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Google Tries Not To Be a Black Hole of Brilliance
theodp writes "Google says it's declined to pursue awesome job prospects to avoid an over-concentration of brilliance at the search giant. Speaking at the Supernova conference, Google VP Bradley Horowitz said the company intentionally leaves some brainpower outside its walls: 'I recently had a discussion with an engineer at Google and I pointed out a handful of people that I thought were fruitful in the industry and I proposed that we should hire these people,' said Horowitz. 'But [the engineer] stopped me and said: "These people are actually important to have outside of Google. They're very Google people that have the right philosophies around these things, and it's important that we not hire these guys. It's better for the ecosystem to have an honest industry, as opposed to aggregating all this talent at Google."'"
Compared to the rest of the IT industry, its not that hard to be awesome. Its just that our expectation have been lowered so much we think a company that delivers something useful and dont engage in illegal practices are freaking awesome!
The gall of not engaging in putting most work into extinguishing the competition! Making actual working products? What do they think they are? God?
HTTP/1.1 400
I think that's definitely a big part of it. It's also convenient for a company to be able to point out to their curent employees that there are other competent people out there who could replace them, so keep your expectations in check.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
People have accused Microsoft of stifling innovation by snapping up so many freshly minted PhD's for Microsoft Research. They get a lot of hate, some of which can be found on this Slashdot article.
Google is wary of the these issues, as they are in the same position.
So we have evidence of them recognizing this, and choosing to do the "not evil" thing, and yet, for all their consideration for the health of the industry, a bunch of envious whiners use it to accuse them of arrogance.
google has done evil and they have lost all their 'shine' when they pull crap like this.
I was never drinking enough of the Google kool-aid to actually believe they were any different from any other for-profit corporation, but I'm not so sure that the specific case you linked proves much of anything. It was tossed out by the lower court, allowed to go through during the first appeal and has since been appealed to the California Supreme Court. If he's having that much trouble pursing his claim in California of all places then I'd question whether or not his case has any merit.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
One thing to consider is that by leaving talent at software companies, the software where their products are used is improved, thus still allowing them to improve their users' experiences with Google. This philosophy of leaving talent at other technology companies is essentially a recognition by Google that they're in a symbiotic relationship with other tech companies (namely, OS creators, browser creators, programming language creators and maintainers, hardware creators....), and they're reacting accordingly by not leeching from the companies that allow them to succeed. It really doesn't matter whether Microsoft likes the fact that Google beats them at the internet advertising game, Google enhances Microsoft users' experiences too.
Another angle to look at this whole thing from is that Google doesn't want to take all the talent from other web advertising companies (Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.) because they don't want to kill off every one of their competitors. In the case of these companies, it's a defense mechanism against being caught in antitrust lawsuits and monopoly status
It's actually remarkably smart for Google to point this out, because if their supporters (the non-web companies) realize the nature of the relationship between themselves and Google, things will just become sweeter between them, and make it much easier for them both to succeed since they won't be fighting each other over resources that they help each other acquire.
There are lots of smart people who aren't interested in what Google is currently doing. The pay, benefits etc might be great, but for most people it's not necessarily how they want to spend their days. It can be a lot more fun being on the ground floor of a dynamic startup doing stuff you believe in with a small group of smart people than being a cog in a giant wheel. Even if it is a pretty special wheel with a much larger degree of autonomy.
I do believe overall google to date has been a driving force for useful, usually practical innovation - especially in the datacenter sphere. So while I'm not a fan boy, I think it's the best search engine to date, and google maps is quite useful. Their real struggle is to stay ahead of said startup (or hope they can buy them, which has its own difficulties).
Google cannot make money from within itself. They rely on having an outside world that people will search for and purchase products from, and if there were no brilliant people working for the world outside of Google, then Google would not have its current market, and certainly not its dominance in the search market. Google is not going to win by doing all the innovation on the web; Google wins when someone is looking for an innovative website, searches Google for it, and clicks on a sponsored research (which is hopefully what they were really looking for).
Palm trees and 8
There's another company that has consistently been "nice" to the industry, refusing to do evil and in general being a stand-up, wonderful bunch of guys: Red Hat. I honestly think that there isn't a more decent company around than Red Hat. They fund a significant percentage of the kernel, driver, and UI development for the entire Linux world. Some of the very best and most productive developers behind the Linux kernel, GCC, and too many other projects to mention are employed at Red Hat!
And to this day, they have yet to throw a single shenanigan around releasing source RPMs. Google's shine is bright, but has a few smudges. Red Hat, on the other hand, is squeaky clean.
PS: No, I don't work for them, I'm just a very satisfied customer!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
...who have actually turned down Google's offer for a second interview. After they offered to fly me to Mountain View, I sat down and took a deep look at who I was, what I stood for, and whether my personal philosophies were compatible with Google's worldview. I decided that I could offer more to society through education than I could working for Google.
I don't regret the decision I made. As the years go by (this was about 2000 or so), I grow stronger in my conviction that it was the right choice as I watch Google's tendrils sneak into every aspect of society.
I remember RedHat kind of slipping from their "glory days" as the highest profile Linux distributor out there. Many people were woo'ed away by the "latest and greatest" or "more user-friendly" features in distros like Mandrake or Ubuntu, and certainly, there was a philosophical difference where some people simply supported the Debian package manager format and were anti-RPM, too.
But that doesn't change the fact that RedHat kept plugging right along, employing deserving software developers and turning out a solid, respectable product.
You don't have to amaze people with "incredible new ideas!" all the time to be a "good company". You just need to treat your employees fairly, offer products that do what they advertise, price your products reasonably, and keep up a tradition of supporting them well.