Slashdot Mirror
Google Hires Vint Cerf
hsuwh writes "Google has hired Internet pioneer Vint Cerf away from MCI as its "Chief Internet Evangelist".
"He is one of the most important people alive today," said [Google CEO Eric] Schmidt, who has been friends with Cerf for more than 20 years. "Vint has put his heart and soul into making the Internet happen. I know he is going to jump right in here and start shoveling out new ideas for Google.""
Vinton Cerf, father of the internet
Or are they merely collecting people and figuring out what to do with them later? From the outside looking in, it sure seems like the latter.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Yet again google farts and it's news on slashdot.
(Yes, I know, the guy didn't comes from MS... but hey, it's MS. If they want to f'n bury Google, they're allowed to. Right?)
UTF-8: There and Back Again
who?
You guys still buying that line?
*shakes head in disgust*
Boy, that Internet thing just isn't catching on. I guess we need someone to really spread the word about it!
Chief Internet Evangelist? Really?
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Vint has put his heart and soul into making the Internet happen.
Are they sure they didn't hire Al Gore by mistake?
Knowing Vint, he will tell Google to work with Bill Gates/Steve Balmer. Or maybe, just maybe, Vint will see that no monopoly is forever.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
meow meow meow
this man is an icon to my dog
a Beowulf cluster of those...
The largest champion of the net.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"I know he is going to jump right in here and start shoveling out new ideas for Google."
I can only think of one thing that people typically use the phrase "shovel out" with... and it begins with sh-.
I sure hope, for Google's sake, that he shovels out something else.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
They should also hire Al Gore, who could qualify as 'The Mother' of the Internet.
No gay jokes after this one, please.
You can't handle the truth.
...I heard they have that on computers now.
"Give up hope, dreams are for suckers."
I forget, do we love or hate google?
(are they becoming an unstoppable giant?)
This guy is amazing.
Obviously Google isn't content to simply dominate the internet on this planet, they want to dominate the interplanetary internet too.
Context sensitive ads for Mars rovers anyone?
... I'm going to fu...ng kill Google.
"At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office," Lucovsky said in his statement. Ballmer also had a few choice words for Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
"I'm going to f---ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f---ing kill Google," Ballmer apparently said.
I'm going to f***ing kill Vint Cerf!
FTA: "[Cerf] also will continue as a visiting scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he has been focusing on a very Google-like project _ trying to figure out a way to connect the Internet to outer space."
How is this project Google-like, other than seeming to be pretty cool?
Cerf has been working on a network utility issue with NASA. I wasn't aware that Google is in the network utility game at all.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
...Mr. Gates!
Well, someone's certainly shoveling something around, and pretty heavily, too...
No I'm kidding. Or maybe not?
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
They'll beta test his work communicating with the Google Lunar Base.
Duh.
Look at the photo with the WaPo article (hint: look at the license plate).
(by met, i shook his hand and introduced myself) at a talk he gave at SJSU several years ago - brilliant mind IMO and very nice fellow as well, took time to talk with everyone who wanted to meet him...
I saw an interesting Google sponsorship of PBS NOVA Tuesday. In their 15-second infomercial a word typed into the Google screen about some natural phenomena and switched to a video clip of that phenomena. (I dont think Google does that right now, but will any month.)
Botht the Cerf and PBS thing shows Google is moving away from being just a startup and more of a community player.
From the article: "Cerf will remain chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the oversight agency for Internet domain names."
.google TLD? or maybe .goo :)
So how long before we get a
Invented the internet? Really? Wow....
... hook up IP routing tables ... um
... :-)
... well that's good but it took Naggle to figure out properly flow control, who actually made IP practical? Did he invent DNS? What about NAT and firewalls? etc, etc, etc....
... my god, what a fucking genius! ...mumble.../rant
Let's see, take a some medium like IEEE 802.3
THATS WHAT THE NET IS... just really large scale. Why people pretend the internet is this magical construct is beyond me.
I mean I have a "network" between 9 computers at my home. that's about as big as the ARPANET was in 1973
But seriously, kudos for doing work THREE DECADES AGO. But let's not pretend for a second that it takes just one person to make the net.
According to the wiki he invented [among other things but primarily] TCP/IP
To treat this guy as a god because 30 years ago he figured out that if you gave a box an address you could send packets to it
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
From the post: I know he is going to jump right in here and start shoveling out new ideas for Google
I usually associate new ideas and shoveling only with Microsoft.
Ducks!
vint cerf is my hero, along with al gore - the inventors of the interweb!
There goes MCI's notoriety. http://global.mci.com/us/enterprise/insight/cerfs_ up/
Grace Hopper? Ellen Feiss? Tubgirl?
More likely it's his inability to dodge flying chairs. Otherwise, Microsoft would have already gotten him.
How can anyone hire an MCI (aka Worldcom, aka UUNET) spam supporter? Being with the worst spammy ISP ever should basically make you unemployable.
This is a much different strategy than the Microsoft sieze and conquer. MS takes over companies to get technologies, and then through culture the effectiveness of the subsidiary becomes null. Google, however, invests instead in obtaining highly innovative, creative, and motivated individuals, and they're doing it en mass. I know there is a lot of speculation about them working on an operating system or something similarly large, but whatever it is, it is big. There are too many bright minds there for it not to be.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
I think it's a sign of decay when a company starts collecting Big Celebrity Names.
There have been rumors that Google is contemplating an internet alternative, buying darknet fibers.
Perhaps this is just another step in their effort to put up an alternative to the Internet itself.
Zoom Player Lead Dev.
If MCI does, then Google is a competitor. Google could possibly be a customer of MCI - or since Google's traffic is that big, an IP peer.
LOL, INTERNET
"Vint has put his heart and soul into making the Internet happen. I know he is going to jump right in here and start shoveling out new ideas for Google."
No pressure at all! Now, go innovate!
Wired News quoting the VP for Engineering:
"The limit to our growth is our ability to get the best talent on the planet and get them working on the toughest computing problems around," said Rosing, a former executive vice president of engineering at Sun Microsystems.
Sure they have. If smart people are hired by google, they can't be hired by anyone else, for one.
When I posted about Google buying a lot of dark fibre I never would have thought about these two things put together....
You really have to wonder what they are up to.. Now either what I put in my previous post is correct and they are just trying to minimise their risk by distributing the BGP peers and reducing their risk, and trying to cut out Akamai who they were originally paying a reasonable amount of money to for various hosting things. Or they are about to come out with something over the next couple of years that will put us all in shock. I have no idea what is about to become of this..
Does anyone have any ideas on what they would be doing with one of the pioneers of the internet and a truckload of fibre?
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Just what we need, another looser claming to have invented the internet. Everyone knows that Microsoft invented the internet.
At least that guarantees that Geraldo will never be employed at Google.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Vint has released a statement on the Google Blog.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Google has become the search engine of choice for millions of people, and introduced a lot of great products like Gmail and Earth. These are excellent and have proven that Google is a dynamic company that has been successful in harnessing user-centric technologies, but they need to do more to stay on top. Already, search engine companies in the East are gathering their might.
One idea would be for Google to architect transparent wireless portals, which is what a Slashdot article hinted at a while back. If they had a wireless platform with which to utilize their current technologies for streaming 24/7 advertisement deliverables, they could maintain their position as the Kingpin of the information world.
Liberal Ontarians and French Quebecers are draining Western Canada's wealth. Stop them now! Support Western separatism.
Everything over IP
IP on everything
and mentioned he had a dog sweater with "IP on everything" on it.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Google wants good ideas before they're made public (otherwise they'd just spend that money buying companies), but most of the popular good ideas orginated not from somebody who thought that today's technology was amazing, but somebody who saw today's software as okay but tedious. Bram Cohen recognized that peer to peer applications of the day were obtuse, untrustworthy and game-able, so he designed something clearly documented, with checks in place to balance leechers and liars.
In a similar manner to how people who argue the efficacy of vi vs emacs miss the greater point that they're both programs lost in today's graphical computing world, I'm not certain hiring Mr. Cerf as a Chief Evanglist will lead to the creation of new profitable ideas. He is certainly qualified enough to say, "I'm not sure what you say is feasible" but once you've settled into some habits, forsaking them in the name of improvement is difficult. The only thing I can see that Cerf has done since TCP/IP is some Interplanetary Communication Protocol, and heavily evangelize his inventions. I don't mean to belittle his accomplishments, but merely point out that he doesn't appear to have been hired to create new technology, but rather to continue to promote his inventions that are still wildly useful twenty years later.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
"I beat the internet, the end guy was hard"
Computer communications were in use, but (and it a BIG but), most were point to point.
A modem calls a modem, and transmits data. There were even "networks" moving data from computer to computer. Basically, you peered up and transferred traffic.
All "routes" were static. Up-stream cooperation was needed to introduce a new "route".
The ideas that (1) the routing could be made dynamic, (2) the routing could be pushed to the edge and (3) that protocol could be separated from physical transport were the innovative things.
It still boggles my mind. Simple ideas; and revolutionary.
This just wasn't the way of thinking through most of the 60s.
If you think that you would have come up the underlying ideas -- more power to you.
Ratboy (and I *was* there, and am still impressed).
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I know he is going to jump right in here and start shoveling out new ideas for Google.
Something about Google and shoveling just goes together so right given the massive piles of steaming **** poured out on the net in glowing praise of them when they are headed towards being every bit the behemoth IBM was and Microsoft is.
Also, that shovelling might turn to bailing if Google stumbles and I don't doubt they will.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
dude, stop with the google posts, this dam website used to be a good place. Now it's gone in the shitter, every day something new about google. Look google took a piss, let's go watch them.
Stop it.
Google Sea? /me hands down slashdot ID.
[self dealloc];
I'll trade you a Vint Cerf for 2 DBA's and a Project Manager.
How soon until we see Google scouting local university playing "fields" for the up and coming talent? Or, will Google simply continue buying and trading the top talent around like professional athletes?
Odd, this seems to be the first real reason to have "professional" in the same sentence as "athlete."
How can jesus save me from your past?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This guy worked on TCP/IP. You know TCP and IPv4 were published in 1981. That was 24 years ago. And technically, that internet is the same as ours now. And it's sure not perfect. They've tried to introduce IPv6, but a smooth transition just isn't possible. Sure, I don't think Cerf could have predicted 10^x IP addresses would ever be a problem, but we do have a real problem on our hands now. Someone should have thought of the illities! So what do Google even want to do with the aged developer of TCP/IP? What has he even been doing since 1981? The web only came in 1991, and Google in 1998.. They're work is all web-related (ok they have some POP and SMTP servers now), so maybe they want Cerf to develop IPvG, a new Ginternet that we all know who will control. I'd much rather have Tim Berner-Lee. The internet is just beeping down a phone line.
and be HEALED, brother! The power of CERN compels you!
Vint Cerf?
That guy was cool in Men in Black!
In case you don't know who Vint Cerf is (he's the one on the right).
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Just like the Yankees, Google is throwing enormous piles of money at (nerd) superstars, hoping that all of that acquired talent will bring them to the top.
Sure, that has (for the most part) worked rather well for the Yankees, but they are also highly criticized for their gluttonous payroll, and dare I say, anticompetetive behavior.
How long will it take Google to earn that same scorn?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Surplus of money? sure
Shortage of ideas? Not so sure. I don't see why Cerf , being the father of the medium in which google is based, wouldn't be a uself hire.
Kharma Whoring
I have a twisted sense of humour, I suppose.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
GP argument doesn't account for Bell Labs.
What is truly important about the way he/ she is looking at the question is that those are generally the types of organizations which collect / trumpet the most recognition for their work. Ergo, it doesn't account for places like Bell Labs or (probably, I haven't read beyond the wiki) Edison's Menlo Park. Just because you don't see basic research as being involved with the production of your Viagra doesn't mean it's not affecting other sciences.
My little site.
So if they can find the mother of the internet, will Google have the chance to create the Internets that we heard of?
Same strategy as Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, HP labs, and (believe it or not) Microsoft Research. Google is the newest incarnation of the classic R&D lab--a great collection of brilliant engineers with freedom to invent. Let's see if they do a better job than Xerox or Microsoft of turning them into products.
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.
Just to prove how bored I am at work, that's an anagram of:
r am=Google+Hires+Vint+Cerf
fletcherise grooving
his reflective gorgon
fleece grooving shirt
slight vigor conferee
vicegerent hoof girls
neglecter of vigorish
leeches forging vitro
threescore fog living
interservice flog hog
erectile frog shoving
selective foghorn rig
long fight recoveries
golfing shot receiver
evictees frig log horn
I fight cleverer goons
And a few more, found here: http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anag
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ballmer throws another chair.
This sig is false.
Frankly yes IP and TCP are useful and sent us headlong into the info tech age... but it's just a comms protocol. Nothing genius. You send X bytes, I ACK X bytes, ... I mean seriously not that super.
... I mean seriously not that super. Every six year old child could invent one, after five days of school. Or not.
Frankly yes Computers sent us headlong into the info tech age... but it's just ones and zeros. Nothing genius.
yeah, shock and awe.. your remember?
/. for that. where is independance and user opinion!?
of course something big is happening. nothing drives a stock marked noted company higher up in ratings as such headlines. thanks
that hire is nothing more than the next chapter after that last microsoft hire. of course they grow and pick up good people on the way. WE give them the power to do that!
fortunately we are still in the position to not use google. mail. map. messenger. usenet. calculator. answers. mobile. scholar. directory. images. translate. blog. code. earth! picasa. toolabar... and hmm... search.
please everybody, take a look out of the box.
So will Google become the new AT&T ? Lars
I believe, I am the most important person alive.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
All you can do is try to assemable the greatest group(s) of already provably inventive poeple you can find, put them in a positive, stimulating environment, and incent them to come up with something great.
That is what Google is doing. That is exactly NOT what Microsoft, HP, et. al. are doing.
Actually not true, Microsof thas spent some time doing exactly the same thing - hiring really smart people and putting them in Microsoft R&D. I can't thnk of specifics, but it seemed like it was people from all fields...
However Microsoft R&D has produced almost nothing of practical value. So, the suspicious mind starts to wonder if perhaps all Microsoft R&D is there for is to keep these smart groups of people from producing something outside of Microsoft!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Stop! Say no more, let me go sell all my Google stock before we ponder the future of how ideas can suddenly appear (and improve only by its application to the pornography industry). Actually, let me walk out the rear of the building, and wait on this sanddune next to this "thumper." I'll watch from here.
BTW, can I have some duct tape and a crowbar (you know, for all those broken doors of imagination that seemingly everyone but me can kick open)?
I am the nightmare of nightmares.
.. but why not?
I read through the comments and I'm surprised there was no conjecture on what they could/are do(ing) with this hire (at least I didn't see any).
Here's a fun idea: they use Cerf's large visionary ideas on how internets work and how data travels across the internet but implement all this using all that dark fiber they've been buying up like mad? Is it too radical to think that Google would re-invent the internet as we know it? Maybe now.. but in 10 years time??
Or a less visionary thought: they're acquiring more resources with respect to internet infrastructure (fiber lines, guy who knows protocols, etc.) to do who knows what.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
I don't know how technically competent he is to-date, however althought he came up with cool shit (tcp/ip) I get this impression (total intuition here) that he's pretty much useless 30 years later. Am I missing something? Am I wrong?
For instance, I know he is a visionary... However, take a great number of reasonably bright people on slashdot for example. I bet you we (individually, for the most part) would come up with the same ideas, and basic concepts that he will while he's working at google.
Don't get me wrong - the guy is good, he obviously is comfortable thinking in his own realm/sphere, but I bet you there are probably tcp/ip topics that blow his f-ing mind -- stuff that he can't even come up with. Or, I could be wrong. What is he doing there? What the heck was he doing at MCI? I'm sure the engineers at MCI probably think, what the F does Vint know about installing an OC48, or a DSLAM, or BGP routing, etc. I just can't see him getting his hands dirty. What are they hoping to accomplish with this guy?
As far as the guy from Microsoft - he sounds pretty darn bright with all the speech technology he was working on. That guy sounds like he is in the know, and has the theory and practical under his belt, and the innovation floating on his brain 24/7.
I'm not bashing Cerf, I just question what the hell good is he there? Someone tell me please. Remember - I like the guy.
This may go down as when Google finally "Jumped the Shark".
No seriously, I used to work with the guy at MCI a decade ago.
He did absolutely nothing for the company. He was just a name to pimp around.
"Why, why, why... I invented the Internet!"
No, I thought that Al Gore invented the Internet?
"Why, why, why... I invented Al Gore!!"
I call your Cerf and raise you a Tim Berners-Lee.
Wait, wrong game...
"MY APOCALYPTIC TENOR HAS NOT BEEN DISPELLED!" - T-Rex, qwantz.com
if Vint Cerf is the father... then Al Gore is the mother !!!
Another proof Google is moving towards GoogleNet!
Fair enough; I didn't get it the first pass. I wasn't there. Google might be stupid. I was, perhaps, projecting. My Fault.
I forget what 8 was for.
I've talked to him before.
I've also seen Timothy Leary (RIP) speak.
Let me just say for the record: Their voice, their mannerisms, the way they talk -- they completely remind me of each other!!!!!!!
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com