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]

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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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"

Googledot! All Google All The Time

[JPelorat]

Google for Google. Google that Googles.

Is it me...

[InVinoVeritas]

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

Google vs. Yahoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two search engine companies? Competing?

I am shocked!

Re:Hiring?

[Scrameustache]

Chicagoogle... find all thing Chicago! : )

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.

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?

[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?

[carlivar]

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

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

[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.

Google + Yahoo

[justforaday]

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

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!

[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?

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.

Uhm, yes?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:Hiring?

[saintp]

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

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?

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

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:Hiring?

[tzanger]

Chicagoogle... find all thing Chicago! : )

I personally like goocago better. :-)

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.

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: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!

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!"

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.

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: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: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:Hiring?

[Anonymous Coward]

So having a PHD makes you a genius?

HAHAHAHA! You know nothing of the real world!

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:Yahoo Using Google's Search Results

[PeteDotNu]

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

Re:There's a key difference.

[BiAthlon]

Try this.

http://search.yahoo.com/

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.

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: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)

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: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:Hiring?

[markwalling]

fun doesn't pay the bills

how much profit has gmail brought in for them?

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...

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: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: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.

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:*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.

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:*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.