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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
Sure thats going to make your average coder hate google...
I disagree. I think Microsoft earned their title, and I doubt it's gonna go away. I'd like to think that the Google invasion is going over more like the story in Doom3:
Or something to that effect, anyways.
For instance, everyone who identifies BillG as the wellspring of all evil forgets how scared we all were of IBM back in the day. Now IBM is seen with much favor in the community. It wouldn't be that way were it not for Microsoft.
So really, it isn't Google's turn to be villain, it's Microsoft's turn to be the good guys.
Hrm, did I really just say that?
--
You didn't know.
they hire a lot of people and pay them well?
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Increased salaries is bad for business and the number of employ hired, but you can't quote a 25-50% hike in salaries as a bad thing... c'mon!
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
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
...you type the URL into Google. Irony at it's best. :)
that a wildly successful software company that only went public a year or so ago is scaring venture $ away from start-ups...what the heck was Google until 2 years ago if not a start-up?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
...because we can't let the worthless peons below "suit" level make more money, god forbid. Sorry, but coders do the REAL work(tm) and should be making at least 75-90% of what execs currently do. Whereas execs should be making about 60-75% of their current pay.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
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.
Paul Graham has an essay about this: The Submarine.
"Suits make a corporate comeback," says the New York Times. Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because the suit was also back in February, September 2004, June 2004, March 2004, September 2003, November 2002, April 2002, and February 2002.
Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.
We have seen this before with anti-Linux campaigns. Nothing new.
Google has ordered it's PR staff to decline any interviews from /. editors...
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
1. Copy story location.
2. Paste into google search
3. click on link that appears on the google search page.
4. ???
5. Profit
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Is a better link to the story available? The NYT web site goes into a redirection loop if you have cookies disabled or are behind a firewall that stops cookies.
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.
"When I meet with venture capitalists, or if I'm engaged in a conversation about going into partnership with someone, inevitably the question is, 'Why couldn't Google do what you're doing?' " said Craig Donato, the founder and chief executive of Oodle, a site for searching online classified listings more quickly.
Geez, I wonder why the VC's always think of Google during our presentation for a search company named Oodle??
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Google is a terrorist organization. Their plot is to systematically (subversively) destroy the IT Sector by employing all the best talent. They'll have a *monopoly* on intellect! You want smarts? You gotta pay da Google. You'll never be able to pry the Scientists from their clutches... They hypnotically keep them there by way of shiny trinkets, coin, and free gourmet meals... No one can escape. We're all going to have dumb workers. We'll never succeed. Google must be stopped! They hate our freedom!
geeks are cats who dig a certain kind of cool
Google is evil because it hires a lot of people for good money, attracts investment, and is successful.
Why do we consider Microsoft evil? Is it equivalent to Google's evil? Well, no, it isn't. Stealing ideas, actively trying to destroy competition, lying in court, producing half-working crap and using a monopoly to force it down everybody's throat... is that morally equivalent to what Google is doing?
Didn't think so.
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?
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
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
So, people are hating Google because they are too good? Forget that, you have to give props and deal with it. If you can't hire someone because Google is offering something better that you simply can't match, then TOUGH! Deal with it and stop whinning.
fuckedgoogle.com
Has interesting facts, e.g. that Larry Page alone made more money selling stock than Google has had revenue in its entire existence. This is where the funding goes.
If Google is draining talent, forcing pay raises and making it hard for start-ups, then it only means that the system is working. Money (and people) go where they are appreciated in a free, capitalist economy. If the start-ups have a better (more valuable) idea than Google's then they should be able to convince both prospective employees and VCs that they start-up is worth it.
Although economies aren't zero-sum games (many activities do grow the pie, or raise the tide that floats all boats), some aspects do have a win-lose component to them. Successful companies can afford (and should afford) to pay their workers more than unsuccessful ones. This means that successful companies will inevitably harm less successful companies by "draining" the labor pool and seem "evil."
If Google is evil it is because change is evil (to some) and because competition (for money, workers, customers, etc.) can be evil -- at least in the eyes of the less successful.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Google shareholder (their stock seems very overpriced relative to the long-term risks of Google's business model and the high expected earning built into the current stock price), but they do seem to be very successful.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
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
Google becomes ubiquitous is a good thing, it seems, for consumers. However, I think there's a real danger that it has too much information that can be construed as personal and valuable on millions of individuals. While I appreciate the "do no evil" mentality that has diven Google so far, the lure of "evil" and better returns are what drive shareholders, and Google after all, is a public company. On another note, one has to be amazed at the way in which Google's unique take on technology and on familar things like web search (Google Suggest), GMail, Google Talk and Google Earth, have allowed it to quickly supplant the leaders in every sphere it steps into. It's quite remarkable, and telling of the culture that thrives in the company. I fear however, that after conquering just about every communication medium (IM, Email, Web Search, VoIP, and rumor has it, free WiFi), stepping out of Google will be as hard as it is to step away from Micro$oft. What is it they say -- too much of something good can't be too good for you after all. In this case, a ubiquitous publicly traded company that features in so many forms of communication exchange, can't possibly resist the temptation to exploit that monopoly... or can it?
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.
I don't think they were underpaid by the industry.
I just think that these people are worth 25% more to google than they were to other companies.
If you work for my company you will make me $100k, I might say it is worthwhile for me to pay you $75k.
However if a competator will make $150k from you, he could quite rightly pay you $110k.
I wasn't underpaying you, the job market has just changed. This is competition, and it's a step up.
Basically the market gets 50% more value from the same resource (you). In the economics this is productivity improvement.
To place Google in context, Mr. Kraus offered a brief history lesson. In the 1990's, he said, I.B.M. was widely perceived in Silicon Valley as a "gentle giant" that was easy to partner with while Microsoft was perceived as an "extraordinarily fearsome, competitive company wanting to be in as many businesses as possible and with the engineering talent capable of implementing effectively anything."
Now, in the view of Mr. Kraus, "Microsoft is becoming I.B.M. and Google is becoming Microsoft." Mr. Kraus is the chief executive and a founder of JotSpot, a Silicon Valley start-up hoping to sell blogging and other self-publishing tools to corporations.
Step 1: Create start-up to compete against Google.
Step 2: Compare Google to MicroSoft in NYT.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Keep fingers crossed?
"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."
"When I meet with venture capitalists, or if I'm engaged in a conversation about going into partnership with someone, inevitably the question is, 'Why couldn't Google do what you're doing?' " said Craig Donato, the founder and chief executive of Oodle, a site for searching online classified listings more quickly.
"The answer is, 'They could, and they're probably thinking about it, but they can't do everything and do it well,' " Mr. Donato said. "Or at least I'm hoping they can't."
So, Google is evil and is hurting innovation because they have so many smart people working on so many projects that there's nothing else to work on?
It sounds more like Google is raising the bar rather than killing innovation. The bubble burst, ladies and gentlemen. You can't get new money for old ideas anymore. Get over it.
but I thought irony was like rain on your wedding day?
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
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?
Could you open an office out where I live??
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.
Microsoft, on the other hand, can pretty much hold the whole computer industry hostage by virtue of having the most deployed systems hence anyone who wants to buy or write software for a computer has to obtain the MS OS to transact business. This is worse than the classic "utility" type natural monopoly -- the better analogy would be if someone owned a perpetual patent on 60Hz AC.
Seastead this.
I remember when Yahoo! was The Cool Company. They offered arseloads of free applications, the applications were nifty, cool, hip and where-it's-at.
Then somewhere along the line, the free email accounts and home pages got so choked with ads and bloat that I couldn't stand using them anymore.
I like Google's stuff. Lots. I've just got this nagging feeling that I've been here before, and I hope I'm wrong.
http://downwithpants.org Overthrow the tyranny of your pants
I don't think we have a winner here.
As far as I can tell, Google's business plan is similar to all the dot-com bubble stories:
1. Get funding through at least one huge IPO
2. Hire all the top talent you can find
3. Give away your products for free, relying on advertising
4. You can figure this one out yourself
So for everyone sarcastically crying how Google is "so evil" because they're doing this, think about it for a second. How fair is it if you have a long-term business strategy to be run out of business by an upstart that is little more than a flash in the pan? For as good as Google is (and they are good), history shows their business model not to last the long haul.
I'm a big tall mofo.
There's a glut of talent in a lot of cities up and down the Coast. How about doing a start-up in Oregon or Nevada instead of the Bay? I'll bet you the salaries are way cheaper, too.
Finding God in a Dog
It seems like there's another story every day about something new Google is trying. Today it's IM. (That's innovative?)
It seems like forever ago that I signed up for a gmail account and it is still in beta. I can't even get to my gmail account on my PDA (probably my fault, but I don't have any problems with Yahoo!)
As an independent publisher I was also excited to take part in their Google Print program (also still in beta). But its been over two months since I uploaded my PDF files (they didn't even have to scan my books) and they are still listed in "pending" status.
Okay, so that's my grousing for the day. Anyone else have similar experiences with Google's lack of follow-through?
Read any good sonnets lately?
... 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.
I think people are actually scared of Google because they don't know what to think of it. At first, everyone wanted to know how to achieve the golden orgasmic PageRank 10 from that little upstart search engine with such a simple friendly page. Now you have companies paying large sums of money to have 'experts' optimize their site for a seemingly great and monolithic Google, sometimes at the cost of ignoring all other search engines. So with this gigantic company, they have a Think Big kind of attitude, as the article points out. Where have we heard that before?...
Here's where everyone gets confused, though. Google isn't forcing its software onto nearly every computer manufactured. They aren't trying to force any sort of vendor lock-in or commit evil business practices so they can continue to give you "good enough" software either.
Forgive me for quoting people's gripes with Microsoft, but that's the difference between the services provided. To the end user, Google isn't costing us much of anything. People wanted a company to kill Microsoft, and now they might get it...and it scares them because the company they're tired of wanted to 'Think Big' and have big ambitions a long time ago too. People are trying to attribute the track history of MS to Google simply because of how quickly Google has taken off, and the fact that both companies were open about having great ambitions early-on.
Who hasn't? Can a company honestly succede without big goals to reach for? No.
On the other side of things, I was waiting for the day that Google would start getting bad press for anything and nothing. So far, every search engine that soared after it's IPO sunk not too long after and was quickly tossed to the wayside. Yahoo! actually survived surprisingly enough, but Google seems to be going another route: They're still worth money (and lots of it) but now some are turning from curious to suspicious about their former favorite. The little child with lots secrets can be seen as cute, the rich and powerful social elite with lots secrets must be hiding something malignant.
The only part about the negative press that annoys me is that nobody is giving Google the flexability to be a new company. They have to know how to behave like a giant from the start, and giants obviously must behave like monsters as far as the press is concerned.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
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.
There is a vast difference between technical quirks in some products and a systematic approach that kills all competition through annoucnemnents and buyouts. I'll bet people that wrote those links above still use Goole to search for things (perhaps not the second guy as he sound irrationally peeved just because they are large and successful).
A illustration of this difference is that Microsoft will bury a startups chances by introducing a press release saying they are working on an area (even if not). Google is accidentally hurting some startups because they do NOT say what they are working on, and venture captialists make assumptions.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
Since /. posters are always too lazy to find the reg-free link, here you all go:
l ley.html?ex=1282536000&en=344e9c533c3980cc&ei=5090 &partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/technology/24va
And: is the same reason applicable to Google?
Well, Both MS and IBM were perceived to be bullys. They used their overwhelming advantages in one market to extend control to other markets. Typically, they cut prices in the new markets in order to drive competitors out, even competitors with superior products. The investment community saw this, and feared investing in excellent products and technologies whenever Microsoft trumpeted that they were moving into a market. I can only think of two products that survived that onslaught: Oracle and Quicken. This is the fear, uncertainty, doubt (FUD) strategy.
The other bullying tactic which both used was to offer low ball buyouts to companies with promising technologies. They would, at the same time, threaten to buy similar technologies elsewhere, and then overwhelm their target company. In many cases, Microsoft seemed to steal technology outright, both from buyout targets, as well as from partner companies. In short, they were thugs, and were known as such.
IBM has changed over the last 20 years. Bill Gates still sings the same tune that he did 20 years ago. I haven't heard those notes from Google.
If you think being an executive is easy, I seriously recommend you take a few accounting classes just as a starter. There's just as much complexity in C-level jobs as there are below, if not moreso, but it is complexity in different areas that are all too easy for gearheads to airly dismiss as trivial (just like it is all to easy for managers to dismiss our jobs as being Simple Matters of Programming). Complexity that if not handled well can completely sink the company, putting everyone on the street and potentially the executive in jail. Sure, large companies have people dedicated underneath the C-level people to the "dangerously complex" tasks like accounting, but your average startup CEO wears not just more than one hat, but pretty much EVERY hat.
Yes, executives make a lot of money. But they do that because of the risks and responsibilities they have. Imagine, for a second, that you're the CEO of Dell or Microsoft or IBM... Nice life, right? Now imagine looking out of your office and every person you see is able to feed their families because of your continued track record of not screwing up, and that companies you couldn't even name are also depending on you to not screw up. Bit more pressure, eh?
I've got a simple standard regarding listening to somebody's economic opinions: has the person ever held a job with a regular paycheck and had to pay rent/buy food/pay bills every month? If not, their opinions are borderline worthless. The same standard writ large applies to corporate management: if you haven't had to meet payroll every month, your opinions about the tasks and difficulty involved with running a company are basically shit.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of dumb managers and executives out there. I've worked for and hated several of them. But to blanket assert that the tasks of a worker bee equal or exceed the risks and responsibilities of an executive's is just absurd.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Wouldn't that be: GooooGle !!
Klink would be more like HOOOOOGAN!!!!
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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Nope. Remember it well. That was one reason I used to like Microsoft.
I think the "wellspring of all evil" is sub-contracted under licence. Every now and then Satan takes a look at his minion-in-chief and holds a review to see if they've been performing up to expectations. Every now and then, the licence gets withdrawn and appliations are invited for a new Wellspring.
But according to sources in Hell (who do not wish to be named) even if Google starts now with the Microsoft class bastardry, Bill's tenure is reckoned to be good for another ten years.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
ka-ching!
If this is bad, then good must really be awful.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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
I doubt Google has drained all the national, or even local talent.
But any newly available jobs are just as boring as our current jobs, with the same bad incentives. Without a reason to change jobs, I won't change jobs. Give me an environment as conducive to working as Google does (good pay, freedom to work on cool things you want to work on, cool things the company wants you to work on, etc...), and I'll gladly let you pay me for my talent.
Until then, I'll let my current employer keep paying me while I expand my knowledge and dream of new ideas.
That sure sounded bad. But if you'll look back you'll see he leaked some financial stuff he should not have pre-IPO.
Once I read that I realized the article had an agenda. Or the reporter just really sucks at fact checking.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
psst, that was Kirk
Some of the reasons, fair or not, for why Microsoft has earned a reputation for evil:
- Maintaining market dominance using closed standards. For example, the Microsoft Word file format.
- Embrace-and-extend. Adopting an open format, then corrupting the standard by deviating from the specification. For example Java and Kerberos.
- LONG latency in security patches and too many exploits.
- Devious scheming against competitors: the Halloween documents.
Well I could go on, but there is probably no need for that here... coals to Newcastle.
Some reasons why Google is earning a reputation for Evil:
- They have attracted many customers by providing a superior product.
- They attract star employees by providing better working conditions.
Others have made the point and I agree, Google hatred bowls down to jealousy, envy and anti-capitalism. The success of Google, much like the success of Apple's iPod, owes primarily to the superiority of the product, not to evil corporate machinations. They are winning market share fairly. Good for them. Good for their employees. Good for their investors. Good for their customers. GENUINE innovation makes everyone better off, except for those competing against it.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
According to highly credible sources, upset Google employees everywhere are demanding lower pay, citing heavy feelings of insult for the rediculous amount of money they are receiving for the minor, unimaginative work they are involved in.
Google has locked the doors of all their development houses from the inside, fearing massive defection to more reasonable companies that tell their employees exactly what to do and when, eliminating the stifling processes of having to be creative. Updates to follow soon.
A B A C A B B
That's what venture capital does. It puts food on your table as you develop your product. It seems like an awfully successful system for something that's supposedly a sham.
The alternative is to fund everything out of pocket. If you have no financial resources, well then you're just another talented designer working at McDonalds.
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.
Take the url to the NY Times story, and do a google search for it. Then click on the link next to "If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link."
NY Times allows google news to link to stories without login, so I guess this works in the same way.
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
Ironic, isn't it? PayPal has been seizing account balances left and right under false pretenses, and they have the audacity to slander a company that hadn't actually done anything "evil" yet.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
If they can't compete in Google's market, innovate in another market. This is, at least used to be, the strength of start-ups. The ability to recognize an area that needed innovation and fill that need. Google has a stranglehold in Information Management right now. Find something else.
You guys are supposedly intelligent, right?
I don't give a shit about team outings, or free pizza lunch or any of that crap. My job is rewarding enough. I want the $$ to justify the time I put into it. I can buy my own drinks and food, thanks.
Blar.
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.
Google on the other hand releases specs and APIs to work with the system and they don't care which platform you happen to be running on.
The following google apps do not work in anything other than Windows:
Picasa
Google Desktop
Google Earth
Google Toolbar
Google Hello
Good for you for pointing that out. Now I would like you to compile a list of microsoft products that work in linux.
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
This strategy works to a point, but can be taken too far. For example: you set up shop in the middle of nowhere, Iowa. You find a few talented coders and begin work. When one of them leaves for whatever reason, you are left scrambling for replacement talent - you already tapped the local sources and now have to draw from abroad. But what coder is going to risk going to Iowa to work for you? Should the job opportunity fail, he's stuck in a place that has no hope of offering him comparable work.
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.
Seriously Google might be stifling to some competition, but it still produces a good final product to the consumer, who benefits. That's the bottom line of a Free Market, the consumer.
.)
Microsoft however destroys companies in ways to increase it's profit margin for inferior product, stifling the market for the consumer and forcing people to shell out a large amount of money for a product that is outdated, trying to keep it to be the only product in the market.
I don't see how one can even compare the two. Google is a website, and hasn't even tried to be the only one (well they wish to be but they don't push out others).
Personal story upcoming. I liked Yahoo Maps, I typed in my work address and searched how to go to a claim service for my insurance (got my stereo stolen and window broken) well Yahoo had me going all these ways that were SO inefficent, and the starting point didn't even match my location. So I went to Google Maps, not only did i get a perfect route (the one I pieced together out of a couple Yahoo maps and 10 minutes). I got perfect directions, exact locations, and every position was perfectly marked.
Yahoo Maps and Mapquest is STILL there, and they are available to you if you want, but Google takes the idea of driving directions and doesn't just do it, they mastered it. What is the Satellite Imagery do? not much but it's a nice feature if you want to use even more advanced stuff (and it looks better to some)
There's a difference between that and what Microsoft has done in the past. Comparing Google to Microsoft in this time frame is just a joke. Microsoft has been doing evil stuff for years, Google is just trying to get more users and it's success is evident, I haven't seen them as "evil" rather they are just proactive, in improving themselves. However it hasn't damaged the market to do so (and they make mistakes... Atom over RSS? heh)
Kudos Googles, Boo Microsoft, and WTF New York Times (also get rid of the damm registration, please or we'll keep use bugmenot.com
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.
I clearly realize that addressing misconceptions are important. I'm not questioning your motives, or your work (which is damn fine, IMHO). I'm just believe your tactics are off. With respect to Google and open source, you are a 4 to 5 star general. To stretch the military analogy (too far?), replies to individual posts are something that should be handled at the squad level (okay, Slashdot might need a platoon or even a whole company :-). Generals shouldn't go beating the bush hunting snipers. What are you going to do when 20 people post things like this? 100? Are you going to read at -1 to make sure you get everyone? I'm sure you've got better things to do with your time.
I still disagree with you about "credentials", though. I believe you get off your high horse yourself when you do that. I think you make your point better (and more succinctly) without resorting to it. You can just point to all the work you guys have put out to the open source world. Some people will be bound and determined to hate you no matter what you do. Some people will praise you and always believe you do no wrong. Most people will make decisions based on what they see and when someone perceived to be at the top takes a defense "well, what have YOU done" tone, I believe it works against you. If you want to clear up misconceptions, then you should very much care about Google's under/overdog status. People perceive what you say differently given on how they view you.
I'm coming off like I'm bagging on you, and I'm not meaning to. I'm trying (in my own way) to help. I think that most people realize the things you've done and you damn well deserve credit for them. All I'm saying is just stress what you've done and not worry about what your critics have done.
hat started a trend in Microsoft history where every product was either a stolen or bought-out design.
And so it seems fitting that they gained a 90+% marketshare due to people stealing/ripping them off(read software piracy).
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
People left the area in the dot.bomb, and changed professions, because they had to. But with the upswing, there's nobody here to hire anymore. So, duh, Google is interviewing nearly everyone who's on the market... the number of people on the market is way down.
Recruiting has gone from a job of filtering the stacks of resumes to really actively pursuing people again.
The funny thing about the Google accusations are that Google takes months to do an interview process and make an offer; the flip side of this whole story is Google being very frustrated that most of the people they make offers to have already accepted a position somewhere else by the time Google gets their offer in. Evil predator, which loses most of its candidates? I don't think so.
Google's a convenient entity to blame, but that's all it is. Until IT people start coming back to Silli Valli, it's going to be escalating difficulty of hiring talent and escalating salaries.
As far as I can tell, it was CNET that announced that Google wasn't talking to them. The reporter in the Times article says it's Google that announced it. I'd like to see a link or something corroborating his statement that Google is doing any announcing; otherwise, it's just spin/bullshit intended to make Google look bad (part of the point of the article, of course, but back your claims with evidence).
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. -- Hanlon
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.
A bit of exaggeration, no?
No.
Google's main product, i.e. the thing that allowed them to make 99% of its revenue, is sponsored search - something they "stole" from Overture (now Yahoo!) which they settled by paying $$$ to Yahoo.
Google never actually "stole" anything more than the idea. And their implementation was amazingly different. Microsoft, OTOH, actually used code directly from BG's University. Not to mention their licensing deal with Spyglass that had a small maintenence payment in exchange for royalties on the Internet Explorer sales. (Guess how much Spyglass collected in royalties?) Or the outright theft of the VAX design for the NT kernel. (Which Digital then settled in exchange for NT being ported to the Alpha. Guess how much good that did Digital?)
They also also trying hard to "steal" various trademark such as googles.com, froogles.com, and gmail.com through lawsuits too.
Uh, yeah. Whatever you say. Maybe, just maybe, Google is execising the law to get rid of scammers? Wait, that doesn't sound evil(tm) enough.
Lastly, it is well known that Google has made a number of purchases that are now products e.g.Picasa.
What's you're point? No one is annoyed at the very idea of acquisitions, just that Microsoft plays dirty to get those acquisitions, plus that Microsoft has never actually invented anything in-house. Google has invented plenty, and uses their acquisitions as a means of bolstering their business. e.g. Blogger.com provides a method through which Google can advertise their adsense program to professional bloggers. That's simply not what Microsoft does. Microsoft buys, steals, or outright blocks the next big thing so that all the money ends up in their coffers. Have you forgotten Microsoft's threats against Netscape, or their early announcement tactics against VisiOn?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
As it appears to me, Google is accused of being "evil" because 1) it pays employees more than its competitors would, 2) it is "arrogant" with symptoms of "hubris", 3) it doesn't talk to CNET reporters, and 4) it controls a vast quantity of information. That's pretty much the order the accusations come in. You got to wonder at the priorities (and thought processes) of a reporter when control of the kind and quantity of information that Google has is something mentioned halfway down the last page.
Addressing specific "concerns" in the article...
...when earlier this year it fired a new employee who had joked online that the free meals, the on-site gym and all the other perks were a clever ploy to keep people at their desks longer.
The news last week that Google plans to sell an additional 14 million shares of stock, adding $4 billion to its current cash reserves of $3 billion, will only provide more reasons to gripe.
Because a tech company generating revenue and making stockholders comfortable, such that they might consider other tech companies as viable again.... is a bad thing.
"Microsoft is becoming I.B.M. and Google is becoming Microsoft."
This is how things happen in the real world. It will happen again.
"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."
Yes, because as we all know, everything worth inventing has already been invented, except for the relatively minute number of things that Google is currently working on. Darn them!
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. A sought-after computer programmer can now expect to make more than $150,000 a year.
And to think, a couple of years ago, we were whining that no qualified programmers could find jobs. Now we're whining that the qualfied programmers are getting snatched up so fast that we can't afford to pay their high salaries to compete. Bleed my heart does.
Why couldn't Google do what you're doing?' " said Craig Donato, the founder and chief executive of Oodle, a site for searching online classified listings more quickly.
Oh where shall I begin... A startup, with a name that is obviously intended to pick up some free indirect word of mouth advertising from Google because it's a likely offshoot of Google, has investors worried that someday Google will decide to do the same thing, only better. Imagine that.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people lined up to replace him. I doubt Google has suffered any bad press from a comment like that. Certainly can't see how it raises the "ire" of anyone. Can you imagine? "Man, this job sucks so much... they pay me too much, give me free meals and all sorts of onsite perks.. they challenge me and give me time to be creative. I love it so much that I don't want to leave at the end of the day. Woe is me."
To be fair, I can understand the concern of some people that a single company can be too powerful and disrupt the industry as a whole. After all, it has happened before. Microsoft is a perfect example. But if you must look for evil, search out the roots. Compare if you will, a company who's core principle is "Do no evil" and a company that broke into the PC market by selling a product it didn't even own yet. Compare a company that offers multiple perfectly useable and useful "beta" applications, to a company that couldn't get through a staged product demonstration without crashing the system. Worry about Google if you must, but keep your concerns in context.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
but mainly my reason for liking google over microsoft is the ease of doing what you want with its services, rather than what they want you to do.
compare gmail and hotmail... 2 inter-OS services..
Hotmail = no pop3 access, no outlook access unless you've used it for a few years already, no forwarding, annoying and slow web interface, no contacts export, no contacts import, and up until gmail very little amount of webspace (increased to 100MB after gmail), doesnt automatically save outgoing mail.
Gmail = pop3 acces, email forwarding, best webmail interface ive used (i love the conversation feature), 2.5 GB web space (and counting), easy contacts export/import plus guides on how to screen scrape from all the competitors, filters (way more manageable than folders, able to apply multiple filters), automatically saves outgoing mail.
just to name a few....
but when it comes down to it, does anybody flame yahoo about their services? no... because even there it is much easier to make yahoo mail do what you want than hotmail.
Hotmail is for the people who just discovered that AOL was a waste of time...
I may be wrong but you're downright ugly!
I'm just believe your tactics are off. With respect to Google and open source, you are a 4 to 5 star general. To stretch the military analogy (too far?), replies to individual posts are something that should be handled at the squad level (okay, Slashdot might need a platoon or even a whole company :-). Generals shouldn't go beating the bush hunting snipers.
For me at least, Chris's responce is a major reason I read Slashdot and an important factor in the open source movement. Yes, open source has several factors that make it great. However, it's being able to talk directly to the developers that holds the greatest attraction to me. With closed source software, the best you get is some out-sourced flunky, that doesn't have a clue, looking up answers in a database. Open source is a lot more personal. I remember the first time I sent feedback to a major project. I didn't really know what to say when I got a responce directly from the developer. This never happened with closed source software.
As for how this applies to Slashdot, I can go to half a dozen sites that feature comments on news articles. Slashdot is one of the very few where you get comments directly from the horse's mouth. As a good example, a while back there was an article about research being done with crocodile immune systems and AIDS. Several comments were made by the guy doing the research. You just don't find that many other places.
Perhaps Generals shouldn't go beating the bush hunting snipers. However, handing off public relations to a squad of drones is not any more appropreate. Especially when that public has a very real interest in what you are doing.
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