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Fortune Magazine On Google Growing Up
prostoalex writes "Fortune Magazine runs a pretty long story on Google, but instead of the usual exultation over PageRank algorithm and Larry-and-Sergey biographies, we get a different message - is Google growing up, and is trouble brewing at Google? Here's Fortune's description of the pre-IPO days: 'Google has grown arrogant, making some of its executives as frustrating to deal with in negotiations as AOL's cowboy salesmen during the bubble. It has grown so fast that employees and business partners are often confused about who does what. A rise of stock- and option-stoked greed is creating rifts within the company. Employees carp that Google is morphing in strange and nerve-racking ways.'"
"Google's foes have a much firmer hold on customers", argued some bloke who wrote a book about Google, so is an immediate expert.
Perhaps. But Google has a much firmer hold on the search technology, and at least in this market, the technology is important. Google as a business need to sort out its stuff (perhaps, we don't really know), but I'd guess that the vast majority of the planet who use search engines, use google, and that can't be bad...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
1. Code that states/federal revenue services use to flag accounts for audits.
So change the code. Stop using hard limits, which is a stupid idea anyway, and start using score-based heuristics. The weightings aren't part of the code-base anyway, so analysis of the code won't give you much. Apply a random factor so the edges are fuzzy. People are going to try and find loopholes in the code and avoid audits anyway --- let 'em. If your code is good, the only way they can avoid audits is by not doing anything that requires auditing. Which is the whole point.
2. Fraud detection code used by credit companies, service providers, etc.
3. Code that determines which passengers get flagged for pre-flight searches.
Exactly the same things apply here. Hiding the problems doesn't prevent the problems. All it will do is prevent you from knowing the problems exist. Make the algorithms public and you can see the problems --- yes, they can be exploited, but they can also be fixed far more quickly, and improving the algorithms is the correct solution.
If Google released their source code, then yes, evil people could find loopholes and exploit them to artificially boost their rankings... but non-evil people, finding those same loopholes, could work out how to close the loopholes and submit the changes back for inclusion in the running code base. The end result? A better search engine.
Think of it in evolutionary terms. The spammers are evolving to take advantage of Google. Google is evolving to defend itself from them. Open-sourcing Google would speed up the process, that's all; which means we'd end up with a better search engine more quickly.
I'm inclined to agree with you, but (you knew there was a but coming, didn't you?) I recall the flap a decade or so ago over the US IRS. They were flagging people who corrected minor mistakes by the IRS and paid what they thought was actually correct (where this was higher). Seems the IRS fell into the habit of calling this the "dumb but honest" flag. Remarks to that effect were even in the IRS's codebase. I don't think Open Source would work for the IRS any more than you do, but I also want to find a way for some sort of watchdog to quickly detect such things hiding in Closed Source applications, particularly ones used by the government, but possibly including private entities where they have become trusted keystones of the society. The IRS has actually become a better agency over the last ten years or so, but it took a lot of effort by congress to weed out problems that had become endemic and institutionalized.
So I guess the question is not should Google become Open Source, but should there be some auditing process for Closed Source code used by such entities, and if so, who should become the new watchman?
Who is John Cabal?
The gapin flaw with this article is that it take the typical suit view of Google. Google's founders have one overriding principal that guides everything, "Don't be evil," which has lead to it's continued success. Things like "locking in" customers would be the death knell of Google, as it's simplistic and quick search are what attracted it's user base to begin with.
Their successful advertising initiative likewise mirrored the message. People don't like being treated like a commodity to be "locked in", especially not the droves of nerds on the internet. I'd be highly suspect that ANY of the "competing" search companies would steal away any of google's userbase, as they will all try and do things for their own benefit that will ultimately make them seem worse in a head to head comparison against google.
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
Since I taught Sergey when he was an undergraduate at Maryland, and have done some consulting at Google, I can offer some insight on on Forbes article.
The Forbes article is right that Google is very selective in their hiring, and puts a premium on intelligence over experience. However, the claim that you need a degree from a top-10 university is bogus. Actually, one thing that helps a lot is a graduate degree. I believe the current situation is that they have more people on the engineering staff with PhDs than with BS degrees (and more people with Masters degrees than either).
One of the interesting things about the Google engineering team is the number of people who had previously done research in topics such as compiler optimization than have no relation to Google's business. They just hire smart people.
I understand that a number of people are upset by recent changes in Google's ranking scheme and the fact that it isn't public or open source. The thing you have to understand is that Google will be forever in a war with the people doing "Search Engine Optimization". These people don't care about having Google return the best result for "ceiling fan", they just want their web site selling ceiling fans to be on the first page.
The initial papers on the Page Rank algorithm assumed a web that was unaffected by the page ranking algorithm. Now, with Google being a dominate search engine, a substantial part of the web is designed to influence Google's search ranking. Figuring out a search ranking algorithm that works well in that context is very hard, and would be impossible if it was public or open source. The SEO people would 0wn it in a moment.
A problem I've noted with Google in the past few years is that a search for anything that people are trying to sell, like "ceiling fans", mostly returned links to web stores selling that product. The newest ranking for "ceiling fans" includes other links as well, such as informative web sites on installation, manufacturers and energy conservation. So it seems like an improvement to me.
Clearly, managing a company that is growing like Google is growing is a challenge. But I'm not sure anyone else could do it better.