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Google CEO Talks Business
prostoalex writes "InformationWeek interviews Google CEO on Google's enterprise strategy. No cool products announcements or anything related to personal technology - Eric Schmidt talks about Google's offerings for the enterprise market."
InformationWeek's most recent issue has the Google CEO on the cover holding a "search appliance" type box. Maybe not an official announcement, but seems there is a new product in there somewhere.
I was there. I found it interesting how shallow/flat their corporate hierarchy is. There aren't many levels between Sergey/Larry and the average employee. They don't try to micromanage employees, instead letting them just run with their work.
:). It is kind of off topic, but I thought it was interesting. Apparently when they were rolling out Google Maps (or maybe it was the satellite data), they went on Yellow Alert because the traffic from mirroring the images across the world (I believe that is what he said) was filling up all their pipes. They were almost taken down, but they managed to get their traffic shaping back in line. Just an interesting tidbit. I'm sure the speech will be available on UWTV's website in a few months.
One impression I've gotten of Google compared to, say, Microsoft, is how quick they are to release new products. I've been to some Microsoft recruiting talks, and if I remember correctly, you have to interview to change product teams, and it seems like a cumbersome, bureaucratic process. At Google, you can help people with their 20% time projects and do work where you are interested. This allows them to get very rapid turn around on projects and this is probably a big reason why they are running circles around MSN.
Oh, another thing I remember. People on slashdot have wondered why they haven't put advertisements on Google News and some thought it was because they would get in trouble for making money off other people's content. Today Eric mentioned that the business model is mostly up to the team that develops it. As an example he gave: during a meeting, they had the option of either developing an advertising system for the news, or adding Afghanistan news. They decided to go after news in other countries before working on the advertising end. This is one reason why some of their projects don't seem to have any money-making goals. He said the Orkut team is too busy trying to get speed out of the system to work on some other things they might try.
Oh, I remembered something else
Andrew
They don't even have an effective monopoly. According to http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2 156431 they only receive 48% of all searches.
The only part of that search that won't work is the wildcard. But you can use -site:florida.com to exclude a particular site. You can also do stuff like comment (ebay OR slashdot) site:com -site:florida.com
"Being stuck using *shudder* Outlook at work makes me wish we had GMail mailboxes at work."
I wouldn't mind it, either. However, I'd miss my Todo list, notes, and some of the collaborative stuff Exchange offers with OL. Google has more work to do.
"Derp de derp."
And as for accountability, Sarbanes-Oxley ensures that any public company is financially accountable. My company is going through compliance right now, and documenting every single process, decision, deal, etc. that touches revenue in any way is a biatch. If you want accountability of strategy and business decisions, why don't you at least wait till Brin and Page make some big misjudgements before protesting as you are. Let's not kill the goose that's laying the golden egg, until or unless it's terminally ill at least.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
http://videosrv14.cs.washington.edu/info/audio/mp3 /colloq/ESchmidt_050526.mp3
Probably more relevant to techies than TFA. Interestingly, ge stopped his prepared statement about halfway into his alloted 50 minutes to take questions.
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Google's finally getting big enough to open an "Evil Department" - they've hired White House propagandist^Wspokesman and Carlyle Group exec Dan Senor.
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make install -not war