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James Whittaker: Focus on Ads and 'Social' Destroying Google
theodp writes "In June 2009, Google welcomed James Whittaker as its newest Test Director. In February 2012, Whittaker rejoined Microsoft. On Tuesday, Whittaker explained why he left Google: 'The Google I was passionate about,' Whittaker writes, 'was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus ...The old Google was a great place to work. The new one? -1.' Welcome to the real world, quips CNET's Charles Cooper in response to Whittaker's still-awesome-even-if-a-tad-naive rant."
More from from his post: "It turns out that there was one place where the Google innovation machine faltered and that one place mattered a lot: competing with Facebook ... Google could still put ads in front of more people than Facebook, but Facebook knows so much more about those people. Advertisers and publishers cherish this kind of personal information ... Larry Page himself assumed command to right this wrong. Social became state-owned, a corporate mandate called Google+. It was an ominous name invoking the feeling that Google alone wasn't enough."
So he moved back to Microsoft? Huh? Don't get it.
Now he'll experience a "corporate mandate called $variable"
where $variable = { "the cloud" , "Windows 8" , "whatever marketing thinks up next" }
Who thinks they would have made that push into automated cars if they had the choice to rethink that today?
The whole company is getting focused on profits rather then innovation.
That might be valid. However, it might also be possible that the best way to ensure future profits is to take risks now on new ideas.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Exciting startup with a couple of people does exciting things, attracts excited developers because they can do exciting things.
Over time company gets big, has to worry about shareholders and lots of internal politics with growing levels of management.
Company is grown up, things slow down, life becomes boring, bored developers seeking excitement move on to next startup.
Are there any exceptions?
They have a bunch of failed experiments--Buzz, Wave, Health, Google wifi, and probably 100 others that died in the vetting rooms at Google.
They also have some stunning successes that started out as private projects within the company--Gmail, notably.
That's not a sign of a dying company--it's a refreshing sign of a company that dares to experiment and isn't afraid to fail occasionally.
So this guy retreats back to a safe, old-school software corporation--Microsoft. 25 years ago, Microsoft must have been an exciting place to work. Today, it's stodgy, rigid, backward thinking, corporate-focused, a follower and not a leader in most areas. He'll feel right at home in his safe, easy corporate 9-5 job.
Google reminds me of the old AT&T Bell Labs organization, where you were expected to put 25-50% of your time into your own projects. It wasn't for everybody; some people need to be basically told what to do 8 hours a day, while other people could feel free to create amazing (or stupid) things, and management just knew that sooner or later something useful would result.
The real question is, how does a large corporation preserve its startup mentality. You really can't, but at least you can try to make the place fun for people who are chasing new ideas all the time. Me, I'd work for GOOG any time. It would be a blast being around so many smart people!
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Man goes to a company with a delusion purported by tech media, saw the reality, then left because reality didn't match the delusion.
Happens all the time. Move along.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
James comes to us most recently from Microsoft. He has spent his career focusing on testing, building high quality products, and designing tools and process at the industrial scale.
Was he in charge of testing Vista?
So, why do we care what the QA Manager thinks about this? You don't often see a lot of innovation coming out of QA, but you see a lot of vague bitching about it with no offer of a solution.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
To keep the profits growing, you have to innovate because the copycats come fast; especially with a non-tangible product - like everything software related.
If they were strictly focused on profits, they'd be making cuts exclusively to boost their bottom line - like what 90% of corporate America has been doing in the last few years. But that's pretty much a one shot deal - it's a just a bump in profits: not growth. Hence, that is one of the reasons (Asian operations is another for some) why corporate America has record profits -cuts mostly people. Now, we have this very high unemployment rate that for the life of me, I don't see how it's going to abate anytime soon - regardless of who's in the Whitehouse next year.
Uh, i'm sorry, the rants about Google innovating too much are down the hall? Whittaker is complaining that Google _used_ to be innovative, but now they're not. He's claiming that they used to let the engineers spend 20% of their time on whatever they thought was cool, but now there's an ultimatum (it's not clear if it's official or not) that everything has to be subservient to the goal of pushing "social" and "sharing" in general and Google+ in particular or it gets thrown under the bus. He's not complaining that they're innovating too much, he's complaining that things like Google Labs and other experimental projects have been killed.
I know that not RTFA is considered the norm, but how did you manage to interpret even the blurb as the exact opposite of what it said? Or did you just assume that if two different parties complained about google within 24 hours then they must be complaining about the same thing?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Google should be all about advertising, because that is their only business which makes money: They made $35 billion or so last year on advertising, and $1.3B on everything else . Assuming 1 Billion on-line people, thats $35 a year for every man, woman, and child on the Internet.
And the way for more effective advertising is more effective stalking, err, profiling of people. Google is very good about tracking its users when there are advertisements, but was losing out to Facebook on non-advertising pages, thus the advent of +1.
It also explains a huge amount of the change in Google's privacy policy: before they would silo data, but now its all-inbounds. If its beneficial for them to data-mine your email (or email sent TO you from gmail users), including paid email accounts and to correlate it to the advertising tracking cookie for DoubleClick, they now can do it. Even services like Cloud Storage and App Engine are under Google's privacy policy. Fun, hu?
"Its hard to believe in a company that says 'Don't Be Evil' when they are busy firing a death ray"
Test your net with Netalyzr
the internet of the late 20th century and the first few years of the last decade was you go find the information you want. Google flourished because they were able to organize it better to make life easier for you.
Facebook, twitter and the rest of social is the new internet. You "like" or follow brands and then read the stream of their updates/news feed. sort of like a custom RSS feed. the point is that you no longer find the information, you are fed a stream of data. just like TV of the 20th century where you sit in front of a box and consume the content.
this is where google is having problems. the whole idea of fighting spam in gmail was to force those companies to use google for advertising. Yes, all the shady loan companies and no prescription drug companies used google almost 10 years ago to advertise. but with SEO the spam problem is coming back and the only way to solve it seems to be social where people crowd source the content filtering.
that's the whole point of Plus, to filter the content. but lately Plus is crap as well. Just a bunch of bloggers/internet oprahs and you are supposed to comment on how cool they are when they post something
What's immature about it? He called out the list of reasons that caused him to lose interest in working at Google, and he did it articulately. There was no name-calling or whining. Kudos to him for being honest and moving on.
Facebook is the new AOL
Google wants access to all the data, and that means selling as few turnkey systems as possible, because they want more people to outsource, which will inevitably lead to many of them outsourcing to google, at which point google can sniff through their data for their own purposes, whether nefarious or not.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You're correct, that's exactly what the article is saying. And the gp is correct about MSFT.
As a (recent) ex-employee I can testify that there is definitely nothing exciting or innovative about MSFT now, coupled with the age-old problem of thinking if it compiles then ship it (that's why I left). As far as products go, they're stuck in the backwaters of stale tech and middle management seems to be ok with it as long as the big dollar enterprise contracts are renewed.
Of course the research division is fine but outside of Kinect, very little ever seems to produce revenue. Employee morale is even lower than the Vista days which is amazing since Win8 isn't too bad. Larry Page had better hope that Google never comes close to being the type of company that Microsoft has devolved into over the last 10 years.
Bottom line is that absolutely nothing can save them from drifting into obscurity while Ballmer remains at the helm.
Let's call it a draw.
The CNet reply was immature, scarcely germane to the highlighted quotes to which Cooper was trying to respond, and very repetetive. I can't believe I read the entire thing. There's nothing wrong with lamenting a company for losing its character and transforming into something not resembling its former self. We all do this every day, almost every hour. "Things just aren't as good as they once were". Unless you're 15 years old, that sentiment rings true for most aspects of our lives. Let's face it, guy is just ticked this ex-Googler went to MS. So sick of this anti-MS bullshit. I use it and I get along just fine. You don't use it, you get a long just fine. It's not a fucking religious war here people, for God's sake we're supposed to be more intelligent and civil than the rest of the school, but we spend all our time in rant wars about god damn software we don't even use??
Rant? Please. I know ranting, and this isn't it. The guy didn't like his job, and a billion people were bugging him about it, so he tried to articulate his reasons. Maybe he didn't do a great job there, but trying to argue with somebody about the validity of personal decisions like why they chose one job or girl or car (yes, a girl is like a job and expensive possession all wrapped into one, deal with it. imaginary girl that may be reading this, you may substitute guy. unless you're gay, then don't. unless you're a gay guy, then do. and if you're bi, pick one or both depending on ... jesus christ I don't care. see, I told you I know ranting) is the very essence of immaturity. They're always going to be right--it was their decision. If it doesn't seem "right" to you, then you're just not able to get into their head well enough. Even if it ends up making them less happy in the end, they made the best decision they could with the information they had, which is their entire lifetime of experience.
The real rant is in the response. Somebody is all upset because somebody else left a company they don't even seem to like that much, but they're pursuing their own happiness and that just needs to be nipped in the bud. This is the real world! Things don't work that way! A company's gotta make money! Aristotle younger generation cliches!
Seriously? You're going to go there, but you don't realize that people rarely make solid arguments in defense of personal decisions? I guess if it's not something that's repeated a thousand times as if it's some sort of amazing insight that you can parrot, it's not worth thinking of on your own.
The greatest shows occur when the person being attacked for their decision doesn't realize that theirs wasn't the objectively correct one for everybody in the world, and tries to further defend their position as if it was. Increasingly specious arguments fly back and forth, people on both sides burrow further and further into their own heads, and the argument just gets weirder and weirder. The only way out of it short of running out of steam is for somebody to both realize what's happening and not care at all what either their opponent or spectators think, because all you can do is go, "it was my decision, I don't give a fuck what anybody thinks" and then stop defending yourself. Or, "wait, I'm trying to convince somebody that they aren't right about their own desires." Either one needs to just deal with everyone too wrapped up in the argument to realize that it's completely changed from where it started, thinking they "won". My prediction: Whittaker will have at least an intuitive understanding of this and shut up, the internet will continue to argue. Blog author will move onto a new inflammatory subject. But sometimes ... sometimes magic happens, and it escalates for everyone to see, until it explodes in some self-destructive chest-beating. On the internet, where it can be watched by everyone and remembered forever. Or until something else shiny and loud comes along.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Google could still put ads in front of more people than Facebook, but Facebook knows so much more about those people.
Knowing nothing of James Whittaker other than what is in the summary, and having not RTFA, I'll assume he is a very intelligent and successful person.
He is also missing the obvious (and he's not the only one).
Facebook knows more of what people want other people to know. Google knows about what is really going on with people. People lie in surveys, whether it's to say what they want to be true or what they think is expected. Facebook is like a survey you create yourself.
Facebook has your holiday photos, knows you've been to an island, like partying on the beach. Google knows you're reading up on herpes treatments.
Maybe Facebook knows you're married. Google knows you're trying to find a divorce attorney.
If Google is relying on + to compete with Facebook, it has already lost the battle.
Because, love them or hate them, Microsoft is a software company trying to apply engineering to diverse software problems.
Ultimately, they make their money through the sale of products, so their interests tend to align with their users'.
Google, on the other hand is an advertising company trying to apply engineering to, um, data mining algorithms; and acquiring start-up companies for the purpose of increasing data collection and improve the targeting of ads.
Ultimately, they make their money through better and more targeted advertising, so their interests tend to align with those of advertisers'.
-dZ.
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