Google 'Wasting' $16 Billion On Projects Headed Nowhere

hapworth writes "Google's engineering culture is 'wasting profits,' according to a new report published today that refers to $16 billion worth of Google projects that are going nowhere. According to the analysis, it's not that the ideas — such as the Kansas City Fiber Project, driverless cars, and other engineering efforts — are bad. Rather, it's Google's poor execution that is killing the company and adding billions of dollars worth of projects to its 'trash pile.'" On the obvious other hand, Google's done a lot of interesting things over the years that they've managed to make work well, and that strayed from their initial single-text-field search bar.

Re:killed?

[Opportunist]

But they could make (pinky to mouth) TRILLIONS!

Re:Searching for hoses

[Americano]

So he was saying that the internet really is a series of tubes?

"You're doing it wrong"

[exabrial]

The article nailed it. Clearly Google has strayed off the well tread path that is currently leading America into profit. Let me explain... First, Google needs to stop paying competitively and treat their workforce like crap, forcing it to unionize. Want to program for more than exactly 8 hours a day? Sorry can't, union contract says you can't work overtime, even if the project is late. You need that hard drive replaced in your computer? Sorry, you're an engineer, you don't hold membership in the IT HelpDesk union. That should succeed in bombing their profits enough to turn their labor force to "high quality" overseas workers in China, furthering unemployment and causing salary drop for Americans, while simultaneously training foreign workers to compete with American companies. Well anyway, they will soon discover that "high quality" chinese work is sort of an oxymoron, when the real problem was bureaucracy communication. So they need to hire a bunch of "contractors" in America to sort things out, because their normal Union labor force is too expensive. But alas, the contractors manage to deliver Google's on time, but off timber, and Google rolls it out to a spectacular ball of fail. But Google is "too big to fail" so Obama hands Google a nice "bail out" check to help them back to their feet... which was really distributed "by contract" to the executives, union labor force, and managers who delivered the project on time.

Shape up Google, you're doing it wrong!

Re:Its called risk and research.

[vijayiyer]

At $38B total revenue, that's less than $1.5B in total non-ad revenue, which is pretty much chump change.

Re:killed?

[NatasRevol]

By their names, duh.

Wave vs UNIX.

Re:killed?

[Oswald McWeany]

So there's this thing called "mass transit"...

Yeah. There's also a thing called winning lottery tickets.

Unfortunately I don't have access to either.

Re:Its called risk and research.

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding, I saw a $1.5B bill on the sidewalk the other day, but I had an armful of groceries and figured, "why bother?"