Google vs. Yahoo: On a Collision Course

An anonymous reader writes "It's pretty clear from this analysis as to which company is ahead of the game. Take this simple comparison: at Google, engineers are expected to spend one day a week on a project of personal interest. This has resulted in new offerings like Google News and social networking site Orkut. At Yahoo, there are posters promoting the "Idea Factory", where employees are invited to well, submit ideas (read boring)."

Comments

Yahoo may be boring

[Anonymous Coward]

But at least those of us without 4.0 GPAs and PhD's can work there.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[arivanov]

If it is worth working. Every time I talk to an agent jobhunting for them he is trying to offer me a 20% salary cut. To add insult to injury they also have the nerve to ask if your current salary is "negotiable". I have started answering "Yes, if you would like to negotiate it in the right direction, in other words - UP".

No thanks. They may have a few really smart people like Delany on their staff, but with this rate of pay I somehow doubt that they are going to get anywhere near getting and retaining talent in general

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[Anonymous Coward]

Well let me the first one to admit that I left Google few weeks ago. Yes they are innovative company and blah blah, but they are getting more into consumers than doing good science/mathematics. If you are into writing softwares etc, go ahead. But if you are like me who is more into algorithms and applied mathematics, innovations have stopped long ago. The neat stuff about data scavanging and mining is long gone. They have one infrastructure built and trying to milk it.

I am not trolling, but the sweet research days are over at Google. But as I said, if you are programmer and that sorts - you are ok and you may like it. For me I was one among who laid the foundation and time to move on.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[Anonymous Coward]

Awwwww. Let's see...google is for people...so...if they are going in a "customer service" direction...how can that be bad?

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[Anonymous Coward]

At Yahoo they're lightyears ahead. I never understood much of the adversity of Slashdot readers against Yahoo. Maybe it would appeal more to them if you explain that the influence alone of Yahoo on the field of usability is much more than Google can ever gain for. During the "killer website" times they alone with Jacob Nielsen stood out; two years on and all portals went back to usability over form.
From a financial point of view, they already went over the one-horse strategy period Google is still in and have diversity of income.
From a "do no evil" point of view, I fail to see why Google is not exactly like Microsoft: they never innovate, but copy or buy the innovators. Have they ever invented something themselves? I wonder why that makes Google cool, while others would be just called boring copycats.
Also, I distrust a company which only hires in a "inbreed" way and only takes on clones of the people already present. They must be so happy with themselves, it makes you wanna puke. More importantly though, this is a recipe for slow detoration of creativity, yah-sayers and slow death in general by dismissing everything conflicting minds can reach, which actually does more than the clone-hormany model.
Next, yo got to wonder if they and all their watchers still know where their head is and where their ass is, because they seem to me mixing them up: for all the effort put into the new services, everyone except a minority of nerds actually cares. Do you think my friendly neighboor,a lovely cake baking woman in her fourties, does anything else with Google then type in a searchword every now and then? Still, she represents the masses where the money comes from. But Google seems only occupied with adding new services and have fallen for the same mistake that made them big. Their preoccupation makes them beatable.
What also makes them very beatable is they have overpaid employees where 20% of the time is mostly thrown away. Since nor the brain or the education of your Indian programmer is inferior, someone could hire tripple the staff and improve on them.
Looking at the stock, this is what I call: cash time.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[Cpyder]

I recently interview with them, and was offered a job, even though I've only got (the Belgian equivalent of) a Bachelor's Degree in CS. Maybe they require lots of paper for their R&D positions, but for positions in their NOC it's skills that matter, not paper. I didn't take the job because I got a better offer closer to home, but my lack of 'impressive' degrees wasn't a problem with them.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[Anonymous Coward]

I have nothing against it being for people and customers. So is IBM now. Funding for fundamental research has been drastically cut down yet both companies (Google, ofcourse, lot more) make money. How many Nobel prize winners did IBM produce in the last 10 years as compared to what I did before ? How many new successful computer architecture did IBM introduce since PowerPC (They are tweaking it here and there for Blue gene and G5 etc) ?

In short I agree with the parent poster that Google may not be the same what it was before. He/She didn't mean it was bad, he/she just resented that he/she couldn't do fundamental research as he/she would like to. No biggie.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has started hiring former Microsoft Product Managers... The honeymoon is over!

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. I am just finishing up a BA (yes, BA) at a CSU school (with a 3.7, not 4. GPA), and they emailed me after seeing my resume online.

I'm in the middle of interviewing them. They have one of the better selection processes I have seen; there is none of the buzzword BS that I see with headhunters--Headhunters and companies looking for buzzwords like "Python" or "SQL" need to realize that a competent programmer can learn most any language within a week; the issue is whether the programmer can write maintainable code with good algorithms, not whether they can lie on their resume about non-existant Java experience or whatever the buzzword is this week.

The last phone screening covered a lot of classical CS theory and was very enjoyable and informitive.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes assume the negative, f****** american

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[hoai2k]

I believe this. I applied to Google a little while ago, and despite the fact that the reputation is that it is more of an academic environment than a corporate one, I found it more corporate than most jobs I've applied to, and I felt like they were really looking for the highest base level applicants (i.e. workhorses who are generally pretty good at all things) rather than people who are very strong in one area, and weaker in others. I would think they would want more of the latter, so they could work with more insight from different fields, but it seems like they're past that building stage and are now filling out a corporation.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[Anonymous Coward]

I submitted a resume to Google for a highly specialized position (non technical) for which I was incredibly well suited. I received nothing in reply, not even "thanks for submitting your resume." No one OWES me a letter, e-mail, phone call or interview, but I send very few resumes, and usually get something in response.

My theory is that they extrapolated my age from the date I gave for my degree and figured I would not help them get into a cool club on Saturday night and hence would not fit in with their youthful culture.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[eh2o]

I think you'd better try submitting that resume again. IIRC they have an automated reply message, so they probably didn't get it.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[Anonymous Coward]

My GPA is 3.5, working on my BS, and I'm an Engineering Intern at Google.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you are aware sys admins at Google are only paid $35,000 ?

That's fucking insane.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[cthulhu11]

I had a phone screen with Google recently, and it was the strangest I've yet experienced. Skills weren't discussed - the screener obsessively beat on a few arcane points, rather than my ability to do the job. He knew pretty much nothing of the facility for which I was applying, and was several states away. About 10 days later I got a GFY form email.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[Anonymous Coward]

There is still plenty of real research happening at Google. All you have noticed is that we prefer to hire generalists.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[Cpyder]

Really? That's strange.
I applied for a data center job, and the first phone screen was with a person that did the same job as I was applying for. It went on for about one hour.
About a week later another conversation of about 45 minutes followed, this time with a colleague actually working in the datacenter I was applying for.
Both conversations were quite informal.

Most of the time they were asking specific, technical questions that weren't really that hard to answer (How do you diagnose a broken machine? What RAID levels do you know? What is spanning tree? What's the difference between a hub and a switch?)

If you want more info on this process, feel free to ask.. I didn't sign any NDAs or something, so I'm free to talk.

Then followed a live interview with two more people, with more technical questions. They also gave me some more information about the job itself, although they remained pretty secretive about some parts. (Which I found a bit stupid, as most of this information is readily available on the net.)

In the end I didn't take the job because the conditions weren't all that good, and the salary was really lousy. Perhaps Google pays better in the US of A, but here in Europe it isn't worth moving 300 kilometers and giving up my social life.

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[drsquare]

Pardon me for asking, but why is a partisan flamebait comment from an Anonymous Coward a front-page story on Slashdot? Have this place really detereorated that far that someone using childish logic to say that 'google iz teh roxx0r' is worthy of an article?

For all the hype and cock-sucking about Google, and for all their money and PHDs, they don't exactly produce very much do they?

Re:Yahoo may be boring

[cthulhu11]

I'm not sure what they were paying for the position for which I interviewed - sysadmin. I was asked some of the questions that you list, as well as others, but at increasingly petty detail. This sort of thing no doubt varies quite a bit depending on the individual on the other end. When I've done phone screens on the other end, for local people it was largely weeding out those not even in the ballpark, eg. who don't know what the fields in a password file are.

Dejavu (sp?)!!!

[alecks]

Anyone else feel it?

Re:Dejavu (sp?)!!!

[BlogPope]

Personally I like how the submitter credits Google Groops to the "innovation policy" at Google. I think I know how that session went

Dude1: I got! We'll buy Deja-News!

Dude2: Brilliant! Have some more options!

Re:Dejavu (sp?)!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dejavu (sp?)!!!"

At least google for the correct spelling! It's "Déjà vu".

Re:Dejavu (sp?)!!!

[DeeFresh]

I believe the correct spelling is actually "dejanews.com"

I wonder

[jav1231]

I wonder how much of this has to do with Yahoo's age. Yahoo has been around long enough to become a more "standard" company. One that eventually loses touch with its grassroots beginnings and has to take it's catchy phrases from travelling self-help speakers. Google is probably headed that way, but for now they seem to have a few original ideas left in their backpacks.

Re:I wonder

[DogDude]

Google's beginnings were a desire to make money. Lots of it. I don't think that there's any chance of them missing sight of that. Anybody who thinks that Google is a altrusitic entity is incredibly naive.

Re:I wonder

[Fitzghon]

I agree.
Google is an innovative company that comes up with fantastic ideas again and again, and implements them.
On the other hand, the article notes that Yahoo bought the VoIP service DialPad. Yahoo's in-house research team appears deficient when compared to Google's.
Google is snatching up a myriad of the brightest minds around, and I think that over time this will prove to be their most important assent in the "search engine race".

Fitzghon

Re:I wonder

[LoverOfJoy]

Yahoo bought the VoIP service DialPad.

and Google isn't buying any services?

Re:I wonder

[cybersaga]

Google is probably headed that way

If Google was headed that way, they would have been there by now. They are huge. They are "standard".

The "20% your time" vs. "submit ideas" is the key. Management rarely sees potential where there is potential. How many times in history have great ideas been turned down because a manager says, "Oh that'll never work"?

At Google, by the time something becomes an official project, they already know it works.

When there's no guessing game, you can't be wrong.

Re:I wonder

[qwijibo]

Every business wants to make lots of money. There's nothing wrong with making money providing services people want. The factor that makes people like google is that they do still provide services people want, not just find new ways to scam people out of more money.

Re:I wonder

[Fitzghon]

and Google isn't buying any services?

They are, but this article clearly presents a tilt towards Google.

Fitzghon

Re:I wonder

[PsychicX]

Maybe Yahoo and Google should just merge and get it over with.

Re:I wonder

[Dr. Evil]

What was the old google.stanford.edu thing about? I thought Google was a research project turned company.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is snatching up a myriad of the brightest minds around, and I think that over time this will prove to be their most important assent in the "search engine race".

After all "snatching up" the best minds worked for Xerox and HP huh?

Re:I wonder

[caluml]

It's true. Once companies get big, and old, and are run by a different batch of people that started it, they lose all the initiative and drive, and vision. I have worked for a few companies that you could just see starting down the path to bean-countery, and insignificance. I think people forget that R+D means throwing money around without necessarily anything to show for it - buy the latest toys, gadgets, hi-tech stuff, and let people play with it. It inspires, engenders ideas. Like Googles one-day-a-week to play around with external ideas. I think that is a fantastic idea. It works both ways too. If I think of something great on an evening, I will log in to work, and start developing the idea for a few hours. When I next get to work, I'll then continue it.
Damn shareholders. Always spoil it. And now Google has gone public... :(

Re:I wonder

[88NoSoup4U88]

Google is an innovative company that comes up with fantastic ideas again and again, and implements them.
On the other hand, the article notes that Yahoo bought the VoIP service DialPad.

So Google-maps has been developed in-house uh...mmm

There are more examples where Google just seems to be going the MS-way of buying out companies, only for them to release it under their name.

Re:I wonder

[drunkennewfiemidget]

Yes, but a company can make a tonne of money and still not be evil. They two things are not mutually exclusive.

I realise much of the successful companies out there are in fact, evil, but it's not a necessity.

It's capitalism. The reason you don't hear about the decent companies that make lots of money is because good people don't make the news. Journalists are more interested in the company that dumps sludge in the local water supply, or integrates their inferior browser with their monopolised product.

When decency becomes something media-worthy, you might realise there's a lot more companies out there that aren't evil.

Until then, all of the news will be about Microsoft, Enron, SCO, and outsourcing to China.

Re:I wonder

[whovian]

How many times in history have great ideas been turned down because a manager says, "Oh that'll never work"?

I am sure there are other, but I will mention Craig Venter.

...people laughed at him, people wouldn't fund his research, he said "I'm going to do it anyway" and he did it. He patented some of the hugest, largest numbers of genes, human genes, that anyone has done. People said you couldn't sequence whole bacterial genomes, they laughed at him, he said "I'm going to do it", he just did it. People said you can't sequence the entire human genome that way he laughed, set up a company, and he did it. Link

I left NIH to create TIGR in part because, at the time, NIH was not in a position to conduct a large-scale human gene discovery study within the intramural program. In our first two years, we at TIGR used the EST strategy to identify more than half of the genes in the human genome. Then, using many of the laboratory and computational methods that we developed for the human gene discovery program, we pioneered the whole-genome shotgun sequencing of the first complete genome of a free-living organisms, Haemophilus influenzae, a bacterium that causes ear infections in children. Interestingly, an NIH study section said this couldn't be done with available technology. Ultimately, this approach became widely adopted. Link

Re:I wonder

[anonicon]

"and Google isn't buying any services?"

Oh, they are, but unlike Yahoo, they're doing something with them.

Re:I wonder

[mrchaotica]

Huh? Since when was Google not buying up every innovative company they can find?

Re:I wonder

[lowrydr310]

At Google, by the time something becomes an official project, they already know it works.

Like Gmail?

Re:I wonder

[Momoru]

I know everyone else already hammered you for this, but seriously Yahoo has innovated alot more things then Google has, and bought less companies as well. Google bought the underlying tech behind Google maps, google bought Orkut, and Blogger. So that leaves Google with Search engine (yahoo created theirs first), news (yahoo had this along time ago), personalized portal (yahoo first), web based email (yahoo first). Google may improve the wheel a little but they have not came out with many original ideas compared to Yahoo. Even this SMS stuff Google is getting into now, I remember back in 1998 I could have Yahoo send me news and weather alerts and what not on my cell phone. Yahoo became like MS for a while, in that it had no competition, so why innovate...but now that Google is giving a challenge, Yahoo is already starting to come up with a bunch of new stuff. Heck Yahoo has shown us some betas that improve search! Google's search has been stagnant for years now, and isnt that why we liked Google in the first place? Compare Yahoo and Google again in a few years... maybe if Google experienced a .com burst like Yahoo, it would be a little more conservative for a while too.

Re:I wonder

[IceAgeComing]

The factor that makes people like google is that they do still provide services people want, not just find new ways to scam people out of more money.

Also, smart geeks like to work on interesting projects. Google is working on things that geeks find interesting. And amazingly, management is smart enough to let its employees create, as opposed to following manager's orders.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for Microsoft for seven years, and in that time we went from "a desire to make money" to a fat, bloated beaucracy. When I started with the company, we'd all sit around in meetings and think of cool things to build that would drive business and boost the stock price. There was no room for people who weren't contributing. We even "fired" a high level manager once by doing an end run on him and making his job meaningless. All of this eventually changed to the point where people would do really stupid things because it advanced their personal position in the company.

If Google goes the way of Microsoft, it will be their success that will be their undoing. Until the .com boom of the late 1990's, Microsoft had a pretty high bar as far as hiring standards went. It was really hard to get into the company. Then our business picked up, and some groups were desparate for bodies to do the work so they hired anyone that they could, regardless of whether they were qualified. As the people who had made millions of dollars left the company, they were replaced by people with visions of making millions but no talent to back it up. These days, rewards aren't dispensed based on merit but on your position in the company.

Virtually any company that is successful loses sight of the fact that it's their customers that make them successful. Once the guys who start the company relinquish control (or lose it), it becomes just another large corporation.

Re:I wonder

[jmc]

I wonder how much of this is due to the fact Google seems to trust their engineers to come up with good business ideas. And I wonder how much of that trust is based on the fact the company was founded by engineers.

Yahoo on the other hand has evolved into a big company, where the upper management probably likes to view each department as having highly defined roles within the company -- management come up with ideas, and engineering implements them. Management (or more specically, in my experience, management in marketing departments) thinks that any idea that comes out of engineering can't possibly be a good business idea.

That's the main reason I drool at the thought of working at a company like Google.

Re:I wonder

[Kiryat Malachi]

For a long time, yes. Worked great for AT&T, too.

It was when they stopped that they ran into trouble.

Re:I wonder

[Cocteaustin]

(Full disclosure: I work for Y!) IMO, this has less to do with their respective ages as companies and more to do with perception. You can certainly have a company that's been around for a while that innovates well (see Sony in the 80s and 90s). Google is the 'new new thing' and they get a free pass on a lot of stuff because of that. (Two words: 'Web Accelerator'.) But there are just as many if not more smart people at Y! and we actually have many more products than they do; we are also releasing new products faster than they are. This is not the way an ossified company operates. Google's focus on creating a utopia for its engineers (as opposed to creating the best possible products for its users, not always the same thing) is going to start biting it in the ass more in the future, particularly in areas where Y! is strong (like personalization) and Google has absolutely no competency with.

Re:I wonder

[AvitarX]

Google maps was like no other map service I had used. It was definatly innovation over mapquest or yahoo! maps.

It's funny because I was using WorldWind for my roadmaps because of the interface and then google maps comes days later and works the same with very beautifully drawn maps moving around and showing enough at a time to be usable.

Re:I wonder

[Cpyder]

On the other hand, the article notes that Yahoo bought the VoIP service DialPad.

Oh no! Yahoo bought something? Are you serious?! Well, long live Google then, because they invent everything in house, don't they?

Re:I wonder

[Donny Smith]

>Yes, but a company can make a tonne of money and still not be evil. They two things are not mutually exclusive.

Google this:
http://battellemedia.com/archives/000919.php

And this:
--------------
Google is one of the most popular search engines for users worldwide. Google's cache function, though, allows users to access (at least intermittently) filtered content, because the request for that material goes to Google's servers, not to the blocked source's servers.168 Concerned by this circumvention method, China temporarily blocked access to Google in September 2002169; requests for Google's site were redirected to Chinese search engines.170 According to the company, Google negotiated with Chinese officials, and eventually access was restored.171

However, we found that while Google's site is accessible to Chinese users,172 the Google cache173 and certain keyword searches are blocked.
--------------
Source:
http://www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/china/#to c4

Re:I wonder

[Grishnakh]

This is a little before my time, but I recall that HP used to be a great company to work for, which produced many great products. (This is back in the days of the original LaserJets, and the classic test & measurement equipment -- probably 80's). I imagine that was during that time when they were "snatching up" the best minds.

If you're referring to Carly's tenure there, I don't think they were too worried about snatching up great minds at that time, and it shows.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

"I wonder how much of this has to do with Yahoo's age"

Answer: A LOT. Working for Yahoo used to be thought of as one of the best games in town.

The real question here is whether Google's growth through advertising really goes that far beyond where they are now. Yahoo has nearly the same business model -- and revenue. A lot of Google's products DON'T have the advertising model working for them (Orkut, Maps, News), whereas Yahoo is moving into the entertainment business.

It's just a big question mark if Google's going to continue to grow at the rate they've been growing previously with the same business model. How many products can you slap advertising on and still get people to click?

Re:I wonder

[Donny Smith]

>Oh, they are, but unlike Yahoo, they're doing something with them.

Yeah, I heard that Yahoo bought a company called Overture, fired all employees, closed it and burned its offices.

Re:I wonder

[SumoRoach]

All our government regulations are in place because capitalism is harmful to everyone else that's not making the money? Microsoft is a great example of capitalism. So is Walmart. Decency fits with capitalism on a micro scale, but it's getting bowled over by a world economy.

Re:I wonder

[IamTheRealMike]

I was under the impression that the first portal site was netscape.com who created it after realising they had so many page hits because their site was the default start page for their browser, and the first webmail was hotmail.com.

But yes, I generally agree with you about people under-rating Yahoo. They're by no means a bad company, and have shown the ability to do cool stuff many times. Their new online music store seems pretty nifty, at least, more customisable than iTunes Music Store is. Only downer is it doesn't work on Linux (but then unless you buy Crossover neither does iTunes).

Re:I wonder

[dbucowboy]

The difference is Google is making billions each year doing what Yahoo does but doing it better (obviously). When it comes down to it, isn't their real goal to make money and be successful? The I'd say they're doing things right!

Personally, I hate yahoo... Simply because there are pop-up flash ads all over their website now. I never go there anymore.

Re:I wonder

[Pinback]

Yahoo was very quick to sell out and become a glorified adfarm. They might as well have renamed themselves AOL-Search.

Google on the other hand thinks that their shit doesn't stink, and the search results are not as good as they once were. But at least they're innovating.

Re:I wonder

[lostguy]

Isn't Yahoo! search now inktomi, which was part of the Overture acquisition? And wasn't Orkut one of those "20%" projects by a Google engineer?

Re:I wonder

[Momoru]

The difference is Google is making billions each year doing what Yahoo does but doing it better (obviously)

Um, and Yahoo isn't making billions? Last time i checked Yahoo's revenue was higher then Google's, though pretty close. Yahoo also has a much more diverse source of income.

As for the popup-flash ads...those days are mostly gone, Yahoo hasnt had a popup ad for a long time, they still have some annoying ads sometimes, but for the most part its just limited to banner ads these days...nothing worse then you see on any other content site out there. (Google doesnt offer any of its own content, so i'm not sure you can directly compare it in this area)

Re:I wonder

[lostguy]

They both appear to make roughly the same amount of money, at least based on their income statements.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=YHOO&annual

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=GOOG&annual

Who knows what will happen this year, though. It could go either way.

Re:I wonder

[GoatMonkey2112]

Being the inventor of something does not necessarily mean that you made it the best. I have been pretty impressed with Google Suggest as an innovation to their search technology. http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en/

I think user defined categories such as the ones defined on some photo sites are the next thing in search technology though.

Re:I wonder

[frank_adrian314159]

Google is snatching up a myriad of the brightest minds around, and I think that over time this will prove to be their most important assent in the "search engine race".

Google is not about the "search engine race". It is about leveraging and connecting people to the information discovered from human-mediated networks. And no, I'm not making a joke about standard boom-era buzzwords. Let me explain...

Many companies who are successful in a given niche often have skills and abilities that can be used in a broader arena. In a lot of cases these companies don't see opportunities because they place artificial boundaries on what they will attempt to do because of their comfort in that niche. For instance, a friend of mine a few years ago did a contract with a large oil company. The company's actual expertise was in moving flamable liquids from point a to point b. As such, they were able to dump their exploration arm, build more pipelines and now make a much larger profit by moving oil than by trying to find and market it. By thinkinking of themselves as an oil company, they neglected their core competancy.

The point of all of this is that a good organization will understand to invest in and promote various products based on their core competancies - not necessarily looking at themselves as an X, Y, or Z company, where X, Y, and Z are the classes of their successful products. The fact that Google can see themselves as having its core competancy in exploiting human-mediated networks (and from their acquisitions and products they seem to understand this, at least at an instictive level) and are promoting a corporate strategy around this notion means that Google will be much more than "search engine" or "advertising" company.

They actually will be one of the first core companies of the third information era (first:1950-90: basic technology in storage and manipulaton; second: 1990-2000: connectivity infrastructure (ISPs) and analogs to old systems (e.g., Amazon); third: 2000-??: discovery and use of meta-information from connected information base, new services and models based on same).

Re:I wonder

[hempalicious]

I realise much of the successful companies out there are in fact, evil, but it's not a necessity.

Since all humans are evil by nature. And all companies are run by humans. It follows that all companies (successful or otherwise) are also evil by nature.

Get off your high horses. The only thing that may be worth comparing is the level to which *evil* is allowed to rule. And personally, I think both Google and Yahoo! have done quite well at keeping the beast at bay. No one is perfect.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the record, exactly which parts of:

• Web Search Engine
• Web-based Email
• Web-based News
• Web Portal

was it that Yahoo! invented?

I'm not saying Google does more, but if you want to say that Google does less you'll have to come up with better examples than services that have been around since before either company existed.

Re:I wonder

[dbucowboy]

Like I said, i havn't been to Yahoo's site in about 4 months. Totally turned me off to them as a whole. Yahoo probably does make millions, but consider the vast size of Yahoo compared to the still relatively small size of Google (in terms of employees ect.) Also, Google's cost of operation is considerable less (from what I've seen) than any other major competitor. Overall I've had really good experience using Google's technologies even if they did "buy" a lot of them from other companies... I want somebody to show me one succesfuly multi-billion dollar company that didn't buy the ideas of others and impliment them in a better way. I don't there there is one... at least not in IT.

Re:I wonder

[88NoSoup4U88]

I'm not saying it's a bad service : it seems that they made a very nice interface, that really works well : It's just that the groundwork for that idea, has been done by mapquest, and they added onto that.

A shame Google maps doesn't support my own country yet though (the Netherlands, Europe)

Re:I wonder

[Cocteaustin]

Yep, that's absolutely true. And the former staff of Flickr is now enjoying their new roles cleaning bird cages in the office of the Chief Executive in Charge of Leveraging Synergies Moving Forward.

Re:I wonder

[elemental23]

Yes and Yes. And let's not forget that not too long ago Yahoo's search was actually Google.

No one ever mentions that Yahoo doesn't even do their own searching. Even back in the '90s, weren't they using Alta Vista? (my memory may not serve me correctly, but I recall some relationship between the two)

Re:I wonder

[elemental23]

Yahoo has innovated alot more things then Google has, and bought less companies as well.

You obviously haven't been keeping count then. Yahoo buys everything it touches.

I think the numbers speak for themselves. Note that these lists are not official and therefore there may be omissions (I can spot one thing missing off Yahoo's list already, Webring, which was later spun off/sold again.

Re:I wonder

[KFury]

So that leaves Google with Search engine (yahoo created theirs first)

Whatnow? Yahoo has never created a search engine. They licensed search results from several companies including Inktomi and, yes, Google, until they bought Inktomi and used it as the basis for a revised engine. By that time Google had provided search for over 5 years, so what search engine did Yahoo create first?

Re:I wonder

[AvitarX]

They actually need to improve their routing algorithems before they worry about expanding. I have used the google directions twice and both times had issues, though other services may be as bad for the same route I am 0 for 2 on google and 45 for 50 on other services.

Re:I wonder

[Snaller]

If Google was headed that way, they would have been there by now. They are huge. They are "standard".

Oh no, they are heading that way. With their new design of Google groups which many people, myself include find has greatly reduced readablity and navigability - and they don't care. And with the way they refuse to give the user the right to store his password in his MSIE browser, etc etc. I think they have peaked, thats not to say they aren't going to make some wonderfull inventions on their way down - when behemoths fall it can take decades.

Re:I wonder

[DogDude]

I generally don't use the word "evil" unless I'm talking about religion or fairy tales. A company can't really be "evil". You could instead say something specific about their business practices, instead of a childish word like "evil"

Re:I wonder

[Momoru]

By that time Google had provided search for over 5 years, so what search engine did Yahoo create first?

Erm no, when Yahoo started in 1994 they themselves provided a searchable directory of web sites. They had this until the late 90s. Personally I prefered their directory method to the eventual method used by Google and others of crawling. Unfortunately it was just not maintainable without vast human resources. Google started in 1998, what do you think Yahoo did in those 4 years previous?

Re:I wonder

[T-Ranger]

If they ever did it directly, it was breifly. The core of Yahoo! is the directory, a hand edited index of sites. Back in the day, to do effective searching you realy had to use both a spider based engine and a hand editied one. I only rarely - like less then once a month - use anything but Google, and havent since I first used it, when it was new.

Mind you, Ive been around. I remember when Altavista contained no adds... Or more correctly, it contained exactly one add - itself - a tech demo of Digitials hardware.

Re:I wonder

[miley]

Sure was. Yahoo first started with their directory back when it was a stanfordresearch project. They eventually decided they needed search, so they used this cool search engine called Inktomi. And Inktomi became the biggest search engine out there. When it came time to renegotiate their deal, Inktomi got greedy, so Yahoo dropped them and began using Altavista. And Altavista became the biggest and best search engine out there. When it came time to renegotiate their deal, Altavista got greedy, so Yahoo dropped them and began using Google. And Google became the biggest and best search engine out there. When it came time to renegotiate their deal, Google got greedy, so Yahoo dropped them and bought Overture (which had just bought Altavista and Inktomi) so they could focus on search themselves.

Re:I wonder

[dfjghsk]

Look a little closer at those links:

Revenue (in thousands):
Google: 3,189,223
Yahoo: 3,574,517

So yeah.. that's pretty similar.. But, here's the number that really matters:

Net Income (in thousands)
Google: 399,119
Yahoo: 839,553

So Yahoo makes more than twice the profit compared to Google.

Re:I wonder

[lostguy]

What's five hundred million between friends? :-)

nice catch. :P

Re:I wonder

[KFury]

It's just a difference of opinion. I think Yahoo created a directory that had the capability of being searched. This is completely different than creating a 'search engine' that searches the web.

Being able to find titles at your library isn't the same thing as searching the content of the books...

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, long live Google then, because they invent [dejanews.com] everything [blogger.com] in [keyhole.com] house [picasa.com], don't they [kuro5hin.org]?

WTF??!?!? When did Google buy K5?

Re:I wonder

[aztracker1]

iirc, Yahoo bought into the webmail when the bought four11/rocketmail.. still have my @rocketmail address, though merged into their yahoo mail system, which has changed a lot from back then, check my mail there every couple months.

Googledot! All Google All The Time

[JPelorat]

Google for Google. Google that Googles.

Re:Googledot! All Google All The Time

[Anonymous Coward]

yes

Re:Googledot! All Google All The Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Today's slashdot article about Google? Check.

It's already 9 and I was concerned that my day might never get started.

Re:Googledot! All Google All The Time

[Anonymous Coward]

We've secretly replaced his google slashdot article with Folger's Crystals...

Let's see if he notices.

Re:Googledot! All Google All The Time

[viva_fourier]

Actually, I count 3 MS articles to your 2 Googles for the current mainpage queue...

but, your post sounds much better than:
Microsoft for Microsoft...

Is it me...

[InVinoVeritas]

Or are Yahoo! and Google somehow worth billions of $(US) by selling banner ads.

Re:Is it me...

[snorklewacker]

Google sells google appliances, but yes, the bulk of their revenue comes in the form of banner ads.

Yahoo has a decent number of subscription and premium offerings such as Yahoo Stores. Still, I'd say most of their revenue still comes in the form of banner ads. It's not really so much of a bubble -- advertisers aren't going away, and if there's two places that companies want to want to keep advertising on, it's yahoo and google.

I often wonder how slashdot survives ... good sales channel for thinkgeek perhaps? Hard to tell from VA's 10Q filings, but it seems to make some decent revenue on the cheap if the "online media" portion refers to slashdot and newsforge.

Re:Is it me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or are Yahoo! and Google somehow worth billions of $(US) by selling banner ads.

It really boils down to how $(US) is defined.

Re:Is it me...

[coolcold]

no, slashdot survive by displaying the "Get the Fact" campaign ads in M$ bashing news :-D

Re:Is it me...

[poot_rootbeer]

Or are Yahoo! and Google somehow worth billions of $(US) by selling banner ads.

They're worth billions (or at least several millions... I won't dispute the argument that they're over-valued) because they have Enormous And Loyal Audiences.

Selling banner ads to people who want to tap into those audiences is merely one of many ways to generate revenue from that asset.

Google vs. Yahoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two search engine companies? Competing?

I am shocked!

Re:Google vs. Yahoo?

[Seigen]

Competition is actually becoming rarer and rarer. You should be shocked. Some of my favorites. 1) Clever deals that bundle many products making it very difficult for competitors to enter a market. I.E. Microsoft's software bundling. 2) Copyright and patenting even trivial things to death making it impossible to enter a particular realm of business. I.E. Amazon.com's 1 click patent. 3) Lobbying for laws that prevent or severely limit competition. I.E. SBC now has exclusive control of all the remote terminal boxes. Are they in any hurry to finally get DSLAM's in those boxes? No, and now no one else can either. Basic infrastructure should be publicly owned, that way many companies can compete to deliver services. Also, companies cannot afford to invest in infrastructure where it does not profit the company, whereas basic roads as well other infrastructure like internet access does benefit the country as a whole.

Re:Google vs. Yahoo?

[Breakfast Pants]

Amazon's 1 click patent is a pretty terrible example of something that "mak[es] it impossible to enter a particular realm of business." Most people using Amazon don't even use the 1-click feature because they want to make sure their order is right and there are thousands of online stores that don't have it that haven't been swayed by this supposed impossibility of entering their realm of business.

Re:Google vs. Yahoo?

[Seigen]

No, it is not the best example in the world, but its hardly the worst either. When you can patent the outright trivial then NOTHING is safe.

More critical things are of course patenting fundamental things like multimedia patents, gui patents, etc which might make it possible to even create open source versions or even commericial versions of many things without the patent holders permission which in many cases will not be received. Defending a patent suit, even if they have a good case is enough to drive small companies out of business. Patents should be far rarer than they are.

Re:Hiring?

[Scrameustache]

Chicagoogle... find all thing Chicago! : )

Re:Hiring?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a PhD?

Hit the wall...

[markild]

"I do believe that Google will hit a wall eventually, and it will hit it spectacularly," said the book author Moore. "The real question is: What will it do then?"

Can't they just do it, and get it over with. I'm starting to get tired of all the fuzz about them now a days.

Re:Hit the wall...

[ne0n]

Official odds are -1095 google, +450 wall at thegreek.com.

not a portal?

[bad_outlook]

Remember when Google said they weren't going to become a portal, and while they have tons of innovation, their 'personalized home page' and email service are starting to feel just like that. Are they just trying to avoid being 'tagged' as one thing and instead trying to retain their own personality? From what I've seen they've taken the leadership role from Yahoo years ago, so I wouldn't worry about anyone trying to piegeon-hole them; they are their own entity and a driving force for the Internet as a whole. Will be interesting to see what Google looks like in 10 years, heck, we'll be able to say "When I was a kid, Google was a search engine, that's it"

Re:not a portal?

[ejdmoo]

Yeah, but at the time, we all hated what a portal was.

I don't mind what they've got.

Plus, the default "www.google.com" will probably not change much.

Re:not a portal?

[PeteDotNu]

For a long time, the word "portal" was pretty much synonymous with "cluttered up with obtrusive adverts". I think that Google are going to show us that portals don't have to be unusably chaotic.

I have no objection to this kind of portal.

Re:not a portal?

[Assassin_for_Atari]

Oh man, the funny thing is..I said about a year ago to my younger cousin about yahoo :P

Re:not a portal?

[Shaper_pmp]

They aren't a portal - Yahoo is a portal - a huge, sprawling mess with a search box lost somewhere on it.

Google is a search company - a clean, sparse search engine homepage with some (~10) links to other projects they own - a very different design philosophy.

Yahoo is a "media" company - they lost sight of search a long time ago, and have only recently started actively pushing it again (how long were they syndicating Google - or others' - results for?). This loss of emphasis on what made them big is what made them lose relevance as a search engine, but what gained them relevance for the unwashed masses (who lap up astrology, dating services, etc, etc, etc).

Google is, first and foremost, a search company (well, ok, an advertising company, but one that understands it can only survive by focusing on "search"). They may also produce or acquire innovations in other areas, but these are generally either subsets of "Search" (News, Local, Adwords/sense, etc) or fit well within the same conceptual framework (ie, large datasets they can mine - Orkut, GMail, etc).

True, Google does now offer a portal homepage, but that's very different to "being a portal" IMO...

Re:not a portal?

[interiot]

Yahoo and Google have two completely different motivations...

Yahoo buys companies so that 1) they can at least move in the direction of an AOL-styled walled-garden area, 2) so they can overall have more page-views and thus have more advertising space, and 3) so they can "synergize" between the offerings to advertise between them and generally present a unified web presence.

Google buys companies and develops new projects because 1) they have money to invest and want to grow it generally, 2) they have more skill in innovation and technology generally, and so they can grow many different ideas without tying them all together, simply because they're better at individual projects, 3) they have experience with and an already-in-place infrastructure for cluster computing, and this allows them to start up new ideas faster than equally-innovative competitors, and 4) because Google was profoundly helpful from a technical perspective in the search arena, and this made them a household name. But new frontiers are coming, and Google is one of the few largish companies who have the chance to retain a culture to take advantage of the Next Big Thing.

Google doesn't NEED more page-views for advertising... they already have Google AdWords where other people bring their page-views to google. Google is more free to develop or turn down new ideas based on their technical merit, in the hopes that they will stay on top of the next big ideas, some ways down the road. During their IPO, Google explicitely said they're trying to take the long view. In contrast, Yahoo MUST develop new ideas NOW in order to simply keep growing.

Re:not a portal?

[Bobman1235]

Remember when Google said they weren't going to become a portal, and while they have tons of innovation, their 'personalized home page' and email service are starting to feel just like that.

While kind of true, when you go to www.google.com it's still just a search engine, nothing else. The default state is not a portal, even though they do offer the service. It's a small distinction, but I think an important one.

Re:not a portal?

[The Clockwork Troll]

I don't remember Yahoo ever having a simple portal, for that matter

I am guessing you probably don't remember the world before DVD players and Spice Girls, either?

Re:not a portal?

[The Clockwork Troll]

Yahoo buys companies so that 1) they can at least move in the direction of an AOL-styled walled-garden area, 2) so they can overall have more page-views and thus have more advertising space, and 3) so they can "synergize" between the offerings to advertise between them and generally present a unified web presence.

Are you sure?

Re:not a portal?

[rob_squared]

Google is not a portal BY DEFAULT, and that's what matters. Yahoo almost forces that on you.

Re:not a portal?

[carlivar]

If you don't want the messy portalness of Yahoo, just go to search.yahoo.com.

Re:not a portal?

[SumoRoach]

True, true. Yahoo may look like a cluttered mess now, but it was nice and clean way back when.

And Smaller Posters Underneath

[Anonymous Coward]

that ask people to stop submitting google pages with "Yahoo" photoshopped over "Google."

personal projects not necessarily helpful

[LoverOfJoy]

While there are great possibilities concerning those personal projects of google employees, it's still a risk. For many employees it could just turn into a wasted day. For others, it could turn into something that Google puts a lot of money into and ends up being a flop. Hopefully enough good (profitable) ideas come out of it but there's no guarantee.

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[Mr. Underbridge]

While there are great possibilities concerning those personal projects of google employees, it's still a risk. For many employees it could just turn into a wasted day. For others, it could turn into something that Google puts a lot of money into and ends up being a flop. Hopefully enough good (profitable) ideas come out of it but there's no guarantee.

That's why they call it R&D.

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[dewboy]

The risk is definitely there, but what you get from letting your employees go on seredipitous excursions once a week is potentially more valuable than profitable ideas: you get very happy employees. Google already has a rep for hiring only the best and brightest -- seems like they have a good way of holding on to them, as well.

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[Rule_Of_The_Bone]

That is the absolute nature of risk in business. Any engineer knows that!

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[LoverOfJoy]

Why not two days a week? three? Sooner or later it becomes unprofitable. I'm not saying one day a week is for sure a bad idea. I'm just saying there's no guarantee that it's the most profitable way of going about things.

Also, I'm not sure it's a guarantee that a day a week to work on your own project==happy employees.

What happens after working there for 3 years and your ideas and the things you've spent tons of time on aren't approved to go larger. What happens if you have tons of time but aren't given the assets to see your ideas really get anywhere? You can still feel jacked and underappreciated and all the other things that help create unhappy employees.

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[Wanderer1]

Ah, yes, Risk and Development.

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[Peter_Pork]

What else would you use to promote innovation? Posters in the restroom? Inspirational speeches by top management? Innovation is about allowing your employees to have lots of ideas, trying them out, and be open to take the few that really work, making billions out of them. Sure, this process can be terribly inefficient and expensive if poorly managed, but Google is probably smarter than that. Also, innovation is about smart, creative people having time to think and having little fear to be wrong. When you give the opportunity to innovate to the top talent Google hires, you cannot help but go well beyond your competitors. Guaranteed.

I'm not saying they will not screw up the business side, and go under. I'm saying that, in the technical side, their setup is just perfect. I cannot think of a better way of building an innovation juggernaut.

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[BasilBrush]

But it isn't 2 or 3 days a week, it's one. To me that seems to be the perfect balance.

As far as approval to take things further, it all depends how it's done. If it was a case of taking a project to the PHB and him approving it or not, then that would doubtless create some friction. However I don't get the impression that's how it works. I think it's more like employees have internal servers where they put any project they think is worthy, and where it's visible to other employees. If their peers agree it's good, and start using and talking about it, they might choose to add their one-day a week effort to the project. And so it grows from an initial idea to having several people working on it, and a lot of internal visibility without any management decisions. A meritocracy. A bit like how successful Open Source projects gather steam on the internet. So the best projects rise to the top, and might make it to be official Google services. Meanwhile, anyone who hasn't had success with their project doesn't blame it on management, but starts asking themselves why it wasn't popular, and if there is a variation or a different idea that would be.

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[Anonymous Coward]

Working on a project once a week is not R&D. Google's just rolling the dice and hoping they come up 7. Real R&D happens in actual research labs (see: Lucent, Ericsson, Microsoft).

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[Khelder]

I agree. I think there are two benefits apart from the direct result of (potentially) cool ideas to turn into lucrative products.

One you state explicitly: happier employees.

The other you imply, but I want to make explicit: you get more, smarter job candidates to choose from.

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[PastaLover]

A project that you can work on freely with no immediate goal of applicability, but rather a long term commitment to new technology is R&D. If they're working on this project 1 day every week that's 1/5 of their time they're spending on R&D. It's not because they don't do it in a 'lab' and that they don't spend all their time on it that it's not research.

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[iGN97]

That's why they call it R&D.

One day a week for personal projects? I'd call that R&R.

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[rossifer]

It is an investment, and plenty of other companies have showed how huge the return can be on letting employees do open-ended work on company time: (Johnson&Johnson, HP (of the past), 3M, etc.)

Like other investments, there is a cost. In this case, the cost is the (potentially) reduced productivity to active projects when people spend in-office time elsewhere. The return on that investment is a potential goldmine of business ideas, some of which are likely to support or extend what google already does. Also, the potential loss of productivity is probably a lot closer to 0% than 20%. Taking a substantial mental break can do wonders for my creative processes, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

Once google decides to take a project and fund it, it's a completely different matter with a different kind of risk (similar to the risks that any startup faces). Most of these risks are manageable, especially if there's money to do market research and to answer other open-ended questions that most startups simply have to guess at. That money is a two-edged sword, however, as the lack of money forces startups to be lean and aggressive without the security of a large bankroll to fall back on...

In any case, your statements make you sound like a highly risk-averse person who would never think of leaving their salaried job and starting a company. Not even if you were certain that the product would be a hit. The world needs all kinds, but understand that the google culture doesn't resemble anything that you're probably comfortable with.

Regards,
Ross

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[LoverOfJoy]

I think you make some very valid points. For the most part I agree with you. I wasn't trying to suggest that Google was in the wrong or that the risk they were taking is too high.

I'm just saying that some people hear about the personal projects day and immediately assume this will lead to profits.

My guess is that it probably will. I certainly agree with the premise of using some time off from the big projects to look to the future and other possible projects as a good thing. Whether 20% of every employees work hours is the magic number to maximize profits remains to be seen. I definitely don't think it's a bad idea. I just don't think it's something to assume is perfect without the need of re-evaluation at some point.

Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful

[LoverOfJoy]

But it isn't 2 or 3 days a week, it's one. To me that seems to be the perfect balance.

And I can totally respect that opinion. Others might feel that the last 4 hours of every Friday would be the perfect balance. Some might think the perfect balance is one day every other week.

My point isn't that Google is doing something wrong. My point is that because of potential risks, people shouldn't assume the current plan is perfect. It's quite possible that in the future Google should cut back on the hours devoted to personal projects...or add hours...I don't know. It's also possible that they should limit which people get to work on personal projects. I really don't know. Given what little I know about their projects and the caliber of employees they hire, I'd probably agree that, at least at first glance, they've worked out a pretty good balance. Perfect? Who knows?

Google + Yahoo

[justforaday]

Google + Yahoo = Twingine (formerly the much better sounding yagoohoogle)

Re:Google + Yahoo

[cheesy9999]

Wow, I never realized how similar they look (probably because I never use Yahoo...)

Re:Google + Yahoo

[clamatius]

This is a simple example of metasearch.

For a more complete implementation (which eliminates combined results, etc), you might want to try metacrawler. Dogpile is better known but is exactly the same under the hood, so the one you use probably depends on your UI choice.

I imagine there are a bunch of other metasearch implementations out by now but I happened to do a bit of work on those two back in the day, so I know a little more about them.

Re:Google + Yahoo

[danila]

Double Trust is a much better implementation, but as another poster said, there is a plenty of metasearch engines out there.

Re:Google + Yahoo

[majestiq]

Dhund is much better than this.. its Google + Yahoo + Amazon + Wikipedia + Technocrati + IMDB + Google News + Yahoo News + Google Images + Yahoo Images + Flikr + Ebay

ZDNet r0x0rz!

[smittyoneeach]

...like a one-string ukulele.

Google's US$2.5 billion war chest and freedom let employees throw many new services against the wall to see what sticks. But critics question whether Google has an efficient process for managing innovation. The free e-mail service Gmail, for example, is still in beta testing after nearly two years.
"It's like the Wild West at Google. They have enough money and enough disregard for the status quo," said one industry insider who asked to remain anonymous.

Google uses the word 'beta' as a fig-leaf, to manage user expectations.
Doesn't take a whole lot of brain cells to grasp that.
Then again, ZDNet publishes Dvorak, so go figure...

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[0kComputer]

I think their news module has been in "Beta" for going on 4 years now.

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[rabbit994]

Beta testing my ass. Your right, it's still being "tested" but they are making money off it because I'm seeing those ads in my email. Besides, you can't give AWAY Gmail invitations these days.

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[Anonymous Coward]

See, there's an important legal reason behind Google News being "beta" after all this time.

It sucks. If Google ever bothers to improve Google News, they risk losing the "beta" status.

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[Eil]

Let's see here, Google's being criticized by "industry insiders" for giving their employees loads of free time, starting up new and enormously popular projects, "disregarding the status quo", and making billions of dollars in the meantime.

Sounds like somebody's jealous. Isn't it even remotely possible that Google is simply proving to the old-fashioned business world what can be accomplished when you take real, meaningful steps boost and maintain morale among employees?

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[tcoady]

Actually gmail is still in development. I can't wait for html mail compose, not that I feel a big need for it but just to see how neatly they will surely make it work.

Also, it could be useful to be able to forward html mail without losing formattig.

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's taking them so long? You can plug Xinha into anything with a text area, for example. From there on out, it's just appropriately encoding the HTML. As long as they do it the non-stupid way, i.e. HTML as attachment only, it's golden. Don't tell me that Google - with its legions of Einsteins and 2.5 billion in reserves - can't figure out how to do something that one guy maintains on his own.

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[neil.pearce]

Haven't they already got HTML formatting?
It's the "Rich Formatting" option when
composing a mail.

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[tcoady]

Yes, a few betas within the beta already have access to "rich formatting" as they call it, but it has not reached me yet so I assume there are a few problems they are working on. http://xinha.python-hosting.com/ looks like an interesting alternative, but does not have a mac version yet.

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[thelexx]

"critics question whether Google has an efficient process for managing innovation"

Let that shit rattle around your head for a minute.

"an efficient process for managing innovation"

What a soul-sucking string of words that is. There mere existence of those words in that order is an affront to the true spirit of creative, explorative and _innovative_ thought. I certainly hope to fucking God they don't have any such thing.

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[rabbit994]

That's what we need, more HTML emails flying around the net. The geek in me hopes that GMail never implements HTML mail compose but the "businessman" in me sees why they would.

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:
> The free e-mail service Gmail, for example, is
> still in beta testing after nearly two years.

Nearly two years??? I thought they started beta on April 1, 2004. It won't be "two years" for another 9+ months.

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[Cocteaustin]

The Goog(tm) was still a business last time I checked. If you want to spend your time doing wild-ass experiments that don't have any relevance to real customers, there's a place for that: it's called academia.

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[thelexx]

It is a business that is as successful as it is precisely because it doesn't seem to have a bunch of pointy-haired MBA types walking around spouting managebable about 'synergistic go-fast leveraging' or other nonsense such as 'an efficent process for managing innovation'.

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[tomhudson]

Yes, a few betas within the beta already have access to "rich formatting"

Are you shitting me? I've been using it for months - I thought evryone had it. It works fine under firefox/linux.

Re:ZDNet r0x0rz!

[Destoo]

There's a good reason for that.

Old story, btw.

Google News: Beta Not Make Money

As it turns out, however, Google has a problem that is nearly as complex as its algorithms. It can't make money from Google News.
So while other online publishers like Yahoo News and MSNBC earn tens of millions of dollars in revenue each year and continue to grow, Google News remains in beta mode -- three years after it launched -- long after most of the bugs have been excised.
The reason: The minute Google News runs paid advertising of any sort it could face a torrent of cease-and-desist letters from the legal departments of newspapers, which would argue that "fair use" doesn't cover lifting headlines and lead paragraphs verbatim from their articles. Other publishers might simply block users originating from Google News, effectively snuffing it out.

My Yahoo integration

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo has been around for a long time. I used them as far back as 95ish. I can't remember when my.yahoo.com came along but I have been a long time user since. However, anyone remember the Denial of Service attacks back in ~2001(?), since then I have been using google, msn, jeeves, in fact all search engines as I was so ingrained into yahoo that I couldn't even search using other engines. But really, the search aspect is such a low priority now that I don't care what engine I use; the real draw of yahoo is the integration of my.yahoo. Google has just now started getting that integration but yahoo has done this for years. I don't think that google will be able to overcome that time/gap that yahoo had in creating it's service. In the long run I believe yahoo will win out.

Re:My Yahoo integration

[Snufalufagus Prime]

My main draw to Yahoo is indeed My Yahoo. I've really takn advantage of the RSS feature on the front page, and I'm still abig fan of Yahoo Companion, and be able to have my bookmarks at home and at work.

Re:My Yahoo integration

[dobedobedew]

I also used to use the my yahoo services, but like many other peope I know I left it as soon as all of those hideous large animated ads showed up. It became totally unusable on dialup.
You have to draw the line somewhere.

Re:My Yahoo integration

[ArsonSmith]

I remember the big DOS attacks back just after the turn of the centry.

Re:My Yahoo integration

[tarogue]

I left it as soon as all of those hideous large animated ads showed up. It became totally unusable on dialup.

I have a dialup connection with 5 computers using a single dialup to connect to the internet and I use my.yahoo.com.
Mozilla + adblock + flashblock = no ads!

Re:Hiring?

[Quasar1999]

Sounds fun, but I much rather work at a company that gives me a task to do, that both the company and I know will generate revenue and continue my employment for the longterm.

Skunk works projects and the like are really fun... but at the end of the day, fun doesn't pay the bills, real work does... and unless you happen to be a genius (or extremely lucky) at coming up with great ideas that make money (in which case why the hell don't you start your own business?), when the times get tough for the company, those who produce the least amount of actual work are the first to go.

So although it sounds great now, when things turn a bit more realistic for google, these perks will very quickly disappear, and you'll see more of what 'yahoo' has...

Uhm, yes?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about Yahoo!, but Google pulled in $3.2 billion from their ad service last year.

Re:Uhm, yes?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are these ads you speak of?

Re:Uhm, yes?

[NanoGator]

"I don't know about Yahoo!, but Google pulled in $3.2 billion from their ad service last year."

Funny how on-line advertising is supposed to be dead, but when you make simple text ads that don't make you fear opening your browser...

Boring is sometimes good

[bigtallmofo]

This has resulted in new offerings like Google News and social networking site Orkut. At Yahoo, there are posters promoting the "Idea Factory", where employees are invited to well, submit ideas (read boring)."

Is this a flashback to 1999 or what? A sky-high IPO from a company that "thinks outside the box" when it comes to employees. Do they have pinball and video games for their employees to use whenever they want too?

The only difference is that Google actually has a business plan and makes some money. Do they make enough money to support an $80B market cap though? Only time will tell that one.

Re:Boring is sometimes good

[patio11]

Saying time will tell on the $80 billion market cap is like saying time will tell whether I'll marry a Brazillian supermodel before taking the gold medal in the 100 yard dash but after being the first simultaneous president of the US and Prime Minister of Bangladesh (does Bangladesh even have a Prime Minister? Well, I guess I'll just have to convince them to make the job to give it to me -- put that on the list.) Google's valuation puts them higher than Sears. Sears takes in more money every week than Google has in its best year ever (Sears/Kmart sales in 2004: 55 billion dollars, and thats Billion with a B and a ! for emphasis). To match that, Google has to sustain its best ever quarterly performance for a year... and then double it, and double it, and double it, and double it, and double it... And then a little bit of cherry on top.

Re:Boring is sometimes good

[Sique]

The only difference is that Google actually has a business plan and makes some money. Do they make enough money to support an $80B market cap though? Only time will tell that one.

There is a quite simple definition of the "true" value of a company: It's today's net worth of all futural earnings. Because the market capitalization is thus today's estimation of today's net worth of all futural earnings, it is a tautology to ask if the company A is able to support its market capitalization.
The market capitalization is already the answer: "We expect the company to earn today's $80bn net worth in the future".

If you like to play with a speadsheet you can build one for Google. It's like a credit: The inflation rate is the interest rate, today's market capitalization is the capital, and Googles earnings are payments which pay for interest and reduce the capital. As long as you can expect the earnings to be higher (for most of the time) than the inflation inducted value depreciation (expressed as interest on the capital), the market capitalization is not overblown.

(For now the numbers are: inflation 3%, market capitalization $80bn, thus $2.4bn lost value per year due to inflation. So Google should manage earnings of about $2.5bn per year and then it will be able to support the expectations in Google's futural profitability. In the first quarter of 2005 Google has earned $360mio. Times 4 means about $1,44bn for the year.)

If Google manages to grow an additional 50% within a short period, it will be able to pay for today's market capitalization with its earnings.

Yahoo search better than google

[GGardner]

Google may seem "cooler" than yahoo, but yahoo's search just works better for me than google's. The last couple of times google couldn't find something for me, it was on the first page of search results in yahoo's search. I think that maybe google, in branching out, has lost its focus on search.

Re:Yahoo search better than google

[dewboy]

I think this same thing happened with Yahoo a while back. At first, they were really just a search engine - and the only search most people knew of and used. Then they started adding all kinds of extras - news, games, fantasy sports, etc - and I noticed that their search capabilities went downhill fast. It was about this time that Google came to prominence and many people (including me) made the switch. If Yahoo can re-focus on their search engine, I'm confident Google will do the same.

Re:Yahoo search better than google

[Peter_Pork]

Oh, yes, and everytime I don't find something in yahoo, I used MSN search. It just works better.

Show me the query, and I'll believe you. Otherwise, I trust Google, the search engine that got us through the dark days of the web (remember the crap Altavista produced?). The Internet as a whole is far more useful thanks to Google. Glad to hear that Yahoo learned a lesson or two though. Others didn't.

Re:Yahoo search better than google

[lawpoop]

I'm curous, what were you searching for where yahoo did a better job than google? What terms did you use, and what site or result satisfied you?

Re:Yahoo search better than google

[Anonymous Coward]

Anal flaming gerbil. Google was returning a bunch of sites about transexuals, and I wanted sites about flaming gerbils inserted into the rectum. Yahoo really came through for me. I especially liked the movie tab.

Re:Yahoo search better than google

[qodfathr]

Actually, they were never really a search engine in the past, in the sense that they had their own search technology, although they were a self-classification directory (like dmoz); Yahoo! always made use of someone else's search on their main page (the big ones being AltaVista and Google).

Today they have their own search, based upon their acquisition of Inktomi. (They also acquired the internet-searching pieces of AltaVista and FAST, but the Yahoo! search code base is built on-top-of the Inktomi code.)

That being said, the folks improving Yahoo!'s search today come from all corners of the search world, including some engineers from those AltaVista and FAST acquisitions. (And Yahoo! also holds most of the patents as a result of those acquistions.) So, a lot of what was good about those other engines is making its way into Yahoo! search. [Yes, AltaVista did have it's good points, and the underlying technology was sound even if the marketing folks all but destroyed the usefulness of that technology.]

I do feel that, lately, Yahoo!'s search is better than Google's, and at times much better. For example, Yahoo!'s image search makes Google's image search look like a toy.

If only Yahoo! would bring back AltaVista's Prisma technology (built in conjunction with Teragram, I believe). [It was sort of like Teoma, but it seemed easier to use to me.]

Re:Yahoo search better than google

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you defending a corporation over a person, sorry "consumer", who says he gets a better experience somewhere else? Brand loyalty is SO 80s.

Re:Yahoo search better than google

[X]

If only Yahoo! would bring back AltaVista's Prisma technology.

Actually, that never went away. Take for example the results page for this search on dog. Above the sponsored results (how cool that they actually think it's more important) and directly below the words "Search results", you'll find the Prisma stuff: "Also try: dog breeds, dog names, dog the bounty hunter, dog training More...".

Re:Yahoo search better than google

[qodfathr]

You are correct, sir! I didn't noticed that it had come back. Good to see it again.

Google is so dead

[bman08]

First an idea factory... Next thing you know, yahoo!'s going to be putting up 'Let your imagination soar' posters in the break room. Revenue should double. But, if they really want do dominate the internet, yahoo is going to have to spring for the 'employees must wash hands' poster in the bathroom. While typhus and ringworm bring google to its knees, the clean handed geniuses at Yahoo! laugh all the way to the bank.

Re:Google is so dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Posteragement - management through inspirational posters.

Re:Google is so dead

[plopez]

Because until you try to spread your wings, you never know how far you can walk....

http://store.yahoo.com/demotivators/limitations.ht ml

Room for both.

[alex_guy_CA]

IMHO the idea behind this article is just plain dumb. It would be like an article saying that in 5 years we won't have ABC and CBS or Disney Land AND 6 Flags. I use Yahoo AND Google every day, and I think I'm not alone.

Re:Room for both.

[OS24Ever]

Exactly. While reading the summary I was thinking 'boy, this is like saying Pepsi is out to stomp Coke out of existance because they have 'make your own syrup mix' day'

Re:Room for both.

[desikage]

Me too,
Google:
Email (private, personal), Search, Newgroups

Yahoo:
Email (commercial, signing up for stuff)
My Yahoo (includes: Stocks, Weather, News)
Notes (I use this quite extensively to write out little bits of information I want to remember)
Full fledged address book

So IMO, Google has a long way to go before I cut Yahoo out, if at all.

Hmm, lets see whos ahead

[0kComputer]

Goog Market Cap:79.54 Bil
Yahoo Market Cap:51.04 Bil

Looks pretty clear to me.

Re:Hmm, lets see whos ahead

[generic-man]

Over $100/share for a search engine? Seems pretty clear to me.

Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[Kinetic Kit]

Google and Yahoo are much different companies today and part of working at either business means understanding really what each company is trying to do. Google is a technology company; Yahoo is now a media company. The biggest difference, however, is this:

Google makes money by keeping people on their website for as short a time as possible. Yahoo makes money by keeping people on their website for as long as possible. The Internet traffic statistics are quite telling.

http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=lan g&lang=en

Re:Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[arethuza]

Last time I checked, Google hardly made any revenue supplying technology. AFAIK the overwhelming bulk of their revenue comes from showing adverts to people who use their service, which sounds like a fairly traditional media company business model to me.

Re:Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[KillerBob]

Yeah... Yahoo's service is more complete. But I doubt I'm alone when I say that I don't need webmail, or instant messaging, or online chatting. I've been there, I've done that, and I don't feel like doing it again.

I don't like Yahoo's webpage. It's cluttered, and full of crap. It reminds me of MSN, which is 2nd according to Alexa's stats.

Incidentally... more people may use Yahoo's other services, but many more people fall to Google for their searching. In that respect, Yahoo fails. It's all well and good if they can keep people coming to their site for their community services. It's an entirely different ballgame when people don't even consider the competition when it comes to searching.

To give an idea of what I'm talking about, here's yesterday's search engine stats from my webserver:

Links from an Internet Search Engine
2 different refering search engines Pages Percent Hits Percent
Google 166 99.4 % 166 99.4 %
AOL 1 0.5 % 1 0.5 %

Re:Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[MtViewGuy]

Yahoo makes money by keeping people on their website for as long as possible.

That's because Yahoo! has such a massive amount of content on its own web sites that you can stay all day at Yahoo!'s various web sites. Yahoo! has not only search, but discussion groups, news, lots of multimedia content and even now a music store selling .WMA-format music files.

Re:Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[LiquidCoooled]

That might be a little off, when I goto yahoo, I visit uk.yahoo.com (even if I type yahoo.co.uk)
however, when I visit google, I stay on google.co.uk

Re:Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the alexa ranking: 1. Yahoo 2. MSN 3. Google If your portal is the site you use most to guide your Internet expeience, then Google fits the title 'portal' perfectly, making Google and Yahoo direct competitors even though they have diffent usage patterns. p.s. and way below the top 3 'portals.' 20. AOL If it weren't for AIM, would anyone be using AOL at all? Is it time for Time-Warner to see the tell-tale warning signs and drop the AOL name?

Re:Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[X]

To give an idea of what I'm talking about, here's yesterday's search engine stats from my webserver:

Hehe. Maybe all the other search engines are just better at identifying relevant sites. ;-)

Re:Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, burn! :-D

Re:Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[WindBourne]

But those will be coming to Google. And based on what I have seen of Google, it will be done bigger, better, faster, cheaper. Quite honestly, Google is just getting going, and it has motion on its side.

Re:Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[KillerBob]

Naw... I'm just smart enough not to use meta tags on pages I want to keep out of search engines. ;)

Actually, part of the problem is that Google is ignoring my robots.txt. I get more visits from Inktomi, but fewer referrals, because Yahoo actually pays attention to the Robots telling it to ignore the blog, the gallery, and the MP3 section. A good 50% of the hits from Google are to the MP3 section. It's gotten to the point that I put in a script on that page that checks the referrer, and if it's a search engine, sends a "Location: http://apple.com/itunes/" header. :)

Re:Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[X]

Actually, part of the problem is that Google is ignoring my robots.txt

Okay, if this is the case, then it seems pretty rediculous to offer this as "proof" of much of anything.

Re:Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[miley]

Really? I see tons of sites using Google technology to serve ads. There has got to be revenue in supplying that technology.

Re:Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[arethuza]

But its all to do with advertisements - their revenue model is based on serving up adds. The technology is necessary, but secondary to that goal. If they made most of their revenue from licensing their search engine code, selling search appliances or selling their desktop search tool then I think Wall Street would treat them as a technology company. As it is they seem to regard them as a 'media' company ('internet' stocks not being a popular category these days) - and to be honest I can see why.

Re:Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference

[miley]

Hmm, I think the technology is critical. If the technology can not produce relevant ads -- and extremely tough thing to do with scale, then the ads value dramatically declines as does the company's value. Otherwise, advertiser.com and doubleclick which do ads for many sites would be valued at similar ratios to google.

Re:Hiring?

[markild]

Even though you hear things like:

"You won't find any bored engineers at Google," the company's Web site says. "You will find friendly colleagues, fascinating projects and the opportunity to make life better for tens of millions of people every day."

..I have problems to belive that it will last. If the company over-expands, and creates to many new projects, I think the situation between colleagues will change dramaticly (even though they makes life better for tens of millions of people every day)...

Yawn

[Fear the Clam]

Yahoo hasn't done jack since the mid-90s. The only reason they exist is because of people too stupid to operate a search engine. Yahoo exists in a part of the Internet where people care an awful lot about selecting their avatars and using the correct smiley.

Mind you, Microsoft and AOL seems to do okay with the dumbshit client base as well, so maybe it's a sound business plan.

Re:Yawn

[qlippoth]

Yahoo hasn't done jack since the mid-90s.
Yahoo bought Overture, if you haven't noticed. Overture is the largest click-through trafficker out there, and makes substantial wads of cash.

And guess who is their main competetor in this business?

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo hasn't done jack since the mid-90s. The only reason they exist is because of people too stupid to operate a search engine.

I use Yahoo daily, and a lot. I don't use it ever to search. I use it as my start page because they were around looonnngg before Google and quite frankly they do everything else (other than search) far better than anyone else. The only "stupid" people are the ones like you that are illogically loyal to a brand name because oyu think it's somehow "hip".

But I suppose that's why you're posting on Slashdot right now instead of making important business decisions somewhere. Because if it were up to you, you wouldn't know a decent model if you saw it, and have no clue what people want or use...

Re:Yawn

[JeTmAn81]

Yahoo Music is so good I don't care if they never even had a good search engine to begin with. That's a great service.

Re:Yawn

[Chubby_C]

"Yahoo exists in a part of the Internet where people care an awful lot about selecting their avatars and using the correct smiley."

That is a very large part of the internet, just because you don't find the services they offer useful, doesn't mean there isn't a large group that does

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh how do you think most IT consultants make their money? 'dumbshit client base' who want 'neato' things.

--Just smile and rake in the cash

What the hey?

[annunaki2k2]

What happened to google being a search engine? Thats all I have and will ever use it for...... As for yahoo, forget it! I like the clean lines of google.

Re:What the hey?

[Waltre]

Agreed, that's what drew me to Google, simplicity.

If Google want to become a portal, they could really take the idea far by smothering it in AJAX. Searches would still only involve a textbox and a submit button, but news/gmail would only be a click away, sans-reload.

Re:Hiring?

[saintp]

Hah, at first I thought it was a search engine for Latina women.

Yahoo Using Google's Search Results

[archmagusrm]

Is Yahoo search still powered by Google? I remember a few years back that the two were interconnected through many of their services. Yahoo search would return listings from the Google web crawler database, is this still the case?

Re:Yahoo Using Google's Search Results

[PeteDotNu]

http://www.google.com/search?q=is%20yahoo%20search %20still%20powered%20by%20google

20% personal project?

[NoseBag]

Google, engineers are expected to spend one day a week on a project of personal interest.

AT&T top management tried this in Dallas in the 90's until a manager took them at their word and enforced the 1/5 rule. The resultant loss in overall productivity quickly caught managements eye and the policy was quietly curtailed.

Re:20% personal project?

[cybersaga]

This is why you have to go through about 15 interviews to get hired by Google.

I doubt AT&T was that strict about who they brought on board.

With a bunch of Joe Normals as employees, of course the 20% rule will fail.

Re:20% personal project?

[qwijibo]

There are people with different personality types and different feelings about their work. Google is hoping that the kind of people they attract are the kind who will do something interesting that might help the company. AT&T strikes me as the kind of place where that policy would have an almost exactly 20% drop in productivity. A lot of large companies have a lot of people who will do the bare minimum to not get fired.

Google is betting on having a significant number of the other type of person. If they're wrong, they still have a bunch of employees who are given more freedom to pursue their own interests than most employees.

Re:20% personal project?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Want to read my k5 story about stealing that 20% when no one was looking?

Re:20% personal project?

[tommers]

I'd heard that employees need to get manager's approval before doing a 20% project and that a good deal of engineers never get this approval. Has anyone heard from a Google engineer if this policy is really practiced as universally as its presented in the Google-culture articles?

Re:20% personal project?

[Anonymous Coward]

The pay and benefits at Google must be amazing to be able to put applicants through so many interviews. Anything over 5 interviews seems excessive to me, excessive to the point that applicants should be able to bill the company for wasting so much of their time. Unless Google gives a signing bonus how do applicants stay motivated? Do entry level positions start at $150,000 or is there something else that I am missing? I wouldn't even bother to apply for a job that required 15 interviews unless they agreed to pay me for my interview time whether I got the job or not.

Re:20% personal project?

[jekk]

Yes, I have heard first-hand from Google employees that they really do spent 1 day per week on personal projects.

Re:20% personal project?

[X]

Acutally, most places I have interviewed of late have at least 5 interviews before you get the job. People think this is unique to Google as part of the mystique, but frankly it's true of Yahoo and most other tech companies that are both good and large. Typically you spend a day interviewing with people, and if they like you, you have another day doing interviews at headquarters with the "big shots".

If you look at the interview process as just a way for them to evaluate you, then I can see why you find it annoying, but I see it also as an opportunity for me to evaluate them. The more I get to see of them before I make a decision, the better.

Re:20% personal project?

[javajedi]

I've heard first-hand from Google employees that they spend their 1 day per week catching up on everything they're behind on from the other 4 days. Google doesn't enforce the 20% rule.

Re:20% personal project?

[javajedi]

I have a friend who's worked there for about 6 months and so far neither the pay nor the bonuses are anything special. It seems like the big draws are rather the chance to work with some really smart people, lots and lots of perks, and your company's name being a household word.

Re:20% personal project?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, your rant about how much your call center job sucked was pointless. You deserved to be fired.

Second, what does this have to do with Google's 20% projects?

Re:20% personal project?

[Grishnakh]

Exactly what kind of perks? Perks can be worth a lot of money.

Re:20% personal project?

[NoseBag]

Actually, AT&T Bell Labs - (Garland) was kinda picky....

Target audience

[Iriel]

...is the lesson I learned getting my degree in Interactive Media Design. I don't see Yahoo and Google in competition as much as simply different services. Some of their departments cross over, but I use Gooogle for finding just about anything and email, while Yahoo is my portal to movie listings, my stock quote and a place to store bookmarks, notes and calendar based events.

It really depends on what you're looking for in most of the areas of service from each company. Google seems more interesting in refining ways to search and pioneering new uses for the internet. On the other hand, Yahoo is where I go for a remote login PDA. I'd like Google to provide notes/calendar features, but if they don't then I'm happy with a 2GB inbox, picture uploading, specialized searches and nifty maps. I'll just use Yahoo as an internet organizer.

Re:Target audience

[Momoru]

and nifty maps. I'll just use Yahoo as an internet organizer.

Sorry, i just had to share a personal story about Google Maps i experienced today. I loved google maps when it came out, but two things about it recently that have been annoying as hell occured. First, try mapping a trip from Baltimore, MD to New Orleans, LA. Map it on google first, then on map quest....notice anything there? Map Quest found a route that was 6 hours shorter!!! I then tried to replicate the same route manually through google and it still managed to estimate a time 5 hours longer?

Next major problem with Google maps...try finding Staten Island or Coney Island, New york. They will not come up. Instead a bunch of businesses with those names come up. Sometimes you just know an area...map quest finds these, Google doesn't. And gmaps has been getting really slow lately. If mapquest just adds some ajax gmaps will fall right off the map (no pun intended).

Re:Target audience

[Iriel]

I've seen my share of quirks as well, but also notice that I refered to them as nifty, and not perfect :)

my Google project day

[rebug]

Project #1: Eat this delicious pastrami sandwich.
Results: Delicious.

Project #2: Eight hour nap.
Results: Zzzz.

Re:my Google project day

[ArsonSmith]

Project #3: Open new slashdot account. try to get karma to excelent then back down to zero in 8 hours.

Results: Zzzzz

Google Man.

[adam31]

Google Man, Google Man,
Size of the entire internet man,
Usually kind to smaller man,
Google Man.

Yahoo Man, Yahoo Man,
Hit on the head with a frying pan,
lives his life in a garbage can.
Yahoo man.

Google Man and Yahoo Man,
Meet on the street in internet land,
They have a fight,
Google wins.
Google Man.

Re:Google Man.

[archmagusrm]

Google might be a giant. But remember, the particle gets the title.

Re:Google Man.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have a fight,
Microsoft wins.

Fixed that for 'ya.

Re:Google Man.

[geoff43230]

Ah, one of my favorite songs! from group They Might Be Search Results.

"Inter-net (not Com-net Controllers)" is another.

Re:Google Man.

[BudaElvis]

For Great Justice!

Yahoo vs. Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow !!! Google News how creative a news site. I guess they were the 1st...Sorry but Social Networking is not creative...Google is a very creative place and has great ideas but those examples are weak...

It's Technology, Mate

[SpinningAround]

I am waiting for a company for the courage of its convictions. The company that won't sell it's soul for the NASDAQ. Maybe it's Google. Maybe it's not.

I like Google 'cause they are GOOD. Good at what they do. Yahoo is worthless as a portal and a search engine.

Stay with it boys and girls. Don't be a NASDAQ whore. Take the long view. Ignore the market. Do what the geeks do best.

Who cares who's ahead of the game?

[Weaselmancer]

Choice is good.

Re:Hiring?

[Scrameustache]

a search engine for Latina women.

Well... that's just much better!

Innovation.

[merdaccia]

"I do believe that Google will hit a wall eventually, and it will hit it spectacularly," said the book author Moore. "The real question is: What will it do then?"

I think Moore's missing the point. The reason a company hits a wall is that it stops being innovative, and instead tries to keep milking past success (ahem, SCO, cough). I don't recall Yahoo! making anything innovative recently, but correct me if I'm wrong. Google, on the other hand, is creating useful services left and right. It's already dominated search, and its webmail system is vastly popular and not even out of beta. Google Scholar needs some work, but Google news and Google maps are making good headway. Google isn't going to hit a wall as long as it keeps encouraging its innovative employees.

Google is like the annoying smart kid that sits in the first row of class. Yahoo's in that class too, watching the smart kid get all the glory, and it can do nothing about it. It's time for Yahoo to either change classrooms or start studying.

Re:Innovation.

[AutopsyReport]

I don't recall Yahoo! making anything innovative recently, but correct me if I'm wrong. Google, on the other hand, is creating useful services left and right. It's already dominated search, and its webmail system is vastly popular and not even out of beta. Google Scholar needs some work, but Google news and Google maps are making good headway. Google isn't going to hit a wall as long as it keeps encouraging its innovative employees.

I'm confused how you can associate innovation with Webmail, Search, and Maps. Perhaps Yahoo hasn't rolled-out any refined technologies in the past while, but Google has. Since when has a Webmail application been deemed innovative?

Re:Innovation.

[X]

I think Moore's missing the point. The reason a company hits a wall is that it stops being innovative

I think Moore actually has a better understanding of the problem. Do you think company execs sit around a table and say to each other, "let's stop being innovative now"? No, it's a situation that happens, and it tends to be inevitable. You're faced with the "innovator's dilemma, and sooner or later it'll get you. Google is just too young to have been hit with this. They're doing everything they can to dodge the bullet, but it really is just a matter of time.

I don't recall Yahoo! making anything innovative recently, but correct me if I'm wrong.

You are wrong. Google has way better PR than Yahoo, so pretty much everything they do gets spun as innovative (regardless of merit), while Yahoo's stuff tends to get ignored. Still, as an example, a lot of search industry experts have been describing Yahoo's Mindset demo as the most innovative thing they've seen in search in years.

Re:Innovation.

[DerekLyons]

The reason a company hits a wall is that it stops being innovative, and instead tries to keep milking past success (ahem, SCO, cough). I don't recall Yahoo! making anything innovative recently, but correct me if I'm wrong. Google, on the other hand, is creating useful services left and right.

That's because you seem to define 'innovative' as 'anything Google does'.

Maps? Done, and in some ways betters by at least three other providers. (What kind of 'innovator' forgets to add a freakin' scale?) Mail? Done, and in several important ways better, by multiple other providers. News? Social Networking? Ditto. Ditto.

Google is like the annoying smart kid that sits in the first row of class. Yahoo's in that class too, watching the smart kid get all the glory, and it can do nothing about it.

No, Google is more like the anoying popular guy in the first row. He wears pink to school one day, and all the sudden pink is cool.

Re:Innovation.

[Grishnakh]

Maps? Done, and in some ways betters by at least three other providers. (What kind of 'innovator' forgets to add a freakin' scale?)

I agree about the scale, but what other provider lets you pan around just by clicking and dragging? I'm sorry, but I've never seen anything remotely this easy to use on a web-based map site. With all the others, it's click on a separate direction arrow and wait a while. Very annoying.

Additionally, Google maps is really great for finding things. I can type in "tire 85018" and get a map of all the tire shops around that zip code, along with a map and markers showing exactly where they all are. I've never seen anything like this from Yahoo Maps or Mapquest.

The scale bit is a little annoying, but not in my area since I can just use the roads for a scale (all the streets are laid out on a 1-mile grid; why other cities don't do this I have no idea).

It's pretty clear...

[ArbiterOne]

It's pretty clear, from this post, which side the poster is on. Take this simple comparison: At the site named Google, you are expected to search and find whatever you want. But at "Slashdot", readers are invited to, well, submit stories (read boring).

Really.

Brand Matters

[augustz]

What Yahoo still seems to be missing is that brand really matters. And brand is related to trust and doing the right thing by customers.

Take their Yahoo! music engine for example. A nice piece of software. But I, along with many I'd hope, are tired of downloading software to find it installs lots of other largely bugus but "required" junk. This is exactly the adware phenomenon that drives people nuts.

Of course, the Yahoo Music engine REQUIRES yahoo messenger to play music as a dependency (and no doubt will add more "requirements" in the future to increase revenue). Obviously, they saw a chance to push garbage that people wouldn't otherwise download.

In the end, this reflects on your brand. Either you are the company that respects my communication preferences, or you "update" them, and set them all to send me spam, and claim it is in enhancement (Yahoo).

Either you provide me with a cool music engine, or you "enhance" it with unrelated downloads.

Bottom line, many of us don't have the time or interest to sort out if we are going to get screwed over. The $6/month for the music engine is irrelevant actually for me, that is free. But the trust / hassle, and just being able to get what I want without tons of junk, that matters a lot.

If my mother, who is not as quickly able to uninstall stuff, downloads music engine, and then has messenger sitting forever in her taskbar, that sucks. Thankfully, I can tell her to download itunes, and she will have a clean and good experience. Neither she nor the queen of england want to be bothered with Yahoo! Messenger crap.

Pretty soon, folks like my mom, and myself, will trust Apple / Google, and when they release stuff, be happy to try it on the premise we are less likely to be screwed. Yahoo has a history in the other direction.

So I don't begrude Yahoo it's right to bundle a nice music engine with whatever other stuff it wants to load it with. I just don't
understand it. In the end, the company that develops products to deliver junk as its goal will fail to a company that developes a product that delivers what people want. I mean, are you putting
together a music service or not? If so, focus on the damn music part.

Long term I think this brand power will really matter, and Yahoo's history relative to Google put google in a good spot.

Re:Brand Matters

[X]

Sigh. You know that part of the deal with YME is that it is integrated with messenger, right? You can share music with your IM buddies and you guys can see what each other is listening too.

Just because you perceive two independent applications doesn't mean that they are two independent applications, or that someone else might perceive them as two different applications.

I mean, both Google and Yahoo have toolbars that also include pop-up blocking. What does pop-up blocking have to do with the toolbars? Well, I guess they both involve a browser, but beyond that, nothing. Why is it integrated in? Because they thought it'd be a good feature that users would want. Maybe some people just want the toolbar and others just want the pop-up blocking, but I notice you aren't saying anything about that.

Re:Brand Matters

[Rrrrob]

Problem is, Apple does the same thing with iTunes. You don't get iTunes without Quicktime. You don't get iTunes and Quicktime without getting the iTunes and Quicktime helpers in your startup folder, eating up boot time. And Quicktime loves to just put itself in your taskbar without giving you the option to leave you alone before it installs. Yahoo is worse, but Appple isn't clean either. Plus iTunes is just sooooo much better. I mean seriously have have any of you tried it?

Re:Brand Matters

[JeTmAn81]

I agree that there are a few problems with Yahoo Music, however I still definitely prefer it to iTunes for various reasons. One of which being the situation yesterday where I forgot to bring a cd burned from iTunes from home to listen to at work. I figured ok, sure I'll install iTunes here and just download the music I *paid* for to this computer as well. After I go through the install process (which takes a while), get a password reset (I forgot the username on iTunes is an e-mail address and not a typical username), I finally get it up and working, try to get my music. "We're sorry, you can only download music once." So, after all that, I can't even listen to what the music I paid for. Sorry Apple, I think I will stick with Yahoo Music (whose purchase prices happen to trump Apple as well) from now on. I'll take a few irritating pack-ins (such as Yahoo Messenger, which I uninstalled immediately) over a near-crippling lack of features.

Re:Brand Matters

[drxray]

Doesn't iTunes install quicktime? Quicktime is nag-/crippleware, or at least that's my experience of it on Windows.

Re:Brand Matters

[Cpyder]

If my mother, who is not as quickly able to uninstall stuff, downloads music engine, and then has messenger sitting forever in her taskbar, that sucks. Thankfully, I can tell her to download itunes, and she will have a clean and good experience. Neither she nor the queen of england want to be bothered with Yahoo! Messenger crap.

She will also be very happy about the 'ipodservice' and 'ituneshelper' processes which are also running in the background from as soon as her computer starts up, using more memory than most spyware.

Re:Brand Matters

[Grishnakh]

I don't have any "IM buddies"; I don't use IM at all, and I really don't care what other people are listening to. So why should I install their special software, instead of it being an option?

If companies want to make optional components which some users might find useful, that's great. But forcing things on users that they don't want is evil.

(I'm just going by the previous poster's description; I haven't actually used this Yahoo software myself.)

Re:Brand Matters

[augustz]

Sigh, that is exactly the problem. They claim they are "integrated" the same way Microsoft claims you can't have a web browser outside of the core operating system.

In both cases, these claims are more or less bogus.

There are two sets of features here. Playing music, and chatting with your IM buddies.

In this case, tons of software exists that is much more flexiable for the second option. For example

http://amip.tools-for.net/index.php?content=about

"AMIP integrates with IRC (mIRC, PIRCH, Klient, Bersirc) clients, IM and Blog clients. It can also post currently hearing song information to your site via FTP or HTTP GET and POST. AMIP can be used to generate Dynamic Image Signatures, such signatures can be used in forums, blogs or on your web site." Heck it works with Winamp, iTunes and more.

If I wanted these crappy Music Engine features I'd download them myself for goodness sakes, the reason they force people to download them is that they wouldn't otherwise.

No doubt they will soon have us downloading integrated and ad-supported weather bug functionality... Gack. Give me iTunes.

Sigh...

Re:Brand Matters

[augustz]

I completely agree. It is matters of degree. But Yahoo Messenger is much less related to a Music Engine than quicktime is. And you can get betters apps to share your now playing feature.

And finally, it is a matter of evaluating how useful to someone something is. I'd bet there are more folks with ipods than yahoo messenger.

Fair enough though...

(in fact, Yahoo's music engine also requires windows media)

Re:Brand Matters

[augustz]

I messenger a pack-in or a requirement? If a pack-in, that's seems even more pathetic.

Re:Brand Matters

[Kazoo the Clown]

That's what lost me from Yahoo search years ago. In the early days, they used to really work hard when you enter a search term to keep you on their site for an extra page by first taking you to some kind of intermediate page where you would have to select a subcategory before you would get to actual search results. It was just a ploy to throw an extra page of ads at you before you left the site. Well, I left the site for good and haven't been back to their search. In fact, I avoided them like the plague in any form for about a year or so till finally I needed to check something out in the groups and then the finance section and I've found those at least tolerable-- once I installed an ad-blocker on their group articles that is, as they randomly subject you to spam pages. YMMV though, as I use a pretty draconian HTML filter so I don't see a lot of the crap that pages are throwing out at people-- I NEVER see pop-ups, for example, are they still even using them?

Re:Brand Matters

[X]

Sigh, that is exactly the problem. They claim they are "integrated" the same way Microsoft claims you can't have a web browser outside of the core operating system. ...and the same way both Google and Yahoo claim to have integrated pop-up blocking in with their toolbars. Go ahead. Scream about it.

Ultimately, all computer programs are the results of a combination of instructions. I suspect that for almost any piece of software you don't actually use all of it's functionality. You might not like the combination of one particular package. That doesn't make it "junk".

Re:Brand Matters

[augustz]

In this case, messenger is a pack-in. Ie, you can uninstall it. And its features only lightly overlap with "music engine". All programs are combinations of features, the point here is this a good combo, and is it driven by customer or marketing needs. I don't think it is.

Re:Hiring?

[tzanger]

Chicagoogle... find all thing Chicago! : )

I personally like goocago better. :-)

new offerings, but stalled.

[Anonymous Coward]

. This has resulted in new offerings like Google News and social networking site Orkut

Yeah, but orkut sucks. It's plagged with problems, not the least of them being the attitude of part of the population. But, for example, it's been over a week since the communities listing doesn't update, and I was over a month unable to post anything once.

I don't know google news, but right now I think the best is google groups, gmail and the search engine.

Why is everyone so happy about personal projects?

[Paradox]

I like Google. I'd love to work at Google.

That said, I find that the "personal projects" aspect of Google is one of the more sinister. Remember that Google can take your personal project if they want it. So it's not really a personal project, it's funded independent R&D.

It's part of the way Google tries to stay agile. By insinuating ownership over projects that their corporate culture couldn't create, they can come up with things that another company their size couldn't, and do it cheaper (remember, Google employees are salaried, and likely you're going to work on the project in your spare time as well).

Add to that the rumblings we've been hearing about how Google "strongly encourages" employees to have such a project, and you paint Google's practice in a less favorable light.

I'm not saying the practice is wrong, but let's not forget that it's just another way to diversify their investment in an engineer. I think it's extremely clever and most engineers would find it pleasant, but I know I couldn't work on many of my projects because I wouldn't want Google to co-opt them.

Re:Hiring?

[NDPTAL85]

Wow you don't know anything about how Google works. The skunk works time that is set aside is by design. Its not a "perk". Its how they stay ahead of the game inovatively. They only hire really really smart people (PhD's) to begin with. So basically everyone there IS a genius. Also the creators of skunk work projects are allocated extra shares of Google to reward them for their creativity.

Its not in any way something "allowed" to mollify the masses.

Down with "portals" and "integration"

[Relic of the Future]

Somedays I feel like a visitor from an alien world on the internet. Integration? my.yahoo? portal? It's like they're speaking. I hope google stays smart, and keeps all their separate services separate. The day I need a gmail account to use google search is the day I stop using google search, and that'll be a sad, sad day.

Re:Down with "portals" and "integration"

[grommit]

Simple logic here, the presense of a "portal" does not automatically add the requirement of having an "account." You can use a portal without the portal having to know who you are.

Try it and see. Go to my.yahoo.com and... *GASP* there it is.. a search bar for you to do searches with.

Believe it or not, some people actually like portals. They don't enjoy going to 12 different places to find the information they need. One quick scan of their portal of choice and they've consumed the majority of the information that they're interested in.

Re:Down with "portals" and "integration"

[teaDrunk]

I agree. having own portal still is attractive. there is some empowerment or atleast the pretense of it, where I think I am deciding what I should see. though, after I visit my preffered portal(s), I then still spend a few more (work:) hours browsing other sites for news/tech/(cartoons:).....

Re:Hiring?

[AKAImBatman]

They need to open an office in Chicago

I'm in Chicago as well. Imagine my surprise when I noticed that Google Jobs has postings for a new office to be opening in Chicago! Don't believe me? Look here. I just hope you have a PHD in triplet if you want to apply. :-/

(Actually, I think Google probably hires 99% of their people through reference or because they worked at other big tech companies. I did some research to see if they have ever hired anyone from the Job postings on their website and came up empty. It may be just because these things are not publicized, but my gut says that emailing to jobs@google.com is a pointless exercise.)

Re:Hiring?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, remember, only 20% of the time is your time, so the other 80% you have a specific task to do. And also, fun pays the bills if you're being paid for it, which is what you get at Google...

And if you're a genius, you don't necessarily start your own business because you don't necessarily want to consume every minute of every hour of every day worrying about business, with the occasional interesting technical detail sprinkled in.

There is no comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo is a destination, while Google is a tool. Yahoo offers so much more than search, ads, and maps. Google is yet another overpriced dotcom that will be eating a healthy dose of reality before too long. Yahoo amy not have Gmail, but whoop-de-do. Gmail isn't all that anyway. I've had an account since the week they started, and while I use it, I like my Yahoo account much better becuase its tied in with all of Yahoo's other offerings. Yahoo is here for the long run. Google, in order to survive will have to become more like Yahoo, because while it now enjoys the top spot among engines, so did Altavista at one time, only to be replaced. Google will be replaced by something else within a few years.

Re:There is no comparison

[CdBee]

Gmail may not be "all that" to you but for many people - myself included - the combination of a 2.3Gb inbox and POP3 access is revolutionary. I used to use Yahoo! mail - I stopped when they started spamming me on a regular basis then stated I had to pay for POP access - a practice they continue, (as do Hotmail now as well despite using a non-standards compliant system) - to this day.

In a race between free and pay-for-spam, free's going to win every time. If only Gmail had IMAP, (I'd pay for that too)

Re:There is no comparison

[rojo]

I've used Yahoo! mail for years and I gladly pay the $18 a year for the plus mail. That's pretty cheap for pop3, no ads (not even text), 2gb of space, wap access on my phone, and the ability to easily use my own domain or work domain when composing a message. Not to mention some of the best spam filtering I've tried. Also it's not in beta, unlike gmail.

Re:There is no comparison

[limber]

My pet issue with gmail that made me switch back to yahoo after a while is that gmail deliberately doesn't support wildcard searches or partial string matches. I wind up having to waste time constructing boolean queries in order to find messages which I *know* exist. (i.e. you search for 'vacation' and it doesn't return an e-mail with 'vacations' in it.) Maddening!

This is definitely one case where the search functionality doesn't "just work" the way a user would expect it to. Quite frustrating in light of Google's branding as the premier search technologists.

Another fair and balanced summary

[m50d]

from what is becoming googledot more and more every day. How much did they pay for this one taco?

Google vs. Yahoo: On a Collision Course

[Anne_Nonymous]

The scene: A collision.

Idiot #1: "Hey! You got your Google in my Yahoo!"

Idiot #2: "Dude! You got your Yahoo in my Google!"
Together: "Yuuuuum..."

Mr. Announcer Man: "Goohoo, two great tastes that go great together!"

Re:Google vs. Yahoo: On a Collision Course

[matvei]

Goohoo? You probably meant Yagoohoogle.

Re:Google vs. Yahoo: On a Collision Course

[tomkins]

LOL. Thanks for the funny.

Innovation != Profitability

[JaF893]

Google might be a lot more innovative than Yahoo! But it's not like Yahoo! are going out of business.

Look at Microsoft - many here on /. say they aren't innovative but they still seem to making a tidy profit.

Re:Innovation != Profitability

[AutopsyReport]

Look at Microsoft - many here on /. say they aren't innovative but they still seem to making a tidy profit.

I think you misspelt a tidal wave of profit :)

Yahoo is winning?

[nonsequitor]

"Yahoo has a big branded advertising business. Google is all search. To the extent that brand advertisers want to participate in the Internet, Yahoo's a better bet,"

I guess this was written before a bunch of advertisers pulled their ads after finding out they were popping up while entering chat rooms for pedophiles. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/19/063920 5&tid=95&tid=98&tid=1/

So who wins? Though Google is bigger, Yahoo appears to have the upper hand when it comes to warm relations with Madison Avenue.

I just think its funny that the article lists its relationship with ad agencies as one of the strengths Yahoo has over Google. Personally, I think Google's ads are less obtrusive since they dont flash at you and try to get your attention.

Re:Yahoo is winning?

[sobachatina]

I just think its funny that the article lists its relationship with ad agencies as one of the strengths Yahoo has over Google. Personally, I think Google's ads are less obtrusive since they dont flash at you and try to get your attention.

As a consumer I completely agree with you. Unfortunately its the advertising companies and not the victims that pay for the advertising.

The trend in media seems to make ads as annoying as possible so they get attention.

That said, I think that google's advantage is not that the ads are unobtrusive but that they are relevant. Google ads are the only ads I have ever actually clicked on. Not only are they helpful in my search but they don't insult me with their presentation.

I hope that enough people feel the same way I do to eventually change the trend in advertising.

Re:Hiring?

[mcho]

Well, I've heard/read from other sources that Google is the "Wal-Mart" of the internet, in the sense that they don't pay well. (And if I'm wrong, please correct me.)

Working for a cutting-edge company (and working on "skunk works" projects) would be a great experience -- but it's probably not for everyone.

In my short career, I haven't ran into too many people that think of ideas that they want to build. The majority of people just want to put in an honest day and go home. And that's okay.

(I, on the other hand, have a start-up as a side-project -- in addition to my day job -- because of my relentless curosity. I'm just an uber-geek.)

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[joolie]

...exactly.

It's also a means by which Google can pay an engineer or other 'smart person' less. It's the modern equivalent of the pinball machine and free pop machine.

"Hey, we're cooooooool. You can do your own research (which we'll own! sign that NDA now!)."

It'd be nice to see Google put some effort into depressing the value of link farms, and stop doing directory crawls to populate their search results. The Yahoo algorithim is starting to show some signs of this happening, and if it keeps going, they're likely to offer better quality search results fairly soon. Link farms suck.

Google and Yahoo will go the way of Altavista....

[sweetnjguy29]

....in that they will eventually both be eclipsed by a newly emerging company at some point down the road which has a better proprietary search algorithm with a better plan to capitalize on it. I see both Yahoo and Google having reached a technological plateau.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[cybersaga]

Does any one know if Google employees are rewarded if a project they start is picked up?

Re:Hiring?

[mcho]

It may be just because these things are not publicized, but my gut says that emailing to jobs@google.com is a pointless exercise.

That's true with most companies. Happy networking...

Your wrong

[tezbobobo]

Yahoo is about much more than a search engine. I don't use yahoo personally. I provide network services and recently blocked all access to the Yahoo network on a clients network.

That network was a primary school.

For a number of weeks now, whenever I visit that school I get asked about ten times, "Why aren't we able to access Yahoo?" "Why did you block it?"

It seems that for people like you and I who remember when Yahoo was a search engine, that's all it is. However, once people left for google, the fans and evangelist of Yahoo were more concerned with the content side. Yes, it is about choosing the correct smiley, but no, its not about search engines. I think that extra content that Yahoo seems to be providing, without anyone important realising they're doing it, is what google needs to, and is, catching up on.

As an asided, more and more people seem to be taking Yahoo seriously again as a search engine. I notice now they've got all the extras (images, advanced options, etc...) bu many claim they return more relevant results. Might be time for a personal experiment...

Re:Your wrong

[robertjw]

I think that extra content that Yahoo seems to be providing, without anyone important realising they're doing it, is what google needs to, and is, catching up on.

As Yahoo started adding all that extra content they lost focus on their search engine - which helped Google to get a foothold in the market. As Google offers more and more online content they will become more and more like Yahoo. They will eventually lose the search engine dominance they now enjoy and some other bright young grad students will come up with a new idea.

It's a typical business cycle. Companies that focus on one particular offering generally make the best offering of that type, but when the market takes a nose dive they suffer. Companies the diversify don't generally create the best individual product, but they do better overall because they aren't subject to the market's whims.

Re:Your wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Why did you block access to Yahoo? I'm serious. That makes no sense.

Yahoo is awesome. They really are. First of all, the search is just as good as far as im concerned. Try a side by side comparision.

Next, Yahoo's email is better for some users. I have a domain, and I give websites addresses like slashdot@me.com. Yahoo lets me send mail from slashdot@me.com. Gmail doesn't.

Yahoo has a calender and tasks. These can sync with a PDA. You can access these via a cell phone. My address book works with my mail and my calender. It also syncs with my phone.

Yahoo has photohosting that is pretty good. Yahoo just bought Flickr, which is REALLY good.

Yahoo keeps my zip code so I don't have to enter it when I want my weather. or sports scores. or movie showtimes.

yahoo lets me chose what teams to watch. yahoo lets me watch multiple cities weather. yahoo lets me see whats on tv in my area.

yahoo has a job search engine.

yahoo has maps. Now, this is the biggest failure of yahoo at this point BY far. Google maps OWNS yahoo maps. its not even fair.

I love google, and it is my primary search. but yahoo has CONTENT. and GOOD, easily viewable content. ...

Re:Your wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

"Your wrong"? I own a wrong? What is 'a wrong'?

Perhaps you mean "You're wrong", which makes some kind of sense?

You might find people had more interest in what you had to say if you learned to articulate yourself with more clarity. Otherwise they'll think you're just an idiot, which I'm sure you aren't.

Re:Your wrong

[tezbobobo]

Because it was a primary school. They have email internally - regulated. In Australia, we can't get the weather. Whilst they have a good childrens section (Yahooligans I think) it is simpler to block the whole thing. Children go for media rich content which chokes our bandwidth and is often times inappropriate. Also, whilst searching is a valuable skill, it is more important for the children to focus on other educational areas. We tell teh teachers to find the URLs ahead of time and tell the children to type them in (or create shortcuts).

I'm not knocking the usefullness of Yahoo. It is the very usefullness of Yahoo that means we had to block it.

Re:Hiring?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Carly Fiorna! I didn't know you had a slashdot account! BTW, thanks for fixing the R&D labs at HP, they needed a good cleaning out.

Re:Hiring?

[Eric Giguere]

There's always a tug-of-war happening in tech companies with respect to innovation. It seems to me that the best companies have people that take a long-term view, looking ahead at what's coming down the pipe, instead of the short-term quarter-by-quarter view. This can be hard in a public company, yes, and it's a difficult balance to achieve.

That said, I don't think everyone likes skunk works projects. The important thing is that people enjoy what they do, whatever it is. A good QA person, for example, is one who derives satisfaction from finding and squashing bugs and ultimately making things better for the customer. Different strokes for different folks. A company like Google will tend to attract the creative I-gotta-think-about-things types because that's what they want. But it doesn't meant that every company has to work that way. Indeed, I doubt every company could work that way.

And don't forget the customer satisfaction angle. I suspect that what really turns the crank of people at Google is that they can come up with projects that will eventually be used by thousands, potentially millions, of people worldwide. They're thinking like customers, and in fact they are customers themselves... and Google's audience is so large in general that I suspect it means that there will always be a group of customers who can identify and enjoy a given skunk works project. And then the audience gets bigger... it's a bit self-perpetuating.

Eric
Google-related: my new book about AdSense for non-techies is now shipping

Yahoo! Japan

[noidentity]

At Yahoo, there are posters promoting the "Idea Factory", where employees are invited to well, submit ideas (read boring).

Yeah, but at Yahoo! Japan it's the "Super Happy Fun Idea Factory!", which isn't as boring, you have to admit. I'm already excited!

Re:Yahoo! Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

do not taunt super happy fun idea factory.

Catch-phrases..

[FirstNoel]

Like,

Throwing Fish..
Moving cheese..
Giving them the Pickle...(I'm not kidding...).
"A setback is a setup for a comeback" - Willy Jolly (again I'm not kidding).
"The Power of One" - One what? I have no idea
and the list goes on...

It would be nice if the company actually embraced new ideas instead of pretending to.

Sean D.

You've Got to be Kidding...

[qw(name)]

That comparison is the basis for judging who is in the lead?!?! Are good tech stories really that hard to come by these days?

Re:Hiring?

[Kiryat Malachi]

Looks like their Chicago office will be strictly ad sales (not surprising, given that Chicago has a relatively large advertising market) and a data center (not surprising, given that Chicago is a major network hub for the Midwest).

In other words, if you *do* have a Ph.D., don't expect to apply to their Chicago office.

Re:Hiring?

[Anonymous Coward]

So having a PHD makes you a genius?

HAHAHAHA! You know nothing of the real world!

There is no real rivalry, people.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really.

Yahoo *was* Google before Google was Google. The hip, young company full of new ideas. Since then they've matured. Their web-based email is often considered the best, they were adding content to their portal a long time ago, and have continued to evolve. They gained their niche long before Google came along. Yahoo has been my home page for years and will continue to be for a long time because it loads fast and I can access my email and get quick news headlines all within seconds of loading my browser, and the layout is fairly clean still.

Google, on the other hand, should be a bit worried. Not by Yahoo, but by the fact that they (Google) have branched out into so many other areas that they've let others catch up in their most-important arena -- the actual search engine. I don't use Google for the rest fo the crap, I don't even use Google News. I solely use it for search. And if they fall off in search, how will they retain custoemrs with other portal offerings that Excite and Yahoo have already had for years and have an established audience?

I really think Google is due for a fall because of this wrong-headedness. They should stick to a superior search engine and that's it. Then they'd be fine.

Also... wait another 5 years and come back and chekc out how Google operates. I bet it'll be very similar to how Yahoo currently is. Time changes everything. Keep in mind, Google is still the young upstart really, the newcomer to the game.

Google News??

[MarsBar]

Obviously someone sat there on a Friday and decided their personal proejct was to buy dejanews...

Re:Google News??

[/dev/trash]

They bought the data. Not the UI and related items.

Re:Google News??

[syates21]

That was my first thought as well, and then I remembered that what was Dejanews is actually (most of) Google *Groups* not Google News.

The News thing is relatively unique at least for the news sites that I am familiar with.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[Shakrai]

I'm not saying the practice is wrong, but let's not forget that it's just another way to diversify their investment in an engineer. I think it's extremely clever and most engineers would find it pleasant, but I know I couldn't work on many of my projects because I wouldn't want Google to co-opt them.

Well that depends on what they do for you when they "co-opt" them. Given the atmosphere of Google it doesn't seem very likely that they would just take your idea, say "All your ideas are belong to us", and stiff you out of any gain or glory derived from your work besides your weekly salary.

So yes, you are probably going to work on your project in your off-hours and not (technically) get paid for it. But if they do deploy your idea and it does become "The Next Big Thing(tm)" then I'm sure you will get stock options, bonuses and all sorts of (in-house if nothing else) recognition for it.

So unless you have the resources to take your project/idea to the World and make it "The Next Big Thing(tm)" on your own then what would be the downside of having Google do it for you? Do you think that the guy who came up with G-mail (that started out as a pet project as I recall) could have deployed a one gigabyte uber web-mail service using his own resources? Likewise, do you really think that Google screwed him over on it?

Re:Hiring?

[ThosLives]

I'd love to see how they define "make life better" for someone. Sure, Google is great for finding various tidbits of information, but Google can't build a water purification plant, set up irrigation, or build a house. (I'm of the belief that information is potential, but action is where the value lies. Thus, providing more information just gives potential...) It might facilitate that somehow, but there's nothing that Google provides that cannot be done by other means. Sure you might be able to do something "a little faster" which is a type of innovation, but there is nothing new there: maps have been around for centuries, catalogs and directories have been around for centuries, etc.

I want to see something fundamentally different that makes a difference - not shinier, more complicated versions of centuries-old things. That run on a computer.

Google fight!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1= Google&word2=Yahoo

Google being flooded

[phorm]

I've noticed that with its increased popularity google is increasingly becoming victim to spamming/etc. A lot of sites I'll visit which (according to google cache) have exactly what I need , but the current website is just a big block of advertising.

My latest attempts to find speaking installation instructions for my Corolla lead to tons of these. The intro page will be full of sites which, despite seeming to have good content in the summary, end up with just links that want to sell you a $4 PDF on how to install door-panel speakers.

There seem to be a few companies in particular that are guilty of this, but they have massive amounts of domains. Hopefully google can fix this soon (yahoo had a lot less ads though neither had the specific info I needed).

PhD genius???

[javamann]

So, you are saying that most, if not all, of the PhD's are geniuses? From what I have seen after 27 years in high tech is that a PhD is someone who avoided work until there were no more degrees to get. Never confuse a degree with intelligence.

takeover?

[handy_vandal]

....in that they will eventually both be eclipsed by a newly emerging company at some point down the road which has a better proprietary search algorithm with a better plan to capitalize on it.

Alternately: Google and/or Yahoo are eclipsed by an established company that has no search algorithm whatever, but does have a better (read: uber-predatory) takeover plan.

Google in particular may prove vulnerable, if it really truly lives by the code of "Do No Evil" -- a company not willing to do Evil may itself be a prime target for Evil machinations.

Then again, I don't think the Do No Evil ethos will last forever at Google -- Evil is simply too fucking profitable.

All of the above is speculative, I am not an economist.

-kgj

Re:takeover?

[yintercept]

Evil is simply too fucking profitable.

You need to get your terms straight. Evil is very rarely profitable. It rarely actually produces anything. Evil is powerful, it is the person or group who subverts a company or a market for their personal gain...generally in doing so they make the rest of the world poorer.

In the case of Google, the great example is the legion of SEO-spammers who create millions upon millions of fake web pages to get their ads to the top positions in the search engines.

These people are actually destroying wealth, but they are following Lord Machiavelli and Sun Tzu in their march to dominate the market...just as they are taught by the legions of business gurus.

Evil is only profitable in that it concentrates power in a few hands. It is not profitable in that it destroys wealth and potential.

Re:takeover?

[coopaq]

Then again, I don't think the Do No Evil ethos will last forever at Google -- Evil is simply too fucking profitable.

"Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."

Spaceballs

No need to RTFA

[allym]

"It's pretty clear from this analysis as to which company is ahead of the game"

Yeah, that and the fact that Yahoo doesn't have its very own /. topic.

There's a key difference.

[tgd]

I go to google, I get a search prompt. If I log in, I get my mail and mini portal.

If I go to yahoo, I get inundated with crap regardless of if I log in or not.

Thats a big difference.

Re:There's a key difference.

[BiAthlon]

Try this.

http://search.yahoo.com/

Re:There's a key difference.

[smitke]

If you just want a Yahoo search prompt without the crap try this:

http://search.yahoo.com/

Re:There's a key difference.

[bad_outlook]

Oh wow, there again shows Google's inovation, even Yahoo has copied them to appear 'non-portal' like! Thanks for the link, I've never seen that, and it's very telling!

Re:There's a key difference.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot. It was like that before google even existed

Re:There's a key difference.

[bad_outlook]

Ah, so I'm an idiot eh? I started on the Internet in 1994, and I used Yahoo at the time, while it looked SOMEWHAT like that link, it was never that spartin, it had many more links as well as graphical 'buttons' to choose from, and it's now (in)famous 'catagories' listing all the way down the left side. The linked Yahoo Seach looks like Google, but back in the mid 90s Yahoo DID NOT. Here, take a look at Yahoo in 1996:

http://www2.yahoo.com/">http://web.archive.org/web /19961017235908/http://www2.yahoo.com/

So that's my point, Yahoo never looked as Google'd as it does now. Thanks for calling me an idiot, but next time please have something to back that up with.

Re:There's a key difference.

[macslut]

"even Yahoo has copied them to appear 'non-portal' like!"

Actually, http://search.yahoo.com/ was there (and "clean")waaaaay back in the 90s when Yahoo was going with the whole ____.yahoo.com and everyone else was paying buttloads of bucks for domain names.

Ever notice what happens *now* when you type ____.google.com? It follows exactly what Yahoo did first.

The main difference between Yahoo and Google is that Yahoo, being first/older has built/bought more. Some of what they built/bought along the way was a product of the times and pulled Yahoo in one direction or another. Good decisions and bad decisions were made along the way (buying Broadcast.com and not buying eBay were some really poor moves). While Yahoo has made some boneheaded investments involving cash, Google has invested huge amounts of time and resources in "pre..." (the steps before profit). It appears that more and more the "pre..." at Google is appearing to be more consumer application focused rather than research focused...gee, who would expect this from a post-IPO company!

I guess one could argue that their choice for what is their "front door" is a difference, but that's more of a marketing difference rather than a difference in what the companies actually do.

Oh, also there's about a $30 billion market cap difference (in favor of Google).

Re:There's a key difference.

[HyperChicken]

If I go to yahoo, I get inundated with crap regardless of if I log in or not.

http://search.yahoo.com/
Like... Wow.... So many banner ads and annoying stuff. (That's sarcasm. Irony will be demonstrated next.)

Doesn't this feel familiar??

[Anonymous Coward]

http://search.yahoo.com/

Re:Doesn't this feel familiar??

[Anonymous Coward]

That's too cool!

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[MikeBabcock]

Their "corporate culture" did create it -- they gave you the tools, the time and the resources to come up with the idea. You don't think they hired you to work on an assembly line did you? They're hiring you for your brain of course.

The vast majority of innovative companies wouldn't exist if it wasn't implicit that employee innovations become corporate inventions. If this doesn't seem fair to you, don't work for a big company and innovate on your own, then tell me the corporate culture wouldn't have helped you do it better.

There's nothing wrong with how Google does things in this sense, to my understanding.

I personally, I might add, didn't take a job recently that required signing over all my ideas and inventions to my employer, including those I worked on in my spare time or that I'd already come up with, but the idea you're presenting here is different altogether.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[ajs]

"I find that the "personal projects" aspect of Google is one of the more sinister."

Every time someone uses some variant of the word "evil" in association with Google, I just have to laugh. Have you met anyone from Google? This is a company fascinated with the technology of the Internet. This is a company full of people (from founders to trenches) that honestly believe that technology can make people's lives better.

"Remember that Google can take your personal project if they want it."

Go do some research. The personal project thing is highly confused outside of the company. Inside the company, you are asked to work on a project that has a benefit to Google. It's not your chance to write something for yourself, it's a chance to get paid to work on the Google project YOU WANT. This is no more sinister than not having such a project and having you work on a project of your manager's choosing.

"It's part of the way Google tries to stay agile. By insinuating ownership over projects that their corporate culture couldn't create"

But, that's just the thing. Their corproate culture CAN create these things because their corporate culture allows employees to spec their own project.

"Add to that the rumblings we've been hearing about how Google "strongly encourages" employees to have such a project"

You're really reaching for some dirt. My Advice? Give up.

George Carlin

[Webs 101]

This kinda reminds me of George Carlin's riff on the differences between baseball and football.

oodles

[Doc Ruby]

Yahoo is a single good idea (hierarchical text menus of spidered Internet content) from 10 years ago. With several good sub-companies bolted on, purchased along the way when they looked like part of a rising wave. Along with many more that never saw the light of day, because they didn't work out. While Google was a few good ideas (very simple search query, very complete spider, brief relevant results) with several more added (image search, adword syndication, news aggregation, etc). Yahoo used its unprecedented IPO money to buy some more good ideas, but that's run out of gas. While Google is using its IPO money to buy people who develop good ideas. I bet Google wins.

snatching up a myriad of the brightest minds

[dpilot]

To re-frame this into the overused /. mold...

Step 1: snatch up a myriad of the brightest minds around
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!!!

Step1 isn't even the most important step here. * First off, there are those who assert that just about everyone is capable of working at "nearly brilliant" levels (I added the "nearly.") of creativity, given the right environment, it's just that most people have been trained by society not to be creative. I'm hesitant to buy in too fully, but I will say that merely good contributors could work wonders in the proper environment.
Second, given the wrong environment, the brightest mindes are likely to be even more discontent than average contributors.
Finally, probably the most important factor is that the founders are still at the helm. Usually the founders know what they want, have a vision of how to get there, and have the karma to make the organization march to their plan. That's hard to match once new people take over, and a business quits being a personal vision, and becomes just a business.

Re:snatching up a myriad of the brightest minds

[drix]

Not necessarily apropos of what you posted, but ... that model is much more tried-and-true than /. would like to admit; people should stop shitting on it. If you replace #3 with "success," since money really isn't the right benchmark to use, the 20th century is teeming with examples of places that employed that idea and prospered. Xerox PARC had a notoriously freewheeling, unstructured environment and originated many of the brilliant ideas about personal computing you are using right now to read this post. Skunk Works was the same way, and so was/is the Institute for Advanced Study. HP, in a less academic context, was run in a very similar fashion. The list of achievements from those institutions alone reads like a "what's what" of 20th century achievement.

and it's stolen...

[YesIAmAScript]

http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,64 046,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

It hasn't happened again, but apparently some employees were taking shortcuts on their spare day each week.

I have to say I am constantly surprised at how much people value a company who mostly just copies what other companies do.

Paradigm Tectonics Warning

[RealProgrammer]

But critics question whether Google has an efficient process for managing innovation.

Managing innovation, in an Open Source mindset, is an oxymoron. Ideas compete in a sort of free market, and managers just watch to see what's taking root. "Throw many new services against the wall to see what sticks", in other words.

That contrasts with the two-fold MBA way of doing things, which is to say A) commission a focus group and convince them that the thing the management team wants is best, and then listen to the focus group or B) let politicking among mid-level managers run its course until someone gets the ear of a TLA-level boss. Some combination of A and B gets the job done.

Since Google's business is driven by a huge number of all different kinds of people using their services, and since they have a profitable business already, they have the luxury of seeing what works.

The real point is that trying to manage the innovation in the MBA sense would eventually kill the goose laying the golden clicks (or something like that). And does the world really need another Computer Associates clone?

Maturity has its advantages

[hey!]

Don't get me wrong. I love Google map, Google mail; Google is the technology leader on the Internet. Period.

But, on the other hand, if you wanted a suite of web applications, Yahoo is definitely more complete. They both have email, but Yahoo has PIM and IM functions to go along with them, and a pretty impressive customizable portal. Their PIM functions also sync to PDAs. Granted, you probably have these services at work. But you probably also have email at work.

If you are small business, you probably could run most of your communications and calendar out of Yahoo.

Google is clearly the more creative of the two. But Yahoo is clearly the one that is farther along in building a coherent collection of services.

Re:Maturity has its advantages

[Anonym1ty]

Don't get me wrong. I love Google map, Google mail; Google is the technology leader on the Internet. Period.

Nope. The pr0n industry has them beat.

Seriously... Yahoo has had maps far longer -mail too for that matter. As much as I like Google, Yahoo also has them beat with "Yahoo Whores" as I call it (Yahoo messenger - because you can just IM up a ---never mind you get the idea) -- GOOGLE HAS NO MESSENGER

All that said about Yahoo, Google has one thing going for it that Yahoo doesn't. I just like Google more Maybe it's some hypnotic flickering solid white .gif image they have for a background or something, but I just like Google better. -No blinking flash ads helps them out a lot too.

Re:Maturity has its advantages

[hey!]

Nope. The pr0n industry has them beat.

Seriously... Yahoo has had maps far longer -mail too for that matter.

That's my point. pr0n and Yahoo are product oriented, and so they have more complete offerings. They're innovations are not in the tech sphere, they're in the business sphere.

That's why Google's products are superior to Yahoo's, but Yahoo's offerings are superior.

There is no doubt in my mind that Google is literally remaking the technology we create applications with. They're literally showing us how to put all the pieces together.

Just how orginal is google?

[LWATCDR]

Google is a search engine. Not the first to be sure there idea of page ranks was original but it was just an improvement in rating the pages. How the internal structure of the search engine is very impressive and very original but that is very much hidden.

Gmail is not that original. Hotmail had web based mail years before Google. Yea the gave you a bunch of storage and a very good interface but they did not invent web mail.

Google news is okay but I see very little that is better than my.yahoo.com. Gee a news site? Again not all that original.

Social networking? Did Google do that first?
Maps? Mapquest, Yahoo Maps, Terra server?
Google Local is very nice and I find it pretty original.

What Google seems to be doing is just taking what everyone someone else thinks up but does a better job of it. Sort of like Microsoft. Google takes the embrace and extend idea to heart.
Don't get me wrong. I really like Google but as far as true innovation goes I see it mainly in the tech side not in the products they produce. I would also worry about having a great idea for a web based service. Good chance Google would take your idea and do it better.

Hey Google how about open sourcing Google earth?
Keep the data subscription based but let us hack it?
I have some cool ideas for it.

Re:Just how orginal is google?

[Ford Prefect]

Gmail is not that original. Hotmail had web based mail years before Google. Yea the gave you a bunch of storage and a very good interface but they did not invent web mail. [...] Google news is okay but I see very little that is better than my.yahoo.com. Gee a news site? Again not all that original.

I think an unofficial Google manifesto could be to do things that have already been done, but 'better'.

Whether they actually succeed or not is left as an exercise for the reader, but you have to admit that search engines are no longer ad-riddled, ultra-busy 'portals' since Google came along, and webmail services are no longer providing pitifully small amounts of storage space...

Re:Just how orginal is google?

[LWATCDR]

"but you have to admit that search engines are no longer ad-riddled, ultra-busy 'portals' since Google came along, and webmail services are no longer providing pitifully small amounts of storage space."

Yep but those are improvements not really innovations.

Just how original is Google is my question? Not successful but how original?

Re:Just how orginal is google?

[aaqubed]

But sometimes the wheel really doesn't need to be re-invented. They constantly come up with small, little improvements that, over time, become something large (although I would argue that Gmail, in particular, is a HUGE improvement. Seriously, it's MUCH easier to find old emails with the search and it's MUCH easier to categorize things with labels as opposed to folders). Take a look at Google Labs. Most of those projects aren't really "new", just different flavors added in. But again, those minor additions add up eventually.

Re:Just how orginal is google?

[LWATCDR]

But again my comment was not on if Google has good products or not. They do. My comment is that they are not this source of brilliant original products. You have made my point. Even Google labs does not really have anything new and brilliant of the offering. They just offer better wheels. That is not a bad thing unless you happen to have made a wheel first that Google then makes an improved version of.

Re:Just how orginal is google?

[aaqubed]

And my point is that originality isn't the only form of innovation. Gmail is definitely innovative, even if web-based mail has been around for awhile. Google Maps (especially when considered together with local search) is pretty innovative, even if there already were countless other mapping sites.

And another thing to realize is that they are trying to stay a search engine. Again, most of the projects at Google Labs are centered around the original search engine. But that doesn't mean that, for example, Google Suggest isn't an innovation.

Re:Just how orginal is google?

[LWATCDR]

I have to admit that I find local+maps to be the one product that Google did that I would call truly innovative and even original.

I also think that a lot of the original thinking and innovation at Google is in the systems. I would really love to get the down low on there modifications to Linux and their clustering tech.

Frankly that is one of the things that really worries me. Google has reached such a scale of data that almost no one will ever compete with them. Any new inovtive seach technology will probably be put into Google. Much like Microsoft does with OS and applications.

Re:Just how orginal is google?

[miley]

> Google Local is very nice and I find it pretty original. Didn't Yahoo Local launch before Google Local?

Re:Hiring?

[Anonymous Coward]

my gut says that emailing to jobs@google.com is a pointless exercise

Actually it isn't, as long as you either went to a very good school and got good grades, or you worked for another search engine. That's what got me an interview.

Boy Costanza Is Going to be angry......

[theannointed]

"Yahoo, many analysts believe, is entering a new era as a media company rather than a tech innovator. It's been building a Hollywood headquarters and an entertainment team under newly hired Lloyd Braun, a former ABC executive" They hired Lloyd Braun? I hate Lloyd Braun. You know they say that he cost Mayor Dinkins the election.......

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[sobachatina]

I don't know about you but I always have a queue of about a half dozen 'personal' projects that are in various stages of completion. Most of my coworkers are have similar interests. We're software developers. We like coding and being creative. It is a very valuable opportunity to be given paid time to work on one's own interests.

You mention that 'corporate culture' that google has that doesn't foster creativity. Did you make that up or do you have some reason to believe that culture exists? I work in a software company that prides itself on having a fun culture. I can honestly say that here there is no restrictive 'corporate culture'. You can't tell who is a manager by looking at the size of their desk, etc. I assume that the culture at google is similar based on their track record.

There doesn't have to be a battle between a company's management and its employees. It is possible to actually like the company that you work for and be motivated to see that company succeed.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[bitingduck]

That said, I find that the "personal projects" aspect of Google is one of the more sinister. Remember that Google can take your personal project if they want it. So it's not really a personal project, it's funded independent R&D.

It's part of the way Google tries to stay agile. By insinuating ownership over projects that their corporate culture couldn't create, they can come up with things that another company their size couldn't, and do it cheaper (remember, Google employees are salaried, and likely you're going to work on the project in your spare time as well).

Except that it is a way that they structure their corporate culture to create projects from the bottom up.

In lots of companies there are mechanisms for bottom up injection of ideas into the R&D stream. In most cases there's some sort of pool of money that you write proposals to get a piece of. Sometimes the proposals are all evaluated in a formal process, and sometimes they're evaluated ad hoc, but in most cases they get filtered early, often before anyone gets a chance to see where they might lead. Either way, the company owns the IP.

What Google does is tell people it's good for them to start working through their own new concepts to see if they can mature them. This is especially easy in a software company, where you don't have to buy any special equipment for experiements, and where they can start throwing in more support fast when the ideas turn out to be good.

Anyplace you work, even a research university, your work related ideas get economically exploited by your employer, it's just that some encourage development of independent ideas better than others. There are also variations in how the proceeds get shared-- faculty in research universities are typically given a pretty generous share, auto workers typically aren't (even if their idea saves a bunch of $$). I read recently that Google has been adjusting their reward structure so that people who came in later and don't get the benefit of nearly free stock can also be very well compensated for ideas that make the company a lot of money (but I'm too lazy to google for the source).

I've been on both sides (handing out R&D money and begging for it) and from what I've read, Google's 20% program sounds pretty good.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[subrama6]

if they hadn't, wouldn't you know the guy's name, or have read in interview with him or something?

Try Yahoo or MSN Search

[Anonymous Coward]

just for a whole day.
They are much much better than Google.
Google is overrated - its self-indugent algorythm does not provide good results at all.
I think its not the "older people" that are too stupid to use anything else rather than Yahoo/MSN.
Its the "younger people" are too thick to realize that Google has lost the plot,
and Yahoo / MSN has become much much better as search engines.

Only a shitty search engine, penalizes or blocks you out - just because you upgraded your site "too quicky" - instead of slooooowly .. in twooo weeeeks .....

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[Colonel Angus]

Google pays your salary, they make available the means to work on a project of your choosing, you have all of Google's resources to aid/supplement your project. Why shouldn't Google own the idea? It's hardly anything new. They're working for Google and Google plays a huge role in making that project a reality rather than a thought in your head.

As has been mentioned, if they want to own all of their great ideas then work on it on your own. Find your own capital, resources, help, etc. and retire a billionaire.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[gaudior]

They may be salaried, but they are likely paid a very nice salary. Combine that with stock options, bonuses, and promotions based on developing an excellent new idea, and the sinister simply doesn't seem so bad.

I haven't heard of any disgruntled Google Engineers. Of course, I welcome the opportunity to be proven wrong.

Hey, wait a minute . . .

[wsanders]

. . . my options are priced at $1500 per share end they're not above water yet!

Disillusioned

[QMO]

I always thought that it was Risk and Distraction.

Yahoo and Microsoft

[JehCt]

Yahoo and Microsoft will one day merge. They have the same attitude toward customers.

Here's an idea

[amichalo]

Here's an idea, let's look at the value of both companies:

Google's Stats show a Price Earnings ratio of almost 113 which means the stock is trading for 113 times the current earnings per share. This gives Google a Market Capitalization (value) of $79 Billion. Finally, the Earnings Per Share (litterally how much the company makes after expenses divided by the number of outstanding shares) is $2.53

Yahoo's Stats yield a sky high but more earthly PE of 57 (1/2 of Google's by coincidence) giving Yahoo a much lower Market Cap of $51 Billion on a paltry-by-comparison EPS of $0.64.

"So what?!? This is news for nerds!" you cry? Well consider that this means that though Yahoo has web properties like Yahoo Finanace (who gave up this info for free) and a public email system (Gmail still requires an invite to create an account) and the infamous Music Unlimited subscription service, investors are still willing to drive up and DOUBLE the price/earnings ratio of Google to Yahoo. Such high PE multiples as Google are commanded only by one thing - an overwhelmingly positive outlook on future earnings.

So We all know maps.google.com kicks tailfeather and Google AdWords are all over sites like /. but as you can see, Wallstreet shares our analysis that Google is innovating.

Google knows this too, and is rewarding that innovation.

Re:Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, you could look at it from a comparables perspective and realize that Google is a one-trick pony (98% of revenue from advertising) compared to the diversified revenue streams at MSFT or YHOO.

Using your numbers

GOOG: 285.89 / 2.53 = 113
YHOO PE=57

gives an expected per share value of $144.21 for Google. So Google is, as you say, selling at twice it's expected value.

Analysts expecting great things from Google? Or irrational exuberance with Google in it's own private dotcom bubble? There are a lot of smart people at Google - I know several of them personally - but there is no way in H-E-double-hockeysticks that they are worth $286 per share.

The first time they miss their numbers, they're going to bust - the momentum investors are going to run home to momma, and there will be a lot of small time players, and recently hired Google employees, getting screwed when their stock tanks.

It's not a question of if, it's a question of when...

Re:Here's an idea

[amichalo]

The first time they miss their numbers, they're going to bust - the momentum investors are going to run home to momma, and there will be a lot of small time players, and recently hired Google employees, getting screwed when their stock tanks.

Totally agreed, I just hope I'm there with a wad of cash when they do because I think GOOG is a good company to be long in - just not at 50+ PE and certainly not on the radar at 113!

What does trouble me is the "one trick pony" thing as you said. Google has all these great technologies outside of the search engine website - they offer for fee site serches and their own hardware blades for intranets and such. They have terrific terrestrial and iconic maps, Gmail, Desktop search, even their free photo application Picasso is a great Windows cousin of Apple's iPhoto that is so easy to use.

Yet why is capable Google incapable of creating more revenue streams? AdWords is great, but there has to be more to it.

The thing about Google is I don't feel like there is anything behind it. With Yahoo News, there is someone there behind the portal. With Google News, there is no portal, just a search engine with keywords.

Makes me wonder.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[Paradox]

Every time someone uses some variant of the word "evil" in association with Google, I just have to laugh. Have you met anyone from Google? This is a company fascinated with the technology of the Internet. This is a company full of people (from founders to trenches) that honestly believe that technology can make people's lives better.

Forgive us. We've been burned many times in the past. Nor would you realize my employer is such a drag by only talking to me. :) Unless, of course, I told you.

Go do some research. The personal project thing is highly confused outside of the company. Inside the company, you are asked to work on a project that has a benefit to Google. It's not your chance to write something for yourself, it's a chance to get paid to work on the Google project YOU WANT. This is no more sinister than not having such a project and having you work on a project of your manager's choosing.

You take exactly what I said, and cast it in a positive light. That's great and all, but let's get with it here. Google's asking you for unpaid work. Yes, they pay you for one day of work on said project, but like all "independent projects", they're hoping you kick spare hours into it.

On the one hand, it's great that Google realizes the potential of this and encourages it. It means that Google's culture is engineer-oriented, which few modern tech firms can boast. On the other hand, they're asking for free work. The only reason I can even imagine this practice in a favorable light is because of Google's terrific track record as a company.

I wouldn't do it for my current employer. Not only would they scold me, they would probably screw me over too. They have a profoundly different track record.

But, that's just the thing. Their corproate culture CAN create these things because their corporate culture allows employees to spec their own project.

No need to be defensive.

You're really reaching for some dirt. My Advice? Give up.

Absolutely not, on both counts. I think that Google's practice is clever and I said most engineers would find it pleasant. I would love to work at Google. But what I don't want to hear is people gush about how Google gives people free time to work on whatever they want.

And if Google ever abuses the engineers who take part in this practice, or penalizes someone for not having an independent project, Google is going to be publicly reamed over it. Working on projects like that is a powerful and significant display of trust that Google's employees have in their company.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[ArmorFiend]

Exactly.

And if my company wants to actually recognise my project, and productize it, well, thanks for the help! I can't make a product by myself. I can make a project by myself. Maybe I'm a show-off, but I'd rather produce things that people can use, and if my employer wants to bridge me between project and product, then thank you very much!

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[Dan667]

I would much prefer a personal project system to what I have now. At my present employer, Managers troll Engineers for ideas and then make a power point for the higher ups on the great innovation they have developed. The Yahoo "idea factory" smells of that, where the Managers pick and choose what they want. The problem with that is that the Manager usually does not understand the idea well and the guy who invented it, for a lack of a better expression, is "left out". The brilliance of the Google method is you get a passionate Employee working on a new idea.

The contract I signed lets my employer own my ideas for a year or two anyways after I leave so I would prefer to work some place I like and passionately manage my own innovation.

What Game are we talking about here?

[ferreth]

Take this simple comparison: at Google, engineers are expected to spend one day a week on a project of personal interest. This has resulted in new offerings like Google News and social networking site Orkut. At Yahoo, there are posters promoting the "Idea Factory", where employees are invited to well, submit ideas (read boring)."

So Google is ahead as far as technical innovation goes, by some measures. Some here seem to think that that would be enough to ensure success on other fronts, profit and size being the main ones. Can we say "Microsoft" people?

While I think that Google and Yahoo can co-exist if they differentiat their offerings, the "winner" in this battle will be determined by marketing, not technical innovation. The average Joe User will not use Google's latest tool if it is not simple, and/or if the word does not get to Joe User.

Re:What Game are we talking about here?

[Decameron81]

"While I think that Google and Yahoo can co-exist if they differentiat their offerings, the "winner" in this battle will be determined by marketing, not technical innovation. The average Joe User will not use Google's latest tool if it is not simple, and/or if the word does not get to Joe User."

The point you are missing though, is that in this particular scenario technical innovation may equal marketing. In fact Google has become what it is today because people likes to find what they are looking for. If Google was a crappy search engine with a massive marketing campaign it would probably not be half of what it is today.

If you ask people today how they found out about Google most of them answer that someone recommended it to them.

Re:What Game are we talking about here?

[FreshFunk510]

While I think that Google and Yahoo can co-exist if they differentiat their offerings, the "winner" in this battle will be determined by marketing, not technical innovation.

While you may be correct, this reminds me of the year 2000 when I had just graduated from college. I think my favorite search engine at the time was altavista and then I eventually found out about Google. I had not heard about them outside of my friends but the superior technology made me switch over.

Maybe I'm an exception since I travel in the CS/programming circles but, to date, I haven't seen the marketing (in the traditional sense, I suppose) of the Google search engine like I have for all of Yahoo.

It was a similar story back in 1996 when I switched from the netscape browser to IE. It wasn't marketing, it was superior technology.

Re:Orkut?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about first posts, but "orkut" means "orgasms" in finnish. And that is +5, Funny!

How is that different...

[artemis67]

from any other work that you do? If your company is just looking for a brain-dead code monkey, why are they paying you instead of farming out the work to the third world? Doesn't your company already expect you to generate ideas?

If you brainstorm the big ideas, you generally get the big rewards. That's how business has always worked. Is there anything wrong with that model? Besides, Google has been generous with the sotck options, from what I understand, so sharing the big idea could have a direct impact on your net worth.

If you don't want to share your big ideas with Google, well... good luck trying to promote them on your own. There's a bazillion websites out there that have an insanely great idea, but no funding to make it happen. Not that I'm disparaging entrepreneurship, but there's no easy path to success with a great idea. If you are a first-time entrepreneur looking for an angel investor, guess what... you are going to sign away most of your ownership rights, anyway, in order to get the funding check to make it happen.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[Kombat]

By insinuating ownership over projects that their corporate culture couldn't create,

Uh... how is this *not* created by the corporate culture? The ideas are thought up by paid Google employees, at Google's offices, during paid regular business hours, possibly with the help of Google resources and while collaborating with other Google employees... exactly how is this not what R&D is all about?

Are you implying that every business idea must be thought up by upper management? And that if the company decides to use an idea thought up by an "underling," then they're stealing that underling's intellectual property? Why wouldn't you say that they're equally "stealing" the upper management's IP then, when they use his idea? Because that's what he's paid for? Well, what in the heck do you think the underlings are paid for, too?

I fail to see the difference here. This is exactly how R&D jobs are supposed to work. They pay you to think up stuff the company can use to make money. Where's the problem here?

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[winkydink]

Engineers come up with great ideas. Managers get great ideas funded. Each has their usefulness.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[diamondsw]

If you haven't noticed, nearly every company today has the same policy - they just aren't as up front about it. Google is, and even they even pay you to sit around one day a week coming up with something *you* want. If it's useful to Google, so be it.

Google is freely admitting that corporate culture is a terrible way to come up with ideas. I see that as a good thing.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[Dan667]

I think you missed the point. Google has structured a corp culture that funds the Engineers and has a passionate advocate (the Engineer) for the idea they developed. If it becomes big enough, then I assume the Managers step in. IMHO, I would prefer this.

Re:Hiring?

[markwalling]

fun doesn't pay the bills

how much profit has gmail brought in for them?

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[Lord_Dweomer]

" I think it's extremely clever and most engineers would find it pleasant, but I know I couldn't work on many of my projects because I wouldn't want Google to co-opt them. "

And this is why you never WILL get to work for them. Many people, myself included, have plenty of awesome grand ideas. Unfortunately, my ideas tend to be on the large side and would be completely impossible without serious financial resources. Google provides its people with this opportunity. In addition, I'm sure they give some sort of bonus/promotion if your idea takes off and makes them money. They'd be stupid not to.

The employees of Google aren't just in it for themselves, they're in it for the team, and you obviously don't have that mindset, which is fine, but please understand that the people working there don't feel screwed over by this policy, otherwise they wouldn't be there.

what's an IP of public DNS server?

[Anonymous Coward]

my IPS's DNS is down, and well, only slashdot is working for me right now. thanks!

/. Google Stories This Week

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Stories on /. this week so far: 5 Google Stories on /. with meaningful/interesting content this week: 0

Propaganda

[AutopsyReport]

It's pretty clear from this analysis as to which company is ahead of the game.

Sure, it's pretty clear if you ignore the authors final words on which company comes out on top ("So who wins"), where it clearly states that Yahoo has the upper-hand, though being a smaller company.

When I first read Slashdot's summation of the article, I thought of it as just another propaganda rambling supporting Google. But the fact that the article suggests that Yahoo is the better company makes me question whether the Slashdot editors even read the whole article, or simply searched for "Google" and "innovative" in the same sentence, and pieced the article's conclusion together from there.

evil: not as profitable as one might think

[handy_vandal]

Evil is only profitable in that it concentrates power in a few hands. It is not profitable in that it destroys wealth and potential.

Well put, and I agree. Thanks for the commentary.

I'm reminded of "People of the Lie" by M. Scott Peck, which defines Evil as a psychiatric category. There are several characteristic traits of Evil, according to Peck.

* Conceals itself (lies, deception);

* The evil one is all that matters, everyone else is worthless -- evil lauds itself, blames everyone else. E.g.: evil people do evil deeds, then blame the deeds on the victims.

None of the above does anything to create wealth. It may acquire great wealth via deception and stealth, but in such a manner as to damage the economy for everyone else.

-kgj

Oogle

[Anonymous Coward]

CEO Tim Koogle left Yahoo? He should get a job at Google, if for no other reason than to be able to say:

Hello, I'm Koogle from Google.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[Momoru]

Have you met anyone from Google?

Honestly no, but I have seen this. Sergey and Larry, despite all the hype about how they "dont care about the money" structured their IPO in a way so that they would maintain complete control, and then have a "sub class" of stock that the rest of the world could own, which is essentially just paper since there are no dividends or voting rights. Next they options themselves millions of these shares, which were given to them exclusively so they could sell them. Hey thats all well and good, they deserve to make money from their company. But then they lower their salary to $1 as if they are just doing this for free....but whats that? They sold every single class C share? Sergey alone cashed out $100 million in June? Whats that again? When they ran out of these shares, they exercised hundreds of thousands more for $0? Sure they don't care about the money. Sure they work for $1....of course optioning 125,000 shares for $0 costs Google the company $37 million... Seeing that kind of insider dumping makes me thing something may be wrong inside Google.

Is this really news?

[RowerLynx42]

Is this really breaking news? Google and Yahoo operate in the same marketplace. They are competitors. Competitors collide in the market place. Will one always outperform the other... yes... thats how business (and competetion in general) works. In other news, Apple and Microsoft on collision course.

Google != ATT

[solomonrex]

The difference is that Google has many PhD's who actually find their 1/5 work exciting/fun, etc. Google is young enough and smart enough that they could very well keep the 1/5 rule around for a while.

But I think in the long run, you're probably right. Eventually, everything tanks.

Also Yahoo isn't EEEEViiiiillllll

[Anonymous Coward]

And Google most certainly is!

http://www.google-watch.org/

(And just who owns all those squatters around that page anyway?)

Re:Also Yahoo isn't EEEEViiiiillllll

[Anonymous Coward]

"And Google most certainly is!"

If you're a tinfoil idiot, sure. I don't believe that Google's all benevolent, and I don't believe they're incredibly innovative, but that siteowner's been a crackpot jerk from the beginning.

Re:Also Yahoo isn't EEEEViiiiillllll

[Anonymous Coward]

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. He's one hundred percent correct about the GMail privacy issues, and the Copyright issues involving libraries.

Re:Also Yahoo isn't EEEEViiiiillllll

[Anonymous Coward]

A clock off by 10 minutes is never right.

The analogy's flawed anyway..

No room for both, someone must DIE!

[Roadkills-R-Us]

I wasn't havlf way through the first page before I was thinking the same thing. This represents two problems.

1) There's a definite mindset in a scary percentage of US businesses and wannabes that there can only be one clear leader in any indutsry, and you have to find them and slavishly emulate them. And everyone else will die. This is a stupid attitude, the kiss of death.

2) A great deal of the mass market media has completely forgotten how to think for itself. They have picked a few clear leaders (in their minds) and slavishly emulate them. This is a stupid approach, the kiss of death.

Oh, wait. I guess that's just one thing, with a prime example!

You're ignoring stuff like Yahoo Groups.

[RoverDaddy]

In the past year or so I've had potential interest in several Yahoo Groups. However, I'm really put off by the need to create a full-blown Yahoo account just to contribute to them. What if I don't want another G-D email address that I'll never use? Let me create a user-id/password pair, and NOTHING MORE. Just because I want to post to a group doesn't mean I want to create a significant relationship with the hosting service.

I've also run into contests that you can only enter through a Yahoo account. Stupid advertisers, trying to draw interest in their product and creating an obstacle for the customer at the same time.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[analogueblue]

where do you see ANYTHING about google expecting people to work extra hours on the personal project? I mean beyond how every company on the planet would like people to work extra hours on all company projects?

Of course they own the work they pay you to do during working hours. To expect otherwise is insane.

If I do end up working more than 40 hours a week, I'd much rather do it because I was working on a project I was fascinated with and WANTED to work on more, instead of just about every other tech firm where working 50-60 hours a week is par for the course in order to compete with the guy/girl in the next cube, and of course the big outsourcing fear.

When you say you wouldn't do it for your employer, you mean that if your employer said "hey, we only want you to work on this project we assigned to you 4 days a week, and we'd like you to spend the other day working on something you come up with that you think might be useful to us or our customers. We're paying you the same, and are expecting you to work the same hours." You'd say no? No no please, I only want to do exactly what you tell me to. I don't want to come up with an idea of my own. *shrug* That wouldn't be my choice certainly. Your risk of getting *BURNED* is exactly the same as doing your normal work. You're working as many hours as you choose on projects that the company owns. Period. That's what a job is all about. There's no addional risk or burnage if you pick the projects or if your manager does. There's just more potential for job satisfaction if you pick it.

I don't think anyone is gushing over google giving people free time. I think the whole point is that most people would love the opportunity to choose an idea or project to develop, something they are intersted in and belive in, as opposed to whatever their manager assigns. I know I would. And yeah, if I'm getting paid for it, and given company time and equipment to do it with, I'd expect that it should have to be in line with the overall company direction, and it would belong to them. Work for hire.

Your last statement about google getting reamed if they penalize someone for not having a project doesn't make much sense to me. I mean, sure, if that were to happen, then yes, people would be unhappy. Likewise, if Yahoo penalized employees for not taking a lunch break everyday, they'd get "reamed". If the Army penalized people for not going to the shooting range while on leave, they'd get "reamed". There's a million similar scenarios, and no reason to belive the google one is more likely than any other. The flip side of that, is if I were a manager at google, I'd sure want to hire self-starter types, motivate creative people who like coming up with ideas and working on them, instead of developer drones who only want to work on what they are told to.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, as I am to mine, but from where I sit you appear to making paranoid accusations without any real basis for any of it being likely. Now, if you'd said "here's some proof that google expects people to work extra hours on their personal projects *more so than most tech companies want employees to work in general* and if you don't do that, you get reprimanded", then sure, I'm right there with you. Or even if you said "hey, 4 years ago Google abused employees with a similar situation, this seems likely to end up as a repeat of that fiasco", I could totally see where you are coming from. But you're basically saying, and please excuse my exageration, "hey, if mother theresa started poisining patients then she'd get 'reamed'". "If Mr. Rogers was found to be a crack-smoking pedophile, then he'd get 'reamed'". "If my neighbor started beating his kids, even though he has a long history of not beating his kids, you never can tell with folks, maybe he'll just start beating them, then he'll get 'reamed'". Seems oddly paranoid to me.

Odds

[hhawk]

They are making a bet. On one side of the bet is basically "prototype early and often" and if you come up w/ something good, we can run with it. On the other side is we are really focused on doing the work that we are schedule to do (not so fun) but it pays the bills and that is the job you signed on for.

That is yahoo is mature (er) than Google and perhaps google has the $$$ to allow 20% of time to be spent "any which way" perhaps yahoo is more focused on delivering the current product and commentments.

The question becomes when Yahoo does say YES, what type of resources they provide?

You could aruge that GMAIL could be a LOT better if they had put more time into it, rather than treating it like a hobby. The contact list still doesn't work correctly, it can't sort by SIZE, etc, etc. And if you want to find a Movie Time your better off on yahoo than google...

All that said I'd rather work at Google..

Re:Odds

[sessamoid]

And if you want to find a Movie Time your better off on yahoo than google...

Actually, not necessarily. Go to google and do a search on:

movies [your zip code]

The links to the movie titles and showtimes take me directly to the theater's page to buy tickets online. Yahoo doesn't link to the theater's page that way. Also, Google's is a text page, so it loads as fast as possible even on my Treo. Yahoo's page is typically loaded with graphics and animated advertisements. Also, Google lists more theaters in my area by default than does Yahoo.

Re:Odds

[brunes69]

While true, and cool, remember that not everyone lives in the US. Google's movie search is useless to me, but Yahoo's knows my Canadian town precisely.

And I don't know what you're smoking, but my Yahoo movie search results link directly to my local theatre. I can only assume it would do the same in the US.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[Anonymous Coward]

That said, I find that the "personal projects" aspect of Google is one of the more sinister.

I don't understand how this is sinister. Google is paying you to do what you want. How is this somehow worse, than say, telling you what to do? You need to realize that in the field of engineering, you're only as good as your ideas. This is opposed to "labor" wherein you are told exactly what to do, and are generally only as good as how well you follow orders.

Of course its not really a personal project that you own. Otherwise it would be equivalent to giving you another day off per week. Corporations are in business because they make money. They make money because their engineers have ideas that they can capitalize on. See the connection?

They should just combine forces

[Licorice101]

to make Yoogle

Re:Hiring?

[Momoru]

how much profit has gmail brought in for them?

No, the question is how much profit has it brought to the guy who came up with gmail?

Amen!

[Paradox]

Google is freely admitting that corporate culture is a terrible way to come up with ideas. I see that as a good thing.

I agree with this, heartily.

At my compay..

[VC]

We're invited to work one day a week on somthing that interests us as well. Of course the compay gets to keep all the patents and copyrights which is kind of a bummer.
We call it saturday.

Google has a great search engine but

[Stone316]

Google has a great search engine and I routinely find things i'm search for there faster than other providers. Thats why I use them everyday. I search at Yahoo every now and then when having things categorized is convient. Say i'm looking for C++ resources, etc, etc. I really don't understand the hoopla over google. I think maybe because it all sounds like our dream jobs... 20% of our time dedicated to projects were interested in, exciting dynamic work atmosphere, etc, etc. Personally, I wouldn't believe until I worked there... For years I wanted to work at a certain company but once I was there I was in for a big suprise. Gmail, maps, etc are all cool products but I personally don't see anything special. While its cool to switch from map view to satelite view in maps, the route planning is no better than mapquest. Same with gmail.. sure its nifty but its email.. big deal.. hotmail, yahoo and even outlook express fulfill 95% of peoples needs. I guess what i'm saying is, they sound like a cool company to work for, they have an awesome search engine but other than that I don't see them doing anything special.

Google is losing

[scronline]

I don't care what any one says at this point. I've spent the last 3 weeks doing constant searches on google for various items of interest. What I found is on average out of 5 pages worth of search returns, I got approximately 10 links that were actually pertinent to what I was looking for. The rest were all blackhat tactics with nothing more than google ads on the site to take you to something that someone paid for you to see. How does that help? If someone paid for you to see it, they want SOMETHING in return.

The days of relying on Google for search information is gone. We already know we can't really trust MSN, and Yahoo is....well, ugly, cluttered, and over all bloated. So it looks like internet searches are becoming less reliable all together.

Google could retain it's market mindset IF they get off their bums and solve this blackhat tactic bullshit. Basically, they are becoming a victim of their own success. But if they don't succeed in clearing this mess up, people will get tired of it and move elsewhere. And of course when that happens, advertising dollars will go elsewhere as well. I'm already about ready to pull our advertising from them if they don't do something, and fast.

Re:Hiring?

[frostman]

I applied for two different jobs at Google, neither one of them really up my alley (but both things I could've done in my sleep, and hey, at that time I thought I wanted to work for them).

One went directly to a hiring manager, who got back in less than a week to thank me and say I wasn't really what he was looking for.

The other went through 'normal channels.' After a couple of MONTHS, I got an e-mail with an utterly ridiculous questionnaire (how many years of this, that, etc.) Apparently within the couple of months someone had sorted the CV's but there was no relation whatsoever between the questionnaire and my credentials.

I'd already decided I didn't really want to drink the Google KoolAid, but I filled out the questionnaire just to see what would happen. Despite it looking like part of an automated screening process, it took more than a week for them to send me a form letter brush-off.

Neither of these were fancy PhD-ish positions... they were mid-level, Perl-intensive, things I might be overqualified for but which sounded like fun in the context of Google.

So I think they have some smart managers - I bet the first guy has put together a great team by now. But they also have a big hairy HR department straight out of Dilbert, and I bet that monster is slowly crushing the soul of an ever-larger chunk of the company.

I do hope the future of Google is great things like Google Maps, but I fear it could just as easily be train wrecks like AdSense customer service.

Too late.

[/dev/trash]

It's illegal for them to now ignore what the stockholders want.

Just think of the merger possibilities

[Anonymous Coward]

YAHOOGLE!! GOOHOO!!!

Re:Google Socks

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is no wine, wont get better with age.

Google is a girl who takes all investor money and offers nothing more than Ms Msn, Ms Ask or Ms Yahoo.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, google salaries are somewhat beneath average Bay Area salaries - i'd guess ~20%. i've been interviewing with google for a position over the last few weeks and it's just gotten to that stage. they expect that the perks and the atmosphere (specifically the chance to work with a load of people who are ALL COMPETENT) will draw better employees than $$ alone.

Well of course.

[/dev/trash]

It's a JOB. Doing more than you are required, is just silly. Some people have lives outside of work.

Re:Well of course.

[Grishnakh]

It's a JOB. Doing more than you are required, is just silly. Some people have lives outside of work.

And with an attitude like that, I guess that's why you work as a wage slave at some dump instead of at Google.

Of course, I'm not going to do much more than required at any company that doesn't offer me any reward for doing so, but if I can spend 20% of my work time doing something that actually interests me, I'm not going to slack off.

Re:Well of course.

[qwijibo]

I have a life outside of work. In fact, I enjoy being a contractor because if my employer wants me to work more, they have to pay me more. That's an arrangement that keeps my boss concerned that I have enough not-at-work-time in my life.

One advantage of doing more than I am required to is that when I'm enjoying my outside life, I have more than the bare minimum amount of money to enjoy it with. Though, the down side of this arrangement is that I have to pay more in taxes than many people make who are only doing what is required.

Re:Well of course.

[syousef]

And with an attitude like that, I guess that's why you work as a wage slave at some dump instead of at Google.

Actually quite the opposite. This is the type of attitude that I've seen get people promoted at a few places I've worked.

Of course, I'm not going to do much more than required at any company that doesn't offer me any reward for doing so

I think that's the key right there. You have to give AND get if you want any kind of fulfilment or recognition (or money to do other things outside of work for that matter). Doing the bare minimum is a losing strategy. Doing anything for nothing is a losing strategy. Working at a pace that won't burn you out and acheiving things for your employer, while they reward you for it is where you want to be.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[metlin]

Well, you work for them - quite obviously, whatever you do during that time belongs to them.

However, the difference is that they are willing to credit you for that, and quite possibly manage it if it were to grow into something substantial.

Most big companies don't do that - you do so much for them, and some bean counter comes along and takes credit while you are left hanging. That is the difference.

On the other hand, if you really think you have an idea that is Earth-shattering, you are quite free to work on it on your _personal_ time, on the weekends or otherwise. Nobody and nothing is stopping you.

(just because you are salaried does not mean that Google owns your soul, there are such things as personal possessions, you know?)

Make Rob Zombie Proud

[drewzhrodague]

Make Rob Zombie proud, and insert a "Yeah!" in between each line, and at the end of each stanza.

Re:Make Rob Zombie Proud

[Anonymous Coward]

who would ever want to make Rob Zombie proud?!?!

Personal Projects

[Anonymous Coward]

Does reading slashdot for 20% of your day count as time towards a favored personal project?

Re:Hiring?

[theurge14]

And you want all this for free?

Maybe you want the Soviet Russia version of Google.

anything but MSN!

[peter303]

To put this debate in perspective, you compare both to MSN. There is no contest in content or corporate culture with MSN coming out the loser in all facets.

Let the Games Begin

[jasongetsdown]

Here's the bottom line, which search is better? observe...
http://twingine.com/search.php?q=yahoohoogle

I believe Google wins this one. they caught the domain change while yahoo displays the now defunct site. Interesting considering twingine.com doesn't seem have the string "yahoohoogle" anywhere in it, not even in the source.

Re:Let the Games Begin

[justforaday]

Ahh, but you googled (errrrr) the wrong word...It should be yagoohoogle, not yahoohoogle like you listed above. Also, the Twingine site does contain that string (under the blog link).

Re:Let the Games Begin

[jasongetsdown]

Indeed I am humbled. Punished againf ro lack of rigor. Slashdotters accept no imitations.

Re:Let the Games Begin

[HyperChicken]

Uhh... Actually, for the term "yahoohoogle" Yahoo!'s first result is Twingine. Google's first result is still yahoohoogle. So that would mean Yahoo won, right? However, according to the comments, that is the incorret word.

For the "correct" word, "yagoohoogle", both Google and Yahoo's first result is Twingine. Only difference on Google, I get an eBay ad while on Yahoo, zip.

Google Uses Yahoo

[djaxl]

Google uses Yahoo, at least for stock quotes:
http://www.google.com/search?oi=stock&q=stocks:GOO G

Which surprises me. You'd thing Google could tap the same data sources and come up with finance.google.com or something, completely independed of Yahoo. Also you'd think they'd try to avoid depending on their competition. Or is there a trade going on? Is Yahoo using Google for anything?

Re:Google Uses Yahoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Way back in the early 2000's, Yahoo used to use Google as it's search engine. They they went back to using their own. Most of the time Google search works better for me, but occasionally on an obscure search Yahoo finds something that Google can't (maybe about 25% of the time).

Google also links to Yahoo maps (alongside Google maps) if you search for an address via their main page.

And it's not like Yahoo doesn't acknowledge Google's existence (Google being #1 in Yahoo's directory of search sites).

I'm personally happy using both companies - I use Google for search, Yahoo for everything else (including email because I refuse to put up with the advertising Google mail gives you).

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[jasenj1]

You have that in writing? These concepts of "likely" and "probably" and "I'm sure" don't hold much water in court. All it takes is one engineer who does an outside project that they don't want Google to own, that Google thinks is something they'd like to own, and *WHAM* all those quaint notions are squashed.

I'd like to think there are still "nice" companies - and that Google is one of them. But business majors, accountants, and lawyers aren't trained to be "nice", they're trained to make money, count beans, and enforce contracts.

- Jasen.

Re:There's a key difference. - FIXED LINK

[bad_outlook]

Apparently Slashcode doesn't like the way the Way Back machine formats it's URLs (of course I am an idiot...)

http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http:/ /www2.yahoo.com/

google: i don't get it

[farble1670]

what does google have?

1. a killer search engine ... granted. how much better is it then the other search engines out there? would your life be any less rich if you had to use y! search? i could easily make due.

2. interesting mapping software. the 3d satellite images are very cool, but i've never used it for anything other than dinking around.

3. gmail, which i completely don't get. it's a decent web-based mail service. and it's great they give you 2 gig or whatever. but the app itself certainly isn't revolutionary. it's web based mail. and i'll never use it until it has an integrated calendar like y! does.

4. a hugely simple "portal" page. y! beats it hands down.

5. google news ...? it's a news portal! so?

as far as i can tell, all google is doing is taking existing technologies and improving on them. that's good. they are doing good work. revolutionary? hardly.

Overture's negative effect on Yahoo

[Anonymous Coward]

My company has countless dealings with both companies and ever since Yahoo acquired (read: infected with) Overture, they have become impossible to deal with. It's 100% corporate bullshit speak, 100% of the time. The type of things that used to be a simple yes-or-no decision now takes LITERALLY months for Yahoo! Literally.

Call Google on the EXACT SAME MATTER, and there's usually an answer in a couple of hours--a week tops.

In fact, I've had calls with them where I was shaking my head wondering if I was being "Punk'd" because the line was practically dripping with corporate-speak. What's worse is that what should be quick phone calls with a couple of people at Yahoo! ALWAYS turn out to be these prolonged, dragged out bouts with completely inept people who are (seemingly) incapable of making decisions.

I'm not sure if it's that they're incapable or completely hamstrung by the PHBs.

Let me put it this bluntly: I don't think anyone at Yahoo is authorized to take a dump without at least two supervisors and/or legal staff approving it first. And that's in their off-time.

It's no wonder Google is thriving--they empower their people. Please wake up Yahoo! before you go the way of AV, Excite, Inktomi, HotBot, and InfoSeek. Empower your people to make decisions, take risks, and be strong. Sure, the hive mentality is safe while you're on top but never for long.

Re:Hiring?

[__aanebg9627]

Having information on computer, connected almost instantly world-wide, and searchable is fundamentally different. It is a greater innovation than the railroad, telegraph or deep-ocean sailing ships, IMO. Admittedly, Google is only adding the searchable part to that.

*cough* dot-com implosion *cough*

[Urusai]

Some day people will realize AGAIN that Internet ads do not bring in business, they only create an inflating spiral of money between dot-coms advertising each other.

If Google made ad money, that's because they were in essence taking candy from other businesses that are blowing their VC on advertising instead of sustainable revenue models. Not that I'm complaining--the great VC rape of the 90s was a superb way of transferring money from the stupid rich to the working class. It was great for the economy. This is why high taxes on the rich are a good idea for everyone, the money works its way to people who actually spend it.

Re:*cough* dot-com implosion *cough*

[TheRaven64]

Except Google advertising does work. I've often clicked on Google ads, because they are (unobtrusively) for things that I was actually looking for at the time. I've even bought things as a result of Google ads - something I can say about no other advertising mechanism.

I have also talked to friends who were less successful at escaping the real world than me, and they have found that they get a very good response rate from Google ads.

Re:*cough* dot-com implosion *cough*

[michaelhood]

That post is completely off-base. I provide Lead Generation services to companies who want to advertise online in order to get real-world customers. Companies who often don't convert sales online at all, and rely entirely on driving customers to their sites in order to submit an information request or "RFQ" (Request for Quote). Companies like these, ones with real business models, account for probably 95% of the AdWords (Google's text advertising program) gross.

Take mortgage companies for example. Many of them are bidding $8/click or more. Life Insurance, too.

Re:Hiring?

[Ant2]

how much profit has gmail brought in for them?

Looking at the number of ads in gmail, I'd speculate it's earned a lot of revenue.

The older and bigger, the slower

[nullreference]

I agree, in terms of innovations, Google also has the advantage of being the younger and smaller of the two.

When a company becomes larger, bureaucracy tends to creep in and stifle innovation. When it becomes older, more resources are devoted to maintaining and supporting existing apps and customers. Also it's harder to break into something new when you have legacy apps (that you have to retain compatibility with) holding you back. Hence innovation by acquisition.

With that said, there are factors other than innovation that will determine who will come out ahead (I think they'll both be around). For example Yahoo has a huge installed base of _registered_ users. For a majority of users, good enough is good enough, so switching to another service is almost out of the question. It remains to be seen if Google can pry that away.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[ajs]

"Forgive us. We've been burned many times in the past. Nor would you realize my employer is such a drag by only talking to me. :) Unless, of course, I told you."

No, you have never been burned in the past. Please, go find me any company in the past 50 years whose S-1 for their IPO includes a promise not to be evil.... I'll wait, go ahead.

You have NEVER been burned, because you've never had the chance. This is classic reverse-psychology. You walk up to someone and say, "I'm not going to be evil," and for the next decade they're watching you like a hawk to see you do something evil. Of course, if Google had filed an S-1 that said, "we intend on razing the Earth and building a little house out of the bones of innocent children," everyone would have chuckled and gone on with their lives.... we're so messed up.

"You take exactly what I said, and cast it in a positive light."

No, I don't. You said that Google was asking you to work on a personal project and that they then claimed ownership. No such process occurs. They ask you to spec your own Google project. VERY DIFFERENT. There is a clear understanding that what you are working on is just the same as every other project, just specified by you. Your manager even has to approve it!

"That's great and all, but let's get with it here. Google's asking you for unpaid work."

Nope.

"Yes, they pay you for one day of work on said project, but like all "independent projects", they're hoping you kick spare hours into it."

No, I think the hope is that enjoying your work will make you want to work longer on the things that they actually tell you to do. And, here's the shocking bit: that kind of sick "make your employees enjoy working" strategy actually works. Sheep! </sarcasm>

" But, that's just the thing. Their corproate culture CAN create these things because their corporate culture allows employees to spec their own project.

No need to be defensive."

I'm not being defensive, and you dodged the point that Google's corporate culture, counter to your claims, does indeed accomplish the things you seem to think that it cannot.

"And if Google ever abuses the engineers who take part in this practice, or penalizes someone for not having an independent project"

Well, I'm sure that if you didn't take the time to write up an idea, they'd be concerned. It is, after all, one of the conditions under which you are hired, and you did agree to do so. If you were unhappy with specifying your own project, you could have negotiated that up-front. Dealing in good faith with your employer is ALWAYS a good idea.

"...Google is going to be publicly reamed over it. Working on projects like that is a powerful and significant display of trust that Google's employees have in their company."

What planet does that kind of attitude come from?! Why is it a display of trust to work on a project of your own choosing? Because you might enjoy it? When my boss lets me work on what I want to work on, I'm thrilled. I don't ask, "but will I be able to claim ownership over it?" or "you're not going to turn it into a product are you?!" I'm just happy to be able to call the shots on at least one project of mine (and at my company that doesn't happen as often as at Google, but it does happen).

1 day for Pers. Projs. is called a 'DAY-OFF!!'!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone naive enough to believe that Google employees work m-f, 9-5 is deluded.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[Cocteaustin]

They are. They have this thing called a Founder's Award which is basically a shitload of restricted stock options. These aren't given out that often.

I am shocked, shocked

[Scott7477]

to hear that someone turned Google down! That's like telling ST. Peter at the pearly gates "No, thanks"..

Re:I am shocked, shocked

[elemental23]

Even Google isn't worth commuting to Mountain View from the East Bay. I did that for two months a while back (not for Google, but for another tech company in MV) and vowed to never do it again. My time and stress levels are more important to me.

If the job isn't in the East Bay or San Francisco, I'm not interested (I'm working in SF currently). My SO is currently commuting to Palo Alto for the summer and she recently decided the same thing.

Re:I am shocked, shocked

[chrisd]

You know, we have a number of free shuttles with wireless network access that pick up googles from SF and the east bay.

I'm just sayin...

Chris

Re:I am shocked, shocked

[elemental23]

Well, help a brother out then! :)

You know, I'll actually be at Google HQ this evening for a tour with a few SIMS students...

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Who cares WHO invented the wheel

[seanvaandering]

...but seriously Yahoo has innovated alot more things then Google has

Seriously, why bother with the details on who invented the search engine? Google capitilzed on the fact that the Internet sucked in its current condition and made it better - Joe Sixpack is obviously using the better portal as a result, and its mostly by choice, its not like Google is forcing their search engine on the world, the world just decided it was the best tool for the job. With a share price of $280+/share currently, I'd still be inclined to sell however...

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Both companies can do well

[ttul]

There's plenty of room for both Google and Yahoo to continue to make scads of money for years to come. Google may end up coming up with more innovative technologies, but this does not mean they'll conquer and kill Yahoo. History has taught many companies that it is often better to be second than first at introducing a new technology to the market.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[Paradox]

No, you have never been burned in the past. Please, go find me any company in the past 50 years whose S-1 for their IPO includes a promise not to be evil.... I'll wait, go ahead.

Companies make promises all the time. Companies have made contractual promises to me, written in ink and signed by both parties, that they managed to squeeze out of.

So yes, I have been burned by corporate promises. So far, I think Google has done a good job of not abusing the enourmous power they have over the internet. But, that doesn't mean they are incapable of doing such an action.

You have NEVER been burned, because you've never had the chance. This is classic reverse-psychology. You walk up to someone and say, "I'm not going to be evil," and for the next decade they're watching you like a hawk to see you do something evil. Of course, if Google had filed an S-1 that said, "we intend on razing the Earth and building a little house out of the bones of innocent children," everyone would have chuckled and gone on with their lives.... we're so messed up.

I think you've mistaken me for someone else. I am definitely not an anti-google person. But, I think it's important that we remind ourselves that companies and their culture are not static. Take Apple as a classic case. The company went from edgy and smart to dumb and shallow, and now they're going back the other way for awhile.

No, I don't. You said that Google was asking you to work on a personal project and that they then claimed ownership. No such process occurs. They ask you to spec your own Google project. VERY DIFFERENT. There is a clear understanding that what you are working on is just the same as every other project, just specified by you. Your manager even has to approve it!

I could be pedantic here, but I won't. I didn't realize this was how they worded it. Part of what my original post (the GP) was complaining about was the near-mindless google-hysteria that infects slashdot whenever we talk about this feature of the company.

We had the same problem with the Safari-KHTML fiasco. People got so enthusiastic that they completely left reality, and the backlash was pretty ugly.

I'm not being defensive, and you dodged the point that Google's corporate culture, counter to your claims, does indeed accomplish the things you seem to think that it cannot.

Let me rephrase it then. This feature of google corporate culture allows them to work on projects that they otherwise could not. They are bruteforcing the "What is a good project?" problem. It is clever, I like the idea. The more I hear about it from Google employees (a few of which have emailed me explaining the real story, which I appreciate, thanks folks!) the more I think that Google has safely addressed all the issues around.

But, it takes a special kind of employer to make such a scenario palatable.

Well, I'm sure that if you didn't take the time to write up an idea, they'd be concerned. It is, after all, one of the conditions under which you are hired, and you did agree to do so. If you were unhappy with specifying your own project, you could have negotiated that up-front. Dealing in good faith with your employer is ALWAYS a good idea.

It's not necessarily a good idea, but I strongly believe that it is the professional and ethical thing to do. As my own personal history suggests, it is not always the economically best thing to do. But I freely admit my last two employers have gone above and beyond the call of stereotypical assholery.

What planet does that kind of attitude come from?! Why is it a display of trust to work on a project of your own choosing? Because you might enjoy it? When my boss lets me work on what I want to work on, I'm thrilled. I don't ask, "but will I be able to claim ownership over it?"

Con

Re: bullshit on that post

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you retarded? I pay $20/year for my Yahoo mail for an excellent spam filter that almost never gets breached, and no ads.
On the other hand gmail reads your fucking mail in order to generate ads for you. As a joke we sent a friend an email saying 'hey homo, want to go hang out tonight' and he got accompanying ads for gay porn. Awesome privacy, huh. Go put you mail on Google you retard, and save a few bucks while they make a profile out of you and shove ads down your throat.

Google may be boring

[hoai2k]

The work Yahoo does may not be as interesting as Google, but perhaps you can live more interesting lives? Many people at google do nothing but work all the time, which makes for a good company, but not for a satisfying lifestyle - at least, not one I would be satisfied with. Perhaps Yahoo is better in this way?

Hardly the same, is it?

[Onan]

Well, itunes does actually depend on quicktime. Quicktime is the set of libraries that does things like, say, decoding mp3 and aac, which one might consider to be a teeny bit important to itunes's functioning. The actual itunes application is just a little playlist manager, quicktime is where all the interesting stuff happens.

And this is actually the sane and reasonable way to do things: handling media formats is a global enough thing that you want some centralized libraries to do it, rather than writing it into each app independently. Complaining that itunes requires quicktime is akin to complaining that firefox requires tcp.

This seems like a substantially different case than forcing one to install an IM client along with a music player. They may offer hooks to talk to one another, and that's great, but neither logically depends on the other.

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[FreshFunk510]

So I'm a bit late to the game and I didn't read every word between Paradox and ajs, but I have to say this: I think you both should save your breath. Here's why.

I think you're both examples of people who are cut from different cloths. Paradox is your typical misanthrope and pessimist: people are out to get you, money/greed is the basic motivator of all, keep your friends close but enemies closer. Ajs is the counter to that: people are generally good, there is such a thing as being unselfish, etc.

First of all, I had to admit I'm a bit biased in ajs direction. Why? Because back in school (in the CS dept at UC Berkeley) most of my classmates thought along the lines of ajs and what sounds like Brin and Page do. Perhaps that's a bit idealistic, but I think most CS types from the good institutions think the same. Perhaps I'M being too idealistic. But, if you've been there then you know what I'm talking about.

Frankly, I'd like to give Google the benefit of the doubt. Working on your project (without knowing too many of the deatils) is beneficial in both directions. You are both correct. 1) It's a fantastic outlet for employees and 2) It can provide software for the future. I'd rather have both than none.

Given that Paradox's position seems to be softening from his original post, I think part of him would agree with that. It's obvious, though, that Paradox is probably NOT the type to ever work at Google. I don't mean to sound judgmental but their motto IS "don't be evil" and Paradox's personality borders upon it. That sort of skepticism could be poison in a culture of dreamers.

I know some people who work at Google too. All of them are the most talented people in the industry. If they found themselves in a situation they did not like, they'd move on soon enough (especially once they're able to sell their options and retire (and that's no exaggeration)). The truth will unfold in time.

What... the... heck?

[Paradox]

Given that Paradox's position seems to be softening from his original post, I think part of him would agree with that. It's obvious, though, that Paradox is probably NOT the type to ever work at Google. I don't mean to sound judgmental but their motto IS "don't be evil" and Paradox's personality borders upon it. That sort of skepticism could be poison in a culture of dreamers.

Ouch!

I'm... evil?

Okay, timeout. When did this happen? Because I'm willing to contemplate the fact that Google could abuse its personal project policy, I am suddenly not a dreamer, not creative, not the kind of person who would ever work at google, and I'm borderline evil?

Forgive me for taking your post with a grain of salt, but that's a heck of a huge assumption?

Not to burst your bubble, but I have 5 emails in my inbox from google employees. Most of them much nicer than ajs, some of them agreeing that concern is valid and explaining to me why Google is a special case. So there are people working at google who shared my concerns.

Sometimes, I read things here that just leave me shaking my head in awe. Your post is one of them. You can be a fan of something without being a raving zealot. You can love something and still criticize it. You can enjoy something but still weigh its pros and cons. You can do something even when you know it's risky.

Re:What... the... heck?

[FreshFunk510]

Perhaps I came off as too strong. I meant to imply that they seem to foster a sense of culture of optimism. Their motto seems to indicate that you can run a business without being "evil." I wouldn't call you evil, but you have to admit that you have a sense of pessimism (I'm sure you feel that it's just "realism"). I apologize if you thought I was calling you evil. I'm not. In fact I have a good friend (also a CS major) who is very much like you. You quoted me out of context but I think the rest of my post indicated this.

Re:What... the... heck?

[Paradox]

Perhaps I came off as too strong.

Obviously, so did I. It's easy to do here on Slashdot, where any comment at less than 100% intensity gets lost in the noise.

I meant to imply that they seem to foster a sense of culture of optimism. Their motto seems to indicate that you can run a business without being "evil."

Depends on what you call evil. I participated in a meeting that did marketing once. While the marketers were nice, I couldn't help but feel like what we were doing was strange. We were in a high-rise building, looking down on the peon like people below, making up categories for our users and saying, "how can we make it attractive to them?"

This is smart business, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, lumping people together. Is it evil? Depends on your feel. Does everyone do it in the business? Hell yes, even Google.

I wouldn't call you evil, but you have to admit that you have a sense of pessimism (I'm sure you feel that it's just "realism"). I apologize if you thought I was calling you evil..

Well, I am very cynical about my last two employers, who were all sweetness and roses until they had me sign an employment contract. Then the lies began. There are lots of people like me out here, who wanted to trust our employers so badly that we made bad decisions.

I'm not going to stumble blindly into an electric fence ever again. If this makes me a pessimist, so be it. I prefer to think of it as accepting that not everyone plays as fair as I do, and I need to be prepared both financially and emotionally to deal with it. Just because I am idealistic doesn't mean everyone else is.

Re:What... the... heck?

[FreshFunk510]

As Reagan said, "Trust, but verify." :)

I know how you feel. I've been there too. I've been screwed. It doesn't feel good to be bent over. I think the key is to watch who you trust, but not come to a state where you trust no one.

Good luck.

Re:Hiring?

[leecn]

bullshit, they dont only hire PhD's, and only a very small proportion of employees (although perhaps larger than most places) have genius level IQ. You seem unable to make accurate statements, is everything else that you say also inaccurate?

media v. tech companies - look at the CEOs

[aramps]

Look at the CEOs, they're coming from different places but clearly working in the same space - media companies are generally about adverstising (yes, even content providers) - the question is which company will be fast enough to eat the other's lunch? (I've already written of MS, which is probably not fair given they will have to react differently than they have been at some point). The advantage that I think Google has over Yahoo is that the tech-centric folks they hire are generally interested in things that have real world applicability - especially in the business world - yahoo doesn't focus on that market at all really (at least to me knowledge).

Re:Why is everyone so happy about personal project

[ajs]

First off, I just want to say that I'm sorry. I was pretty harsh in my last message, and it was because I was typing at max baud in order to crank the message out while I waited for a report to generate at work. Not your fault, not an excuse, just the facts.

Ok, that said, I certainly see where we differ here. You look at Google's filing as a "promise" just like all the rest of the worthless promisses you are made in a day. I look at it as the freedom to do the right thing.

You see, no matter how good the intentions of your average CEO, he (or she) must admit that when push comes to shove, they MUST do anything legal within the bounds of their prospectus to maintain shareholder value. If that means being "evil", then evil is what they must be.

Google did a very smart thing: they put "don't be evil" in the S-1. To my knowledge, no one has ever done this. It doesn't mean you can trust them, but it DOES mean that you don't HAVE to assume that they will behave in as corrupt a manner as neccessary to keep the company profitable and meeting analyst expectations. It's the kind of clever hack I expect from Google, nothing more.

Now, on to the topic of the projects. I think there, we just didn't communicate very well. Partially, it is a clever ploy to get more work out of people. Personally, I have no problem with that, as long as it also improves the QUALITY of that work, and I think it does... you may not feel the same. That's cool.

Your comments about ecconomic motivation are well taken.

Thanks for the conversation!

That's good.

[/dev/trash]

So you sell er I mean give all your ideas to Google, what then? Stock options? You'll be just a wage slave, as well.

Re:That's good.

[Grishnakh]

Maybe you should go back to your job at McDonald's while you're out of high school for the summer instead of trolling on Slashdot.

If you work as an exempt employee for any company, any idea you come up with, on your time or theirs, belongs to the company. Don't like it? Fine, keep working at McDonald's. But for the rest of us with a college education and a real job, that's how it is. (This isn't absolute, BTW; if your idea is completely unrelated to the company's business and they have no interest in it, you can probably get them to release their claim.)

So, if my choices are:
1) working at company A, coming up with a great idea, working on it on my weekends, and then the company laying claim to it after it's proved fruitful, and getting little or nothing in return, or
2) working at Google, coming up with a great idea, working on it 1 day/week during working hours and getting paid for the time spent on it, and probably getting some bonus/stock options, etc.,
I'll take #2.

If your idea is really revolutionary, and you really think you could develop it on your own and make tons of money on it on your own, you could always quit your job, work as a contractor for a year or so, then bring it out after enough time has passed that the company can't claim you worked on it while under their employment contract.

Maturing Market

[toko_loko]

I think that the internet bubble of the late 90's was simply a sign of a new market and over-exuberant investors. The market has now matured, Google's growth has been slowing within the past two weeks, and the search market isn't nearly as volatile as it was the first time around. This is the time for the internet to become a sustainable and influential factor in the world economy. Google is leading the way as far as being young enough to have not been affected by the bubble, but old enough to have learned from it. If you look at the P/E ratios from many of the late-90's companies, you'll see that Google is actually making money. I think that Google has come in at a very crucial time in the history of the internet, and this consolidation will lead to Google taking over the internet in the same way that Microsoft took over the PC. Bling-bling, motherfuckers.

McDonald's.

[/dev/trash]

Fuckers stole my new burger idea too.

I work at yahoo and it's not as bad as you make it

[Anonymous Coward]

The yahoo inside is a lot more hacker friendly than most people imagine. There are TONS of code in yahoo CVS that if released outside would bring yahoo down !. Stuff like a launchcast music player written in perl or a Y! messenger in Qt. Most of us are encouraged to do this (by our own engg managers) - which is a good thing because I personally waste more than 20% of my time playing pool.

I have a very good off-time project, which is picked by me ... Idea factory is for people who have ideas and no time to implement i.e business managers.

big brother

[Anonymous Coward]

I know google is quite bad when it comes to cookes that expire in 33 friggin years, and mining of your email messages for targetted ads. Is Yahoo just as bad? I've been avoiding google in favour of yahoo on the assumption that Yahoo wasn't as orwellian.

Google News...

[kronocide]

...is Deja News. It's not a product of the incredibly cool and creative working atmosphere at Google. They did a Microsoft: bought a product, changed its look and feel and rebranded it. I'm so sick of hearing how amazing Google is as a workplace. Their whole (bean) bag is so 1997.

Culture is just one aspect... what about the rest?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having an inventive culture can only take you so far... I guess it's back to invention v. innovation. One creates markets, and the other creates products for the demands of the market. Google is trying to invent (or at least buy out inventions), Yahoo! is trying to innovate. At the end of the day, short term gains will be won by the innovator, while long term gains will be for someone who invents. But I think both need to have a pulse of the market... upstarts like del.icio.us, gataga.com, spurl.net are doing what Yahoo! or Google could've done easily. Maybe it's more a pulse v. wall street battle. Comments?

America F--- Yeah!

[wahay]

I love living in the Future!

Can you imagine hearing in 1996 that Yahoo! was too conservative of a business culture?

Re:Hiring?

[NDPTAL85]

No. My previous statement is as accurate as this statement is.

All Google developers have genius level IQs, as can be evidenced by their performance.

Re:Hiring?

[leecn]

Yeah... because the performance of an individual is an accurate enough way to make a statement as to their IQ level, I mean look at Einstein when he was a patent clerk, getting passed over for promotion. Clearly he was a genius.

I think maybe you are talking out of your ass. Genius level intelligence is IQ 150. Attempting to deduce $All_Google_Developer_IQ from 'their performance' (whatever that is) is not possible, unless 'their performance' is their performance in an IQ test.

In science, statements of fact are supposed to be known/provable pieces of information, that can be relied on. Guesses/hypotheses are not statements of fact. Here is an example of a guess:

You are in marketing

You have not admitted that your statement was incorrect (when it clearly was). You have in fact made an even more outrageous claim, that ' All Google developers have genius level IQs .

I suspect that even now you will not admit the error (why can't you just admit it? everyone makes mistakes). You will more likely ignore me/try to belittle me/make an even more outrageous claim/accuse me of 'hatred of america'

Regards