place. It's like they have no brain. It's like they are just outright stupid. Which I suppose is hard to say (and have believed), especially after years of hype (and supporting anecdotes) about its exceptionally talented pool of employees.
Essentially, it often seems like a sea of INTJs who like to parade around as though they know what to do with data (and are above bias and feeding into their own BS, because they are "data-driven"), but that at the end of the day are just going based on whim/gut, one which is more self-centered and out of touch than "in tune with" and reflective of the world at large (or where it's going).
I suppose if you spin around in your own shht enough, and surround yourself with more of-- yourself-- then eventually, you'll fall into line believing your own BS and that you must be right.
I remember when I was at Google for a short time in 2010. The place was a source of endless annoyance and irritation. The field was wide open, and it was all there for the taking, but then they just consistently and continually kept making the dumbest decisions. And they'd defend those decisions as though they were God almighty and immune to being wrong. It was the greatest consistent stream of stupidity I had ever seen. And by the looks of it, nothing has really changed. It's just been shht, then more shht, then more BS trying to explain away the shht, as though shht isn't what it is.
It's not that they "fail often due to releasing more and sooner" or "see something beyond the field of view of many;" it's that they just plain failed and it was most likely due to stupidity/credentials (you heard what I said) being heard over repeated statements of what made more sense (or of what would be more likely to go somewhere). Also, that failure that looks like a half-assed piece of crap likely was likely 2 years (or more) in the making, rather than the 6-8 weeks it seems went into it.
It's just shht every time, and as soon as you step into realizing it, you'll see that it's always just more shht from them. Their only successes (even in their "main" business) have come from the competition "falling off" (F'ing themselves over), rather than from them releasing things that are worthwhile or better.
The place was extremely infuriating to me, and I couldn't wait to leave. I was in silent shock the majority of the time I was there, and it seems that even though 6+ years have gone by, not much has changed!
I'll say it outright and in plain English: the "almighty" Google-- the almighty enterprise of innovation-- the almighty force for pushing the web/world forward-- is completely full of shht! They couldn't put out an innovative (or even just quality) product to save their lives! If anything surfaces from them that's not more garbage, then it was likely from an acquisition. And even then, it seems they are F'ing even those avenues up more frequently as time goes by.
Because everyone always has to be shipping and disrupting! Big Business! Product! Sales!
Who's to blame?!
Attention, Decision, Interest, Action. AIDA.
We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? (second prize is a set of steak knives.)
Third prize is you're fired.
These are The New Leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they're gold. And you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you would be throwing them away. They're for closers.
It doesn't, but if Google keeps feeding moonshot stories to the press, they should expect the press to circle back and see if there is any follow-through.
If Google X is really just a nerd-PR exercise, let's call it that.
[+] [-] flexie|9 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car
Tesla has more than 100,000 model S driving around and in just 7 months their auto pilots have already surpassed the km driven by Google for the past 7 years by almost a factor 100 (roughly 200M km). That is real use in many places, situations and weathers, not just test drives in California.
I realise it's not apples to apples and that Google's cars may be more autonomous for now. But with the numbers stacked against it like that I doubt it will be long before Tesla's auto pilot is vastly superior.
As I see it, given the lack of a Google car, they will have to team up with a major car company to get enough cars out there. And that requires a more elegant hardware solution than what they currently put on the rooftops.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/231097-tesla-records-its-...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors
[+] [-] haberman|9 years ago|reply
I think that is an understatement. This video shows why staying in your lane on a highway (what Tesla autopilot does) and dealing with city streets are two just completely different things: https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=8m49s
I think Tesla has a ton of catching up to do to compete with where Google is right now.
[+] [-] samwillis|9 years ago|reply
That's not to say that tesla isn't developing full automation it's just that what they sell now is just clever branding on something you can get elsewhere.
[+] [-] kllrnohj|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|9 years ago|reply
Tesla (currently) has one radar, one camera and 4 short distance ultrasonic sensors. Google has LIDAR plus a lot more.
Tesla's suite may or may not be sufficient for operation. But for training, good data is critical.
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|9 years ago|reply
Additionally, I've read some really interesting articles about research other car manufacturers have done. For instance, Google has never tested in bad weather, but Ford has been working on self-driving cars that work in snow. And while Google just assumes the humans are meant to be 'along for the ride', Volkswagon did some really good UI work, in terms of figuring out how to make the car's actions predictable, and hence, less scary. (Essentially, the car indicated to the driver what it was about to do before it executed a maneuver.)
Google is really good at capitalizing on their self-driving car project for marketing purposes, but it's extremely unlikely it'll ever be a market leader.
[+] [-] advisedwang|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdorazio|9 years ago|reply
X, on the other hand, has been around for over 6 years now and as far as I know, its only marginal success to date has been Glass. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that X's success rate so far has been lower than many people expected.
[+] [-] WDCDev|9 years ago|reply
One thing did jump out at me in this article.
Mike Cassidy, who stepped down from Loon, ran the team “like a fire drill,” a former employee said.
I read this as, "Leadership likes to change its mind about direction and focus ... constantly". That's a recipe for disaster. Focus is key. You need to find the right direction as quick as possible, then execute.
[+] [-] karma_vaccum123|9 years ago|reply
It may sound hackneyed, but I believe necessity is the mother of invention and it doesn't seem there is that kind of motivation here...it feels forced.
[+] [-] mathattack|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danvoell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tkinom|9 years ago|reply
* Even if the projects get 10, 100 millions $ in revenue / profit, it is meaningless compare to billions in profit from search. The folks in those projects are not likely to benefit significantly from it.
* The smart folks probably know it. If they join the project (self driving car), some of motives are to learn as much as possible using Google's resources, name, connections and set it up for their own next venture.
[+] [-] jobu|9 years ago|reply
Reading this article makes me wonder if it was a good idea to put all of them into one division though. Even when you go in knowing a project is a long-shot it can be demoralizing when it fails. I can't imagine how hard it would be to work in a whole division of mostly failed projects.
[+] [-] taprun|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathan_f77|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cardine|9 years ago|reply
Instead of getting lean startups that have to move quickly because of resource scarcity you have bloated startups that feel no pressure to move quickly because of the unlimited resources they are receiving.
[+] [-] jakozaur|9 years ago|reply
It just operates on hype curve. GoogleX takes projects from "technological trigger" to "peak of inflated expectations": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|9 years ago|reply
- Verify/Life Sciences is failing pretty hard and has failed to develop any actual products. https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/28/google-life-sciences-exo...
- Glass is an absolute failure. I own one, I loved mine. It's still a failure.
- Gcam went to... Google Research? It went from moonshot R&D to normal R&D. That's not success.
- Google Brain... went to Research as well. And really, it is likely just a rebranded version of whatever DeepMind was already doing when Google bought them.
- Project Tango went from Google's moonshot R&D to Motorola's R&D (ATAP) which Google kept ownership of. That's also not success.
Android Wear, Flux, and Project Insight (Indoor Maps) probably all count as actual successes for X, but that's about it.
[+] [-] alecco|9 years ago|reply
Unsurprising. The valley (and tech in general) is forgetting it's power doesn't come from management and politics.
[+] [-] bbctol|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karma_vaccum123|9 years ago|reply
In a academic context, there is no subtext of creating products. Yeah, churning out papers is as contrived...but I still feel like the timelines in academia are more generous.
Google talks a good press event, highlighting their embrace of failure, their desire to take on crazy moonshots etc...but its all in the context of quarterly reports. Something has to give.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|9 years ago|reply
Isn't the whole idea of a "moonshot", in this context, a project that has both a long window before any payoff, and a high risk of failure. So isn't this a very much "water is wet" story?
[+] [-] baccheion|9 years ago|reply
If you're familiar with the internals of Google (or have ever worked there), then you wouldn't even be slightly surprised by the content of this article or the ever present stream of product failures from Google. In fact, if you're aware, then you know things are likely to remain this way until something is done about all the BS present internally.
You see the "difficult to work-- FOR" and almost (or all out) sociopathic leaders being outed to some extent in the last year or so: commonplace. That is, Google likes to position itself as being above such stupidity, but if you listen to what they say more carefully, you see this is their default/go-to strategy. That is, they explicitly seek out such personalities (similar to many VCs), as they believe (based on "data") that it's what's more likely to lead to success.
Also, while it would be easy to believe Google is all about the "moon shots" they like touting/hyping (especially given how much money they are dumping in that direction), if you look at who they are putting in key positions, and how everything is setup, you immediately realize that (regardless of what they are doing) it will all likely go nowhere.
Something is very strange about that place. It's like they have no brain. It's like they are just outright stupid. Which I suppose is hard to say (and have believed), especially after years of hype (and supporting anecdotes) about its exceptionally talented pool of employees.
Essentially, it often seems like a sea of INTJs who like to parade around as though they know what to do with data (and are above bias and feeding into their own BS, because they are "data-driven"), but that at the end of the day are just going based on whim/gut, one which is more self-centered and out of touch than "in tune with" and reflective of the world at large (or where it's going).
I suppose if you spin around in your own shht enough, and surround yourself with more of-- yourself-- then eventually, you'll fall into line believing your own BS and that you must be right.
I remember when I was at Google for a short time in 2010. The place was a source of endless annoyance and irritation. The field was wide open, and it was all there for the taking, but then they just consistently and continually kept making the dumbest decisions. And they'd defend those decisions as though they were God almighty and immune to being wrong. It was the greatest consistent stream of stupidity I had ever seen. And by the looks of it, nothing has really changed. It's just been shht, then more shht, then more BS trying to explain away the shht, as though shht isn't what it is.
It's not that they "fail often due to releasing more and sooner" or "see something beyond the field of view of many;" it's that they just plain failed and it was most likely due to stupidity/credentials (you heard what I said) being heard over repeated statements of what made more sense (or of what would be more likely to go somewhere). Also, that failure that looks like a half-assed piece of crap likely was likely 2 years (or more) in the making, rather than the 6-8 weeks it seems went into it.
It's just shht every time, and as soon as you step into realizing it, you'll see that it's always just more shht from them. Their only successes (even in their "main" business) have come from the competition "falling off" (F'ing themselves over), rather than from them releasing things that are worthwhile or better.
The place was extremely infuriating to me, and I couldn't wait to leave. I was in silent shock the majority of the time I was there, and it seems that even though 6+ years have gone by, not much has changed!
I'll say it outright and in plain English: the "almighty" Google-- the almighty enterprise of innovation-- the almighty force for pushing the web/world forward-- is completely full of shht! They couldn't put out an innovative (or even just quality) product to save their lives! If anything surfaces from them that's not more garbage, then it was likely from an acquisition. And even then, it seems they are F'ing even those avenues up more frequently as time goes by.
Google Photos: acquisition!
Google DeepMind: acquisition!
Google ATAP: acquisition!
Etc.
They've got nothing.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] khnd|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wonkaWonka|9 years ago|reply
Who's to blame?!
Attention, Decision, Interest, Action. AIDA.
We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? (second prize is a set of steak knives.)
Third prize is you're fired.
These are The New Leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they're gold. And you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you would be throwing them away. They're for closers.
[+] [-] karma_vaccum123|9 years ago|reply
If Google X is really just a nerd-PR exercise, let's call it that.