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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2560 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 24, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Twitter at its first user peak (around 2015) had 3500 employees. In 2022, It had 7500 without any additional user acquisition. In 2024, it has 2800.

In 2010, Google had just over 20,000 employees. Its major products were Search and AdSense, with YouTube, Chrome, GMail/Docs and Android following distantly behind.

Today, Google has almost 200,000 employees. Its major products are still Search and AdSense, which are barely better than they were in 2008, and they’re still distantly followed by YouTube, Chrome, GSuite and Android, with a modest cloud business added to the list.

Unlike Twitter, Google makes a lot of money. But it is still extraordinarily inefficient, and its headcount is likely at least 4x where it could be under competent administration. Every big tech business experiences extreme bloat because of a combination of the iron law of bureaucracy and more general fiefdom internal politics.

Its major products are still Search and AdSense, which are barely better than they were in 2008

I could swear Search is outright worse than it was in 2008...

For users, maybe, but bringing money to owners - probably not

It’s funny to call a $20B business “modest,” but I suppose that’s true for Google’s scale.

According to this report, their services division spent $87B to make $144B. The Cloud and “Other Bets” segments are basically rounding errors in comparison.

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