You said: > Sure. Google is profitable, but the bulk of it's revenue stream comes from a single source - web advertising.
I used to think this was a problem, but I don't think it is anymore. There are many industries with a single revenue stream - Toyota for example. Or TV - yes, TV, it's all advertiser supported - a single revenue stream supporting hundreds and thousands of channels, with a zillion employees and so on. All dependent on a single revenue stream.
While I suppose your point was that Google's revenue stream is a source of weakness due to it's concentrated point, have you thought that perhaps it's a source of strength? Without multiple revenue streams to protect and tend to, Google is able to be much more focused on improving the one it has.
As for the innovators dilemma, I'm sure some people down in Mountain View have read it, and worry about that particular scenario 24/7.
Whatever, as a non left or right person, I ask you - why has the US turned in to the soviet union? Remember the movie "The Hunt for Red October" where the first mate was talking about defecting to America and thinking how amazing it would be to drive state to state without papers.
While there isn't border checkpoints between states yet, it doesn't seem so far fetched does it?
On the subject of the DHS non-border checks, what happens to those who are unable to prove their legal status in the US because they don't have their paperwork? That pretty much includes anyone who wasn't born in the US, including legally naturalized citizens.
So left, right, who cares - there are bigger problems here.
You are incorrect - Canadians on H1-B status are not required to get a visa. A Visa is a stamp (now a holographic decal the size of an entire page) you get at a US embassy in your home country. Canadians only require proof of their H1-B status, which is essentially just a I94 card.
The other question is, if you are a Canadian in the US on a H1-B you don't carry your passport with you. So what happens if you get pulled over by one of those? Do you get arrested?
That is a damn lie and you know it. 15 minutes away = 2 miles away in redmond - the traffic is not good, also once you hit the freeways you are fucked. Ever heard of the 520 bridge? I405? I5 north, I5 south?
Seattle has very crappy rush hour traffic, so much so that the WSDOT has built one of the most sophisticated road monitoring networks and displays in the country: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/traffic/seattle/
- the IPO filing prospectus said this - we are after the long term, don't expect us to optimize for short term gains. - A/B class structure. Google insiders hold 95%+ of the voting power
that's pretty sweet. Mostly not concerned about privacy - this is no different than say, flickr geotagging. It's not real time, it's not video, so we're good.
What you think your job is, and what your actual job is are two quite different things. Traditional software 'methodology' is bunk and doesn't work - this is why you are confused.
You think it works like this: - User knows what they want - They write it down - You...? - Programmers implement it (probably wrongly)
If you consider your job more like an architect, then you will see the flow is really more like:
- Users think they know what they want (maybe) - They can tell you what they DONT want - You interpret their needs/desires in to a design and spec - Programmers implement it (probably wrongly, but nothing is perfect)
If you think about what architects do for their clients, they figure out roughly what the client wants (house, building, garden, etc) and various parameters specified and unspecified in fuzzy things (building code, safety margins, design principles, aesthetics, etc). They then produce a number of different designs and design ideas to run past the client. Iterate a few times and then once they have sign off, build it.
If you were required to write some 300 page doc about the house you want, you'd be finding a new architect. Likewise, make life easy on your customers. I'm sure they have pre-existing documents and references regarding the accounting rules they need implemented (I assume you are familiar with accounting - if not, why the hell are you building it?!). But as for the UI and other software design features, most people just want something that (a) works (b) well (c) usable (d) does what they need. Meaning, don't ask for label or window placement.
If you have a RAD tool such as interface builder on OS X then you can create semi-functional mocks easily. I'm sure.NET has something similar.
The US has a very unfair tax system. If you are an American citizen, then you pay taxes on ALL your income, regardless of where you were when you earned it, where you lived, who paid you, etc, etc. Meaning those citizens who have moved out of the country for various reasons continue to pay american taxes, despite not being in the US. As a counter example, as a Canadian no longer residing in Canada, I pay the Canadian government 0 taxes. I am not using services, hence I don't pay.
As for the Google case, I believe the Irish office is an IP generating office - they have an engineering office there, and engineering jobs for hire (search for it). Ask yourself: should Google pay US taxes for revenue and value created in Ireland?
This what the core of the article is about. The Ireland office is contributing to the value of Google, hence it's only fair that Google pays taxes to Ireland (if you were in ireland you'd think so). At the same time, double taxation is generally considered unfair, so what's your beef?
As to why you can't get this benefit? Well, you don't get the benefit of being able to fly whenever you want, so why not complain about that instead?
I wish I had modpoints - I am interested in this question as well.
Specifically, the rise of safer highly concurrent languages such as Erlang that provide a different concurrent approach, would you reconsider the use of stackless python if you were doing Eve all over again?
have you ever thought that your "listening tastes" actually diminish the music for you? I dont constantly hear these differences, and I enjoy the music just as much as you. In fact, I enjoy it better, because I am not driven to post to slashdot about how much mp3 and aac sucks.
Do you think your description would also fit Yahoo? They seem to make most of their money via their advertisement system - their other services don't really make much profit - maybe yahoo mail could be profitable (don't know), but I don't know.
Also, what about TV networks - they are basically just advertising agency with video production on the side.
You forgot to mention the BIGGEST difference between Google today and those exuberant failing dot-coms - Google has a strong revenue stream, with good growth, and a technically superior product. *shrug* I guess it isn't enough.
Have you thought what you are seeing isn't dot-com, but the technical culture of the valley?
PS: Anyone who uses code coverage measures it on at least a per-statement basis, preferably finer-grained than that. That's not really a big surprise.
I think 24 is a profoundly disturbing show. I think in this 'terrorism is war' mentality, whre people think anything goes, and anything works, 24 has convinced america that torture can work.
Lets just put it this way, Mossad gave up on torture. If they can't make it work, no one can.
As you should know, in the 1970s there was concern that the world's population would grow faster than the food supply. Well in the years since, farm production has improved it's yield while also less individuals work in the field now.
So pray what would adding more people to the farm industry do again?
Also, it might not be more efficient to provide capital investment directly from the government. It is fairly safe to assume there will always be more people looking for an investment than dollars to provide it. Now you need an army that researches the applicants, decides who gets what, and finally chases after people who don't pay.
Perhaps we can get the financial industry to do this, they are recently out of work and have the needed expertise.
Thus, I have demonstrated (at least in my mind) that the financial industry does serve a purpose - choosing and providing capitol investments. It may not always be efficient or equal, but neither would the system you are proposing either.
I've never worked in those major corporations, but I've worked in 2 others, and that is now how we did business.
Rules: - NEVER give feedback to the interviewee during the interview. - Dont answer any questions from people you've already interviewed - refer them to the recruiter.
The reasons is you want to leave people with a good impression of the company. Flying off the handle at their missing/poor/weak skills/whatever is not good. Also there are issues regarding lawsuits and discrimination and all of that. As someone else noted, having "too much experience in X" is considered age discriminatory which IS illegal.
Just leave it all for the recruiters. Interviewers generally avoid post-interview contact as much as possible.
The system doesn't provide much accountability, but hey, it's not like a legal court.
This comment is particularly hilarious in it's lack of history.
The point of the mac mini is everyone was bitching that all low-cost Macs CAME with displays (old bondi iMac for example), and if you wanted a non-display option you'd have to get the expensive powermac.
So what does Apple do, they create the mac mini to address those complaints.
And then you, who complain that it doesn't come with a monitor.
If they created your $1000 expandable box, then next year I can look forward to a posting claiming it is either too expensive, not upgradable enough (I can't upgrade the CPU! WAH!), or that it does/doesn't/shouldn't/couldn't have/want/need a monitor/keyboard/mouse.
Finally, the mac mini works great for many users. You are probably not one of those users. Deal with it.
PS: As for their equipment appealing to enterprise - who in the enterprise are you suggesting? At my work (most definitely an "enterprise"), about 30-50% of the people I see are schlepping a mac book pro around. The reason why they have it is because the company had the vision to provide the platform people were asking for. How is equipment not appealing to this enterprise?
TCP has been improved since it was originally created. Any good network technology course will expose you to this. BSD was innovative because it significantly improved TCP performance both between BSD hosts and non-BSD hosts.
As a small example, take TCP slow-start. Or TCP window adjustment based on ping. None of those things were in the original TCP spec.
To say that TCP is a 30-year old technology as if there was no significant improvement is more than a bit of a misnomer.
As for OSI - I'm going to take a internet position - show me a working, viable implementation. You can't anymore. The problem was all OSI implementations were proprietery, erasing any advantage they _might_ have held over TCP/IP. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are SNA and DCE.
You are not correct - newer intel macs no longer ship with TPM due to cost reasons. This really made some people unhappy because the TPM can do some interesting crypto things, like generating true random numbers. Someone did an analysis and wrote some software, it is here:
The important take aways are: - TPM on Macs are NOT used to tie OSX to Apple hardware - TPM module is not even used by OSX in any capacity - TPM is user-controllable/hackable to perform what you want - TPM is not available on all intel macs.
while i agree with you about the move to rental/leasing instead of ownership...
on the water bottle front, most water bottles are made from a plastic that cannot withstand multiple uses. Especially heat. The plastic starts releasing components into the water.
You've probably heard about polymer estrogens that are causing problems for people. This is that!
You are aware that the original post is about AdWords?
As for not making money on AdSense - are you not paid for the CLICKS? That you only got 5 clicks in 400,000 impressions is not necessairly google's fault. Now if you had some comment re: the quality of placed ads, then there might be something to talk about.
I think it's important to realize that the adwords system is not just a straightforward action model. The overture model is straight auction, which is why adwords is superior to overture - the highest bidder does NOT always win.
A critical piece of any adwords auction is the click thru rate, aks CTR. Any experienced adwords advertiser knows that their CTR is the most valuable aspect of their ad. A higher CTR ensures you pay _LESS_ per click (even if your bid is higher), and the ranking algorithm uses relevancy, as measured by CTR as a major indicator of what should be first.
Simply put, even Google can't bid their ads to #1 position. If Google's own ads are doing well and are in the #1 position, then it is because they are more relevant than the other ads.
So to characterize it as google using unlimited "funny money" to permanently secure #1 advertiser spot is just simply wrong.
you also don't understand how the ranking of ads in pages works either. You cannot pay for the top position, end of story. An critical aspect is the click thru rate, without a good CTR no matter how much you bid you will be forced lower and lower and eventually off the sponsored links altogether.
The brilliance of the adwords system is the dependency of CTR - essentally relevance. Ads which have high CTR have high relevancy and thus are positioned better and those advertisers pay _less_. Don't believe me? Open an adwords account and play with it. About $10-20 total should give you enough time to figure out how it works.
But surely this is true for everything right? Someone would have eventually invented the . Transistor, DNA sequencing, etc... why give Turing any accolades? Someone would have eventually done what now seems so obvious.
Except at the time, text ads were not obvious. *shrug*
As for Google's product being ads... what is NBC's product? CBS's product? Ads or tv shows?
Slashdot Mirror
You said:
> Sure. Google is profitable, but the bulk of it's revenue stream comes from a single source - web advertising.
I used to think this was a problem, but I don't think it is anymore. There are many industries with a single revenue stream - Toyota for example. Or TV - yes, TV, it's all advertiser supported - a single revenue stream supporting hundreds and thousands of channels, with a zillion employees and so on. All dependent on a single revenue stream.
While I suppose your point was that Google's revenue stream is a source of weakness due to it's concentrated point, have you thought that perhaps it's a source of strength? Without multiple revenue streams to protect and tend to, Google is able to be much more focused on improving the one it has.
As for the innovators dilemma, I'm sure some people down in Mountain View have read it, and worry about that particular scenario 24/7.
Whatever, as a non left or right person, I ask you - why has the US turned in to the soviet union? Remember the movie "The Hunt for Red October" where the first mate was talking about defecting to America and thinking how amazing it would be to drive state to state without papers.
While there isn't border checkpoints between states yet, it doesn't seem so far fetched does it?
On the subject of the DHS non-border checks, what happens to those who are unable to prove their legal status in the US because they don't have their paperwork? That pretty much includes anyone who wasn't born in the US, including legally naturalized citizens.
So left, right, who cares - there are bigger problems here.
You are incorrect - Canadians on H1-B status are not required to get a visa. A Visa is a stamp (now a holographic decal the size of an entire page) you get at a US embassy in your home country. Canadians only require proof of their H1-B status, which is essentially just a I94 card.
The other question is, if you are a Canadian in the US on a H1-B you don't carry your passport with you. So what happens if you get pulled over by one of those? Do you get arrested?
"traffic isn't really that bad around [here]"
That is a damn lie and you know it. 15 minutes away = 2 miles away in redmond - the traffic is not good, also once you hit the freeways you are fucked. Ever heard of the 520 bridge? I405? I5 north, I5 south?
Seattle has very crappy rush hour traffic, so much so that the WSDOT has built one of the most sophisticated road monitoring networks and displays in the country: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/traffic/seattle/
People are forgetting 2 things:
- the IPO filing prospectus said this - we are after the long term, don't expect us to optimize for short term gains.
- A/B class structure. Google insiders hold 95%+ of the voting power
that's pretty sweet. Mostly not concerned about privacy - this is no different than say, flickr geotagging. It's not real time, it's not video, so we're good.
What you think your job is, and what your actual job is are two quite different things. Traditional software 'methodology' is bunk and doesn't work - this is why you are confused.
.NET has something similar.
You think it works like this:
- User knows what they want
- They write it down
- You...?
- Programmers implement it (probably wrongly)
If you consider your job more like an architect, then you will see the flow is really more like:
- Users think they know what they want (maybe)
- They can tell you what they DONT want
- You interpret their needs/desires in to a design and spec
- Programmers implement it (probably wrongly, but nothing is perfect)
If you think about what architects do for their clients, they figure out roughly what the client wants (house, building, garden, etc) and various parameters specified and unspecified in fuzzy things (building code, safety margins, design principles, aesthetics, etc). They then produce a number of different designs and design ideas to run past the client. Iterate a few times and then once they have sign off, build it.
If you were required to write some 300 page doc about the house you want, you'd be finding a new architect. Likewise, make life easy on your customers. I'm sure they have pre-existing documents and references regarding the accounting rules they need implemented (I assume you are familiar with accounting - if not, why the hell are you building it?!). But as for the UI and other software design features, most people just want something that (a) works (b) well (c) usable (d) does what they need. Meaning, don't ask for label or window placement.
If you have a RAD tool such as interface builder on OS X then you can create semi-functional mocks easily. I'm sure
The US has a very unfair tax system. If you are an American citizen, then you pay taxes on ALL your income, regardless of where you were when you earned it, where you lived, who paid you, etc, etc. Meaning those citizens who have moved out of the country for various reasons continue to pay american taxes, despite not being in the US. As a counter example, as a Canadian no longer residing in Canada, I pay the Canadian government 0 taxes. I am not using services, hence I don't pay.
As for the Google case, I believe the Irish office is an IP generating office - they have an engineering office there, and engineering jobs for hire (search for it). Ask yourself: should Google pay US taxes for revenue and value created in Ireland?
This what the core of the article is about. The Ireland office is contributing to the value of Google, hence it's only fair that Google pays taxes to Ireland (if you were in ireland you'd think so). At the same time, double taxation is generally considered unfair, so what's your beef?
As to why you can't get this benefit? Well, you don't get the benefit of being able to fly whenever you want, so why not complain about that instead?
Any hospital that is using whatever Dell or HP or any vendor has pre-installed on a box is being irresponsible.
Those Dells should have been wiped and had a secure configuration reloaded. Yeeeesh
What hospital are you at, so I can avoid it?
Let Eve Online forever be a warning to those who would use Direct X and Direct 3D.
This is probably why carmack is a big OpenGL head.
I wish I had modpoints - I am interested in this question as well.
Specifically, the rise of safer highly concurrent languages such as Erlang that provide a different concurrent approach, would you reconsider the use of stackless python if you were doing Eve all over again?
have you ever thought that your "listening tastes" actually diminish the music for you? I dont constantly hear these differences, and I enjoy the music just as much as you. In fact, I enjoy it better, because I am not driven to post to slashdot about how much mp3 and aac sucks.
Is your quality of life better mister audiophile?
not true - you can retrieve your gmail emails via pop3 without emptying your inbox.
Do you think your description would also fit Yahoo? They seem to make most of their money via their advertisement system - their other services don't really make much profit - maybe yahoo mail could be profitable (don't know), but I don't know.
Also, what about TV networks - they are basically just advertising agency with video production on the side.
You forgot to mention the BIGGEST difference between Google today and those exuberant failing dot-coms - Google has a strong revenue stream, with good growth, and a technically superior product. *shrug* I guess it isn't enough.
Have you thought what you are seeing isn't dot-com, but the technical culture of the valley?
PS: Anyone who uses code coverage measures it on at least a per-statement basis, preferably finer-grained than that. That's not really a big surprise.
I think 24 is a profoundly disturbing show. I think in this 'terrorism is war' mentality, whre people think anything goes, and anything works, 24 has convinced america that torture can work.
Lets just put it this way, Mossad gave up on torture. If they can't make it work, no one can.
As you should know, in the 1970s there was concern that the world's population would grow faster than the food supply. Well in the years since, farm production has improved it's yield while also less individuals work in the field now.
So pray what would adding more people to the farm industry do again?
Also, it might not be more efficient to provide capital investment directly from the government. It is fairly safe to assume there will always be more people looking for an investment than dollars to provide it. Now you need an army that researches the applicants, decides who gets what, and finally chases after people who don't pay.
Perhaps we can get the financial industry to do this, they are recently out of work and have the needed expertise.
Thus, I have demonstrated (at least in my mind) that the financial industry does serve a purpose - choosing and providing capitol investments. It may not always be efficient or equal, but neither would the system you are proposing either.
I've never worked in those major corporations, but I've worked in 2 others, and that is now how we did business.
Rules:
- NEVER give feedback to the interviewee during the interview.
- Dont answer any questions from people you've already interviewed - refer them to the recruiter.
The reasons is you want to leave people with a good impression of the company. Flying off the handle at their missing/poor/weak skills/whatever is not good. Also there are issues regarding lawsuits and discrimination and all of that. As someone else noted, having "too much experience in X" is considered age discriminatory which IS illegal.
Just leave it all for the recruiters. Interviewers generally avoid post-interview contact as much as possible.
The system doesn't provide much accountability, but hey, it's not like a legal court.
This comment is particularly hilarious in it's lack of history.
The point of the mac mini is everyone was bitching that all low-cost Macs CAME with displays (old bondi iMac for example), and if you wanted a non-display option you'd have to get the expensive powermac.
So what does Apple do, they create the mac mini to address those complaints.
And then you, who complain that it doesn't come with a monitor.
If they created your $1000 expandable box, then next year I can look forward to a posting claiming it is either too expensive, not upgradable enough (I can't upgrade the CPU! WAH!), or that it does/doesn't/shouldn't/couldn't have/want/need a monitor/keyboard/mouse.
Finally, the mac mini works great for many users. You are probably not one of those users. Deal with it.
PS: As for their equipment appealing to enterprise - who in the enterprise are you suggesting? At my work (most definitely an "enterprise"), about 30-50% of the people I see are schlepping a mac book pro around. The reason why they have it is because the company had the vision to provide the platform people were asking for. How is equipment not appealing to this enterprise?
TCP has been improved since it was originally created. Any good network technology course will expose you to this. BSD was innovative because it significantly improved TCP performance both between BSD hosts and non-BSD hosts.
As a small example, take TCP slow-start. Or TCP window adjustment based on ping. None of those things were in the original TCP spec.
To say that TCP is a 30-year old technology as if there was no significant improvement is more than a bit of a misnomer.
As for OSI - I'm going to take a internet position - show me a working, viable implementation. You can't anymore. The problem was all OSI implementations were proprietery, erasing any advantage they _might_ have held over TCP/IP. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are SNA and DCE.
You are not correct - newer intel macs no longer ship with TPM due to cost reasons. This really made some people unhappy because the TPM can do some interesting crypto things, like generating true random numbers. Someone did an analysis and wrote some software, it is here:
http://www.osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter10/tpm/
The important take aways are:
- TPM on Macs are NOT used to tie OSX to Apple hardware
- TPM module is not even used by OSX in any capacity
- TPM is user-controllable/hackable to perform what you want
- TPM is not available on all intel macs.
while i agree with you about the move to rental/leasing instead of ownership...
on the water bottle front, most water bottles are made from a plastic that cannot withstand multiple uses. Especially heat. The plastic starts releasing components into the water.
You've probably heard about polymer estrogens that are causing problems for people. This is that!
You are aware that the original post is about AdWords?
As for not making money on AdSense - are you not paid for the CLICKS? That you only got 5 clicks in 400,000 impressions is not necessairly google's fault. Now if you had some comment re: the quality of placed ads, then there might be something to talk about.
I think it's important to realize that the adwords system is not just a straightforward action model. The overture model is straight auction, which is why adwords is superior to overture - the highest bidder does NOT always win.
A critical piece of any adwords auction is the click thru rate, aks CTR. Any experienced adwords advertiser knows that their CTR is the most valuable aspect of their ad. A higher CTR ensures you pay _LESS_ per click (even if your bid is higher), and the ranking algorithm uses relevancy, as measured by CTR as a major indicator of what should be first.
Simply put, even Google can't bid their ads to #1 position. If Google's own ads are doing well and are in the #1 position, then it is because they are more relevant than the other ads.
So to characterize it as google using unlimited "funny money" to permanently secure #1 advertiser spot is just simply wrong.
you also don't understand how the ranking of ads in pages works either. You cannot pay for the top position, end of story. An critical aspect is the click thru rate, without a good CTR no matter how much you bid you will be forced lower and lower and eventually off the sponsored links altogether.
The brilliance of the adwords system is the dependency of CTR - essentally relevance. Ads which have high CTR have high relevancy and thus are positioned better and those advertisers pay _less_. Don't believe me? Open an adwords account and play with it. About $10-20 total should give you enough time to figure out how it works.
But surely this is true for everything right? Someone would have eventually invented the . Transistor, DNA sequencing, etc... why give Turing any accolades? Someone would have eventually done what now seems so obvious.
Except at the time, text ads were not obvious. *shrug*
As for Google's product being ads... what is NBC's product? CBS's product? Ads or tv shows?