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Mineral winds down: 'We will no longer be an Alphabet company'

44 pointsby adrian_mrd11 months ago

7 comments

dekhn11 months ago
Let&#x27;s see what&#x27;s left in Alphabet that isn&#x27;t Google.<p>There&#x27;s Calico, CapitalG, Fiber, GV, Intrinsic, Isomorphic, Verily, Waymo, Wing, X. Nest and DeepMind were absorbed into Google, and many of the previous Alphabet mini-companies are already gone (Makani, etc).<p>My personal expectation is that Calico will eventually wind down, as their research has been pretty unexceptional and I don&#x27;t think they&#x27;ve managed to find any real revenue sources.<p>Intrinsic is probably on borrowed time, looking for revenue, and if they don&#x27;t get significant amounts in the next two years, will be shut down.<p>Waymo isn&#x27;t profitable yet but it looks like the execs have decided to give it a very, very long runway, and they are the technical leader in no-driver cars. It&#x27;s still at risk if they don&#x27;t find a good revenue model.<p>Wing has no real revenue to support their costs, and drone deliveries just aren&#x27;t going to be a great business, so I expect it to shut down in the next two years.<p>Fiber- it&#x27;s hard to tell why Google has allowed this to continue for so long. The only thing I can imagine is that they are somehow using the usage data to generate revenue or ML training data.<p>Intrinsic is really new so they probably have a couple years runway, but pharma sales aren&#x27;t a great business to be in if your only product is a protein structure predictor and binding predictor. I work in this field and I still see this as an unrealistic bet on Alphabet&#x27;s part.<p>That leaves Verily. It&#x27;s clear Alphabet has downsized it significantly and scoped the projects down significantly. They have turned away from every single early idea and pivoted to a few remaining areas where they have some strength. I work in this field and it&#x27;s amazing to me they keep it around- so I expect that unless they sell it in the next year or two, it will be shut down.<p>CapitalG, GV, and Google&#x27;s real estate ventures will probably all continue because they have generated a fair amount of revenue.<p>Google Cloud is part of Google, not Alphabet, which IMHO is an insult to the people who run it. It could be spun off as an all-in Alphabet company but it&#x27;s so closely tied to the rest of the Google infrastructure it will never live on its own.<p>Truly impressive how little Alphabet has achieved.
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datahack11 months ago
Man it’s so frustrating to see another failure to gain revenue from x labs. I really wish I had the resources to take one of these out and find product market fit. I just don’t understand why product market fit isn’t established and revenue found <i>before launching</i> — these failures seem to elementary to avoid.<p>It just seems like they flail when they launch because they are science projects and don’t have established and verified customer pain.<p>I really think that one exercise could reshape the whole effort. Just work on problems that also have some element of customer traction — it doesn’t mean you can’t moonshot. But it does mean you can stay in business long enough to have a <i>chance</i> at a moonshot which is the really thought part usually.
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modeless11 months ago
Google X is a failed experiment. Waymo is the only worthwhile thing they ever did and it predates X (as Chauffeur).<p>Just look at their &quot;Projects&quot; page here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.company&#x2F;projects&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.company&#x2F;projects&#x2F;</a> Still touting public failures like Everyday Robots, Loon, Glass, Makani, now Mineral. Fail fast shouldn&#x27;t mean fail always...
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ZeroGravitas11 months ago
An interesting wrinkle is that they only graduated from X to being a standalone Alphabet company a year ago.<p>That was supposed to signal that they&#x27;d achieved a sustainable business model, but a year later, apparently that wasn&#x27;t the case.
ipsum211 months ago
Frustratingly it&#x27;s never explained why the company failed.
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xnx11 months ago
3 days ago. 23 comments: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40867508">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40867508</a>
SebFender11 months ago
Interesting - but if I may - the bullshit generator force is strong.