Comments for thinking

Comment on How to fix Google by Tyler

Tyler — Wed, 04 May 2011 05:53:34 +0000

@Marcio, the idea is indeed not based on internal competition (although that is very interesting) but about an obligation-free sense of cooperation. I wish I could offer some examples of companies that have really done this, but I’ve never seen it before. A halfway example could be the partnerships that go into McDonald’s. Many McDonald’s locations are independently owned, but they must abide by many rules to use the brand. I am guessing that McDonald’s makes custom deals with all its suppliers to provide a certain quality of materials at low prices. In this case, we could sort of consider the suppliers and independent owners as a cooperation of companies.

However, I don’t like that example because it is very hierarchical. Yes, search and ads are the core values Google provides. But there are many pieces that could live independently. YouTube can work well independently. Android is another example. Other elements are probably less profitable, such as maps, gmail, and chrome, but they all have very strong meaning to users, and could contribute strongly to the Google brand. I think each project, with much less formal obligation to the others, could open itself up to more innovation. With innovation comes risk of failure, but also great reward of paradigm-shifting ideas, the ones that seem obvious in retrospect, but crazy before you actually do them.

Comment on The traffic bible and universal morality by Tyler

Tyler — Wed, 04 May 2011 05:42:08 +0000

Hi @Stjepan, thanks for your thoughts on this. You make some good points about the deeply relative and subjective nature of this topic. I think we both agree that there is a lot we don’t know.

Comment on The traffic bible and universal morality by Stjepan

Stjepan — Tue, 03 May 2011 17:42:33 +0000

Nice post, I like honest atheists (if I’m wrong I apologize), you people at least recognize the fact that you don’t already know everything. And because I like you I am going, or at least try, to prove you wrong.
First I want to make clear that we operate on a different set of assumptions, and just the way you do not prove why the principle of mediocrity should stand, I will not prove mine.

This said I shall now make my argument.

It is obvious that there are many different moralities and it is also undeniable that they have changed over time (evolved if you prefer). It also seems that we have no useful way to compare moralities, and all atempts to do so seem to ultimately come down to personal preference (the epitome of relativity). From this it is absolutely impossible to infer the existence of universal or absolute morality.

But, we need morality to make order in a society, and we need universally applicable morality to keep order across many interacting societies.

Thus we conclude that humans are incapable of finding the right solutions for their problems, or in short are stupid (luckily we already knew this).

God, being merciful and not wanting us to break our heads with too much thinking, gave us exactly what we needed, universally applicable and amazingly simple morality: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

This two commandments are, the axioms of the part of God’s Law that was given to us. I do not say that this is the entire Law, because, obviously, humans are too stupid to understand it, and God, being all-knowing, doesn’t want to confuse us. And besides, I think this is quite enough.

P.S. Sorry for my bad english (greetings from Croatia). I really did my best to keep it short, but I obviously didn’t succeed, sorry for that too.

Comment on How to fix Google by Tyler

Tyler — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 04:51:37 +0000

I’m proposing that they share profits. Currently a very small number of revenue streams covers all projects at Google. They can continue to do this with multiple companies. It is unusual, but there’s nothing to make this impossible. The benefit would be that each individual company could have a clarified and more focused sense of purpose and identity. Their value, within a set of sister companies, need not be value in direct revenue, but in what they contribute to the system as a whole. For example, gmail can be seen as an independently great product that contributes to customer loyalty. In this case, you could view customer loyalty as a value (although gmail also offers rooms for ads as well).

Comment on How to fix Google by Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 03:38:33 +0000

sounds like Virgin’s model

Comment on How to fix Google by Marcio Baraco

Marcio Baraco — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 02:43:56 +0000

I’ve seen “break it down into sub-companies” suggested for many large cos, but the rationale is usually that competition amongst them will enhance performance. You seem to be suggesting not to actually break into competing companies, but into a partnership.

Sounds like an idea worth discussing.

I would ask, though: What is the difference between a partnership and a company? I mean, i would guess there are whole teams into Google dedicated to telling everyone you don’t need to feel responsible for the cruft and that you should feel free to propose ideas that do not fit into the overall scheme. The cruft does not exist in small companies, but add one company dedicated to better coordination between the other companies and it all ends up exactly where it began. It might even become a layer of meta-cruft or something…

Comment on How to fix Google by Quora

Quora — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 01:28:38 +0000

What does Larry Page need to do to bring Google back to its startup roots?…

Here is a similar answer: http://tylerneylon.com/b/archives/118...

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Comment on How to fix Google by human mathematics

human mathematics — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:46:43 +0000

How could they subsidise the non-revenue-generating bits if they broke the company up?

Ads pay the bills while they look for the next PageRank.

Comment on Crazy Cut Solutions by Tyler

Tyler — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 06:18:28 +0000

Hi Nick – I’ve been focusing on building another game first. Most people I’ve shown these puzzles to have really liked them, so this is high on my list of next app ideas, but I don’t have a definite timeline for it.

Comment on Crazy Cut Solutions by Nick

Nick — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 02:11:26 +0000

Hi Tyler. Have you had any more thoughts on making an app?

After staring at #4 for a bit and making a lucky guess about the top right-hand corner I actually loaded it up in an image editor and used the “fill tool” to color the sections (after adding the diagonals).

Having the whole shape divided into triangles at the start might be too easy, but being able to add sections and color as you go might be good for the harder puzzles.