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Why I Left Google

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Re: Why I Left Google

#81

Post by Tichy »

sbisker wrote: post #13
Tichy wrote: post #7

Weird choice to post such an article on msdn.com, of all places.

It's sort of a cultural thing amongst a lot of Microsoft employees, especially older ones (or in this case, ones that have returned), to run their blogs off of Microsoft's blogging platforms. In this regard, Microsoft's culture actually does a very good job of encouraging its employees to blog from the inside - I've never felt quite the level of direct engineer access and communication working on Google platforms as…

So he ran from Google to Microsoft because Google did not live up to his ideals anymore. I am not actually a Microsoft hater, but I'll take that story with a grain of salt.

Re: Why I Left Google

#83

Post by cooldeal »

ashishgandhi wrote: post #61
georgemcbay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the responses seem a bit harsh. Also as someone who never worked at Google but has been a pretty big Google "fanboy" (of the search, Google Apps, Android, etc) his waning enthusiasm for the brand as an employee seems to have taken a very similar dip to my waning enthusiasm for them as a user, though due to personal investment his dip was probably faster and deeper than my own. I've loved Google in the past pr…

A little off-topic. My comment is going to be anecdotal so it may very well be wrong and if yours has been a different experience I would love to hear about it. A lot of people love a company X because it's "not Apple" or sometimes "not Facebook". I don't get that. It's doesn't make any sense to me. You like something; in this case a company, because it has/does/stands for/makes certain things. Why do people like X j…

There are a lot of haters around, for example any link to http://winsupersite.com is hellbanned. I guess the anti-MS folks that abound here(mostly Apple and Google fans) have flagged the premier source of information about MS to death because they hate MS.

Re: Why I Left Google

#84

Post by cooldeal »

[deleted] wrote: post #78
jmduke wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html : "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

[deleted]

>But if you're able to get behind Google+ in the first place, and you're able to call a move from Google to Microsoft an improvement, it's a pretty safe bet there isn't an entrepreneurial bone in your body. And it's not as if the guy's a hacker, either. He's some kind of suit, or polo shirt at best.

I think it's pretty safe to bet that you don't like MS at all. There is a lot of cool stuff happening there and to paint a whole company like that and blame the guy here is a sure sign of this.

Not to say that there is a shortage of people like you here. After all http://winsupersite.com is hellbanned of HN, for the crime of being the premier site of new and inside info, probably due to flagging by people who are too invested in their biases.

Atleast MS (and Apple) for the most part take your money upfront and leave you alone, whereas Google likes to give away stuff for free to users and OEMs and then try to make it back by tracking you across the web. That is an improvement to some.

Re: Why I Left Google

#85

Post by spullara »

AmericanOP wrote: post #21

Google should focus on their product- the search bar. Google Plus Me should mean I can find anything of mine via the search bar. If I want to find a file on my computer, I should be able to search for it using google.com instead of spotlight. I should be able to do this even if I'm not on my normal machine. It's not just desktop files. If I want to show my dad pictures of my trip to Cabo, I shouldn't have to log into…

Here is some information on the product that did this that they launched in 2004: http://googledesktop.blogspot.com/

Re: Why I Left Google

#88

Post by Steko »

justinru wrote: post #64
Steko wrote: post #60

G+'s problem at it's root is that it's a FB clone. They copied the core functionality and tacked on a few specs that make it, literally, FB+1. The problem is no one is going to move their whole social network for FB+1 or FB+2. Google needed to build a product an order of magnitude better to win social. There are plenty of colas that are +1 better then Coke but to take away Coke's base you'd need to be Coke+100. The o…

I don't think giving users a percentage of ad revenue is a feasible business model. How/why would that work?

Shrug I thought I made the case already.

If Google makes X on untargeted ads and X+Y on targeted ads then it comes out ahead by offering Y/10 of that money to the user somehow.

Yeah it's peanuts so you make it Google Play credit. For some people maybe it's only one song a month, for others it might be one movie a quarter.

Re: Why I Left Google

#89

Post by crag »

Every company grows up. I'm old enough to remember when Microsoft was cool. I remember my first copy of Windows 286; all 12 floppy disks worth. I was excited. Now I fight with the MS sales team over MSDN prices. :)

My point; it's part of the process. Google's grown up. Do I like it? No.

Re: Why I Left Google

#90

Post by timr »

georgemcbay wrote: post #31
arkitaip wrote: post #18

I think people here are being ungenerous towards the author. Too me this story sounds genuine and not like a pr move dictated by Microsoft. It strikes me to be a personal account by someone who's trying to make sense of the past and actually mourning what he believe is the death of old Google. This deserves our respect as professionals because inevitably we are all going to find ourselves in a similar situation, tryi…

I agree the responses seem a bit harsh. Also as someone who never worked at Google but has been a pretty big Google "fanboy" (of the search, Google Apps, Android, etc) his waning enthusiasm for the brand as an employee seems to have taken a very similar dip to my waning enthusiasm for them as a user, though due to personal investment his dip was probably faster and deeper than my own. I've loved Google in the past pr…

"I've loved Google in the past precisely because they weren't Apple and they weren't Facebook."

I absolutely do not understand this frame of mind. Why not just like a company for its products, rather than liking them because they're "not" some other company?

Life is too short to get caught up in the identity politics of corporations. Google is a business, not your buddy.

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