BC INTERNET
Saved by @Alex1Powell

~8yrs ago (Dec’12) I got a job @Google. Those were still early days of cloud. I joined GCP @<150M ARR & left @~4B (excld GSuite). Learned from some of the smartest ppl in tech. But we also got a LOT wrong that took yrs to fix. Much of it now public, but here’s my ring-side view👇

 By 2008, Google had everything going for it w.r.t. Cloud and we should’ve been the market leaders, but we were either too early to market or too late. What did we do wrong? (1) bad timing (2) worse productization & (3) worst GTM.
We were 1st to “containers” (lxc) & container management (Borg) - since '03/04. But Docker took LXC, added cluster management, & launched 1st. Mesosphere launched DCOS. A lot of chairs were thrown around re: google losing this early battle, though K8 won the war, eventually 👏
We were 1st to “serverless” (AppEngine). GAE was our beachhead -- it was the biggest revenue source early on but the world wasn’t ready for serverless primitives. We also didn’t build auxiliary products fast enough. Clients that outgrew GAE wanted “building block” IaaS offerings.
1st to hadoop (map-reduce ‘04) but our hosted Hadoop launched in ‘15. AWS EMR was ~200M ARR by then. 1st to cloud storage (GFS ’03), but didn’t offer a filestore till ‘18! Customers were asking for it since 2014. Didn’t launch archival storage or direct interconnect till v. late.
Common thread: engineering hubris. We had the best tech, but had poor documentation + no "solutions” mindset. A CxO at a large telco once told me “you folks just throw code over the fence”. Cloud was seen as the commercial arm of the most powerful team @ Google: TI (tech infra).
TI “built” stuff == good; Cloud “sold” stuff == bad. This unspoken hierarchy led to GTM decisions that cemented our #3 position in a market where we had far superior tech. Another reminder that BETTER TECH RARELY WINS AGAINST BETTER GTM: https://t.co/jpVV5CWl44
As a result of this engg::product::sales tussle, we 2nd guessed if we were (1) platform or product (2) for developers or enterprises, serving (3) new age cloud-native cos or everyone. Steve Yegge has a legendary rant on #1: https://t.co/hf3rtIJgUb. KNOW WHO YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE!
A lot of early mistakes were made w/ #2-3: AWS was going to the customers and rolling cloud-compatible on-prem versions and direct interconnects to their DCs. We wanted more clients like Snapchat: cloud native. World had lots of goldman sachs: hybrid. GO WHERE THE CUSTOMERS ARE.
Sales teams without quotas (🤯); chaotic branding (GCP? Google Cloud? Google for Enterprise?); title inflation - everyone was “head of X” “lead of Y”; ill-conceived vertical solutions; weak partnership programs, etc. All this took years of fixing.
When TK joined from ORCL many old-timers left GCP to other parts of Google, but he was 100% the right person for the job: aggressive, customer-obsessed, sales oriented. My friends who stayed back speak of a very different org.
GCP is likely at $8-10B ARR now and still growing >50% y/y. This is remarkable, but MSFT came from behind and is now neck-to-neck w/ AWS. I am hardly shocked - for MSFT, an Azure contract was probably 1 extra pricing sheet under a pre-existing MSDN MSA. Zero legal friction.
My google exp reinforced a few learnings for me: (1) consumers buy products; enterprises buy platforms. (2) distribution advantages overtake product / tech advantages and (3) companies that reach PMF & then under-invest in S&M risk staying niche players or worse: get taken down.
As always, this is one person’s narrative so unlikely to be fully accurate. GCP is a much, much stronger platform and team today. Goes without saying, my heart will always root for Google Cloud. We are still scratching the surface of this beast and it is still day one. /end

More from Internet

Julia Angwin
Julia Angwin
@JuliaAngwin
Facebook is a newstand. But no one can see which news Facebook is pushing to the top.

So we built an app for that called #CitizenBrowser. Our first finding: the sharp impact of Facebook’s political ad ban reversal in the Georgia Senate elections.
https://t.co/GZNdwZOlHW /1

This is the first report from our #CitizenBrowser project. There will be many more to come. But first, I want to tell you a bit about how we did it because it’s the most ambitious thing we’ve ever done @themarkup – and we do a lot of ambitious projects. /2

#CitizenBrowser grew out of conversations @suryamattu and I had about how to audit Facebook. We had both worked on browser extensions to collect data from Facebook, but FB always threatened to shut those down, just like their recent threats against the NYU AdObservatory. /3

But the bigger problem is that browser extensions don’t capture most FB activity. Most people use FB on mobile and browser extensions only work on desktop or laptop computers.

So one night, late at the WeWork, @suryamattu said to me: “We’ll have to build our own browser.” /4

“No way,” I said. “That’s insane.” But slowly, I came around. Here’s why: browsers are good at running in the background. Users could log into FB once through the browser and never use it again.

Then we wouldn’t be monitoring users. We would only be monitoring their feed. /5
INTERNET
Pasquale "Pat" Scopelliti
Pasquale "Pat" Scopell...
@ThyConsigliori
29 December 2020 #MAGAanalysis #Overturn

Comments On @OptimisticCon Article:

The key supporting effort appears to be underway on Trump’s operational timeline

As we emphasized yesterday, J.E. Dyer commands us: "But do hold the line."
INTERNET
Advertisement
David Evans
David Evans
@pentops4
There has been speculation that changes to the way the internet is implemented will be rolled out to allow access only to authorized sites.

Some think this is impossible

I'm here to tell you it is not, and very likely.

Allowing access only to white listed IP addresses is easy.

The vast majority access the internet via their Internet Service Provider, and ISP's can easily block client access to any IP address they choose.

China has been doing this for years.

This is how firewalls work, and is much lower level than DNS blocking.

I would imagine this will be rolled out to 'Combat the ever growing threat of Cyber Attacks'.

Most people only use a few thousand services like Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Reddit etc, Walmart, Costco, Tesco, Morrisons etc. as it is.

It will be easy over time to require 'legal registration' for any and all other services and sites.

We already took a step toward this years ago anyway, so this is just the logical next step.

As 5G technology is rolled out in your city, more and more control is being introduced at the street level, using what are known as 'Edge Servers'.

While making services faster to access, it also allows an additional layer of security and access control at the local level.
INTERNET
Gwen Snyder is uncivil
Gwen Snyder is uncivil
@gwensnyderPHL
With Parler down, there are going to be a ton of white supremacists switching to (or back to) @Telegram, a company that has sheltered some of the worst, most explicitly pro-terror Nazi groups for years now.

RT to tell @apple & @google to KICK TELEGRAM OFF their app stores, too.

Or, Telegram can actually enforce its terms of service.

But I am watching tons of Nazis thrill to the idea of mass murder on there.

They're emboldened, and @Telegram gives them a place to recruit, radicalize, and plan to kill people.

Parler was bad, but Telegram is the absolute wild west.

I've watched actual terror plots unfold there.

It's where they share printable gun plans and bomb how-tos.

It's where they discuss targets and share vicious, gory murder videos of minorities they don't like.

And I would also add, deplatforming the less dark-webby extremism platforms like Parler ALWAYS means a temporary influx to these more extremist, darker-webby platforms.

We saw it after 8chan, too.

It was necessary, it immediately and overwhelmingly cut down on successful deadly terror, but in the very short term I watched numbers swell in overtly terror Nazi channels as more radicalized/edgelors 8chan folks sought a new home.
INTERNET
Pasquale "Pat" Scopelliti
Pasquale "Pat" Scopell...
@ThyConsigliori
Prepping for today's thread, the story of the CURRENT CYBERWAR is clearly overwhelming. J.E. Dyer @OptimisticCon links us to this story. Just one quote to
INTERNET

You May Also Like

\u0936\u094d\u0930\u0940\u092e\u093e\u0932\u0940 \u0939\u093f\u0924\u0947\u0936 \u0905\u0935\u0938\u094d\u0925\u0940
श्रीमाली हितेश अवस्थी...
@HiteshAwasthi89
Sri Parasurameswara Swamy Mandir, Gudimallam, Andhrapradesh

Gudimallam is a small village located in Chittoor district. It is seven miles away from Tirupati. This small village came to significance,due to it's very beautiful Shiva Mandir with history of thousands of years. 1/n


The main importance of the mandir lies in the Linga which is housed in the Garbhagriha of the temple & considered as the only one of such type. It is the earliest Linga discovered so far and it has been assigned to the 3rd century BCE.(Satavahana period) 2/n
ALL
Kieran Snyder
Kieran Snyder
@KieranSnyder
1 There's a chasm between an NLP technology that works well in the research lab and something that works for applications that real people use. This was eye-opening when I started my career, and every time I talk to an NLP engineer at @textio, it continues to strike me even now.

2 Research conditions are theoretical and/or idealized. A huge problem for so-called NLP or AI startups with highly credentialed academic founders is that they bring limited knowledge of what it takes to build real products outside the lab.

3 A product is ultimately a thing that people pay for - not just cool technology or user experience. But I’m not even talking about knowledge gaps in go-to-market work. I'm talking purely technical gaps: how you go from science project to performant + delightful user experience.

4 Most commoditized NLP packages solve well-understood problems in standard ways that sacrifice either precision or performance. In a research lab, this is not usually a hard trade-off; in general, no one is using what you make, so performance is less important than precision.

5 In software, when you’re making something for real people to use, these tradeoffs are a big deal. Especially if you’re asking those people to pay for what you’ve made (can’t get away from that pesky GTM thinking). They expect quality, which includes precision AND performance.
MACHINE LEARNING
Advertisement
Suhas S. Hardutt
Suhas S. Hardutt
@HarduttSuhas
THE BATTLE OF TALIKOTA and the destruction of Vijaynagar (Hampi)
26 January 1565

A tale of valor, deception and decimation.

A grim reminder that if we fail to protect our heritage, it will eventually crumble under the onslaught of "forces of anarchy".
(Elaborate thread)


This decisive battle was fought between the Vijayanagara empire and the Deccan sultanates resulting in a rout of Vijayanagara and ending the last major medieval era Hindu kingdom in south India.(1)

The seeds of 1565 encounter were sown more than 250 years earlier when the forces of the Delhi Sultanate, during the time of Alauddin Khilji and later Md Bin Tughlaq swept through southern India in an expansion spree.(2)

By middle of the 14th century, facing rebellions, Tughlaq withdrew to Delhi, leaving behind 2 empires, Bahmani, which ruled the Deccan from Kalaburagi, and Vijayanagara, which ruled most south India with its capital at Vijayanagar.(3)

The Raichur Doab, between the Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers, existed as a natural boundary between these two kingdoms, with wars often breaking out over control of this territory.(4)
HISTORY
\u2728Anshika Sharma
✨Anshika Sharma
@Anshi_________
Low-risk, High-return stocks are what we look for relentlessly

But many of them we know but ignore
some of them don't grab financial headlines

Here are 10 low-risk, high return stocks (that we ignore):

What I mean by “high-return”?

These stocks have OUTPERFORMED the market:

💹Chart with upwards trend Since IPO
💹Chart with upwards trend Over the last 5 Years or since IPO

These are all long-term winners that will keep on winning

What do We Mean by “low-risk”?

A combination of:

❣️Great management
❣️Broad moat
❣️Financially strong
❣️High ROCE
❣️Low Disruption/Dilution/Volatility
❣️Consistent Organic Growth
❣️Assorted Customers/Suppliers
❣️Low debt

1-#CDSL

A depository is a big business and will grow continuously, Its a sustainable business
cause "Market hai toh CDSL bhi hai or rahega"


2- #Dixon

High Management Efficiency with a high ROE of 19.30%
Healthy long-term growth as Net Sales has grown by an annual rate of more than 30%
High Institutional Holdings
LOW RISK HIGH RETURN STOCKS , LOW RISK HIGH RETURN STOCKS FOR LONG TERM , LOW RISK STOCK IDEAS
Carol Forden
Carol Forden
@CarolForden
1. The major problem most startups face is marketing and the ability to carve out a niche, find and retain paying customers.

Even with a stellar developer team and a stellar product, your startup may not grow or survive without a great marketing and sales teams.

2. Start growing your audience before you’ve a product or an idea.

You should start promoting yourself and building your audience before you have a finished product or even before you have a great idea that you want to build.

3. Don’t wait to start building your audience after you’ve launched a product.

Most first-time developers actually ignore marketing.

They’re oblivious to the challenge of attracting people to take a look at something they’ve created.

4. At least until they see their first project crash and burn within hours of the launch.

There are so many times that I have seen developers spend countless hours building something, releasing it with no fanfare...

5. and only then trying to figure out how to promote it by asking marketing questions on Indie Hackers, Quora or Hacker News. Don’t make that mistake.
STARTUPS