In discussions like this people will always call out how our smartest minds are being wasted on serving advertisements. While I despise advertisements and the economy around it, I wonder how accurate that assertion actually is.
So much of the work done at Google and Facebook seems to be solving general computing problems. That's how we got things like React and k8s that aren't specific to advertisements at all. On top we constantly complain about app the projects cancelled by Google. All these projects were build by someone and rarely are directly related to serving advertisements. Not to mention all the very valuable products provided by Google many of us use every day that provide tremendous value despite Google's ultimate goal of serving ads. Gmail, Maps, Docs, Calendar, YouTube, Google Voice and probably many more. Not to mention products we ridicule for their unnecessary changes and internal competitors like Meet/Hangouts. Pie on the sky stuff like self driving cars. AI advancements like Tensor flow. They have a leading security project that slowed down all out CPUs ;)
What percentage of work at Google is in fact directly "wasted" on advertisements?
So much of the work done at Google and Facebook seems to be solving general computing problems. That's how we got things like React and k8s that aren't specific to advertisements at all. On top we constantly complain about app the projects cancelled by Google. All these projects were build by someone and rarely are directly related to serving advertisements. Not to mention all the very valuable products provided by Google many of us use every day that provide tremendous value despite Google's ultimate goal of serving ads. Gmail, Maps, Docs, Calendar, YouTube, Google Voice and probably many more. Not to mention products we ridicule for their unnecessary changes and internal competitors like Meet/Hangouts. Pie on the sky stuff like self driving cars. AI advancements like Tensor flow. They have a leading security project that slowed down all out CPUs ;)
What percentage of work at Google is in fact directly "wasted" on advertisements?