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Google's Turn To Be The Villain
caesar79 writes "The New York Times has an article titled "Relax, Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn as the Villain" (also evil but at least free registration required) According to the article, the "go-getting" attitude of Google is coming across as arrogance to many people in the Valley. More importantly, it draws attention to the fact that Google has drained the market of talent, caused a 25% to 50% hike in salaries and made it difficult for startups to get funding."
So, Google is a villain for improving the wages of technologists, and also retroactively (circa 2000) making it harder for startups to get funding?
<emote=plea style=Jon Stewart> Oh Google, why must you be so evil?<
Mox
they hire a lot of people and pay them well?
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I think the complaints are mostly because google isn't the small underdog anymore. Nobody likes a leader.
"How dare google make better offers for top quality programmers! Who am I gonna hire at 10$ an hour with no overtime for 80 hours a week?!? Google is Evil!"
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
Come on, the only people that are thinking Google is evil are other companies that have to compete with them. Look at the oddidty of this paragraph:
Google is doing more damage to innovation in the Valley right now than Microsoft ever did," said Reid Hoffman, the founder of two Internet ventures, including LinkedIn, a business networking Web site popular among Silicon Valley's digerati. "It's largely that they're hiring up so many talented people, and the fact they're working on so many different things. It's harder for start-ups to do interesting stuff right now.
I see, they are damaging innovation through creating so many products.
What?
What he really means is "I can't get top engineers so I can't innovate as much". But that doesn't mean innovation is not occuring. And how are we to be sure innovation at that company would have been as skillfully executed or as good for the industry as it might be at Google.
People complain about Google "hoarding" good engineers. But programmers are not slaves, to be bought as sold as property. Each person makes a choice and it just so happens people want to work at Google. If other companies want to hire the same calibur of people they either need to figure out how to attract programmers OR get the heck out of Dodge and go to a market where obtaining labour might be easier.
If only the heads of whiny companies consider Google evil, then I would say that slightly improves Googles rep with me. So far Google's behaviour has been far better than most other companies - and after all, Evil is as Evil Does. As long as Google continues to compete through excellence then I have no issue with them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I personally get sick of hearing industry whiners bitch about tech employees being paid what they are worth. Guess what, the industry has been typically underpaying by 25% over the past few years. Google has been simply offering competitive wages to attract the caliber of workers they desire.
and the B.S. about it hurting startups is insane. No startups worth a damn started by hiring expensive people... you do not create a business by spending money like mad, that is something everyone learned from the 90's. Every sucessful startup started with self made people with others they knew or could talk into starting a business with them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's not the attitude of Microsoft that makes them evil, it's the business practices. Google does not do the same thing as MS when it comes to business.
The attitude of Google reminds me a lot of the early days of Apple Computer. Out to win big - yes, but villian - no. At least not yet.
Compete or die!
The difference between how this applies to Microsoft and Google is in the end products and services each produces. Google's place in the market is the result of quality applications, a building of a trust relationship with its users, and a eye towards putting out the best software and services it can.
Microsoft on the other hand owes its place in the market to luck, the laissez-faire attitude of govt. during the early days of its development, and a focus on corporate marketing double-speak that focuses on the "message" rather than the quality of their products.
Google may be evolving into a corporate giant, but that doesn't equate with them being evil. They are far more similar to early Apple, but with better leadership.
As an engineer, I want more companies to be evil like that. I wouldn't mind a 25% raise and working environment that doesn't get in the way of what I'm capable of.
Since when does success = villain?
It is pretty frustrating to see people constantly complain about large, successful companies. What the article fails to mention is that Google likely hires the best of the best. So I would guess that the talent level of the employees dictates the pay, instead of the company name dictating the pay. Make sense?
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The issue here in my opinion, is that Google is leveraging it's advertising revenue model and it's vast economies of scale in hosting costs to corner the web application market. This is the play that Microsoft should fear and I think that has allready been adressed.
The problem is that their efforts do stiffle web entrepenuers who are trying to break into new areas such as hosted groupeware for email, file, photo and video sharing etc. (I know this from personal experience). Keep in mind that not all web application developers are looking for a "good Salary" from a benign giant like Google. Some of us actually want to be masters of our fate and make a living on our own. But now the real fear is "Will Google invade my market and make a free version of my Widget?"
That's becoming more real every day. I can't buy bandwidth at the same cost as Google, and I can't leverage massive Advertising revenues to give away my products for free either.
"Do no evil" doesn't mean "don't crush small start-ups".
-Adam
IBM is cool now because they're actively 1) paying for linux advertising (related to IBM, but still), 2) writing lots of Linux articles, 3) contributing to linux, etc etc.
Google Talk is cool because it uses an open, standardized protocol. You can't really go after Google under the Sherman Act for using the Jabber protocol.
It's still possible for Google's management to change, and for them to start leveraging their massive marketshare in a way that directly inhibits search engine competitors. Until they try something like this though, I'm going to sleep well.
(and note that MS is still, by far, the least likely to contribute to open source, or even seriously grok open standard protocols)
For quite some time, it was only the Google fanboys here (and there are quite a few) who were under any illusions about Google Incorporated.
Uh, yeah. Did you read the story? It's not that Google is outright EVIL(TM), it's that the other tech corporations think Google is EVIL(TM) because Google is bigger and more powerful. Techies still love Google, because they raise the general salary and promote good working conditions.
Microsoft was once A Good Company.
No, Microsoft was once an upstart. i.e. "The Underdog." They were never a "good" company. Their primary product (Microsoft BASIC) was a complete ripoff of University code. That started a trend in Microsoft history where every product was either a stolen or bought-out design. (Which isn't to say that Microsoft employees don't work hard. It's just that Microsoft as a corporation doesn't have an honest or original bone in its metaphorical body.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Silicon Valley is a lot like a University campus. A lot of really smart people with a ton of brilliant ideas on how to make the world better, but often lacking in the common sense or business saavy to translate the idea into something real.
Companies in Silicon Valley are a dime a dozen anymore. There's always some kid sitting in an apartment dreaming up The Next Big Thing. Some of them do come up with great stuff, but for whatever reason they just never get to the point where they're selling or distributing what they dreamed up. Those that do often do it on a limited basis because they lack the resources to go bigger. Those who really are onto something neat get bought out.
Google is hated by these guys now for the same reason academics look down their noses at their equivalents in the professional world. Because Google successful in ways others could only dream of. It's jealousy really. They claim it's because Google has lost its small-company spirit, that it's no longer doing what they do for the pure reasons of doing "cool" stuff or whatever. Google has taken the spirit and the drive of so many startups and they actually went somewhere with it.
We tend to hate, or at least target, those who do better than us.
Funny all these companies whining about having to compete with Google for top talent, and pay competetive salaries... You'd have thought they could just outsource, or are they maybe actually concerned about the *quality* of the people that Google is hiring, not the cost?
There's a difference between a monopoly on search engine services and a monopoly in the OS space. Changing search engine providers is as simple as replacing a bookmark, changing operating systems requires some serious expeditures, especially at the enterprise level.
If Google has a monopoly on search engine services, it's a very fragile one.
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
... if you have both the technical chops and the commercial success to back it up, which Google does, especially compared to other big players who are called arrogant.
Research labs like Xerox PARC back in the day were viewed as arrogant, in large part because of their technical success and lack of business success - "if you're so smart, home come you're not rich?"
Microsoft is viewed as arrogant because they're wildly successful commercially, but their technology is middle-of-the-road at best - from a purely geek point of view they don't deserve their success.
Google is an almost unheard-of beast that does truly technically innovative things and profits by doing so.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
the graph seems to indicate a surge in "evil google" around the time of the IPO. IIRC Google's motto is "DO NO EVIL", and in the time leading to the IPO that fact was mentioned many times in many articles. It looks like any article that says something like...
...would notch the "evil" index up and not hae any influence on the "cool" index at all, even though it is a very positive statement!
In contrast to Microsoft's image of industry dominance at all cost, Google has cultivated a friendlier image with its adoption of open source technology and its philosophy of "do no evil"
'tis an amusing graph, but completely meaningless.
Those numbers don't sound right to me. How many people work at google? Say their salaries are really high.. there are still many other places that *aren't* google out there who are not going to pay those prices. Perhaps salaries have gone up for the cream of the crop, but 25-50 percent still sounds like a huge spike in an area with such a large quantity of software people.
To me this seems like one of those times where someone just threw out a number and that number instantly becomes the focus of everyone's attention because they don't have any better numbers.
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No..it's time for companies to maybe think "out of the valley" for once. Not all of us care to live in Cali. I'd rather see the sun RISE over the water, than set ( but if you're lucky enough to live in FL you can see both. I can just hear the "voting" jokes...c'mon, bring'm on. ).
Still, the point is there. Startup company's over there hem and haw about not finding talent this, or talent that. Get a CLUE, most of us don't want to live in Overpriced-everything land, ok ?
So if that there aren't enough engineers in the valley is the excuse start ups are using to try to get in more H1B's then they deserve to crash and burn like they did during the DotBomb Boom. There is NOT a shortage of qualified engineers in the United States of America ( and Canada ). What there IS a shortage of, is legislators who will stop being namby-pamby's whenever someone like Bill G complains that it's costing him 2 Million more to drill out a new wing for his house, and his financials won't look right because he can't get the number of UNDERPAID H1B's and F1's that he wants.
There isn't a shortage of skilled engineers, it's not like we're picking tomatoes out of the ground people, it's that company's have come up with progressively sneakier and more loop-hole clinging ways to try to maintain the pay scales down.
Hence, why I've gone back to contracting. As long as you're going to think you're going to run your company with impunity, I'll charge you for the privilege of that false sense of power.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again,....more power to the company who is prepared to pay for a skill, they will keep that skill longer, and get more ROI dollar for dollar, out of that person, than the company who isn't. Sure, some of you younger guys are willing to work for "wheatgrass" drinks, but just wait until you have a family and have REAL bills, we'll see if that extra indoor basketball court is really worth that absense of a commensurate salary.
However, consider the coder who comes up with an idea for the next killer app. If they can't get startup funding to hire a few extra sets of brains and typing-fingers domestically, what are their options?
Well one option is to leave freaking California! There are a lot of talented programmers that for whatever reason do not want to live in CA. Find a place where a lot of them are and go there.
If you can't stand the heat then move somewhere cold.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As far as us violating the 'spirit' of the GPL. You have no clue what you are talking about. This kind of crap drives people away from using free software in the first place. What have you done to help open source?
Chris
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Google is guilty of one thing really, and it's respective to what Microsoft had going for it in the very beginning (ala DOS), in that it has a bunch of clever ideas, and they are implemented well. The thing with Microsoft is that they are now in a position to literally, stop business from functioning in certain parts of the world by implementing changes they deem 'necessary'.
What if Microsoft stopped patching Windows XP? I mean, if there's a vulnerability to Windows, and a BIG one that cripples businesses and users worldwide... Things in this world would HALT. Financial institutions that rely heavily on Excel would not trade. Banks that use SQL Server couldn't make transactions. Of course, this is a very 'doomsday' scenario, but it also can portray the stranglehold Microsoft has on the current business world.
Google on the other hand well... they don't have that kind of power. The resentment in the article comes from different Silicon Valley 'players'. One that I found amusing was the PayPal founder -- and the article later mentioned there may be a PayPal rival in the works. I wonder why he's bitter against Google?
Others complain about the talent Google is 'stealing'. Another post mentioned this but I feel it's worth reiterating -- you pay people what you feel they are worth. Trust me as much as I'd like to work for Google, if they don't pay me more than I make now... I don't think I'd make the move. There is a huge bonus to Google because of the way they treat their employees -- and people worldwide know it, and they want to be a part of the community that ENJOYS their jobs. If you work at a bank as a programmer, where you have to wear a dress shirt and tie, arrive promptly and work extra hours with no appreciation, then the wunder-stories of employees at Google are extremely appealing. If you are mad about not getting that 'talent' that Google is 'stealing' then start changing your work environment. Make employees ENJOY their work, give them freedoms -- it's software development after all! And yea, PAY THEM MORE! I find it amazing that computer programmers who LITERALLY have to study longer and harder than DOCTORS (due to the ever-changing atmosphere of technology, new languages, methods etc), get paid so little so many places in this country. When a computer programmer makes less than a garbageman it's indicative of a larger problem. So fix that problem you complainers -- don't blame Google because they saw past the problem and offered a solution.
I won't say Google is full of angels, but by in large when they express the "Do no evil" philosphy, they are pretty close to following up on it. They release an IM client, and show you, ON THEIR SITE, how to make it work with other 3rd party clients like Trillian or iChat. They release a web based email with a lot of free space, and to no addition revenue, offer free POP3 service for it. They release Google Earth free of advertising. They buy Picasa, update it, and release it better and ad free, even better (imho) than the Photoshop Gallery software or anything else. They release plugins for Internet Explorer, and follow by releasing similar plugins for Firefox. They create AJAX and allow royalty free use of it.
Evil huh? There may be examples of how Google is being 'evil', but at this point it's as laughable as the character with the same name in an Austin Powers movie.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
You are in fact, quite correct to question those numbers. Let's look at the original quote.
Google, Mr. Hoffman said, has caused "across the board a 25 to 50 percent salary inflation for engineers in Silicon Valley" - or at least those in a position to weigh competing offers.
First, Mr. Hoffman begins with a load of steaming hyperbole. Then the reporter appears to add some facts to the stew.
It appears that there has been salary inflation for those who have highly desirable skillsets. However, I can tell you for damn sure that there has not been across the board salary inflation. Ask any engineer in the valley how much his/her salary increased in the past two years.
When Google first appeared on the search engine scene, Yahoo was fat and lazy as king. Google was the young, hip, energetic younger kid. Plus it used Linux!!! Google really brought linux into the limelight showing that it could take center stage and work. Google took advantage of this new found popularity and started hiring as many talented people as they could. Then Google started pressing the line and pissing off some people...
Since then, google seems to be positioning themselves to be the sole internet portal where everything will go through them, web searches, email, IM, your map searches. I mean, if google wanted to, it could know more about you than I think it should.
So far, their policy has been "do no evil." I for one hope that remains the case. Right now, my only real gripe is their lack of giving back to the open source community. They used linux to build their empire but give very little back to it other than being able to use it as an example of what linux can do. Ok, that's useful, but given how large they are, I think they could actually spend some resources to give back to the community.
But wait, they are using jabber for their IM servers. Well yes, I could use any IM client that uses jabber to connect to them, I think using an open standard like that is great, except you can't use the voice features that way, you have to use their program which isn't open source and currently only available for windows. So basically they are using an open source product to create a closed source program. Sure it's free, but that doesn't help me, the linux or mac user at all.
So unless you use windows, you can't use their IM client, you can't use google earth and I still haven't seen them release any source code. Is this evil of them? No, I don't think using open source products makes them evil, I think it's good in a way but I certainly wont consider them a friend until I'm running google earth on my linux box while talking to my friends over GIM.
If you start sucking and you deliberately compromise the user's interests to make some money or crush some company, do those users have to bend over and take it, or do they have elsewhere to go?
I think in Google's case, it's pretty obvious they have somewhere else to go. Google doesn't have anyone locked in, not with Search, not with Maps, and definitely not with Gmail. If they turned evil, that would definitely compromise their quality of service, and there are many people including MS eagerly lining up to serve Google emigrees who only came to Google in the first place because Google's lack of evil made for a good user experience.
I think it's incredibly immature to equate the size and power, or even the ambition of a company, with evil. I guess there are some people who can't distinguish legitimate moral objections from mere sour grapes and envy. Remember that what makes Microsoft bad is the fact they deliberately screw their users (just because they can) and try to undermine open standards and install their own proprietary ones. This behavior should be condemned whether it's done by a big or a small company (remember Rambus?). And Google, big as they are, are not doing this. They are the sort of company we should cheer - a pro-user company with a bit of power. The alernative is that only the evil companies have the power, and I wouldn't like that.
So causing the average wage to increase, which fell through the floor after the dot com crash is a bad thing? I personally would enjoy getting paid more again.
Hiring up a boat load of talent to cause a tech labor shortage is a bad thing too? I think there are a lot of unemployed and underemployed techies out there who would benefit greatly by this.
The perspective here seems to be from a corporate standpoint, one that doesn't want to pay it's people any more money and wants to be able to replace them easily at a whim. I would hardly call Google evil for that.
Yes, there are times when just watching people trash you is the best course, but this isn't one of them. Also, I don't really care about googles under/overdog status. We're doing a lot of work with open source and if we want people to take that seriously, we have to take credit os that future works will be taken seriously and not just a sops to curry favor.
I think that asking people what they've done is completely appropriate...if people want to stay on their high horses, I want to see thier credentials.
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Do you have a price for the subtle psychological benefit most people get from working in a nice looking building and campus instead of a boring office building with multiple companies on different floors or wings?
The article is about Google's reputation among venture capitalists and technologists in Silicon Valley, and I do not think it's fair to extend this comparison to Microsoft into the realm of user exeperience.
Microsoft's products in the 1990's were essentially bloated foistware. Their software implemented critical functionality poorly and was outpeformed by other products, but they used marketing tactics bordering on extortion to ensure that they picked up a monopoly on end user operating systems. And they still made us pay for their crappy software.
Google's products in the 2000s are available for free. They compete with other free products for market share, and therefore are differentiated by performance and functionality.
In my opinion, Google is leading the way in good technology implementations, and they deserve to have an industry-leading position. Where they need to be careful is to remain competitive, and not stray into the realm of anticompetitive behavior.
My guess is that they are going to launch some initiatives in nontraditional (for them) categories of business, and maybe one or two will have some success. The rest will fizzle out because the company will not be able to translate its success on the internet to success in other media avenues. If they are smart about how much capital they risk on these projects, they will learn their lesson, and still keep the top spot in the internet-based free services.
Microsoft has repeatedly been caught commiting intentional, illegal, anti-competitive acts. All of the "evil" attributed to Google has simply been side-effects of being a successful business. The two are not even remotely comparable.