Linked List: September 14, 2018

Friday, 14 September 2018

AliveCor CEO Vic Gundotra on Competing With Apple Watch Series 4 

Kif Leswing, writing for Business Insider:

Over at the headquarters of AliveCor, a startup based in Google’s hometown of Mountain View, they, too, were surprised by the announcement, CEO Vic Gundotra said in a phone interview on Thursday. Gundotra is a former Googler, widely known as the executive behind the Google+ social network. […]

The fact that a huge tech giant is entering their corner of health-tech validates AliveCor’s approach, Gundotra said. […]

“Ours is $99, theirs is $399, our sales popped yesterday, big time,” he said.

“Their entry into our market validates us” and “Our sales are popping” translate into English as “They’re going to crush us.” Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

And this price comparison is prima facie nutso. $99 gets you a single-purpose no-fun ECG device. $399 gets you a watch you can wear all day every day and use for dozens of purposes other than ECG.

How the Weather Channel Made an Immersive Hurricane Florence Storm Surge Animation 

Brian Barrett, writing for Wired:

On one level, yes, the visualization literally just shows what three, six, and nine feet of water looks like. But it’s showing that in a context most people have never experienced. It fills in the gaps of your imagination, and hopefully underscores for anyone in a flood zone all the reasons they should not be.

Perfect example of how showing something can be tremendously more effective than merely saying something.

Larry Page Is a No-Show With Google Under a Harsh Spotlight 

Mark Bergen and Austin Carr, writing for Businessweek:

It’s not just Washington. Even in Silicon Valley, people have started wondering: Where’s Larry? Page has long been reclusive, a computer scientist who pondered technical problems away from the public eye, preferring to chase moonshots over magazine covers. Unlike founder-CEO peers (Mark Zuckerberg comes to mind), he hasn’t presented at product launches or on earnings calls since 2013, and he hasn’t done press since 2015. He leaves day-to-day decisions to Pichai and a handful of advisers. But a slew of interviews in recent months with colleagues and confidants, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were worried about retribution from Alphabet, describe Page as an executive who’s more withdrawn than ever, bordering on emeritus, invisible to wide swaths of the company. Supporters contend he’s still engaged, but his immersion in the technology solutions of tomorrow has distracted him from the problems Google faces today. “What I didn’t see in the last year was a strong central voice about how [Google’s] going to operate on these issues that are societal and less technical,” says a longtime executive who recently left the company.

Fascinating look inside Google’s leadership. Really does seem like they’re out of touch. Their tremendous profits are all coming from things that Page isn’t paying any attention to at all. Presumably Sundar Pichai is paying attention to them, but it’s certainly an unusual arrangement.

In Page’s absence at the Senate hearing, louder voices filled the void, from senators criticizing Google for its dealings with China to pundits decrying Page as unpatriotic. McNamee, the early investor who’s since advocated for the company’s breakup, says Page and Pichai shirked their civic duty by skipping the hearing. “This is Corporate Governance 101,” he says. “You’ve been invited to speak in front of a Senate hearing to protect our democracy, and your response is, ‘We’re too important to go’? The whole world is looking at them: ‘What the hell is wrong with you people? Who are you?’ ”

That empty chair was just an awful image for Google.