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?

New Google product coming?

[AndroidCat]

VOIP GooglePhone? They could combine it with their search engine and social networking. I can't wait to try that I'm Feeling Lucky button on my dialing screen, woohoo!

Re:New Google product coming?

[jcuervo]

Heh, that'd be some interesting phonesex.

Male: I'm taking off my pants.
Google: Mens' pants. Sale on Docker's. www.pants.com
Female: Ooooh, I'm touching myself.
Google: UNIX manpages - touch(1)
Male: I bring out the goats.
Google: Everything you ever wanted to know about herpes.

Still better than Clippy.

I see you're having sex. Would you like me to:
( ) Videotape it
( ) Watch
( ) Hold the bucket of cheez-whiz

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?

[ebuck]

I agree.

Google came up with the idea that popularity (in terms of links) makes a good algorithim to index the Internet, also they came up with the idea that you could serve such an index on a large cluster of cheap machines, instead of a few big expensive ones.

All the other stuff they came up with afterwards wasn't very revolutionary. Web mail? Weather service? Statistic / Index pages? Educational indexes? Specific domain searches? Good services, but not revolutionary.

Bell labs came up with a lot of theory. They created programming languages (B anyone?), operating systems (UNIX and Plan9), compilers, tools, and much, much more, like:

# The first synchronous-sound motion pictures
# Stereophonic sound
# Speech synthesis
# The cathode-ray tube
# The radio altimeter
# Radio astronomy
# The laser
# Solar cells
# Coaxial cable
# Radiotelescopes
# Radar systems

And that's not counting the nearly 25000 patents (most filed way before the great US patent give-away). They've made significant contributions to the fields of Physics, Mathematics, Communications, Computer Science, Astronomy, Aviation, Military Defense, and Power Generation, just to name a few.

Google's got some good stuff, don't get me wrong, but they need to expand thier scope, double thier output, and hang around for another 80 years if they want to top the accolades Bell Labs has accquired.

---
Yes, yes, we all know who invented the transistor.

Re:A bit premature to compare to Bell?

[Austerity Empowers]

Having also recently left Bell Labs it's safe to say at least Bell Labs is dead. You can tell when they close 70% of the bathrooms and shut off every other hallway of lights. All the smart people left, or are semi-retired, most of them before I even joined. It did so many great things in the past century but the executives have a very short memory and sadly ignore any new ideas originating from their own R&D, instead relying on "wall stree sources" or ambiguous "industry trends" which fly in the face of common sense to most of us.

It's probably worthwile to use this latest defection to hold a belated funeral. Plan 9 is probably the last semi-useful project we'll see from that place. I'm also not real sure that Google is the future, so far they're short on product and long on ambiance. Research is fine but unless it's funded by academic sources you gotta have a product too. Ultimately that's what did Bell Labs in.

Re:For anyone else wondering...

[AndroidCat]

[..] in order to create a coherent video.

Darn! Bell Labs invented a method of producing coherent light, but the secret of producing coherent videos hasn't escaped to the outside world yet.

How did he get a job at Google?

[nxtr]

Did he get an invite?

"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.