Slashdot Mirror
The Final Days of Google
theodp writes "Robert X. Cringely speculates about The Final Days of Google, making a compelling case that when the end comes, it is going to be an inside job. To find the founders of a Google-beating start-up, Cringely suggests looking no further than the thousands of entrepreneurial geniuses currently working for Google, who will inevitably be driven to leave the company to realize the dreams of their rejected ideas. 'The real money is in taking existing ideas and twisting the idea just far enough to make it work in a fantastic new way. Think Google vs. AltaVista; Apple vs. all previously existing laptops and mp3 players; YouTube vs. all previously existing video sites, etc. In addition to ideas, you need creativity, resources, connections, and luck -- none of which appear to be in short supply among Google worker bees. Much of the next influx of ideas to Sand Hill Road will come not just from former Google employees, but also from groups of former Google employees who are planning their future companies over free sushi and Diet Coke late at night in Google cafeterias.'"
Free sushi?!?!! :)
I want to work for google
An innovative startup made of ex-google staffers will kill google?
But Google wasn't the end of MS, MS wasn't the end of IBM, the markets big. A new player doesn't mean the 'end' of old players.
Google does one thing really well - search. Many of the ideas brewing are not a search replacement, they are either something completely different or an add-on to search.
I am sure Google ignores many of the 20% ideas that are actually quite good, but I doubt the ones they ignore are the kind of things that make search better; that is the kind of thing these geniusses spent 80% of their week on, after all.
"Cringely suggests looking no further than the thousands of entrepreneurial geniuses currently working for Google, who will inevitably be driven to leave the company to realize the dreams of their rejected ideas. "
To destroy Google, someone would have to beat them at what they make their money on - search and ads. First off, 95% of the people in the company probably do not work in this division, and don't have the background and aren't surrounded by it enough to get ideas about it. The 5% who do probably could not start a company without running in trouble legally given all the Google trade secrets they are privy to.
The final days are near when the Jesus-god will return to judge the worthy and the unworthy. Learn the magic happy dance and perform it daily or the Jesus-god will turn you into macaroni salad
Not even Google can save you from hte Jesus-god you have been warned.
Spare us your wrath your humble servants we pray o Jesus-god.
not having read the article.....
but why does the next killer app etc have to come from within the currrent killer organisation?? just ask yourself, where did Google come from?, Microsoft?? Lotus even?? (if u are old enough to remember that).
I prefer to keep my eyes on Paul Graham and his friends in Y combinator - just wish I could be in on the deal.
But first they need to fire 150,000 workers. It's not going to be pretty.
So that's what Microsoft did, huh?
Maybe it's just a combination of pure dumb luck (being in the right marketplace at the right time) and the tenacity and money to keep going.
New ideas are ten-a-penny. It's having the business acumen and vision to get them off the ground and make them profitable that's the real skill.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Developmen
The most pertinent part of the article I've linked is:
Some of the perks that google gives its employees are quite devious. Why risk your money and time starting your own venture when you have it made at google?
Why do you think that the most innovative and radical ideas come from unemployed hungry developers? Who has made a concerted effort to hire said hungry developers? That's who I'd bet on to hurt google's bottom line.
http://nyamenation.org/
If they are "former" employees why are they eating in Google cafeterias? Did this not baffle anyone else?
It is normal human perception of reality which makes us believe that everything that goes up, must come down. Still, with proper adaptive leadership I don't see why google should be around for the next (insert huge number here) years. Most companies downfall seems to be happening because their leaders can't adjust fast enough to the current market, just look at the American motor industry. Still, I don't see why we shouldn't need to search for things in the future, so the market will be there. And as is claimed, google has a lot of brainpower and even if a few of them leaves the company, it's not going to be the downfall of the company.
Google is not a search engine company. It's an advertising company. Anything which generates content is purchased by google. They have made internet more junk and ofcourse useful. It is not safe to invest in google shares because they are in such a business where profit can be modified easily in different ways. I still remember that youtube deal. I saw a sudden surge in their stock prices. They declared a nice quarter report beating all expectations. In the end, they paid less number of shares to youtube guys. This is nothing but evil.
The best art videos collection from YouTube
Unless you can topple Adsense there's not a chance in hell you'll supersede Google.
This happens in all emerging industries, key staff in all departments need to be treated exceptionally or they leave and start up themselves.
I'm more interested in predictions about the death of Cringely.
I don't think it matters as much as he thinks.
Not all great ideas are equal. Goole's strengths are online services that leverage their search and advertising technologies. Google are proven to be very good at picking winners in this space. Combine this with the fact that many of those great ideas don't play strongly to Google's strengths.
So only a fraction of those great ideas are of real interest to Google, and Google have a high likelihood of picking the best that are. Google still can't lose. A lot of people will leave Google and found great, successful companies but that's not a bad thing for Google.
A competitor to Google or Microsoft has to be doing what Google or Microsoft does to be a threat. By the way, that's why Google isn't actually a threat to Microsoft. If only MS could see that, stop trying to be a second rate Google and get back to being a first rate Microsoft.
Simon Hibbs
Why do people continue to post Cringely's stuff, and how does it continue to get on Slashdot? He himself all but admitted that he is a troll!
Oh, wait... I guess I just answered my own question.
I heard this same thing years ago about Microsoft. Yes, some smart employees left and created startups which were largely partnered with them. Same will be true for Google. I don't see any problem for Google here.
Google can't die! They're invincible! Right?
/cries
I was mislead!
Like Microsoft and Peter Norton? Oh boy, I can't wait.
Anyway, I think he forgets two main points. one overlooked concern is size. Size is needed to create momentum: you can only sell a lot of ads of you have a lot of viewers, you can only buy the computing capacity and bandwith if you have a lot of revenue. If you as a google-like company do not manage to get the critical momentum. It is the same size that makes google inherently an 'evil' company. They have are so involved in your private life that they get a lot of potential power over you. Google tries to handle this power in one way or another, maybe you do not agree with many of their decisions, but what are their options, and is there one single correct way to handle this?
Then there is second factor, quality: Remember, in the case of google, you have the choice to use it or not. There are at least a few alternatives for every application that they offer. But you CHOOSE to use google, because of the quality of the products. Apparently the designers behind google have a feeling for quality products that is outstanding. This is something to respect, it is not easy to make something technological easy. Just think about it, when was the last time you clicked the 'advanced' search button in google. They did an amazing job of opening the web in a way anyone can use. Imagine that they would work with regexes? Or via clickable boxes for every special option? No, the genius is in taking a complex problem, and presenting it in the most simple form understandable by humans. I for one, can not repeat this, can you? Can cringely? This is also where google can fail. Just this week I noticed that my terrible old pc has more and more problems with google every time. Google mail is getting pretty bloated with features in that it is very slow to load in my browser. As I said, to find the right balance between features and simpleness is an art, if they start really losing that, I will start useing something else pretty quickly.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
The next killer app does not have to come out of the current killer. But it is a very well documented and repeating pattern that many of these "next killer apps" are developed within the then dominant organisation - because that's where the money is - but ignored or not understood by management. The inventors then quit and build the new killer organisation, leaving their previous employer wonder what happened. The most important observation, however, is that the very same people that went through all this later fall in the exact same trap themselves.
Remember Ken Olsen. IBM didn't believe in his ideas for smaller better and more ubiquitous computers, so he built DEC. But 20 years later he didn't believe in the PC ("there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home") and DEC ended up being bought by Compaq.
There are plenty more examples of this pattern in the computer industry.Linux user since early January 1992.
I mean, ex employees setting up new web presences and such ?
All google needs to do to make it a mutually beneficial thing is to enter cooperation with them.
remember what has made google a major player - they introduced adsense, which has accepted any web presence, any small site as partners in contrast to msn's, yahoo's advertising concepts. this gave them the entire coverage of the web.
same philosophy translated to the approach to ex employee run services would benefit google phenomenonally, as these people would probably be creating hip stuff, and hence having great reach.
its not an end, its an expansion.
Read radical news here
With a killer application like the iPod or Youtube someone can sometimes take over an almost equally shared market, but Google did exactly this already and so it became a totally different situation. To dethrone a monopolist it takes a lot more than just doing it better. Think Linux vs. Windows.
Further Scriptural evidence refuting Heliocentrism. To me, this settles the debate. The Earth does not move. To assert that the Earth does move is to renounce Christianity(Google). It really is as simple as that......Same goes for google.
I think Cringley is right in some sense but I don't think we will kill google really, however as part of our idea is search without ads, we will draw a lot attention from google in the future. It is not about direct competition though, we are not insane...
We are releasing a beta version within a few limited domains soon, which will probably go unnoticed for a while as google did the first years...
What we shouldn't forget though is that google are collecting a lot of resources and skills. Search/ads may not be the big money generator in the future. Google is certainly a much more flexible company than Microsoft that has stuck mainly to the same business model for 30 years.Google may morph slowly into a privacy eating gorilla and then after a single public-relations fiasco (it still has a lot of enemies), it may turn more mellow like IBM or Microsoft.
But die ??? Nope.
Cringley says rejected ideas consortium inc., would kill google.
I agree some ideas may have been good, but rejected. But overwhelmingly, good ideas do get done, like Microsoft Office.
MS Office is THE fastest office package ever, because it so damn easy to use (after 2000, no real changes i agree).
Excel was being used in real battle support during the Iraq war (initial days).
iPod vs. other MP3?? I aint think so. iPod has a 85% market share. The rest ALL brands are combined as a generic products MP3.
So i can buy a Rio, HP, Zune, and all are MP3....
What matters is Brand name...
Google is fast becoming a verb, and once u become so generic, it is hard to remove your name from people's memory. U have a cash cow, if u know where to milk.
Lets hope google keeps its focus on finding relevant information, and leave this office, etc., business to the experts.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
"Much of the next influx of ideas to Sand Hill Road will come not just from former Google employees, but also from groups of former Google employees who are planning their future companies over free sushi and Diet Coke late at night in Google cafeterias.'" --- Good ideas come from inspiration. The delacate flavours of suchi would normally relax and entice the mind to realms of wonderful inspiration. But Diet Coke surely must ruin those flavours. Good suchi should only be accompanied by the best saki, and don't the best deserve the best? Google should have nothing to worry from these folk, but just to be sure, they could serve their retained staff saki and serve the exiles coke. How's that for an employee loyalty programme?
C'mon folks, this is CRINGELY, for God's sake.
I could just about understand why Slashdot gave his drivel exposure ten years ago because, frankly, there wasn't all that much tech news about and we were glad for what we could get.
Now, however, his well-worn trick of shoddily stringing-together whatever buzzwords and companies are in vogue at a given moment is just patronising, manipulative and insulting to our collective intelligence. Others have been doing it so less clumsily for years now.
Seriously, if he had all the contacts he claimed to have had, and this is going way back, do you think he'd still be living in his hut in the Appalachians, grinding out this bullshit for a living?
What really gets to me is that way he lets on that he is part of an elite inner-circle when the truth is that he doesn't really have that much of a clue about the Internet; it was only a couple of months ago that he updated his shitty website so that it wasn't a complete joke. He couldn't even figure out how to keep his old commenting system from regularly collapsing.
So, let's stop wasting our time with this has-been: could someone please code a Cringely Simulator, it wouldn't have to be complicated, just randomly throw together the names of whatever companies seem to be getting coverage, stir in a few buzzwords and even it all out with some ridiculous assertions no-one with a mental age above five will take seriously. Then we can all read that instead and stop giving this tardfuck the oxygen of publicity.
When Google started in a garage it was not just the idea: the implementation was good.
And now they have "insert 6 digits here" PCs (!) crunching data.
So not only do they have a good technology they've also got a huge infrastructure.
Dreamer: Look, VC, I'm gonna bury Google for I worked for them (without taking into account that I'm violating my NDA).
VC: "what's your plan?".
Dreamer: Easy, I'll buy 100 000 PCs with the money your going to advance and I'll write better applications than what they have.
plonk. Anyone wanting to bury Google should have a very impressive technology because you need to outsmart them in a big way to beat what they can do with their infrastructure...
Not too mention that it's not just about searching the current Web anymore for Google: it's also about having data going back several years (search patterns etc.) which not a single newcomer could possibly have.
Yahoo! or MS could maybe kill Google. But ex-employees starting a new company? I wouldn't hold my breath.
Wow, I have no idea how I touched such a raw nerve. Joel Spolsky and Paul Graham have a decent mastery of English and essay writing and so will often be quoted. The best hackers and coders wind up alienating or confusing people when they try to make their points understood (think RMS) and so won't be quoted as often, at least in a positive light.
http://nyamenation.org/
A tutorial on how to write an article that gets Slashdotted:
1. Take one or more very very popular companies:
Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Disney, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, eBay...
2. Write down few obvious statements of the companies you picked:
Apple works alone and is driven on computers and consumer electronics that are realiable, simple, and shiny.
Microsoft and Google are both a successful companies that are doing fine, and will be doing fine for a long time, if even for pure inertia and since everybody uses their products already.
etc.
3. Take said statements, and reverse and mix 'em up in totally random and unpredictable way, that seems to make no sense:
Apple to start selling beige Windows boxes, goes after Dell.
Microsoft wants to buy Google.
Google is going down any moment now.
Intel's buying Disney to have full control over the home media center.
4. Now imagine you're Hollywood screenwriter, take above statements, and try to write a high concept movie around those statements.
A real life example: snakes on a plane.
How did the snakes end up on a plane? A mobster's trying to kill a witness to a murder the mobster did.
Why on Earth (and HOW) put snakes on a plane versus just hire someone to shoot the guy? Because "the mobster has exhausted all other possible options".
There we go: interesting, unexpected, and totally believable, your usual Slashdot article. Enjoy!
Best Regards, Cringely and Dvorak.
The real money is in taking existing ideas and twisting the idea just far enough to make it work in a fantastic new way.
... if you're a lawyer) the bigger question is whether or not America's best and brightest will be allowed to take an existing idea and do anything with it. We're locking down ideas (good and bad, and even bad ideas often be twisted into good ones with a little skull sweat) at an increasing pace. When the day comes when you can't have a creative thought without owing somebody a royalty, it really won't matter if you're a Google-killer. You'll never get off the ground.
Yes, that's called progress and it's precisely what the patent (and copyright) systems were set up to foster. Given current trends in the area of "intellectual property" (the current hot market sector
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This is just not true. For every RMS or ESR we have a Linus Torvalds or an Andrew Tridgell who seem to do a very good job of making clear points and get quoted often.
Cringely will (finally) no longer exist and the universe will be at peace.
hypothetical bullshit.. maybe, just maybe, Google finally did something right in the world of business.. and if we're lucky they'll take over the world with their incredible power, and it will be for the better of humanity.. think of all the starving children in Africa.. we should be praising Google and giving them our money so that the children too, can have Gourmet meals morning, noon and night.. if one company deserves our trust, it's Google in my opinion.. i find it ridiculous to even be preaching about these unpredictable aspects mentioned in the article.. they seem to take better care of our personal data than our government surely does.. Google for President!
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
It's going to be in three trillion years anyways, 'cause this is a continuation of the last story, right?
But Google wasn't the end of MS, MS wasn't the end of IBM, the markets big. A new player doesn't mean the 'end' of old players.
Google can quickly change to accomodate any revolutionary new idea in the computer industry. Their business model is not tied to how computers work. If somebody found a new way to make computers and systems that made the old way obsolete, Google would just switch to the new way. By contrast, companies like Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Sun, Apple and others are married to the status quo. And if you think that the computer industry is not ripe for a revolution, think again. The algorithmic model is as old as Babbage and Lady Ada, that's 150 years old! We have a big problem called unreliability that has put an upper limit on the complexity of our systems and kept software development costs at a high level. The old way of doing things does not work well anymore. The market is screaming for a solution. And what the market wants, the market will get. I doubt that the coming revolution will come from the West, though. They have too much to lose. They can no longer change their ways because the old gurus have become demi-gods, and nobody dares question the gods. I see it coming from places like China or India. You've been warned. You heard it here first. ahahaha...
IBM is really a fraction of their size that they were back in the days of uncle lou (which is what we called him when he first started). Their decline is not a decline, but a losing of the market share that they had. Basically, IBM was the 8000 lb gorilla back in the 70's and 80's.
Likeiwse, MS is starting downwards as well. Apple and Linux are finally eating into their desktop. To really see it, step out of America.
OO and google office is starting to take some of their office monopoly. As time progresses, more govs will go the path of OO as well schools who pick up olpc.
And MSIE is down a LONG ways down from the late 90's, early 00's. Back then they owned 98% of the market. Now, they are at around 80% and still continuing downwards.
MS was never the main attack on IBM, just the last one prior to their downfall. Likewise, we are seeing MS's downfall. They will not end, but they will not own the market with free reign to crush whoever looks wrong at BG or Balmer.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Management has failed when a developer has to issue a 'svn commit'". WTF? WTFF? It's way too typical: Joel knows nothing about system administration nor configuration, hence the command line is too difficult and no developer should know how to use it. Nonsense. Go tell that to the founders of Xen source or KVM. These are real startups with real money behind and, believe me Joel, these developers don't fear to issue a 'svn commit' (adapt to git/mercurial or whatever VCS they're using).
Funny thing is, he said the opposite. That developers should just issue a "svn commit", and not care about air conditioning, hardware failures etc.
But, I'll leave you to rant there, I suppose reading what you're ranting about was too much work for ya.
http://nyamenation.org/
No matter how good those "rejected ideas" are (and I doubt that Google would be rejecting them out of principle if they were truly good or groundbreaking), no startup made of geniuses will ever be a threat to any of the giant companies, let alone Google. If there ever was such a startup, one of the giants, most likely Google itself, would rush to buy it back the moment it started looking promising (see youtube and the like).
Free markets are not zero sum games. If we enter a lottery, somebody walks away with the pot and everybody else loses. With trade in a free market, everyone who participates comes away a winner. So if Google employees come up with some new company, that doesn't mean that Google is harmed in any way.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Cringely originated at InfoWorld and his bit (gimmick for you in Rio Lindo) was Pammy, his dingaling blonde girlfriend. He pretended to be an industry insider, but in reality Cringely was a succession of journalism interns working for minimum wage.
InfoWorld became irrelevant and they sold the Cringely thingy to the American taxpayer at National Government Radio because they needed the bucks. There have been at least a dozen hires at NPR writing under the Cringely moniker, all of them low paid or unpaid interns.
Cringely don't know squat.
Is from a potential employee that was rejected by Google's interview progress. From what I have heard the interview process is pretty condescending. Anyone here interview with Google to confirm that? I could see someone who is rejected starting their own thing, which becomes the next thing.
Doesn't google have some extreme NDA? It seems to me that no one who left google could start up a competing company just because google would find a way to accuse them of using ideas that were originally google's own. And if they don't have this much control yet, what will they do in response to this? IANAL, but I would think they could easily force their employees to legally hand over their ideas as intellectual property to google BEFORE they would be considered...
1. Diet Drinks taste bad.
2. These aspertame or splenda drinks can only mask any good flavor of sushi.
3. Diet Drinks do not statistically make you loose weight. You are drinking these foul drinks for what reason?
4. Are you sure there are no long term affects of consuming these chemicals?
Do you have any idea of how much writing RMS has actually done? E.g., see his book of essays for an example of his mastery of English and essay writing. RMS will be frequently misunderstood like this as long as he is delivering an unpopular message. Moreover, the message is generally counter to the establishment. Spolsky and Graham may challenge convention but certainly not on the level that RMS _consistently_ does. The comparison in other posts that holds up Linus over RMS does not take into account that Linus simply does not indulge in controversial matters to the degree that RMS does.
RMS also can be insensitive, impatient, and unaccomodating to various norms (e.g., looks like a hippie).
Thus, RMS alienates and confuses _in spite_ of his excellent communication skills.
The reasoning in this article is badly flawed. While nobody knows, or if they know, can't say what is in agreements, policies, and procedures within Google, one thing we can assume is that Google is not stupid. Their ideas have to be protected, developed or not. They were smart -- rather than have undocumented ideas developed in spare time, Google made it part of the job. So, there have to be the documents that describe the ideas for, if nothing else, the review that selects the best. Why should Google throw away those documents? -- they don't throw away my email.
So, my bet is that Google is or will become a resume stain for anybody who was in a development role there. Venture capitalists will be unsure whether Google would come down on them if they developed the idea. Why go with that risk when there are plenty of other ideas clamoring for support? If somebody does pitch and develop an idea, Google can sue them and there are no pockets deeper than their's. If you carry it farther, how would one prove that the idea didn't originate from Google, since obviously you can't appeal to them for proof. So, I think Google is safe and probably they have better control of their IP than most any other company.
While I don't personally believe that Google is getting dethroned anytime soon, keep in mind that it has happened before. Back in the 1970's, all the Really Smart People (tm) in Silicon Valley worked for the mighty giant known as Fairchild Semiconductor. A few of them jumped ship to go work on their own, on this crazy idea they had to put an entire central processing unit on a single chip.
They put together a little startup called Intel.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Google will never have the problem Cringley is talking about because of their famed "20% Time" or "Friday's To Yourself" policy. The itch of wanting to start a small project on your own is entirely satisfied at Google because they let you do it on your own time without having to worry about annoying your boss.
Take GMail. A pet project, at least initially, by all accounts. A motivated employee got together a small group of other employees, and used their 20% to create the code base for GMail. Today it is one of their most successful programs. The entire entrepreneurial process is internalized, because it's way less expensive to use Google's capital, employees and name than it is to start your own company.
S.
It's "Cringeley", so don't take it too seriously, but...
Google has a fundamental problem. It became successful as a search company that ran a few ads to defray expenses. Now it's an ad agency that offers services to build ad traffic. This limits them.
How? You can do a better job at search if you don't have to suck up to the pay per click advertisers. Just throwing out most sites with pay per click ads is a good start. But Google can't do that - that's where the revenue to support their bloated operation (been to Shoreline lately?) comes from.
Google seemed to undergo a big change starting about two years ago. That's when they first started cozying up to the "search engine optimization" people. Google used to view "search engine optimization" as evil. Now they are the major sponsor of SEO conferences. And, of course, they bought DoubleClick, an advertising company so obnoxious that most Firefox users blocked their ads long ago.
Consider Craigslist, which is rapidly destroying newspaper classified advertising. Craigslist has an edge - they're cheap. They only have fifty or so employees, and the owner has no ambitions to become a Fortune 1000 company. This drives their competitors nuts, because they aren't annoying their customer base with ads and nobody can afford to compete with them. They're devaluing ad-supported media.
its also rather shit how you cant see the summary as you post your comment on it. slashdot sucks.
iPod vs. other MP3?? I aint think so. iPod has a 85% market share. The rest ALL brands are combined as a generic products MP3.
So i can buy a Rio, HP, Zune, and all are MP3....
What matters is Brand name...
That's what I thought too, until I played around with an iPod and iTunes. The reason iPods are the most popular is because of iTunes, because it's so simple yet powerful to use. With a conventional MP3 player you first rip a cd, compress it to MP3, tag them, organize them in folders/playlists in the way you want them to play, plug in the MP3 player to your computer, and then use the file explorer/bash/whatever to copy the files to the MP3 player. With an iPod, you pop the cd in your computer, wait while iTunes rips, compresses and tags them, then you plug in the iPod and wait as the files get synced to it. The files then go into a playlist on the iPod. The process is completely automatic! Add to that the fact that you can use the same software to copy movies, photos, podcasts, in addition to being able to buy music, and you have a killer app.
This is why iPods have 85%, and AFAIK the other manufacturers don't have anything similar to iTunes.
I've given up. Now I find it natural to see the same shit that was on the front page there yesterday on Slashdot today. Guess it's easier to use other popular websites as a source than it is to find your own interesting articles to post.
If it'd only happened once or twice, you could chalk it up to coincidence, but it's happening every day. Slashdot never gets the scoop on anything. It's now 100% second-hand junk.
I think this phenomenon illustrates Cringely's point, only the Google in this scenario is Slashdot.
I remember an issue of Wired in about 1998 or 1999 predicting 25 years of unprecedented and uninterrupted growth.
-- QED
As a technologist who has worked exclusively at Silicon Valley start-up companies for the last 15 years, I recently went through four rounds of telephone interviews at Google. At the end of the fourth I told the interviewer that I was simply not interested (to his astonishment). This company is full of dead weight. It is the same kind of dead weight that occupied the vacuum of so many start-ups at the end of the dot-com explosion. I know many smart, driven, successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. None of these people want to work at Google, they want to build products and services that Google will buy. The end of Google will come from within? I tend to agree with that prediction. I think that it will not be from the wit of some self-proclaimed eccentric Googlite, but that it will be from the creative stagnation that is inevitable in a massive corporation.
Google is probably going to follow VA Research. VA Research once had the largest IPO in history. They were the IT company, mentioned every 2 seconds on CNN. Put VA Research on your resume and you had unlimited job offers. Celebrity programmers could drive to Calif* cold and be guaranteed a job at VA Research. They were reinventing the software world.
VA Research was going to make all the world's software released under GPL licenses and be financed by selling web servers, just as Google is going to make all the world's software web based and financed by financed search results.
Nowadays no-one even knows what VA Research was or what their business model was. Hard to believe one day, they'll probably not know what The Goog was and neither what Google's business model was.
Since Google is run by the entrepreneurs that left VA Research, it's hard to believe they won't leave again and start the next IT company.
This is inside knowledge that The Cring probably already knew.
Getting into The Goog is difficult because they have 10,000 resumes for every opening. They get so much noise and have such an inefficient screening practice, only 1% of the employees who get through actually contribute anything.
Apple's notebooks are currently in 5th place, behind HP, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, and Gateway.
Apple's notebooks constantly lag behind in feature set and performance. Consider:
Whether or not you think these features are useful, many, many people do. I use the media reader on my notebook all the time, and I don't have to bring around a USB or ExpressCard reader. I dock my other (business) laptop daily at work, hooking me up to power, USB (keyboard/mouse), DVI, audio (headphones), and the network in one step.
Not to mention the features that Apple now has, but was just late with. Sudden motion sensor (ThinkPad had it first). Camera (Sony notebooks, HP notebooks, my cheap 2-year-old generic Compal notebook). Multi-finger scroll (Alps drivers circa 1998). Lighted keyboard (ThinkLight). Remote control (Dell/HP notebooks circa 2003).
The list goes on. I'm not saying that Apple doesn't innovate. MagSafe is a very cool idea (although there doesn't seem to be sufficient stress relief on the cable). But there is plenty of innovation in the notebook space, coming from many different companies in many different parts of the world.
You know what? The ThinkPad T61 looks like crap compared to the 15" MacBook Pro. But it's faster (800MHz FSB, Turbo cache, NVIDIA Quadro graphics), beefier (magnesium protection for the screen, shock mounted HDD cage), has better battery life (5 hours with the 7-cell battery), lighter (about half a pound lighter with the 7-cell), cooler and quieter, smaller, easier to secure (smartcard reader / fingerprint scanner, full drive encryption), and much, much cheaper (2.2GHz/1GB/DVD-RW/120GB/WSXGA+/NVIDIA/11n/Blueto
Winning indeed.
I wish companies would finally stand up to this kind of socialism. Yahoo, MS, and now Google...If I own a business I have a *right* to collect information about anything that happens on my servers. Period. You don't like it, feel free to use MSN search. Customers do have a *right* to privacy. You have the right to not use Google. If enough people stop using it because of their privacy policy then Google will feel it in the wallet and change. Basically people are too lazy to bother voting with their wallets so they take the lazy route of just passing crazy laws. I know America is bad when it comes to socialist laws, but reading horror stories like this make me glad I don't live in Europe...
I haz invendit a sno haus
I call it the iGloo
now u pay me or u freez ha ha ha ha
What the hell is the author smoking? We need no stinkin diet coke !!!
SUGAR is good !!
We all bitch about how hacks and the shit they do to make their dough but damn, they do it so well and we're all just the peanut gallery. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! Here's my attempts at controversial articles.
1. World of Warcraft is "crap" and obviously the developers have no idea what they're doing
2. Vista, not as bad as you first thought
3. The grace and humility of Steve Jobs
4. Experts say "Your mama is a bitch," claim to have scientific proof
5. Abacus to make a comeback, IT slated to be phased out within the decade. "Yes, they're not as quick and efficient as computers but these new abacaii have such neat colored plastic beads!"
Give me a wad of money and I'll spank together an unfounded article to go with your favorite headline.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
...that this article comes right on the heels of this article: A Snapshot of the Universe 3 Trillion Years From Now.
--
Franklin Brauner
Basically he's saying "no company lives forever."
.Net.
In other words: "Duh!"
Also, his counts on the number of possible projects Google could pursue under their employee development plan was dismissed immediately by people who know how large corporations pursue ideas.
However, I'd like to see him apply the same logic to Microsoft, since obviously the same thing applies - except of course that Microsoft hires "brilliant morons" who can't code, can't design, can't do usability or security, and are willing slaves to making Bill richer - but who really know Visual C++ and
So maybe the logic doesn't apply. If it weren't for myopia and incompetence on the part of most of the corporate world, and also for Bill's heavy-handed marketing and distribution tactics amounting to near monopoly, - and to some degree, the incompetence of its competitors, such as Sun, HP and IBM, who insisted on fragmenting the UNIX market with proprietary versions - Microsoft would have been out of business a decade ago.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Google actually owns those rejected ideas.
The article states that "Thousands of PhDs are now working in various Google labs". I would be very surprised if there are more than 1000 PhDs within Google. Probably a few hundred, yes, but not in the thousands. Google still has a looooong way to go until it is comparable to the venerable Bell Labs or other real research places.
build new companies out of good ideas that don't quite fit into google by putting them together with VCs, buying a minority interest in the company and thereby keeping a share of the cashflow of any company that works out?
Google does hire really smart people, and the percentage of things that work out from these people will probably be better than VCs are seeing now.
This will also get them lots of bright entepreneurial types. As for losing critical employees, google's constantly hiring anyway, and google can always make completing the current project a precondition for their helping employees strike out on their own.
This also builds google a business ecosphere which it'll probably find ways to leverage.
What Cringely sees as trouble I see as opportunity.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Ahh... Google... crapping on the little guy... just like any other corporation.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
I disagree that Apple has the best engineered notebooks on the market, I believe that would go to Lenovo/IBM. I don't believe the T61 "looks like crap", some individuals tend to cater to the "all business black" look as I do, rather than "trendy silver" or plain white. Thinkpads have been black from 1992 onward, while many other companies (including apple) have played with their designs to conjure brand recognizability in the crowded market. You can't tell me you wouldn't feel a little awkward using the circa 1998 toilet seat tangerine ibook in a public area in 2007, or at least less-so than I would using a 9 year old thinkpad in the same instance. I'm glad that apple has seemed to find their own unique style everyone seems to like, but matte black fits my needs better, and has been a mainstay for 15 years. At least with my machine after 6 months my palmrests don't wear away and reveal a the dark grey plastic underneath like many Toshibas and dells do around here. Speaking of...over here in Iraq all they have at any PX are toshiba laptops. With Vista home. AAARGH! MY $.02
Zachary Sandberg http://zachsandberg.homeip.net
Dog is my co-pilot.
Netcraft confirms: Google is dying .
Google Will Soon Become the "Commodore 64" of Internet Search
r native_search_engines_mar07.php
It is very likely that Google, et al, will soon become the "Commodore 64" of Internet search (cool technology for about ten years that was supplanted by something much better).
If you go to the current listing of open job positions at Google (http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/index.html) and do a search on the keyword "semantic" you get one result and this result is not related to the Semantic Web. Similar searches at Yahoo Corporate and Microsoft show ten to fifteen results for the keyword "semantic" and none of these are related to the Semantic Web. At ask.com "Careers" there are zero results for a search on the keyword "semantic".
Semantic Bridge Technologies (http://www.semanticbridgetechnologies.com/) is a startup company located in Austin, TX. We are creating a tool set and the supporting infrastructure for the implementation of the Semantic Web. We are taking a very pragmatic approach. Our target audience is comprised of web designers and software engineers who build Internet applications not theorists who study semantic structures. We are building a bridge, not an ivory tower.
The creation of a dynamic and interactive, "Semantic Knowledge Repository", along with the tools that will allow web designers and software engineers to easily interact with this repository will have a profound impact on the rapid deployment of the Semantic Web.
The technologies of the Semantic Bridge Project could truly transform the world.
Final Note: There is a great deal of innovation going on in Internet search and it is not happening at the major Internet search companies: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_alte