Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

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How many quarters after Q1 2016 till Marissa Mayer is unemployed?
	1 or fewer
	2
	4
	Her job is guaranteed; what are you even talking about?

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Google Maps disrupted the gently caress out of GPS Navigation thingies for cars

# ? Sep 18, 2016 07:18

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# ? May 22, 2024 16:09

Dr. Fishopolis: Aug 31, 2004; ROBOT

MeruFM posted:

Google disrupted how the internet worked
Before google, it was literally AOL keywords or you type web addresses manually.

Also they did not have a very good business revenue until Schmidt went full-on ads

oh my god there are people in the world too young to remember the internet before google.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 07:31

Dr. Fishopolis: Aug 31, 2004; ROBOT

FilthyImp posted:

Google Maps disrupted the gently caress out of GPS Navigation thingies for cars

I don't know that sudden, iterative progress counts as disruption. Moreover, they weirdly never licensed it to car manufacturers, or car manufacturers didn't want to pay for it, so we still live in a world with lovely rear end car GPS systems even though everyone's phone has a better one.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 07:34

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

oh my god there are people in the world too young to remember the internet before google.

Ooh! Google's implementation of search logic is worth mentioning, since Google does a decent job of figuring out what your gobbledegook actually means, or is able to understand "How much is 10cm in in" and in some cases just spit ab answer at you without needing a visit to MetricConversion.net

# ? Sep 18, 2016 07:35

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

oh my god there are people in the world too young to remember the internet before google.

I no joke gave up on the internet for years in the mid-'90s because I couldn't for the life of me find enough to engage me there with a combination of Altavista, Lycos, Yahoo, and others I no longer remember. After getting back online, for years after that IRC was most of what I would do there.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 07:35

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

^^^
The Internet was a weird little place back then. Half the fun was finding these weird little corners of it, but I think it's easy to forget just how limited it was due to non-broadband speeds and sub-Ghz computer processors. poo poo like waiting for your rad as gently caress GIFs to render, or being unable to run AIM, ICQ, your browser and WinAmp simultaneously really boxed you in. It was really a communication or information resource first.

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

I don't know that sudden, iterative progress counts as disruption.

I'm pretty sure the stock prices for Garmin and TomTom dropped something like 20% when Google announced they were making maps a free, baked in component of Android.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 09:05

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Altavista has been doing exactly what google did for a few years at least, except they didn't have as smart of page rank algorithm. Had some advantages early on though, like you could search for text that was nearby something else, to ensure it isn't completely unrelated. Google nowadays will return pages that don't even contain the searched words

For Maps vs GPS, there's been plenty of maps on phones/PDAs before Android even existed, it's just that none of those reached a critical mass, Maps still suck as navigation though, I have no idea how they still haven't figured out loving tunnels while Here manages them perfectly.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 09:24

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 218 days!

Metacrawler was where it was at before Google.

Basically there were a handful of search engines that had algorithms and user experiences that were at least marginally better than Yahoo, etc. Google did it the best, and then kept doing it better and better.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 09:28

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

mobby_6kl posted:

For Maps vs GPS, there's been plenty of maps on phones/PDAs before Android even existed, it's just that none of those reached a critical mass

Well yeah, you could buy a Thomas Guide app for your WindowsCE phone and hope that it was recent enough or smart enough to get you where you were going... Or hope you didn't need some dumb add-on.

Or you could pay Verizon 's lovely monthly fee (or $5 day-use fee charged conveniently to your account) to use their wap-driven, weirdly coded GPS Nav program that didn't have accurate maps.

Or just use your phone's wireless data plan/WiFi to call up basically a web page to point you where you need to go. Simple.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 09:36

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Or just install Microsoft Streets and Trips on your laptop!

# ? Sep 18, 2016 10:54

Subjunctive: Sep 12, 2006; ✨sparkle and shine✨

MeruFM posted:

Google disrupted how the internet worked
Before google, it was literally AOL keywords or you type web addresses manually.

There were search engines before Google. Lycos, Altavista, Hotbot, etc.

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

I don't know that sudden, iterative progress counts as disruption. Moreover, they weirdly never licensed it to car manufacturers, or car manufacturers didn't want to pay for it, so we still live in a world with lovely rear end car GPS systems even though everyone's phone has a better one.

My car uses Google maps, though it does custom navigation tweaks so it doesn't pick routes quite as well.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 12:41

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

oh my god there are people in the world too young to remember the internet before google.

^^

I remember when Yahoo! was a hand-curated list at Stanford. I did indeed stop buying GPSes after my first smartphone, even though the UI on Google Maps was and is considerably worse than on my last GPS. (Why, oh why, does Maps auto-fill include, high on the list, streets 400 miles away from me? Once I even got a street in London.) Basically, a bad free solution will often replace a good paid solution, and this, my children, is disruption at its finest.

Mode Media goes boom,, leaving its bloggers unpaid.

quote:

Over the past couple of years, a herd of unicorns � the tech industry�s term for private companies worth more than a billion dollars � have thundered through Silicon Valley. This week, one of them stumbled out of the pack.

Brisbane�s Mode Media has abruptly shut down, leaving bloggers unpaid, investors frustrated and rumors swirling in its wake.

The company, a publisher of lifestyle sites and operator of an ad network which placed big brands� campaigns on smaller websites, told investors and employees Thursday that it was closing its doors after failing to find a buyer or line up financing.

Bankruptcy appears to be a possibility. It would be the first so-called unicorn based in the Bay Area to face such a fate. While others have been gobbled up in acquisitions or forced to accept lower valuations in financing rounds, none of the companies publicly tracked on lists of unicorns has simply gone under.

Only one small part of the business, a provider of private social networks called Ning, will continue to operate, thanks to a deal with a company run by a Mode board member.

Samir Arora, a showy entrepreneur who made his name by selling a software company to IBM during the dot-com boom, started Mode as Glam.com in 2003. The startup became a publisher for fashion and lifestyle bloggers, many of whom now allege the company failed to pay them for ads it ran on their sites.

As Glam, the company sought female audiences with a pink logo and splashed the color on its office walls, and Arora dressed in colorful ties or pocket squares to match. After the company changed its name to 2014 in Mode, courting wider audiences, it adopted a black-and-white design, and Arora adopted an all-black wardrobe, Forbes reported last year.

The company raised at least $224.6 million from 10 investors including Accel Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, German company Hubert Burda Media and others. It also received debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank.

As talk of an initial public offering grew, Mode acquired social network Ning in 2011. The deal brought Marc Andreessen, a Ning co-founder, onto Mode Media�s board of directors.

An August 2013 round of funding valued the company at $1 billion. According to a report in Business Insider, the company filed secretly for an initial public offering that year, but never followed through.

The company had offices around the world, including Los Angeles, New York, London, Mumbai and Tokyo. A search on LinkedIn shows 361 people who list Mode Media as their current employer. Employees were not paid severance, according to one person who was laid off Saturday.

I vaguely remember hearing about Ning. Maybe even twice.

Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Sep 18, 2016

# ? Sep 18, 2016 17:38

FlamingLiberal: Jan 18, 2009; Would you like to play a game?

How dare you guys forget AskJeeves

# ? Sep 18, 2016 17:53

feedmegin: Jul 30, 2008

nm posted:

Not really. There were a fair number of search engines that sorta kinda did what google did, just very poorly.

Also gopher! If you werent around for the 90s Internet maybe be a bit cautious before spouting off about it itt :shobon:

Early Google was cool (no ads!) but it wasn't some revelation.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 18:00

Soy Division: Aug 12, 2004

Yeah I remember when Google was a scrappy upstart and I was reluctant to use it because its name sounded dumb. It really was better, though.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 18:45

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

And most browsers didn't have a way to search straight from the browser window. Some search engines of the time looked like msn.com does now; that didn't help when everyone was still on dialup. Google pretty much nailed it with "logo, seach field, two buttons".

# ? Sep 18, 2016 19:10

El Generico: Feb 3, 2009; Birds revere you and consider you one of their own.

You are welcome in their holy places.

Back when using search engines was a skill, and you had to do it a certain way to get the kind of results you wanted. AskJeeves seemed like the more user friendly way to go but half the time you wouldn't get what you actually wanted.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 19:27

Shifty Pony: Dec 28, 2004; Up ta somethin'

Hodgepodge posted:

Metacrawler was where it was at before Google.

Basically there were a handful of search engines that had algorithms and user experiences that were at least marginally better than Yahoo, etc. Google did it the best, and then kept doing it better and better.

Google did it best but they also prevented anyone else from doing anything at all resembling what the hey did. Pagerank is patented in a way that effectively locks down the entire idea of "rate pages according to the rating of pages which link to them" which feeds light into the idea of "pages which are linked to often and/or by sites which are linked to often are more likely to be useful than those that are linked to rarely and/or by other rarely linked sites".

It is really up in the air whether that patent would survive a serious challenge today but it expires in a year so I don't think anyone is going to bother with it.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 19:36

Subjunctive: Sep 12, 2006; ✨sparkle and shine✨

As I understand it, classic PageRank as described in the (pretty accessible) paper isn't part of Google's algorithm set any longer either. It's horrendously susceptible to abuse.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 19:43

Marenghi: Oct 16, 2008; Don't trust the liberals,
they will betray you

I've seen a lot of wannabee entrepreneurs and future millionaire CEO's posting this as how aa great example of how a CV should be done.

A lot of design over content. Her most recent displayed accomplishments were the buyout of Tumblr and leading the buyout under Verizon.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 22:14

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Liquid Communism posted:

Don't forget the part where Uber's standards for what vehicles they'll accept their drivers using are also both a lot higher than most conventional taxi fleets, and not maintained or provided by Uber themselves! It's pretty easy to get a nicer experience when you're not paying for your fleet, after all!

Uber's whole -deal-, beyond the app-based hailing and surge pricing which are legitimately good ideas in the taxi business, is externalizing the vast majority of the costs of being a taxi company onto their drivers, and burning investor money like nitromethane to prop up this unsustainable growth and business model until they drive their competition out.

I wonder if we could have some sort of state subsidized transportation service which could tax the wealthy and then spend their money to provide a good service to both employees and passengers.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 22:22

nm: Jan 28, 2008; "I saw Minos the Space Judge holding a golden sceptre and passing sentence upon the Martians. There he presided, and around him the noble Space Prosecutors sought the firm justice of space law."

Gail Wynand posted:

Yeah I remember when Google was a scrappy upstart and I was reluctant to use it because its name sounded dumb. It really was better, though.

I am embarrassed to say that my mother, who wasn't even that young at the time (but was why we had internet in the early 90s as well, so I guess she was ahead of her time), introduced me to google. And I was skeptical too (how can I get things done without anything on the website but a search box?), but lo and behold it was better than the rest.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 22:28

Tars Tarkas: Apr 13, 2003; Rock the Mok

A nasty woman, I think you should try is, Jess.

Arsenic Lupin posted:

I vaguely remember hearing about Ning. Maybe even twice.

Ning became really big with the looney tunes rightwing crowd because it let you set up social networks that seniors could navigate and complain about how the Kenyan Muslim is destroying America. There were other groups on the fringe left, but not nearly as large in scope, and none of them were backed by well-funded groups like some of the rightwing stuff was. Many of the groups have since left Ning for Facebook (or just fell apart entirely), though there are probably still some around.

Subjunctive posted:

As I understand it, classic PageRank as described in the (pretty accessible) paper isn't part of Google's algorithm set any longer either. It's horrendously susceptible to abuse.

I don't think they've updated it in years, they also have gotten more coy about when they update their search algorithm because of people trying to game the system for their web marketing scam sites.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 23:06

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Tars Tarkas posted:

I don't think they've updated it in years, they also have gotten more coy about when they update their search algorithm because of people trying to game the system for their web marketing scam sites.

Is there any reason to believe that's Mayer's actual CV and not somebody's idea of a joke? Look at the pie chart.

Google is constantly iterating the search algorithm, and that was, when I was there, the most tightly locked-down part of the company. (X is probably more locked down now; I wouldn't know.) Whether or not PageRank is still in use, a *lot* more secret sauce got added over the years.

# ? Sep 18, 2016 23:25

Shifty Pony: Dec 28, 2004; Up ta somethin'

I was more making a point that Google, Facebook, etc are as much a product of perfect timing and luck as they are of good business models or visionary discoveries. Attempting to replicate their success by attempting to act the same way that they did is futile unless you have a time machine.

# ? Sep 19, 2016 00:02

Space Gopher: Jul 31, 2006; BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Is there any reason to believe that's Mayer's actual CV and not somebody's idea of a joke? Look at the pie chart.

Look at the bottom right - it's "made with admiration" by a company that makes CV templates that look like that.

# ? Sep 19, 2016 00:10

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

OwlFancier posted:

I wonder if we could have some sort of state subsidized transportation service which could tax the wealthy and then spend their money to provide a good service to both employees and passengers.

That sounds democratic, man. The new hotness is in aristocracy, don't you know?

# ? Sep 19, 2016 00:13

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

I don't know that sudden, iterative progress counts as disruption.

Disruption is part of the iterative process of technology companies creating tech kits for other businesses.

# ? Sep 19, 2016 00:40

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Is there any reason to believe that's Mayer's actual CV and not somebody's idea of a joke? Look at the pie chart.

Executives, especially famous ones, don't need CVs for the simple reason that they don't submit job applications. There are specialized executive headhunter firms that work directly with candidates and try to hawk them before companies needing as such.

# ? Sep 19, 2016 01:36

pr0zac: Jan 18, 2004; ~*lukecagefan69*~; Pillbug

nm posted:

I am embarrassed to say that my mother, who wasn't even that young at the time (but was why we had internet in the early 90s as well, so I guess she was ahead of her time), introduced me to google.

Why is this embarrassing?

Shifty Pony posted:

I was more making a point that Google, Facebook, etc are as much a product of perfect timing and luck as they are of good business models

I think I disagree with this. Both understood their audience and use case better than any other company did and have executed more competently than any recent up and comers since. There were dozens of other companies trying to do the same thing as each at the same time and there continues to be new attempted competitors to each to this day. Timing was relevant, but not very important and luck doesn't exist.

quote:

or visionary discoveries. Attempting to replicate their success by attempting to act the same way that they did is futile unless you have a time machine.

This however is completely true. Both were better implementations of previous ideas not brand new ones and while they have good lessons for other companies, cargo culting is never successful. See also: those people who decided being an rear end in a top hat is the pathway to business success because Jobs was a dick to everyone.

# ? Sep 19, 2016 01:51

nm: Jan 28, 2008; "I saw Minos the Space Judge holding a golden sceptre and passing sentence upon the Martians. There he presided, and around him the noble Space Prosecutors sought the firm justice of space law."

pr0zac posted:

Why is this embarrassing?

Because despite being an 16 yo internet nerd back then, my mom who needs help setting up her printer knew google was better well before I did.

# ? Sep 19, 2016 01:55

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

pr0zac posted:

Why is this embarrassing?

I think I disagree with this. Both understood their audience and use case better than any other company did and have executed more competently than any recent up and comers since. There were dozens of other companies trying to do the same thing as each at the same time and there continues to be new attempted competitors to each to this day. Timing was relevant, but not very important and luck doesn't exist.

At the time Google got started, the conventional wisdom was that the web-search space was closed and it was far too late for anything else to come into competition.

# ? Sep 19, 2016 03:15

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Space Gopher posted:

Look at the bottom right - it's "made with admiration" by a company that makes CV templates that look like that.

Is there a single company on the planet who would even let someone with a CV looking like that in for an initial interview? Somehow out of everything I've read in this thread it's this that bothers me most. The mind boggles.

# ? Sep 19, 2016 04:14

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

DACK FAYDEN posted:

Is there a single company on the planet who would even let someone with a CV looking like that in for an initial interview? Somehow out of everything I've read in this thread it's this that bothers me most. The mind boggles.

Probably a hip multi-platform media startup (they've got coverage in Snapchat, YikYak, Twitter and WhatsApp!).

Or basically a place where style rules over substance.

The What My Day Is Like section is total rear end though.

# ? Sep 19, 2016 04:34

archangelwar: Oct 28, 2004; Teaching Moments

DACK FAYDEN posted:

Is there a single company on the planet who would even let someone with a CV looking like that in for an initial interview? Somehow out of everything I've read in this thread it's this that bothers me most. The mind boggles.

Yeah starting to see a lot more of them, but it makes sense in more creative disciplines. Fucks with a lot of software that auto loads databases from the text if the design is too gaudy. Doesn't bother me much but it is not a positive either.

# ? Sep 19, 2016 04:55

9-Volt Assault: Jan 27, 2007; Beter twee tetten in de hand dan tien op de vlucht.

Marenghi posted:

I've seen a lot of wannabee entrepreneurs and future millionaire CEO's posting this as how aa great example of how a CV should be done.

A lot of design over content. Her most recent displayed accomplishments were the buyout of Tumblr and leading the buyout under Verizon.

I would throw it away just for using a pie chart.

# ? Sep 19, 2016 09:37

Dead Cosmonaut: Nov 14, 2015; by FactsAreUseless

The CV's use of purple and grainy background makes me irrationally angry

# ? Sep 19, 2016 09:42

nachos: Jun 27, 2004; Wario Chalmers! WAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Why the gently caress is being a graphic designer being pushed as a requirement for applying to a job now. Nobody has time for this poo poo. Unless you're one of the ones who can afford to pay for CV templates while unemployed I guess.

# ? Sep 19, 2016 11:42

fatherboxx: Mar 25, 2013

Marenghi posted:

I've seen a lot of wannabee entrepreneurs and future millionaire CEO's posting this as how aa great example of how a CV should be done.

A lot of design over content. Her most recent displayed accomplishments were the buyout of Tumblr and leading the buyout under Verizon.

"Showing Yahoo! employees that their work has meaning"
This is just cruel but maybe ok if that CV is intended for a prison counselor position?

# ? Sep 19, 2016 11:57

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# ? May 22, 2024 16:09

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

nachos posted:

Why the gently caress is being a graphic designer being pushed as a requirement for applying to a job now. Nobody has time for this poo poo. Unless you're one of the ones who can afford to pay for CV templates while unemployed I guess.

American recruiters are the most entitled pieces of poo poo on the planet. Too many of them only have experience with an economy where people will jump through any hoops to get a job with them. Then they whine about not finding qualified people: you've successfully filtered away anyone with substance, dumbasses!

# ? Sep 19, 2016 13:12

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