Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering
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Re: Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering
#2There's a number of things that have happened in the organic search area of Google that seem to suggest a declining interest in quality organic results.
There's Matt Cutts' long leave of absence, his departure, and the announcement that he's not really being replaced. A much lower volume of communication from Google on initiatives in the space (they used to talk endlessly about Panda, Penguin, etc). Amit's original reason for departure was "his next journey will involve philanthropy"..that seems to have changed.
My guess is that two things are driving the declining interest...
a) The marketshare battle is done. Google won. No competition.
b) Their various initiatives to push organic results down the fold (more ads, knowledge graph, various widgets, and so forth) has made the quality of the organic results not as important. Good enough is the target.
Re: Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering
#3Amit joining Uber after a year's break coincides with the common "1 year no-solicitation" clause in employment contracts. I wonder if we are about to see some top people in Google get poached. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Re: Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering
#4There's a number of things that have happened in the organic search area of Google that seem to suggest a declining interest in quality organic results. There's Matt Cutts' long leave of absence, his departure, and the announcement that he's not really being replaced. A much lower volume of communication from Google on initiatives in the space (they used to talk endlessly about Panda, Penguin, etc). Amit's original r…
A much lower volume of communication from Google on initiatives in the space (they used to talk endlessly about Panda, Penguin, etc).
I hear that Google search has largely moved to machine learning techniques. When I was there in 2005-2009 there was a bunch of hand-tuned stuff, and hand-tuning was definitely Amit's preferred strategy at the time. One side effect might be that a machine learning black box has fewer big, externally-perceptible shifts. It also just might require less ongoing interesting engineering work. Hard to say, though.
Re: Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering
#5I'm really confused on what to think about Uber. My personal thinking/logic is really bearish on them, similar to the post on the front page yesterday [1]. However, I keep seeing extremely smart/accomplished people joining it which makes me second guess my intuition.
Re: Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering
#6This statement -- “Those computer science challenges for a computer science geek are just intriguing – you give a geek a puzzle, they can’t drop it; they need to solve the puzzle. That’s how it felt to me.”
When I've been asked what keeps me going this is it, I really like interesting puzzles and I'm sitting there stuck trying to solve it.
It also says a bit about what Uber thinks their big problems are (or where their value add will be). I was expecting them to go with someone more operations focused like Urs Hoezle.
Re: Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering
#7Amit joining Uber after a year's break coincides with the common "1 year no-solicitation" clause in employment contracts. I wonder if we are about to see some top people in Google get poached. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Hope so. I guess last exodus was in 2012 when top people like Marissa Mayer and her reports got poached.
Re: Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering
#8There's a number of things that have happened in the organic search area of Google that seem to suggest a declining interest in quality organic results. There's Matt Cutts' long leave of absence, his departure, and the announcement that he's not really being replaced. A much lower volume of communication from Google on initiatives in the space (they used to talk endlessly about Panda, Penguin, etc). Amit's original r…
A much lower volume of communication from Google on initiatives in the space (they used to talk endlessly about Panda, Penguin, etc). I hear that Google search has largely moved to machine learning techniques. When I was there in 2005-2009 there was a bunch of hand-tuned stuff, and hand-tuning was definitely Amit's preferred strategy at the time. One side effect might be that a machine learning black box has fewer bi…
Both Panda and Penguin were machine learning, and definitely had externally perceptible shifts. But, you're right, perhaps they've figured out how to do that with less disruption.
Edit: I wonder if Amit changed his tune regarding machine learning, at least for his new space.
Re: Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering
#9I'm really confused on what to think about Uber. My personal thinking/logic is really bearish on them, similar to the post on the front page yesterday [1]. However, I keep seeing extremely smart/accomplished people joining it which makes me second guess my intuition. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13437414
Big $$ talk loud
Re: Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering
#10I'm really confused on what to think about Uber. My personal thinking/logic is really bearish on them, similar to the post on the front page yesterday [1]. However, I keep seeing extremely smart/accomplished people joining it which makes me second guess my intuition. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13437414
Big $$ talk loud
not sure how they treat people like him but for the average engineer they don't pay great and want to force you take take equity instead of $$. really hope Amit is getting pure cash out of this deal.
edit: also, im pretty sure google pay him big money.