Rob Pike's Excellent Adventure

Frisky070802 writes "The Newark Star-Ledger has an article about Rob Pike's move from Bell Labs to Google. The article has some interesting points, such as how Pike took a "huge pay cut" to go there just to work on cool things. And in a nostalgia trip for those others of us who've walked the halls of Bell Labs, the article compares earlier days at Bell Labs to the heady days at Google (Claude Shannon on a unicycle, and the famous Penn & Teller trick on Arno Penzias, then the head of Bell Labs research). Most of all are the differences in real-world impact: 'But products trickled slowly, if ever, from [Bell Labs]. They blast from Google at hyperspeed.'" (Painless demographic-only jump-through screen to read it.)

Comments

"trickled slowly from Bell Labs"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps, but then again, weren't they responsible for a few minor things such as ... the Transistor? The Laser? Unix? Arguably 3 of the most important inventions of the past 100 years?

Re:"trickled slowly from Bell Labs"?

[JohnTheFisherman]

Yeah...I've seen the soaring stock price of Google (market cap beats AOL/TW now, yeah, uh...wow) and I'm wondering when it's going to collapse. They provide some nice free things for the web, but their advertising revenue can't come close to justifying their $80B value.

What do they do that makes money? Believe me, I know there's more to life than money, but that's pretty much the main factor in the stock valuation.

Re:"trickled slowly from Bell Labs"?

[Danger Stevens]

Their Adsense program has pushed their revenue through the roof. They make several hundred million dollars a year from their advertising sector.

It's not really the revenue that makes them worth so much though, it's their profit margins. The way they publish high quality software has made them into a company that only needs a fraction of what it earns. This means huge potential for growth.

I'd say the current ruler of the internet with an outrageous income could easily be worth $80B.

Re:"trickled slowly from Bell Labs"?

[nomadic]

Google will never, ever come anywhere close to the importance of Bell Labs. Ever.

And I can't think of a single real innovation that came from Google. What, a really effective way of indexing web pages? That's not innovation.

Re:"trickled slowly from Bell Labs"?

[zippthorne]

It's got a P/E of 115. that's almost 10x what most investment resourses will tell you is a reasonable level. Think of it this way: if all those earnings were profit and they issued that to shareholders as dividends, you'd make less than 1% on your money. You would do better in a bank account. Its price is rising faster than that can only mean one thing: it's going to burst.. it has to.. unless they grow a lot. and quickly.

products? where

[Anonymous Coward]

"...products blast from google..."

uh, where? i can't think of one tangible product google has ever produced...

bell labs on the other hand... oh lets see... how about... THE TRANSISTOR

A bit premature to compare to Bell?

[dabacon]

Isn't it a bit premature to compare Google to Bell labs? I mean here are some things that happened at Bell labs: the invention of the transistor, the discovery the cosmic background radiation, a major role in the invention of the laser, the discovery of the mathematical theory of communication, the invention of the solar cell, etc. etc. While I love Google, I don't think they've quite lived up to Bell labs legacy quite yet (but here's hoping they decide to spend billions on fundamental research!)

Re:A bit premature to compare to Bell?

[kognate]

But they _are_ spending billions on fundamental research. What do you think the "20% of your time on personal projects" is?

They get to do fundamental research much more cheaply than places like Bell Labs do. This is partly because you're projects could go on for years and never get cancelled. And you get a massive amount of computing resources at your disposal.

Re:A bit premature to compare to Bell?

[drsquare]

What fundamental research is this? All I see from Google is web applications that have been done a million times before, but with slightly different interfaces. Excuse me if I'm not blown away by that. That 20% is only one day a week. What can you do in one day a week?

I wouldn't describe them working at hyperspeed either. I mean gmail has been at the beta stage for how long? Remember this is a WEBMAIL service we're talking about, not a fusion reactor. It's a service which has a million equivalents on the Internet, gmail having a slightly slicker interface and some more disk space. That's it.

Are there any companies doing fast-paced, ground-breaking research these days? Or do they all just chase profits based on existing stagnant business models?

Oh Brother

[jfonseca]

Oh Big Brother that is!

If Google is to become what it seems to be morphing into we may well be staring at the next Microsoft.
Remember Microsoft had similar early days, chaotic work environment, great brains, a management that hired more great brains....

And...guys....they now have Rob Pike on the team. C'mon, concede already! Google has style.

The question is...why not just go with the already existing Microsoft? Do we need another giant? I guess we do.

Re:Academic research making a difference

[toddbu]

Hmm, are you suggesting that the next big advance is going to come from academia? Or are you suggesting that it's the younger generation that will give us the next big push? You shouldn't necessarily tie the two together. There are a lot of really bright young kids coming out of our colleges these days, but I'm not sure how much the schools themselves are doing to advance their education. Ever look at a current version of a computer science text? Not much that's interesting there, other than the $200+ price tag. I'd like to think that in many situations these students are doing well in spite of the lack of support that they're getting from their educational institutions.

"Trickle" from Bell Labs?

[birge]

Bell Labs has produced some incredibly important things: The femtosecond laser, which is one of the most important tools of chemistry and physics today. The radio telescope. Modern communications theory. A lot of basic electrical engineering theory from microwaves. I'm missing a ton of stuff, obviously, but you catch my drift.

I suppose it's a little harder to come out with stuff once a week when what you're doing is a little more significant and deep than pretty scrolling maps. Comparing Google to the old Bell Labs is ridiculous, and suggesting that "PageRank" somehow compares to the scientific breakthroughs that occurred at Bell Labs is an insult to the people that worked there. I love Google, but it's not particle physics.

Let's wait to see how many Nobel prizes come out of Google labs.

Re:Trickle

[Forbman]

Maybe not the software, but if we could look at the algorithms and system management software they use, it might be a different story.

Part of their skill seems to be identifying and developing efficient and simple ways to do what everyone else has done so far in a bloated, complicated fashion, both in execution and implementation.

Re:No, the transistor was not invented at Bell Lab

[gwm]

But this is true of any invention; Bell Labs no more "invented" the transistor than Thomas Edison "invented" the light bulb or James Watt "invented" the steam engine. Sure, they made huge contributions--and deserve all credit for that--but they did so by standing on the shoulders of generations of other great scientists and engineers.
It is a characteristic of human nature that we insist on simple answers to complicated questions, on convenient labels for complex entities.