Whew boy you hit the nail on the head. Google just seems to be aimless at this point, and now with the layoffs (despite their immense profitability) they're going to have a much tougher time hiring and retaining top talent.
I don't understand why the board hasn't ousted Sundar yet -- has he even spearheaded a single successful initiative that wasn't sunsetted within a few years?
Seems like you could make an LLM generate product ideas and it would be about equally effective.
This is why I think Google is in real trouble. They really don't recognize that they could fail. It's kinda like you can't smell yourself and don't realize you stink, until everyone leaves the party because of it.
> Yahoo's: had an offer from Microsoft for ~$33B in 2004 or so, declined, and later hired Marissa Mayer. Eventually sold to Verizon for ~$4B.
The former Yahoo assets that Verizon didn't purchase -- Yahoo Japan, plus a large stake in Alibaba, and several other investments -- were liquidated for a ~$40B total return to shareholders over the course of several years. So combined that's a 33% increase over Microsoft's offer. Obviously not a great return over like 15 years, but far from "worst board decision of all time" level either.
Microsoft's 2004 board, on the other hand, I have to wonder what they were thinking...
Microsoft's GitHub, which is apparently at the forefront of the "LLM revolution" with Copilot, also announced significant cost-cuts. What's your point?
How so? I don't see any examples of top talent being fired (barring the scuffles at Twitter, but that isn't FAANG). Most people on my LinkedIn feed being let go are new grads or middle management who ostensibly didn't perform to company expectations of perfromance.
