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Is Google Too Smart For Its Own Good?
An anonymous reader writes in with a piece in Fortune speculating on what's next for Google. The writer believes that a supersaturated solution of very smart people, plus stock that may have run out of upside, will yield what he calls Son of Google — a large wave of innovative companies created by Google graduates. And a Google less intent on hiring, and less able to hire, the very smartest people around. Could happen.
I'm not worried, at least not until we get to the Revenge of the Son of Google, or maybe the Bride of the Son of Google. That's when the entertainment value really drops off.
Perhaps part of the google ethos and internal structure is aimed at reducing competition from former employees - the sorts of pressures that drive people to break away are diminished, with the 20% project time and a good chance of whatever you're working on becoming a proper google beta. Of course, people that just have a drive to be the boss of the boss's boss will still form companies, perhaps they are eliminated at interview?
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Excuse me... (AKA Mod down at will, but,) English, motherfucker! Do you speak it. You mean former Google employees, right? Google doesn't have a college as far as I'm aware of!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
... I do not see the problem here... If Google is supposedly at their plateau... and now they cant hire the new brilliant talent being produced in the wild... Whats to say those in the wild who are capable in the world might not already be earmarked by Google? Or if they do join a spin off company, then its just to further that individuals experience. In the long run, who cares. Google has an incredibly stacked deck, and so far the results have not been in line with the usual... problem laden products... Honestly, I would like to see more spin off companies. Brings out competition and fresh creative ideas.
People are forgetting the secret to Google's success.
Luck.
They developed the right product at the right time. Microsoft did the same. They happened to be home when IBM called and got the DOS contract.
heir graduates can come up with quality product but will they be able to provide somethign the market really needs?
I'm not sure that online service providers are going to be naturally monolithic in the way that, say, hardware manufacturers or pre-web software companies are. I find it easy to imagine that Google's core business could be wiped out in a year by a new upstart with a better technology. Microsoft are lucky in that they have established lock-in - it will be superceded by something else over the long term rather than replaced by superior products of the same ilk. Google doesn't have any lock-in, and I think the nature of online serices is such that companies that try to establish it aren't going to be successful.
Is Slashdot Too Political And FUD'ish For Its Own Good?
I find it weird that with all Google's allegedly supertalented employees, not one of them have gone for a quick Linux makeover to have a GoogleOS. I'm sure that by now, Google's panties would draw enough developer attention to finally make Linux a main course instead of it staying a side-dish.
Kind of how Failchild Semiconductor was the wellspring for many of todays semiconductor companies? This graphic (PDF warning) was the best thing I could find.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
As far as I know, google employees are allowed to spend a certain amount of time on their own projects, which might later even be added to google's product line. If google is saturated with smart people who are free to attempt their own innovative projects, why would ex-google employees pose a threat to google with their innovation?
Planet MiniBox - Home to the world's leading shoutbox
In a word: YES. You hit this one on the head.
--
Wi-Fizzle Research
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
Hiring mediocre people backfires a lot sooner than hiring only really smart
people.
The kind of people who will form their own companies will do so irrespective of whether they work for google first.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
With the large number of companies in general merging as part of their profit formula, I don't really see why these would do the opposite. Google has always tried to let their employees work quite freely and in the past let ideas from them turn into financed projects, so I really don't see what big gains there would be for them to split up.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Nope. It's not enough so, considering it hasn't driven your ilk away.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Right, lets role play here for a minute. I'm a phd coder employed at google. I have a good chunk of cash in google shares that will vest soonish. So I'm going to take that money and go and start a startup because?
Which wally thought that the primary motivation for programmers was making money?
Pretty much every study of programmers motivations i have ever read has shown them to be intrinsically motivated by the opportunity to solve puzzles, and to be able to hang out with birds of similar feather. The fact is that money isn't that much of a motivator for coders, provided there is sufficient to buy toys. The latest laptop. A 30" lcd into which to plug said laptop. A plasma telly and an xbox 360 on which to play halo.
Starting up a company is risky, there is a bucket load of work to do that isn't coding, and you have to stop talking to all the other coders who you like chatting with at work. Wtf?
Someone has NO CLUE how coders think. And this made it to the front page of slashdot how, exactly?
Competition is always good and if some genii from Google split off to form something worth our time, I'm sure we won't mind. Google maybe... but I don't work for them or own stock in them.
Support Liberty, Support Ron Paul
You graduate TO google. The reason this will not happen is that people are still heading towards Google to make cool products. They will pay you to work on your own stuff at least 20% of the time, what better investment could you get?
stuff |
There is definitely a history of big successful companies triggering successful offspring. There are many examples, but the one that springs to mind first is SAP, which was formed by five former IBM engineers. My guess is that most successful spin-offs use the skills and experience they have acquired in order to create enterprises that do not directly compete with their former employers.
However, I would imagine that the biggest worry for large successful corporations is to lose their key employees due to more attractive job offers from other companies, regardless of whether they compete or not.
Slashdot should stick to technology, and not try to pick stocks... The thing about stocks is that you don't judge the value by the price alone, you judge by the number of shares outstanding, the revenue (and profits) AND the price.
Google's shares cost what they cost because of scarcity--they didn't sell the whole company! They IPO'ed a small part of the company. Further, Google's revenues have been growing for a while now, and with deals like the rumored Clear Channel/Google ad partnership, will likely continue to do so.
If Google's managers believe the stock price is getting too high, they could always split it 2:1, or 3:1... That would likely lower the dollar figure significantly... But it would also mean there were twice or three times as many shares on the market--which wouldn't seem to fit Google's current M.O. The "upside" on Google is FAR from being maximized. Look at Walgreens--an OLD company with a very basic business model: Get health products and sell them in every neighborhood. But look at them--their share price hovers between $28-$40 over the course of about two years. As they expand and grow revenues and profits the price goes up. Once it gets to about $40-$43 the board splits it and the value drops, with everybody having twice as many shares. Over time, companies operating themselves this way have generated a considerable amount of wealth for their shareholders.
Google has a TON of upside left. It certainly won't grow this fast forever, but they're a long-time away from "significantly diminished upside."
Who did what now?
If hiring smart people alone was the silver bullet than MS Vista would have been released several years ago..
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
-- Post at least two stories about Google on slashdot every day.
Besides google-search, all other attempts to produce software are not
at all impressive, and you've got to give them the flooding of news sites
with announcements every time a product comes out. A luxury simple OSS
developers do not have and they usually announce below the noise threshhold.
Just because you say you're the smartest ass around, doesn't mean it's true.
really smart people work for "the sector".
It's going to be hard to compete with Google as a start up. Google has more than money, talent, brains, and consumers. They have a planet full of data (I'm willing to bet they are the ones who commissioned the building of that super computer in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy). Bad jokes aside Google knows a whole lot about people they probably beet any company in social data, they know what people search for, what topics they email about, what topics their spreadsheets and docs cover, what people are buying for Christmas, how they got their email, what websites people write, what people debate in the groups the visit, what they look at on Amazon (I've bought a few books which I found using a Google search), they know how deep the web is and how people travel it. They have a top notch translation tool, and know how people misspell words. Their data alone is sufficient to eliminate competition. I'm sure there know where and how to launch a product for greatest hype and speed of sign ups. I can't imagine any start busting into the data portion of the Google business.
Obviously.
--Q
Nope. It's not enough so, considering it hasn't driven your ilk away.
Why? Continuously since late 2001 the quality of articles and editors here has degraded. The lowest low was when they added the "political" section.
If I want to care about politics I go to other places. Slashdot was great as long as it cared only about tech stuff instead of politics and FUD.
They (the editors) say that the visits have increased because of FUD and politics. But why do old readers (who only cared about tech stuff) have to suffer through this politics, FUD and incompetence when there are sites that do FUD, politics and incompetence much better than Slashdot does now?
You could easily make the same statement about Goldman-Sachs which after it went public a few years ago there were lots of people with "fuck you money" as they would put it. Plenty of folks did leave (a more than decent number of hedge fund managers have the firm on their resume), but it doesn't really seem to slow their ability to continue to attract (and retain) top talent.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Google seems to be doing fine. They are hiring the right people and those people seem to be eager to work at google. If they do enough to keep those smart people, which they seem to be doing then I don't see a problem. Google is going all out to add Mac support for all of their products and now even have a Mac blog from the developers. Even if some employees do leave I see that being a plus for the internet. Google knows what people on the internet want and it gives them that. Programs like Google earth and searches like Froogle and Google maps are setting the standard for search companies. I think Yahoo wish they had the problem of being too smart for their own good.
I don't think that programmers would run away from Google easily. But then Google isn't just a bunch of programmers. Most likely it would be the business minds that would leave the company in order to start something new.
Such employees would either leave on their own and hire programmers to do the dirty work of their new enterprise, or take maybe an entire team of gifted people with them.
Going anon obviously.
Two things -
1. Academic != Smart. The amount of small minds here (particularly the worst kind; small minds with large egos) is unreal. Just because you have a PhD does not make you smart.
2. Most Google employees are total sheep. They are the type of people who want to join a cult. This goes against everything business owners stand for.
3. Setting up a business has nothing to do with being smart or academic. Only certain kinds of people (generally, the kind of people who like selling, i.e. not nerds) enjoy and succeed at setting up businesses.
People totally overrate Google employees. It's funny/sad.
A little off-topic, but in an interview the golfer Bernard Langer was once told that he was extremely lucky to sink a particularly difficult put.
He responded 'The more I practise, the luckier I get!'.
I don't believe the successes of Google or Microsoft are down to luck. Neither do I think that Warren Buffett is a lucky investor.
Being opportunistic and taking a calculated risk sounds more like it.
The idea was to become a leader in video. I told them to sign royalty deals with television and movie copywright holders to host what could be bigger than on demand. You could have almost any movie or television show ever made for video download. I sent them this last year.
God spoke to me.
What a major plot twist.
If Google is "too smart for it's own good", I suppose same people would say "Microsoft is too dumb for its own bad".
Then suddenly it all makes sense. Right? Nope. But still good 'nuf for Slashdot, start the presses!
Well it's nothing new, Microsoft has already been there, done that. Give it 10 years and Google will be the new company geeks love to hate. It's already getting that way for a growing minority.
I love my sig.
A major problem in working with AdWords is that the adwords team are inefficient. Also, the adwords admin system is slow, and generating reports is slow like hell.
Minor point: the Adwords team I use is the local (danish) team, but that should not leave me with service that is of lesser quality.
...bought sonofgoogle.com?
Damn. I think I missed out on billions.
Remember, hire dumb people, so they're never a threat to your business...
Someone else has already pointed out that you don't seem to understand stock splits, so I'll tackle another of your misconceptions:
This is exactly backwards. If I sell N shares representing half the company they are each worth half as much as if the same number of shares represented the whole company.
--MarkusQ
...people who have no interest in working for Google. Seriously.
I, for some reason (probably related to how horrible I find things like JSP), do not like web development at all (with the exception of web services that my good old fashioned thin/fat client can consume) when compared to C/C++, but that's just me. Some people love that environment; however, the press seems to think that everyone with a brain wants to join Google.
I presume that there are quite a few engineers who wouldn't be tempted by Google (except possibly from the remunerative aspects of the possibility.)
Even the stuff that Google produces, while useful and can make things easier for people, strikes me as hugely dull... Google Earth is slightly interesting, but to be honest, it's a simple software problem just backed up by the enormous hardware capabilities of Google for serving. It still doesn't do much at all, it's just that nobody else does it really, not for free.
Anywho...
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Who am I kidding? Point buy, yo!
Wis: 8. -1 will save is meaningless to my 18 str 14 dex 14 con 8 wis 13 int 9 cha spiked chain spec human fighter.
I'm just looking forward to roleplaying the big brawny but curiously hearty, lithe and intelligent type, not min/maxing, I swear.
Where Microsoft displaced good products for marketing, Google risk displacing marketing for good products - that never fulfil their potential because the mode of getting them to market was weak.
My product/service impression of Google is of an awesome search company attached to a giant web 2.0 lab. As an everyday consumer (non-techie, non-slashdot, barely internet-savvy), what are these extra lab things doing for me? Where's the portal for all this stuff? The glue that binds my gmail to my goffice to my gbookmarks and greader - all into one seamless user experience.
We all live in a state of ambitious poverty. -- Decimus Junius Juvenalis
The plot of the film has just been revealed on a popular fan-boy site.
Google is secretly dissolving smart people in a vat to create an Omniscient Liquid Brain. Ballboy Chairkovsky and the rest of The Incredmondibles don their crime-fighting costumes to battle the threat.
"This totally kicks Harry Knowles' fat ass across the firmament of geekdom," said one commenter.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
and make sure you promote them to senior management!
Meet the new sig, same as the old sig
Unless we define "smart", this is just a silly thread. Being smart is much more than a set of metrics, as you suggest. Many programmers themselves are not even good at programming.
:o)
Google is not Mensa. Mensa is not even Mensa. If Google really was stocked with geniuses, it would suggest that they a) know how to find geniuses, b) know how to lure geniuses, and c) know how to make geniuses work together for corporate success. Frankly, I do not believe that ANYONE can do it. It would take... genius.
Software engineering reminds me of Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game: an abstract obsession detached real human values. Many people in the field think they are brilliant because they think what they are doing is brilliant. It is not.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
hey jim, are you the James_Sager that wrote that webpage in your .sig?
for example, what are all these thumb twiddling pseudo journalists going to waste days pontificating over, and writing useless, pointless and baseless articles over?
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
From the people I've had to work with, I think too many companies are doing that (Erm... "Manager in Charge of Database Development", I ask him if he knows what MySQL is and he says "I think I may have heard of it a long time ago")
"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price.
He wont be a manager for long---at my worksite, they promoted him to VP-CIO.
Meet the new sig, same as the old sig
As a long time subscriber to Fortune, I have noted a tendency to be pro-Microsoft and anti-Google. Examples:
In one article comparing the two companies, all photos of Microsoft were in color, and the company was refered to as "Bill Gates' company."
All photos of Google were in black-white and the company was refered to as "Google."
Captions and taglines were positive sounding for Microsoft, ominous sounding against Google.
Reason? Microsoft advertises with the magazine, and Google does not.
I think what the article references ("smart people will get tired of non accomplishing anything because their colleages are also smart") will not happen, just because the alternative is worse ("get back to a regular company full of stupid people") Maybe the writer was tagged as "not smart enough" to enter the company and now he's trying an alternative.
Make a /. spinoff. Grab the slashcode, and make your own tech news site. If the masses decide they want pure tech news, they'll come to your site. If not, they'll stay at slashdot.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
First you allow your smart employees to follow their whims while working for you, so they get a sense of personal fulfillment which reduces their desire to strike out on their own. Then, if they do strike out on their own, they will probably need to buy back a lot of their own IP from Google - which Google isn't obligated to sell. Ad to this some implied promise like "If you defect and compete with us, we will suffocate you by doing what you do except bigger" and loyalty is pretty much 100% assured.
This is a very different system from Microsoft, where many of their smart employees don't get to do what they want. The guy who started RealNetworks had a pretty high position in MS, but he couldn't convince the higher-level paper-pushers that a video player would be a good idea. So he went off on his own, and MS had to make the WMP to try and suffocate him post-facto (at which they failed). If Microsoft worked like Google, RealPlayer would have been an MS product from the beginning and their strangle hold on us would have been much tighter.
My uncle lost a ton of money in Lucent because his philosophy for success centered around them having the highest percentage of staff with PhDs in the industry. Take heed?
---------
No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
Could someone please welcome our new Sons of Google Overlords (and get it over with)?
Be heard || Be herd
You are not alone. I'm the same. Fortunately for you, many high profile "web apps" are in fact written in C++. Did you really think the Google search engine is written in PHP? Preferring C++ style coding should not put you off applying.
I work on Google Earth and I can assure you, while it's "simple" relative to, say, web search, there is far more magic going on behind the scenes than you probably realise. It's anything but a boring team to be on. Especially, the nice thing about Google Earth is people have a very emotional response to it ... there are all kinds of human stories around what people do with it ... which you will never get with some corp database product.
It could happen, but it probably won't. Here's why: Google's employees live better than kings.
What do I mean? They've got a vast selection of food that they could want to eat; they have fairly undisciplined day schedules; they've got no overt worldly responsibilities. And, what's most important, they can spend their days however they want working on things that interest them. They may not be golfing or doing 'leasurely' activities, but most academic types don't care for those kinds of entertainment anyway.
When you enjoy every activity of your day (well, at least 'almost') why would you throw it away to try and compete against such an environment?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It is very hard to start a new technology company and make it profitable. It affects your entire life, both on the business side and on the personal side. For each company that succeeds, many fail but you do not hear about them, of course. The vast majority of Google employees are probably less interested in going through that than in doing what they love to do everyday in an environment that provides for most of their needs. So much easier...
Some people are smarter in specific areas, some people have design genious, others people smartness (knowing when someone is ripping you off, lying, ...)
Its too broad a term to really define.
I certainly didn't mean to bag on Google Earth, just that people (myself included) have been doing real-time GIS applications (for CA Unicenter as an example) which streamed off of USGS CDs and DVDs in the datacenter since 1997. The wow factor isn't the application, it's the data itself. That's what makes Google's client software seem magical. The front end stuff that most of the teams work on (as far as we outsiders can see) is nothing special. I'm not saying it's bad in any way, but it certainly isn't what I'd expect from the purportedly assembled brainpower there. I, as an example, would expect Google to have had a decent natural language processing system in place (years ago) and for them to be a leader in the real-time translation of web pages and/or thin/thick clients. I think that if Google didn't bind itself so tightly to the browser, it could turn out some truly excellent software; however, nothing much seems to come out of Google except browser based client apps and the back-end products, the same things it has been doing for years. It just seems like a narrow usage of talent.
;) J/K.
There must be several thousand 'very talented' engineers working there, right? Why isn't more coming out? Why haven't you guys solved poverty (presuming a solution exists...?)
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If, on a results page, I type into the search box before the page finishes loading, their onload script replaces what I just typed with my last search. They've had years to come up with a solution to this silly bug.
If Google's that smart why have they fucked up youtube so that the column on the left is right on top of the first column of videos on Firefox?