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Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by manningthegoose on Friday January 21, 2022 @11:42AM (#30026014)
It's possible that this project was created as a sort of L8+ engineer/manager retention program. There's been some reporting that high level execs have been leaving GAMMA companies for blockchain/crypto projects with high payout potential[1]. I wonder if Google is heading in this direction to toss these people a bone with the hopes they'll stay.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/20/technology/silicon-valley...

Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by PragmaticPulp on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:31PM (#30026830)
Doesn't really make sense. People leave for cryptocurrency projects because they’re promised a huge portion of the tokens or pre-mined coins. The idea is that they just need to make the project work well enough to hype enough people into buying the coins, at which point they can unload them at huge returns and then move on to the next crypto project to repeat the process.

It doesn’t make sense that Google would keep people around, pay them a lot of money, have them produce useless projects without the same asymmetric upside potential, all to keep them from going to companies that weren’t even competitors in the first place.

Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by vmception on Friday January 21, 2022 @01:22PM (#30027730)
I'm all for a huge premine and short vesting period, but Google is competing with Meta.

Google is Web 2.0 "get off my lawn" Mecca, they ignored this space until Meta.

People go there because they just caught on to the compensation packages and are going to catch on to Web3 compensation packages just as late. They already work on overly complicated stacks for useless cogs on useless products that Google shuts down randomly.

Have you seen what "backend" competency entails these days? Its absurd!

Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by dehrmann on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:58PM (#30027291)
> It doesn’t make sense that Google would keep people around, pay them a lot of money, have them produce useless projects

It might. This keeps these people out of the job market.

Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by jmeister on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:42PM (#30027035)
This is silly. There are many, many true believers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29140393

Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by NicoJuicy on Friday January 21, 2022 @01:24PM (#30027776)
That's just a comment to yourself without many commenters in it.

/S?

Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by jmeister on Friday January 21, 2022 @01:34PM (#30027921)
It links to this course syllabus from the top algorithmic game theorist in the world:

https://timroughgarden.github.io/fob21/l/l1.pdf

I doubt roughgarden is excited about blockchains just because he has some tokens

Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by NicoJuicy on Friday January 21, 2022 @03:38PM (#30029673)
Not exactly.

You mentioned that there are true believers, so i thought you referred to the commenters on the topic, since you linked to the HN topic and not the pdf associated with that topic.

Which is a bit confusing tbh :p

Definitely since you both submitted it, have the top comment on it and I don't know him.

Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by progbits on Friday January 21, 2022 @11:55AM (#30026227)
But why keep them if they are going to be doing useless work? In the hopes they get bored and move internally to different project?
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by xnx on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:19PM (#30026621)
Sometimes having someone do useless work for you is better than having them do useful work for a competitors.
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by uvdn7 on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:03PM (#30026357)
It’s not entirely useless. It costs big companies little to make this type of investments to avoid a potential big miss longer term (think of IBM, Nokia, etc.) Big companies are paranoid about missing the next big thing, so it makes sense to invest in a lot of things.
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by kaycebasques on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:00PM (#30026314)
Is GAMMA the new FAANG?

* Google

* Amazon

* Microsoft

* ???

* Apple

Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by lmkg on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:03PM (#30026352)
Facebook is now Meta, so the acronyms have to change.
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by monkeybutton on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:21PM (#30026651)
So MAANG. Add in Oracle at the end and you've got yourself a MAANGO!
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by chainwax on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:25PM (#30026728)
Oh cmon, MANGA is so much better
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by xen0 on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:06PM (#30026402)
Or maybe we just need a new company beginning with an F?
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by VWWHFSfQ on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:14PM (#30026524)
I vote for Foot Locker
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by jdhn on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:19PM (#30026608)
All Foot Locker has to do is start selling exclusive NFTs with their shoes, and they'll be considered an innovative blockchain company in no time.
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by inter_netuser on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:24PM (#30026703)
Fugazzi MAMMA
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by basch on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:16PM (#30026556)
Google is Alphabet tho, so its MAAMA or MAMAA.
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by maxwell_xander on Friday January 21, 2022 @01:24PM (#30027761)
MAMAA is by far my favorite, it sounds like a child crying out to mom. Mamaa! (also easy to add another m or a if ever needed - mammaaaaaa!)
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by jimminy on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:52PM (#30027181)
Pop Netflix back in there from the FAANG, and you have MAMANA
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by basch on Friday January 21, 2022 @01:35PM (#30027953)
with a market cap of 177B it has no business being in the conversation. Disney is 250B.

Johnson&Johnson and Comcast are more deserving of spots even. Tesla, NVidia, Visa.

Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by moralestapia on Friday January 21, 2022 @03:22PM (#30029458)
It's MAAAM!
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by langitbiru on Friday January 21, 2022 @01:13PM (#30027555)
Or TAAAMM. Companies with hug TAMs.

https://twitter.com/sama/status/1484571438442967042

Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by oplav on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:02PM (#30026332)
Meta
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by henearkr on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:20PM (#30026624)
And actually Google is now Alphabet, so it would be one of:

AAAMM

MAMAA

AMAMA

etc

Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by ndotl on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:10PM (#30026451)
Meta?
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by goodpoint on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:24PM (#30026705)
N is for Netflix. Microsoft is hardly relevant.
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by quickthrowman on Friday January 21, 2022 @01:26PM (#30027810)
Yeah the 2.25T company is less relevant than a movie and TV studio that is worth 1/12th as much. /s
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by sound1 on Friday January 21, 2022 @01:35PM (#30027941)
Haha... that was a good one, you ALMOST got me there :-)
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by colinmhayes on Friday January 21, 2022 @01:24PM (#30027758)
2 trillion dollar company hardly relevant
Re:Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’ by goodpoint on Friday January 21, 2022 @02:36PM (#30028853)
By this "logic" FAANG should contain Saudi Aramco and probably Tesla: https://companiesmarketcap.com/

Instead, the name was always related to high growth + high salaries + innovative technonogy + interesting companies to be working for.