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Google's First Employee Departs
redletterdave writes "Craig Silverstein, the first employee hired by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, will leave the search giant for Khan Academy, an online education portal based in Mountain View, Calif. Silverstein had been with Google shortly after it first launched in the garage of Susan Wojcicki, a friend of both Page and Brin, in September 1998. He had helped Brin and Page develop infrastructure when Google was just a Stanford grad school project, but when he officially joined the company, Silverstein became its technology director. The Khan Academy, where Silverstein is heading next, is a not-for-profit organization that aspires to change the education industry by providing free 'world-class education to anyone anywhere.' Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is an enormous fan of the service, telling CNN that he uses it with his kids."
Obligatory.
can't say i'm surprised, none of csilver's open source projects have been properly maintained in years
Craig is good egg who walks the walk. Not hungry for power, glory or money, he already has enough of all that. The original Google do-gooder. I sincerely hope that his shoes do not prove too big to fill.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Good move, khan academy is really nice, but could use a lot of improvements on general usability.
I'm guessing he has enough money to last him several lifetimes by now. Good to see people that will work for non-profit at that point.
"Change the education industry"? That's a strange choice of words, considering Khan Academy coursework is free and so is K-12 education in America. Should we even be thinking of educating our children as an industry?
Breakfast served all day!
Almost 14 years with a start up? I thought the new model was to resume build and jump, the sooner, the better. Maybe it's different for people who get in that early.
Netscape search site perhaps.
All the cool kids used Alta Vista.
Now looking for a Google replacement.
If you can tough it out for a bit... My plan is to wait a few more years (for shit to really hit the fan) and then introduce a search engine that's a simple form on a page.
It's going to be huge.
I wish I was being sarcastic. :(
Uh, no.
Search was their first product.
Google Groups was later. End of '01 perhaps?
Evil compared to what? Mother Theresa and Ghandi perhaps, but compared to Facebook and the worst of the worst that is Microsoft they are still saints.
And you do know that almost every single complaint is filed by Microsoft, either by proxy or in the open as partners against Google? This has even been documented and verifiead as a fact (even by Microsoft) so its no tinfoil crackpot theory.
The code for Khan Academy uses Google Code and runs on Google App Engine so he should at least have a passing familiarly with the technology stack that his new company uses :-)
Source: http://www.brianbondy.com/blog/id/109/
Dear Mr Gates,
I have noticed how fond you are of the excellent efforts of the Khan Academy to disseminate knowledge to anyone for free.
I'm very excited to have found two more projects that should really be up your alley. You will probably want to donate billions to them right away!
They are very much in line with what the Khan Academy is trying to accomplish, but they are working at another perspective of knowledge.
They are about fascilitating the dissemination, creation and construction of knowledge and information on computing hardware:
http://gnu.org/
http://linux.com/
They are Free and Open instructions for computers (machines to process data with). With these free of cost and Free as in freedom software projects and the excellent efforts of the Khan Academy, all the children of Earth (with access to computing hardware - that is yet another avenue you could look into) can really get a leg up.
Sincerelly,
Dr Pointer-Outer-Of-Obvious-Ironies-Dinkelspiel
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Before Google, I used Altavista.
I am afraid that Google is a proof of the axiom that all power corrupts. While not seeing them as totally evil, the fact of being huge and rich has distorted their vision so that they cannot see the dark side of the things that they do, I think they still mean well, they think that they are "doing no evil". But their view is so distorted by the point that they are looking from that they have lost touch with what ordinary people think. They are so intent on open information that they cannot understand why people, quite honourably and innocently, want too keep some information private to themselves.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I have property tax bills that say otherwise. K-12 education in America is anything but free.
Like most taxes in America it's unfair, racially biased, and (usually) badly managed.
Just because you don't write a tuition check to the school for K-12 doesn't make it free. It's far from free.
Also, what's with every other story being about Google anyway?
--
I value my privacy so I NEVER use any product/service from the Google creeps.
All the cool kids used Alta Vista.
You weren't one of them. We used Asta la Vista
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
All the cool kids used Alta Vista.
I used to use Alta Vista as my main search engine, back when they supported boolean queries (the "NEAR" keyword!). When they dropped that capability, I abandoned them. Google didn't really become better than Alta Vista. Alta Vista became worse than Google.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
All the cool kids used Alta Vista.
I remember around 1996-1997 when Altavista turned to absolute shit, didn't matter what you searched for, at least half of the top 20 results were porn, porn and more porn.
Of course, that was back in the days when search engines often just assumed that pages were honest about their own content so just having a huge block of keywords in the same color as the page background at the bottom of every page meant you'd show up in searches for those keywords.
When I first heard of the basic idea of how Google's search algorithm worked I was actually a bit surprised, even as a teenager at the time I had kind of assumed every major search engine worked in a similar way. I suspect I was far from alone in that assumption...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Evil compared to what? Mother Theresa and Ghandi perhaps, but compared to Facebook and the worst of the worst that is Microsoft they are still saints.
Actually, I'd class Google as a saint compared to Mother Teresa, who believed that suffering was good, and ensured it was widespread in her "hospices", and publicly stated that poverty should not be alleviated because it also was a good thing.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I remember when Alta Vista came out with natural language searches. You could ask it What's the name of President Clinton's cat? And it would give you links for where to buy socks.
What jumped out at me was that BillG says he uses the Khan videos WITH his kids. Kudos on the parenting, Bill.
Best of luck dude! We need people like you do things like these!
Indeed! it used to be great. Before they went all out commercial.
I can't wait for you to leave slashdot.
People have such ridiculously selective memories about Alta Vista. Yes, it was once awesome, but it sucked because it had no search algorithm, it just matched keywords. This worked fine at first, but people (and by people I mean porn sites) pretty quickly learned that all it took to game the system was to put huge blocks of tiny text at the bottom of every page containing every keyword they could think of. Pretty soon, it didn't matter what you searched for, you got back the same 10 porn sites. So yes, Google became better than Alta Vista, because they figured out a system that was at least marginally difficult to game.
After or as they bought out deja news....
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Where he will teach super-human reasoning courses like "LMGTFY 101" and "Your Way With Eels 510".
I thought it was a one-man show.
I'd class Google as a saint compared to Mother Teresa, who ...
The new Reverend Dr Hyde I presume.
Religion says that conformity trumps individual sovereignty, and Mother Teresa was true to those beliefs.
Anarchy says that individual sovereignty trumps conformity, and Ghandi was true to those beliefs.
I know which one of these two icons I look up to.
Oh, if I only had mod points.
This guy is leaving for a good cause and all, but I've noticed a pattern of Google employees leaving lately. Even newer recruits don't seem to stay long. I wonder if they've taken the fun out of working there? Obviously, something has changed. It can't be the computing problems, because they still have huge challenges.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Obviously rats leaving a syncing ship :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Gandhi was a dick! I used to party with him, and he would just do a bunch of coke, drink whiskey, call people on the phone trying to start fights, and then pass out on the couch. Sometimes he would make it out of the house to finish the dispute he started on the phone with one of his neighbors, but that was rare. One time he totaled a car in reverse in the fucking driveway! WTF?! It was kinda fun to party with him, if you could get the fuck out of there when the police came. Good times.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I used to use Alta Vista as my main search engine, back when they supported boolean queries (the "NEAR" keyword!). When they dropped that capability, I abandoned them.
I'd completely forgotten about that, it was quite useful. Are there any modern search engines that support a NEAR-type search parameter?
Khan uses the oldest educational technique in the book- the demonstration lecture. Its just packaged better. First someone who clearly explains it. Second in a right-length chunk of a few minutes, not a forced 60 minutes. And on demand, anywhere, not on a schedule at a certain location. And almost free, after it is done the first couple of times.
People have been trying a half century to properly use television and computers in education. This seems to be one of the better results.
I got an interview with Google in 1999, and I had the opportunity to have lunch with Craig. He never mentioned to me that he was the 1st employee at the time.
I do remember what he asked me. I was interviewing for the job of initializing their QA department. He asked me how I would look for problems in an indexer that stored MILLIONS (ha) of pages. I had to ask what exactly an indexer was.
On the way out, I spent too much time flirting with the hot red head they had at the front desk, and Larry walked by and saw what I was doing. I don't think that's why I didn't get the job though.
DAMMMMMNN I wish I got that job!!!!!!!!
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
There. Fixed that for you. No, seriously. I'm not kidding.
I like it!
i really hope someone at Google screamed "Khaaaaaaan!" if for nothing else than effect.
Does anyone know?
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
I used alta vista in high school. A teacher told me I should use yahoo instead "because real people are indexing that, so it's better."
Authorities were later called to Google HQ to dislodge a chair from the windshield of Sergey Brinn's Ferrari out in the parking lot, and a glass company was immediately called in to repair the window.
She believed that pain was a good thing and poverty should not be eliminated? That's not exactly unsaintlike. Maybe a bit more pessimistic than many of us comparatively wealthy and healthy would want to admit to ourselves, but I imagine that dealing with the sick and dying every day would make one re-evaluate the human condition.
As far as not giving out painkillers in her hospitals, maybe she should have, but I think it's hard to make the case that she was providing something worse than the alternative. I don't think it's fair to say "This person was trying to do something good, but she should have been doing it better, so it's not good."
Try DuckDuckGo
Pretty soon, it didn't matter what you searched for, you got back the same 10 porn sites.
You know, I think I only got a porn link from an Alta Vista search if I was explicitly searching for porn. At least, that was in the days when it had boolean search criteria, which I almost always used (e.g. "Fractional NEAR (differintegral OR calculus)"). Maybe it went even further downhill than I thought after they abandoned the boolean query.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I can't wait for you to leave slashdot.
Does that mean that you are intent on leaving Slashdot before he leaves?
Ezekiel 23:20
I never saw that, but I believe you.
Apparently my 2nd year calculus professor believed in this model. He assigned sections to read from the textbook and exercises to do as homework. Homework was collected at the beginning of class and then he lectured on the topics covered in those sections. He wanted us to be "prepared and qualified" to listen to his lecture. He announced this approach on day 1 of class, half the students immediately dropped his class and signed up with a different professor. Too bad, I did better in 2nd year calculus than I did in 1st. He made us work hard and we enjoyed greater success as a result.
I remember when Alta Vista came out with natural language searches. You could ask it What's the name of President Clinton's cat? And it would give you links for where to buy socks.
The thing I remember about alta vista is that when I searched for "UDP proxy", for example, all I got was a hundred pr0n links without a single link to anything actually relating to UDP or proxying. I think it was just about then when I switched to google.
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
Something reasonable from a dotcom millionaire? Not a hobby electric car company or Space Nutter delusions?
One of my high school classmates posted a creative writing piece with nothing to do with porn on our school's server. But for some reason he named it "I like pornography on the internet." The page got several hits a day from Alta Vista and others for people searching "pornography," so apparently it wasn't to hard to game the people gaming the system.