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.""

Comments

Wikipedia link

[dividedsky319]

Vinton Cerf, father of the internet

Re:Wikipedia link

[justforaday]

Vint Cerf had sex with Al Gore?!? : o

Re:Wikipedia link

[josh roulston]

"Vint Cerf is also working on the Interplanetary Protocol, which will be a new standard to communicate from planet to planet, which will be radio/laser communications that are highly tolerant to signal degradation."—Wikipedia

Are you sure you mean "new world order"?

Re:Wikipedia link

[Spankophile]

You get a +5 for linking a wikipedia article now huh?

Re:Wikipedia link

[Xarius]

Yes

Do they have a strategy behind this?

[winkydink]

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.

Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?

[flatt]

PR, plain and simple. It will work.

Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?

[richie2000]

I think they've taken Nokia's slogan and modified it a bit:

Google - Collecting people

Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?

[garcia]

Do they have a strategy behind this?

Of course -- to make money for their investors.

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.

Google has always been fairly secretive about their dealings, even after they went public -- it's just that now they are releasing stuff a lot sooner than they were in the past.

Yeah, I'm sure that they are "just collecting" people but I have a feeling that they are being put to good use. Dodgeball (one of the collected items) is likely going to be put to excellent use for business reviews and frequency of visits -- especially when they figure out a way to tie it to everything else.

If you haven't seen their recent additions of Google Maps showing locations of you, and your friends' check-ins, I suggest that you do that.

The possibilities are scary.

Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?

[pjkundert]

Non-linear, pure "invention" doesn't occur on a fixed time table. You cannot plan for it. You can't assemble a team, give them a deadline and some money, and say "OK, go invent the next great thing for me.".

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.

And no, they don't expect you to understand this.

Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?

[qwijibo]

Smart people with a track record of good ideas will generally produce more of them. Google just wants a chance to get the ideas before anyone else. There are such positions in many large companies because good ideas with profit potential will pay many times over for all the unprofitable ideas.

Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?

[Alomex]

It sure looks like they have a surplus of money and a shortage of ideas what to do with it. So heck, let's hire Turing Award medal winners just for kicks.

Successful jocks collect supermodels, successful nerds collect supergeeks, I guess.

Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?

[Mannerism]

It's a marketing thing. Grey matter like Vint Cerf is always good for getting quotes in the press, getting keynotes, etc. At least they gave him an honest title: he's there to evangelize. If I had a few billion in market cap I'd buy Vint Cerf, too.

Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?

[clambake]

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 had the chance to listen in on a google interview last week for some kind of QA position. It was very strange. The questions that were asked had nothing really to do with trying to get to the heart of whether or not the guy was a good programmer, or that he understood the basic QA concepts and how to test properly, etc... Instead it was a kind of game where the candidate was supposed to recall as many esoteric bits of pseudo-knowledge as possible. Like, name all of the character encoding standards in the world that you know, or which RFCs describe HTTP, and explain how the protocol works...

Questions that are essentially meaningless as far as QA is concerned... in fact, meaningless as far as any position they could offer is concerned, unless they are planning to hire an Internet Historian. I think in that entire conversation, which went on for about an hour, only a single question that cold be considered something pertaining to "QA" or testing was asked, and that was oddly half-hearted (I believe it was something like, "In one minute, please name all the test cases you can think of for a web form that takes credit card info").

I got the impression from the questions posed in that call that Google really don't have a clue how to hire. They seem to hire based on same technique as Japanese entrance exams.. i.e. pure knowledge bits are more important than conceptual understanding or problem solving...

Now I am beginning to think that Google isn't actually as smart as people think... They are just remendously lucky...

Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?

[Tumbleweed]

They could be copying the Microsoft strategy of buying out, err, hiring all the best and brightest, sticking them in labs to play with whatever they want, and then never doing anything with what they come up with. It prevents those people from going elsewhere and actually making good products.

Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?

[WilliamSChips]

Bell Labs? Xerox Parc(a commercial failure, but that was because Xerox was afraid of the computer destroying its business)?

Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?

[pjkundert]

Very, very few truly inventive poeple find money (eg. personal enrichment, leisure, prestige, etc.) an incentive. Name two.

Isaac Newton

Francis Bacon

Claude Shannon. Father of modern information theory. Published (Not Patented) "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" in 1948. Died a Professor Emeritus.

Nicola Tesla -- Modern multi-phase power systems. Edison was a puny shadow ofthe same era. Slaved for 10 years as a New York street cleaner to bring his 3-phase power system to reality, and then "gave away" the patents, worth Billions (perhaps even Trillions) in todays dollars, to Westinghouse.

Evariste Galois -- Galois fields (eg. Reed-Solomon encoding). Died in a duel protecting the honour of a woman.

Need I go on?

Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?

[tonyr60]

If their strategy is to wind up Microsoft then this should help. I can imagine that Ballmer will not be happy, but the vendor responsible for supplying office furniture to Microsoft Corporate office may be.

snark

[ReformedExCon]

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?

Re:snark

[hotdiggitydawg]

You bet! Cerf's up, dude...

And I'm sure nobody's cracked that joke before...

Re:snark

[ReformedExCon]

Apple's had them also. Guy Kawasaki was one of their big evangelists a few years back.

Their role is to get the word out about their project/product/concept and turn sceptics into true believers by flooding them with positive information about it. Is there anyone who doesn't know what the Internet is?

a case of mistaken identity?

[ChipMonk]

Vint has put his heart and soul into making the Internet happen.

Are they sure they didn't hire Al Gore by mistake?

Re:a case of mistaken identity?

[Duncan3]

Even funnier since I've seen Vint himself correct the Al Gore thing in a talk saying that Gore does deserve credit for getting the early internet funding that it needed. Vint even presented him an award.

But yea, the joke is funnier then the truth by far ;)

Re:a case of mistaken identity?

[lheal]

Purely unintentionally, it's the first actually funny Gore/Internet joke ...

I agree with that so far

... made since the original Repub exaggeration.

The only exaggeration was Gore's, claiming that he took "legislative initiative in creating the Internet." He had a part, he showed leadership and vision, and deserves credit for that. But he implied, while trying to get elected President, that he was responsible for the creation of the Internet, when what he did was recognize its importance and apply tax dollars.

For a while, he was the loudest, if not the only, voice at the Federal level saying that the Internet needed funding. But create the Internet? Get real.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Poor metaphor

[Red Flayer]

"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.

love or hate?

[jshaped]

I forget, do we love or hate google?

(are they becoming an unstoppable giant?)

Re:love or hate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple rules for Slashdot Slashbots:

We love Google. Always.

We love Apple. Always.

We love Linux past the point of sanity. There is nothing which couldn't be made better with Linux.

We love the FCC when they're regulating spectrum, except when they're actually selling a usage license. We hate the FCC if they're doing anything outside of that, like sneezing.

We hate Microsoft, always. If somebody in Redmond catches a cold,we gloat. If Microsoft releases a bug patch, it's an example of shoddy work (Whereas bug patches in open source are CLEARLY an example of high-quality work! No double standard there.).

We moderately dislike the Democrats, but since they're the party of opposition to Sat^H^H^Hthe Republicans, we champion them like they were Gods incarnate (Unless Libertarianism comes up, of course).

Novell is evil, except when they're doing stuff with Linux. Or against Microsoft.

IBM is totally awesome. Except where POWER chips and Linux aren't concerned, there they suck.

Anything but X86 is the best instruction set ever. Except for IA64, which was also made by Intel, so it sucks. X86-64, because it was made by AMD, rules however, and fixes all of the problems anybody has ever had with anything remotely close to X86.

Intel is always expensive crap. Except where the Pentium M comes into play. There they're just expensive.

AMD is always cheap and kickass. Except for the FX chips, which aren't cheap. And the Turion, which is just cheap.

NVidia is evil for not releasing open source drivers for Linux. NVidia is saintly for releasing solid support for Linux.

ATI is saintly for releasing open source drivers for Linux. ATI is evil for not releasing solid support for Linux.

Any mention of BSD is a troll, unless the story explicitly mentions BSD, because mentioning another Open Source Operating System draws glory from the wonder that is Linux.

And so forth and so on...

Re:love or hate?

[ChocoBean]

Google is our ally. Google has always been our ally.

Microsoft is the enemy. We have always been at war with Microsoft, and Google is our ally.

The world is not enough...

[hazee]

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?

Cerf at NASA on Google-like project?

[Red Flayer]

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.

Re:Cerf at NASA on Google-like project?

[Red Flayer]

Eesh, I forgot about that.

Here's a link to an article about Google hiring people with experience in buying dark fiber capacity: http://news.com.com/Google+wants+dark+fiber/2100-1 034_3-5537392.html

The question to me is, how does this tie in with Cerf's hiring?

Pure speculation, but is Google trying to build its own backbone with proprietary protocols?

Or will Cerf be working on implementing current protocols, either for Google's internal needs, or for an entrance by Google into telecom?

Are phone.Google, video.Google, etc too far away?

Does Google want to get into content delivery as well as search?

The guy makes terrible puns

[keshto]

Look at the photo with the WaPo article (hint: look at the license plate).

Google PBS commercial

[peter303]

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.

Re:Google PBS commercial

[Mignon]

a word typed into the Google screen ... and switched to a video clip of that phenomena.

Does "Jenna" qualify as natural phenomena?

Google TLD?

[op12]

From the article: "Cerf will remain chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the oversight agency for Internet domain names."

So how long before we get a .google TLD? or maybe .goo :)

Re:Google TLD?

[ScrewMaster]

.GOO? But wouldn't that be more appropriate for ... oh, forget it.

Re:Google TLD?

[Morgalyn]

I am wondering how long it will take for some sort of conflict of purpose to come up between working for Google and chairing ICANN.. Like a lawsuit that says it gives Google an unfair competitive advantage, since they have an 'in' with an independent overseeing agency...

Something Big is Happening at Google

[guaigean]

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.

Re:Something Big is Happening at Google

[lessthan0]

Actually, that was Microsoft's strategy too when they were young. They really did obtain "highly innovative, creative, and motivated individuals" to create good software. Now, the acquire them to keep them from creating something that would threaten their monopoly.

sure

[diegocgteleline.es]

Sure they have. If smart people are hired by google, they can't be hired by anyone else, for one.

Re:He did what?

[tomstdenis]

First off, the wright brothers didn't invent flight. The first flight was with a glider. So go read a proper history text.

Second, there is an acceptable period in which you can gloat about your accomplishments. 8 terms of office later ... give it up.

Granted hindsight is always 20/20 there are a lot of flaws with IP and TCP in general. It isn't perfect and frankly the lack of progress since the early 80s when TCP/IP was standardized shows that his "ability to innovate" is right up there with grapefruit.

As for this interplanetry bullshit, it's the same ol' same ol'. You apply error correction codes and do longer packets once the connection has been established. You can even do SYN/ACK over a different medium.

The fact is we can simulate [in about 200 lines of C code] a "network with really long delays and random chances of packet drops".

You don't have to be in space to test out what delays do to a protocol...

Tom

You have to wonder what they are up to...

[bernywork]

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?

Here's What Vint Says...

[north.coaster]

Vint has released a statement on the Google Blog.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Now we know the final boss

[jeffimix]

"I beat the internet, the end guy was hard"

Re:He did what?

[kinglink]

Yeah you know designing a form of networking that will last for 30 years, that's nothing major.

The fact that we can do so much with TCP/IP is evidence that the creator actually had more sense then most people in this industry, trivilizing his stuff because you can name stuff built off of that is a joke.

You make jokes about the size of ARPANET but what you don't realize is that those 9 computers were linked to each other, before that you'd have to have a direct line to each computer to call it a link, instead you could do one link to a central system to route the packages with out any major software really running. The idea of the ARPAnet is that it was a defensive infrastructure that could be attacked, and had nodes destroyed with out losing the entire network.

And as for size, yeah it's 9 computers, what ever you want to believe.

Just because you don't beliieve he's worth anything doesn't make him worth less. The fact is the guy actually invented something everyone uses now, that's incredible, a single standarized system of Control, that everyone can agree to, on all platforms, and hasn't been completely revolutionized for the most part for 30 years. Let's see your next development last more then 10 with out needing to be completely scrapped and reworked.

Who's running Google, George Steinbrenner?

[goldspider]

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?

Yeah, here's a Wikipedia link about that:

[Headcase88]

Kharma Whoring

I have a twisted sense of humour, I suppose.