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Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

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Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#41

Post by kls »

zheng wrote: post #34
kls wrote: post #28

I can't help but feel like this is the equivalent event of Ballmer throwing the chair. It's good to have decent among a company so long as it is promoted in a healthy manner, having employees grumble about it at the water cooler only serves to infect the ranks but promoting an open forum where any person can decent and others can rebut allows people to at least understand why the decision where made. In some manner t…

Not to nitpick, but it's "dissent". I learned the hard way ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3262893 )

Thank You for the info, I have a very bad form of dyslexia (among some other related issues) which lent to early childhood issues, with spelling and English related subject, which to this day plague me when writing. As such I have to heavily rely on the spell checker. One of the reason I post is to keep my ability to write up to at least sub-par.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#42

Post by bjdixon »

Arelius wrote: post #13
bjdixon wrote: post #2

So, what are people using as alternatives these days? I use gmail, google talk and google.com exclusively for email, chat and search. If (for arguments sake) I wanted to switch what is there of similar quality that still be around and relevant in 3 or 4 years?

Google talk is pretty replaceable with many other jabber based servers, and clients, and enough variance that you can generally find a solution that works best for you. afaict, Jabber messages can cross from and too the standard google talk jabber domains. Search, I still find myself using google from time to time, but my default search is duckduckgo, this is greatly helped due to the fact that it's simple to search…

yeah, I can deal with the jabber client, I'll try ddg, but gmail is kinda sticky =) Maybe I'll roll my own or something. I guess I know what I like, right?

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#43

Post by bishnu »

moocow01 wrote: post #26

Ah yes... and everybody thought Google was immune to the tech company lifecycle. My guess is this is where the downslide begins (which will probably be decades for a company of Google's size). I've seen this play out in small and large companies alike ... once the business model gets solidified and turns into a cash cow all the execs go into defense mode which manifest itself in a number of ways but my way or the hig…

Well in this case they're sacrificing their cash cow (search) for a social network that is optimistically 1/10th the size of Facebook. I would argue the precise opposite is happening here - SPYW represents an effort to innovate, and nobody is getting "complacent". Whether or not it's too radical is another story.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#44

Post by brightghost »

Kylekramer wrote: post #20

It is quite the jump from “This is the path we’re headed down – a single unified, ‘beautiful’ product across everything. If you don’t get that, then you should probably work somewhere else" to "Agree with SPYW or GTFO". One is an admirable goal for a whale of a company and the other is a stubborn denial of contrary opinions. I thought Pando Daily was suppose to be a "different" tech news site.

Yeah, the quote seems pretty clearly to be in reference to Google Plus in general and the universal toolbar and redesigns they've been rolling out, not the social search results specifically. Pretty misleading article.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#45

Post by jsnell »

Kylekramer wrote: post #20

It is quite the jump from “This is the path we’re headed down – a single unified, ‘beautiful’ product across everything. If you don’t get that, then you should probably work somewhere else" to "Agree with SPYW or GTFO". One is an admirable goal for a whale of a company and the other is a stubborn denial of contrary opinions. I thought Pando Daily was suppose to be a "different" tech news site.

That depends totally on the context (what question was that an answer to, how much ranting had there been on other internal fora before that, what was the tone of the answer, etc).

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#47

Post by kls »

Aloisius wrote: post #35
pg wrote: post #3

You don't have to get a job at another company. You could also start your own.

Serious question: have there been any success stories of ex-Googlers starting their own companies? I've been under the impression that the few that have had successful exits were bought by Google itself, mostly as talent acquisitions.

I don't know about profitability but some of them have exited to companies other than Google, in this list: http://mashable.com/2010/08/26/ex-googler-startups/

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#48

Post by pg »

Aloisius wrote: post #35
pg wrote: post #3

You don't have to get a job at another company. You could also start your own.

Serious question: have there been any success stories of ex-Googlers starting their own companies? I've been under the impression that the few that have had successful exits were bought by Google itself, mostly as talent acquisitions.

Twitter and Foursquare are fairly prominent examples, though in both cases the founders were people who became Google employees when their previous startups were acquired.

Among startups we've funded, I know at least Greplin, Optimizely, Appjet, and ReMail have/had founders who previously worked at Google. I'm sure there are at least that many more, but I don't remember where most of the people we funded worked before.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#49

Post by paul »

Aloisius wrote: post #35
pg wrote: post #3

You don't have to get a job at another company. You could also start your own.

Serious question: have there been any success stories of ex-Googlers starting their own companies? I've been under the impression that the few that have had successful exits were bought by Google itself, mostly as talent acquisitions.

Big success takes longer to be visible since early acquisitions are typically small. I think weatherbill is doing very well, and there are quite a few promising yc companies started by former Googlers (such as optimizely). And of course 2/3 of the Twitter founders were previously at Google. I might also mention FriendFeed :)

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#50

Post by tedsuo »

cbs wrote: post #37

Guys, unless you're actually a player, save yourself the headache and don't get caught up in this little valley tiff. I think SPYW is dumb, but google is trying something to improve search results, it happens to use data that they have on the user. I don't think they need permission from everyone in the valley with a sign-in service they can't crawl before they're allowed to make changes that are meant to improve sea…

“Most portals show their own content above content elsewhere on the web. We feel that’s a conflict of interest, analogous to taking money for search results. Their search engine doesn’t necessarily provide the best results; it provides the portal’s results. Google conscientiously tries to stay away from that. We want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible. It’s a very different model.”

-Larry Page, 2004

I think it is important to note that google is straying from their original mission, intentionally or not.

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