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Bell Labs & Google: bookends of the same sad story?
When I finished reading this (must-read) wonderful profile of Bell Labs, the singular most iconic research institution of the modern era, I was left wondering — just because you invent the future, it doesn’t mean you get to enjoy the benefits from it, nor does it guarantee that future generations will remember your contributions.
For decades, Bell Labs, the Murray Hill, New Jersey-based center for innovation, has come up with breakthroughs that have propelled society forward. The transistor, the laser, and the UNIX computer operating system are three in a list of endless things that we use daily. The digital camera can trace its origins there, not to mention
“At first sight, when one comes upon it in its surprisingly rural setting, the Bell Telephone Laboratories’ main New Jersey site looks like a large and up-to-date factory, which in a sense it is. But it is a factory for ideas, and so its production lines are invisible.” — Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer, in his 1958 book, Voice Across the Sea.
Founded in 1925, Bell Telephone Laboratories was the science and communication research arm of the Bell System, jointly owned by AT&T and Western Electric. At one point, this institution employed 15,000 people, many of whom worked on technologies and breakthroughs that earned the researchers 10 Nobel Prizes, five Turing Awards, and more than 20,000 patents.
When AT&T was split up, Ma Bell retained ownership. Later, Lucent Technologies became its owner. Alcatel merged with Lucent, and eventually, the combined company was acquired by another fallen telecom hardware maker, Nokia. And now, Bell Labs is moving from its Murray Hill campus to a new location in New Brunswick, NJ.
Whether it’s Bell Labs, Xerox Parc, or IBM Research Labs, the story is always the same: corporate overlords are so married to the staid predictability of their cash cows that they fail to make bold decisions. Middle managers who eventually rise to the top lack the imagination or risk-taking capabilities to put their companies on new growth curves.
AT&T’s Bell Labs literally invented the future. AT&T of now is a second-tier mobile service provider that can’t even set the market agenda for the market its forebear invented out of thin air.
And the latest example of this corporate ennui is none other than the once mighty Google — the company that has helped catalyze and jump-start much of our “data-centric” reality. You can trace recent breakthroughs in “artificial intelligence,” from computer vision technologies to large language models, back to Google. And yet, you can see them flourish and thrive elsewhere.
The company is so entrapped in its “10-blue-link” prison that it can’t invent its own future. Don’t take my word for it. Tim Bray, who worked for Google, had this to say:
Google has lost its edge in search. There are plenty of things it can’t find. There are compelling alternatives. To me this feels like a big inflection point, because around the stumbling feet of the Big Tech dinosaurs, the Web’s mammals, agile and flexible, still scurry.
A staff engineer at Google was harsh about her assessment of Google:
Google does not have one single visionary leader. Not a one. From the C-suite to the SVPs to the VPs, they are all profoundly boring and glassy-eyed. Right now, all of these boring, glassy-eyed leaders are trying to point in a vague direction (AI) while at the same time killing their golden goose. Given that they have no real vision of their own, they really need their subordinates to come up with cool stuff for them.
At a fundamental technological level, Google has what it takes to will a technology, any technology, into existence. Just look at Waymo. I am celebrating Apple’s Vision Pro, but we all forget that it started with Google Glass. A former Google employee explained Google’s problems on a social platform:
It’s their culture that celebrates rapid imitation, premature product launches and a tendency to abandon and underinvest in projects. It’s less about a lack of vision and more a lack of commitment which leads to a disconnect between their long-term strategy and immediate actions, which hinders the development of innovative ideas. What I witnessed wasn’t a lack of vision but rather lack of follow through.
And this means the company needs to hit Control+Alt+Delete. I’ve been saying this for a while: it needs new leadership. Otherwise, Google, like many before it, might find itself in the rubble of technology’s history.
I’ve covered Internet infrastructure and its evolution, which has given me a unique opportunity to meet and interact with those who helped build this future. Quite a few worked at Bell Labs. Occasionally, they shared their stories of corporate mediocrity, meekness, and lack of vision. A few of them left Bell Labs to join Google.
I wonder if they’re feeling a sense of déjà vu!
January 22, 2024. San Francisco
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4 thoughts on this post
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Perhaps innovation would be better served by the slow demise of Google and the departure of its more talented employees. Who knows what new technologies and companies they could create unfettered by a company only focused on preserving its ad revenues.
Martin
That has already started to happen. OpenAi has many former Googlers and so does Anthropic. This is nature taking its course and taking an “evolutionary” hack at a large company.
I have always believed that “regulators” are a sign of a coming atrophy and eventual demise of a company.I am wondering if the founders of Google will have enough wherewithal to do something about the challenges at the company.
I’ve always wondered (and wished I could participate in) an R&D Consortium created by VCs. Something along the lines / mix of Bell Labs, Xerox Parc, ARPA, or even SRI (I think the later was more mercenary and did R&D for hire, mainly government).
VCs contribute some percentage of their vast earnings to the consortium that then works on the more fundamental science and engineering research and development that feed the next generation of VC funded companies that make them practical.
It would need some kind of governance and way to share the R&D that doesn’t cause legal or political (internal or external) problems and doesn’t block the actual R&D from flourishing. But if we could pull this off, it could trigger a true new wave of innovation that would ensure we were moving forward, be globally competitive and help create a better future.
Robert
As a pure-research play, one could technically have a “R&D lab” that gets a % of their carry from a group of Venture Funds, which would mean that the lab could theoretically do very well if one of its inventions is monetized via startup that is either acquired or sold. However, the % of money coming to the lab would not be that much for first few years, so that could technically be something of a cost center. It is a good idea in theory, sadly, one wonders if this is feasible given the on ground reality. Each VC firm has its own dynamics, how they work with their limited partners and how the IP is converted into companies and it is monetized.