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Re:This year’s Founders' Letter by apsec112 on Thursday April 28, 2016 @06:47PM (#11592437)
This makes me nervous about Google's long-term prospects. There just aren't any new ideas here. Pichai has been very focused on mobile, and that's not a bad idea exactly, but it's just riding a wave created by Apple almost ten years ago. He's now starting to talk about virtual assistants, but that was kicked off by Siri's launch, almost five years ago. To have long-term success, Google will need to develop genuinely new ideas, ones that not everybody has already heard about. You can't be the biggest player in technology if you never take any risks.

(disclaimer: former Google employee here)

Re:This year’s Founders' Letter by educar on Thursday April 28, 2016 @07:56PM (#11592793)
What is pichai's claim to fame? It's very hard to figure out what exactly he has done to suddenly rise up to the top. Just a very likable person? I am yet to see anything visionary from him.
Re:This year’s Founders' Letter by sievebrain on Friday April 29, 2016 @10:06AM (#11595773)
Being a competent manager. Sort of like Tim Cook. He managed Chrome well, and then Chrome and Android, and now Google as a whole.

Visionaries are quite rare and unfortunately sometimes their visions aren't actually that great. See: VicG and Google+. Vic was a visionary who had unconditional support from the top, but in the end it wasn't enough to have a big impact.

Re:This year’s Founders' Letter by btian on Friday April 29, 2016 @01:46AM (#11593955)
I think Google Toolbar was his idea.
Re:This year’s Founders' Letter by apsec112 on Friday April 29, 2016 @03:31AM (#11594281)
Per Wikipedia, Toolbar was launched in 2000 but Pichai joined in 2004.
Re:This year’s Founders' Letter by sytelus on Friday April 29, 2016 @03:15AM (#11594221)
I'm actually worried about short term issues in Google search. After the introduction of "AI" in to search, the keywords are far more frequently being ignored and results are astonishingly less relevant than about a year ago in my experience. There also isn't any easy way to force the keyword in queries because "+" operator has been reassigned to Google+.
Re:This year’s Founders' Letter by cma on Friday April 29, 2016 @03:27AM (#11594271)
Quote the word by itself.