Steve's Google Platform rant

"Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don't get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call. One of the team members marched in and told me about it when they launched, and I asked: "So is it the Stalker API?" She got all glum and said "Yeah." I mean, I was joking, but no... the only API call we offer is to get someone's stream. So I guess the joke was on me.

Microsoft has known about the Dogfood rule for at least twenty years. It's been part of their culture for a whole generation now. You don't eat People Food and give your developers Dog Food. Doing that is simply robbing your long-term platform value for short-term successes. Platforms are all about long-term thinking.

Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that's not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there's something there for everyone.

Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: "Gosh, it looks like we need some games. Let's go contract someone to, um, write some games for us." Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now? The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them.

You can't do that. Not really. Not reliably. There have been precious few people in the world, over the entire history of computing, who have been able to do it reliably. Steve Jobs was one of them. We don't have a Steve Jobs here. I'm sorry, but we don't."

Interesting comment on Google+ as a platform. I love google products. There will be lots of innovation (gmail, google voice, g+ etc) if google provides good APIs to external developers and treat these APIs as first class citizens.

I still periodically try out some of the regression tests that I'd done back when I worked there... there are bugs that have been in the site for about 4 years now. I think when my team was reduced by %90 from people leaving, they just disbanded it and nobodies doing that work now. Certainly the major initiatives haven't moved forward.

I don't think Bezos has a technical background... I thought he was a hedge fund guy before moving out to Seattle. But I agree with everything else you said.

The funny thing was, when I got hired I was told that they were going to let people use Macs and that it would be a few months. I had my own laptop I was willing to bring in and use, and though they were trailing macs with a few people, I was told I'd be fired if I used my personal mac for work.

So, I had to use a piece of crap HP laptop. The thing was always in the shop. There were many days when I basically lost an entire days worth of work because it would break. They replaced it several times. (and I was babying it.. .it lived on my desk for the most part.)

So, not only could they have had zero costs by letting me use my own machine, but they lost more than the cost of the laptop several times over in lost productivity by me not being able to work when the machine they made me use was in the shop.

And when I left, they still hadn't approved macs (or maybe the IT department decided they were "too insecure" or some BS.)

While I was there, they were constantly starting initiatives and then abandoning them. Like the restaurant menus. The movie schedules. The scanning of mail order catalogs!? They'd start some project, do a press release, then disband the team and never advance the code again... it would just sit there and rot.

I think one of the reasons that most of management there is not technical is that non-technical people are threatened by technical people in that role. Technical people have quite an edge when managing programmers. I think engineers who express an interest in moving to a management role are often perceived as a threat.

Having worked for companies like this, I know exactly what you mean. Even the anger, 3-4 years after leaving one of them, is still there. It's a bit crazy, but then, this is somewhere you spend 1/2 of your waking life....

I just clicked on edit page, and gave 'steverant' as the password. Guess, what happened next. :P

The rant is absolute gold. It is well written, it's entertaining, it's funny, it's insightful. Most importantly, it's right (about platforms at least, and from what I've heard, about Amazon and Google's culture). It is as near to perfect as a rant can probably ever get.

I can see "What did you think of Steve's Google Platform rant" as an interview question.