Two executives in charge of Google's most turbulent products are leaving this week.
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Google loses two execs: one for Messaging and Workspace, another for Payments
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Somebody mentioned Trillian in the Ars comments the other day, and it cracks me up that there used to be a company that thought it made good sense to offer a semi-common interface with and between many other companies' messaging apps.
Here in 2022, where everything is dumb and nothing matters, one of the titans of the industry has several different messaging apps entirely under its own roof, and it can't seem to be bothered to make sure they can talk to each other.
I'm sure another, more differenter figurehead will fix it.
Here in 2022, where everything is dumb and nothing matters, one of the titans of the industry has several different messaging apps entirely under its own roof, and it can't seem to be bothered to make sure they can talk to each other.
I'm sure another, more differenter figurehead will fix it.
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It’ll be the same organization climbing, self-serving corporate hierarchy and I bet all the same problems will happen all over again.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
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Exactly. The same. Freaking. Show. Always. Every single time. Google has a good product, but the manager in charge of it leaves suddenly so it never goes anywhere because they couldn't be bothered to set up a plan of succession.
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Both of these executive's last had engineering experience decades ago. I do wonder if a lot of the missteps that Google has made around these products are largely related to having the wrong skillset in charge.
I know nothing of what plagued these products development, and I'm completely talking out my ass, but I do think Google would do well to put engineers with more recent engineering experience into these leadership roles, not business/marketing people, if they want their products to launch well.
Google's engineering team is huge, and they have a lot of intelligent developers, and it is always shocking when products shit the bed and are buggy, missing features etc, and I just know that didn't come about as a result of a competent engineer helming the ship, but instead an out-of-touch marketing/business person saying it's good to go.
I know nothing of what plagued these products development, and I'm completely talking out my ass, but I do think Google would do well to put engineers with more recent engineering experience into these leadership roles, not business/marketing people, if they want their products to launch well.
Google's engineering team is huge, and they have a lot of intelligent developers, and it is always shocking when products shit the bed and are buggy, missing features etc, and I just know that didn't come about as a result of a competent engineer helming the ship, but instead an out-of-touch marketing/business person saying it's good to go.
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Fancy Internet Person
Ars Praefectus
Now who will cancel messaging apps? I fear they will be rudderless without their executives.
ETA: In sincerity, Google makes so much money on their ad business that the rest of the organization lacks any real direction.
Messaging is never going to be as big as advertising within Google. If it doesn't collect data for the ad business, support the ad business, or serve ads, it's an afterthought.
ETA: In sincerity, Google makes so much money on their ad business that the rest of the organization lacks any real direction.
Messaging is never going to be as big as advertising within Google. If it doesn't collect data for the ad business, support the ad business, or serve ads, it's an afterthought.
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Having the guy in charge of payments named "Bill Ready" is so on the nose I'd think it was a terrible DC comic adaptation.
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I'm an engineer, so I am biased, but I actually think a competent marketing person would absolutely hate the idea of fragmentation (all of the messaging apps) and removing features (the google pay debacle). If it confuses users, marketers should (and usually do) hate it. I think this was either a very bad engineering decision (simplify the apps or make them more single purpose? Who knows) or an MBA optimizing for EBITDA or some other BS.
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I look forward to Google Workspace Pay and Google Workspace Chat, which will be consumer products existing in parallel with just plain Google Workspace.
Also, be looking for the launch of Google Meat, their SaaS HR offering!
Also, be looking for the launch of Google Meat, their SaaS HR offering!
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Somehow when you are high enough up the corporate food chain, past performance doesn’t seem to matter much when jumping ship. Like if you were looking for a lower level leadership post to fill, would you prefer someone whose prior area of responsibility is a disjointed mess?
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Great Article thank you.... Would like to know who each of these people were working for and Who put them in these positions.... get them out in the daylight...
Better than that I would like to know the Executive managers over Each and Every one of the Messaging Failures and for Each and Every Payments Failures. Let's see if there are any common Executives holding this last Decade of idiocy...
Better than that I would like to know the Executive managers over Each and Every one of the Messaging Failures and for Each and Every Payments Failures. Let's see if there are any common Executives holding this last Decade of idiocy...
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Fancy Internet Person
Ars Praefectus
It's been reported that internal promotions are driven by metrics around user count and novelty and "growth".
The decisions are nonsense by normal standards, but they are planned to game/use an internal Google formula for success.
Maintaining a stable product doesn't get much weight, so this is the outcome.
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To put it differently, Google pays you to understand their formula.
GIGO. I can only fault any sub-C-level employee so much.
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I've been living under the Apple rock so I am completely clueless when it comes to Android.
If I'm in the US setting up my brand-new phone (Samsung? Pixel? Moto?) running the latest, WTF am I using to pay using my phone? I dont't have to use Google Pay, no? Or do I just tap by credit/debit card on the reader and call it a day?
Edit to add
If I'm outside the US where I belive most people use Android, what am I using? I suppose my question is, Is Google Pay that important other than Google being able to glean all that usage data?
If I'm in the US setting up my brand-new phone (Samsung? Pixel? Moto?) running the latest, WTF am I using to pay using my phone? I dont't have to use Google Pay, no? Or do I just tap by credit/debit card on the reader and call it a day?
Edit to add
If I'm outside the US where I belive most people use Android, what am I using? I suppose my question is, Is Google Pay that important other than Google being able to glean all that usage data?
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Fancy Internet Person
Ars Praefectus
Yes. At a company without the Google Advertising money machine, this would have been a major disaster that could bankrupt the company.
This also does not only affect Google. Google buys small companies regularly, and getting bought by Google or Facebook or Microsoft or Amazon is a reasonable tech company exit strategy.
But that means many promising products and technologies get lost and squandered by big companies that don't care about those products (because the product was never going to be as important as advertising, for example).
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Today I learned that there was somebody in charge of Messaging apps at Google. That comes as a huge surprise.
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I think the presumption there is that anyone cares if their areas of responsibility were a disjointed mess.
You perhaps forget that the #1 priority for any corporation is to make money. If the efforts of these executives facilitated that priority in a reasonable fashion, regardless of any collateral damage done by gross mismanagement of their departments, then one could say they were team players who helped the company reap profits and therefore were "good executives".
It may have been they kept their budgets low and didn't spend a lot on that mess. That mess was never going to bring in any significant revenue flow compared to their ad side services and probably their cloud services, too. So keeping operational expenses down by never producing anything worth while could be a real world strategy for executives who don't expect to be able to directly add to the bottom line.
I wish I could add a /s to that, but by all the evidence we've seen in the last decade or more, that's very likely how it works in corporate America these days.
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Time for the next manager to come in, kill the previous leader's pet projects and institute his own. So brace for a couple years of decrepit neglect of the product before the next one is announced and represents a full about face in strategy and design/philosophy for users. Then it will launch missing half the features users actually care about and come with no easy migration while simultaneously forcing users onto the new shiny. At which point it's time to wash rinse and repeat before any of the problems can actually be ironed out of the product
Also kind of get a kick that the "Next Billion Users" thing is a part of some executive's title given how much of an abject failure all of the initiatives have turned out to be. Android Go is dead and the only thing with a modicum of success was "new" Google Pay and only in the specific Indian market
Also kind of get a kick that the "Next Billion Users" thing is a part of some executive's title given how much of an abject failure all of the initiatives have turned out to be. Android Go is dead and the only thing with a modicum of success was "new" Google Pay and only in the specific Indian market
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Indeed! That Javier guy leaving is nothing, but Google should have showered Mr. Ready with dollar bills until he agreed to remain as head of their payments program.
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Don't forget that the workspace pay will feature a messagung app and workspace chat will be able to send money to your contacts. Neither system will of course be interoperable with the other.
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Fancy Internet Person
Ars Praefectus
When I get an email that says "Bill Ready", I do not want to open it.
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A month ago or so, I read over here how the execs were asking now enterprise Stadia team to catch up with Microsoft's share in cloud services in one year.
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One ringy dingy, two ringy dingy
A gracious good afternoon, this is Ms. Tomlin with the Telephone Company, have I reached the party to whom I am speaking. Mr. Bill Ready?
Mr. Ready we are contacting you due to a balance you owe us for 6 long distance calls to Topeka Kansas, when may we expect payment of the bill Bill?
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*Citation needed*
Google Pay (2.0?) says that isn’t always true, and it certainly can’t be true of many of their messaging apps just based on how many they have had.
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I don't understand how a company can be run that badly..
They are constantly breaking their own legs - i mean they probably got my payment data wherever i pay but nonetheless it's just shitty PR.
They are constantly breaking their own legs - i mean they probably got my payment data wherever i pay but nonetheless it's just shitty PR.
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Reliable internal sources have told me Google will be delegating messaging strategy to a room full of an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters due to high employee turnover. Asked about the transition Google's VP of human(oid) resources stated that "Even if we suffer 50% turnover of our infinite monkeys we will still be able to maintain a dedicated workforce of infinite monkeys. Our primary concern now is preventing the possibility of turnover of 50% of each individual monkey, which would be incredibly messy and leave us with a surplus of bananas"
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I don't get why Google Voice is always lumped into their messaging app of the week mess.. It is a completely different product then Messaging in the app sense of messaging. It is more of a call/sms router then a let's get everyone in the world to unify into app! It by far is the most stable of their "Beta" apps they acquired and still for now provides exactly what it is supposed to do back from the GrandCentral days.
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Agreed, at least that a competent marketer/marketing team would not allow this out the door (nor the revolving door of rebrands, a la Microsoft's similar strategy).
In fact, I would posit that this is the exact type of problem that focus groups (one tool marketing uses) are good for!
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Just pin wads of cash to the outside of your clothes, and pull off whatever you need.
Honestly, it would probably be safer.
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