zlacker

>>tech-h+(OP)
Google works like crazy to hire all of the smartest and the best people, but do they really need them? Billions and billions in shareholder value could be extracted by hiring a bunch of mid-tier Java programmers and having them farm Ad Words for the next decade, until the first competition shows up.

>>whatsh+Ac
> until the first competition shows up

Their worry is that competition will be started by the people they've not hired and kept on the bench. I'd imagine a large amount of their top-level hiring is driven by taking minds off of the market, more than optimising their output.

>>wasted+4d
This couldn't ever work. Folks that smart want to do things that are real.

>>KirinD+Fh
Real != profitable. Google can offer academic style oppurtunities at industry style salaries.

Eg. Fuchsia OS might have been started because Google saw a bussines oppurtunity in writing an open source capabilities OS. Or, it might have been started to keep smart OS engineers from leaving the company.

>>gizmo6+cj
It seems fairly ridiculous to suggest that Fuchsia is not a real project. It wouldn't be the first OS Google has built.

>>KirinD+3n
What are the others? Android and ChromeOS are both built on the Linux kernel.

>>floren+sv
Not just Linux, but ChromeOS is based on Gentoo Linux (originally Ubuntu); which is to say, much of the userspace stack was pre-exsting as well. The core of the operating system is the Chrome web browser, which was also a pre-exsting project, which a relatively clear business interest to Google (influence over the web platform).

Android has a bit of a better claim, as more of the userspace stack was written for it. It also wasn't started by Google (although they bought Android Inc. years before it was released publicly).