Why I Left Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Left Google

#221

Post by talmand » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 6:46 PM UTC

talentdeficit wrote: post #58

talmand wrote: post #24

Is it me or does several of his complaints about the overly-aggressive targeted marketing apply to Facebook as well? He must really hate Facebook then. Personally, I think all this targeted stuff is not as good as stated by the people selling it. I can understand that he felt the need to leave because something changed for him and his attitude towards his employer. But I seem to remember the big statement someone mad…

for the most part, facebook can only target you when you're on facebook. google now targets you across their properties some of which have significant lock in. it's not as easy to escape google being creepy as it is to escape facebook being creepy.

I would say Facebook is far worse because they have easy access to more data about you that you more than likely provided. Then there's the data that they get about you from your friends. And as pointed out, Facebook has been tracking people outside of Facebook on any page that had their like button code in place.

Re: Why I Left Google

#222

Post by adambyrtek » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 7:21 PM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #181

cletus wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with blog posts like this one is that they're largely ignored for their content. Instead, those with an agenda or an axe to grind (on either side) come out of the woodwork. Your comment is a case in point. Anyone familiar with your story (at Google and, as you know, there are many of us who are) knows how totally skewed your perception is. Many people (including me) tried to offer you constructive advice.…

You mischaracterize the slotting process, which is now largely gone anyway (and you should know this so I'm not sure why you're bring it up as if it were a present problem) I said that they got rid of it, but I think the fact that such an obviously bad idea could get in the door in the first place is symptomatic of out-of-touch managers, and the same people are still there-- just coming up with new bad ideas (like th…

I have a feeling that you are just venting your specific personal frustrations in public while pretending that they represent some universal truth about Google.

Re: Why I Left Google

#223

Post by danielhunt » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 7:30 PM UTC

megablast wrote: post #160

danielhunt wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, speaking as an android user who LOVES that I can auto upload my pics to the GOOG, I absolutely hate that Google has any social platform at all. Because G+ exists it makes Facebook a competitor. Can I easily share my auto uploaded pics with my Facebook friends? Not at all. Can I change where I upload my pics to? (Ie : not picasa) not at all. Picasa is about lock in. Not about user experience.

I think Google and Apple already see the facebook threat, and are trying to limit helping it grow any further. Even without G+, you may not have had this sort of FB integration to Google. The only reason Microsoft is sidling up to FB is in an effort to get some traction in mobile and the web space.

I suppose 'lock in' was the wrong choice of words to use. I understand that the data is only there because I chose to auto-upload it, and I also understand that I can easily re-upload the photo to facebook, but my point was that Google themselves are actively preventing me from doing something like that through the Picasa interface.

I think you understood the meaning behind my point, but I'd argue that they shouldn't even be in that space in the first place. The very first thing that any photo-storage/sharing site should be looking at, after the service itself is working, is social sharing and interaction. Google are restricting the interaction on their platform (understandably, I might add) because they have built a competitor to Facebook.

that is what I have a problem with.

Re: Why I Left Google

#224

Post by crististm » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 7:45 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #175

michaelochurch wrote: post #165

To understand why Google isn't what it used to be, one has to understand what happened in 2009-2011. This is the era when Google decided to get "real managers" and they hired a bunch of executives from places like Oracle, IBM, and Intel. If Google had told them to wipe their fucking feet off before tracking shitty culture into the place, it might have survived. It didn't. Google has an immense amount of talent "under…

The problem with blog posts like this one is that they're largely ignored for their content. Instead, those with an agenda or an axe to grind (on either side) come out of the woodwork. Your comment is a case in point. Anyone familiar with your story (at Google and, as you know, there are many of us who are) knows how totally skewed your perception is. Many people (including me) tried to offer you constructive advice.…

Did anyone ever question you for being full of it? Judging from the tone only...

Why did you get defensive in the end ("google isn't perfect..." = "water is wet", no, really)?

Re: Why I Left Google

#225

Post by krzyk » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 7:56 PM UTC

anthonydchang wrote: post #195

michaelochurch wrote: post #165

To understand why Google isn't what it used to be, one has to understand what happened in 2009-2011. This is the era when Google decided to get "real managers" and they hired a bunch of executives from places like Oracle, IBM, and Intel. If Google had told them to wipe their fucking feet off before tracking shitty culture into the place, it might have survived. It didn't. Google has an immense amount of talent "under…

You are truly either delusional or an attention-monger that needs to troll to feel better about yourself. Like cletus mentioned, many people reached out to offer you constructive advice. You ignored everyone, thought yourself superior to everyone. I bet you were just waiting to be the first to comment, no? You did well...not only did you throw Google under the bus, you also threw California under the bus. Learn to ha…

Come on, why are you riding him so much? Who tried to help him? From your comments here you look more delusional then him.

As for the "California" thingy, he can't tell anything wrong about any state?

Re: Why I Left Google

#226

Post by brlewis » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 8:09 PM UTC

nirvdrum wrote: post #104

nextparadigms wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "the people" were on Myspace, Hi5, Friendster and other social networks before Facebook - hundreds of millions of them. So clearly it's something about the product, too.

While that's true, I don't think any of them really had critical mass. Of those you mentioned, I had precisely one friend on Myspace, none on Hi5 or Friendster. I had two friends on Orkut. I think Facebook played it smart by making it an exclusive network on college campuses at first, then opening it up.

Facebook played it smart and still plays it smart by devoting much of their user interface into coaxing you to engage non-users or infrequent users of the service. I would rather just see a news feed, but that UI only gets you a FriendFeed-size user base, not Facebook.

Re: Why I Left Google

#227

Post by eliasmacpherson » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 8:16 PM UTC

To be very honest I am glad he left google. The googletesting blog went to shit as soon as he came along. It was very enlightening to read it until he showed up.

Whittaker reminded me of one of my over enthusiastic handwaving lecturers, very short on substance. Compare and contrast the articles written by Misko (Hevery) and Whittaker. I don't think his departure is a manifestation or representation of anything at Google, and I think it's telling he returned to MS.

Re: Why I Left Google

#228

Post by philwelch » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 8:16 PM UTC

jfager wrote: post #219

philwelch wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what Apple did to Microsoft and Dell is make a better product, which is exactly what Jony Ive is talking about.

Okay, so make a better product. Just don't market it as 'the same thing but better', market it as 'different and better'. That's the point.

Ive wasn't talking about promotion. He was just saying that "different" is not sufficient.

Re: Why I Left Google

#229

Post by InclinedPlane » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 8:20 PM UTC

I think advertising has a lot to do with google's growing pains.

Google clearly has empireitis and that alone is causing them to grow into something that the google of, say, 2000 would look on and despise. But aside from that the incentives of being an ad focused company are harmful to what used to be google's core values.

The problem with any ad-focused company is that your users aren't your customers. Your customers are the ad companies, and your users are your product. There's less reason to make a product that people love passionately, deeply, and value greatly. There's only a reason to make a product that people use frequently. This is a subtle but hugely impactful distinction. It's the difference between a newspaper full of hard-hitting investigative journalism married to solid, thoughtful analysis and an run of the mill tabloid rag. When all that matters is how many eyeballs are looking at ads then it makes the most financial sense to maximize that at the cost of everything else.

Re: Why I Left Google

#230

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 8:21 PM UTC

6ren wrote: post #124

ChuckMcM wrote: post #67

Ouch. Not enough people think about year 10. You know, that's when you're 10 years old as a company and you've got a lot of huge successes behind you. Kind of like teenagers when they realize that finding a job is suddenly not an 'optional' thing in their lives. James' rant here reminded me of a similar rant I read (internally) at Sun on its 10 year anniversary. They had published a book all about Sun's first decade,…

Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" was motivated by DEC getting killed. He claims that DEC was a victim of a disruption: a new technology that offered something that didn't seem to be a threat, become successful in other markets and eventually improved enough that it was threat - then it was too late. There, the old technology was minicomputers; the new technology was workstations. The new technology isn…

Its an interesting comment but lets put a few things in perspective:

1) "However, right now, Google is fighting for its life."

Any company that is dumping 2 - 3 BILLION dollars into the bank each quarter is not 'fighting for its life.' Google is doing just fine at the moment.

2) "My only disappointment is that google didn't manage to transform its internal inventions into innovations. "

This is a huge thing, and its important to know that it isn't that Google didn't make money, its that Google didn't make enough money.

When I was their 2006- 2010 I saw projects that were nominally making a profit of several million dollars a year get cancelled. That is they were covering the cost of the group working on them and they earned their bit of the advertising pie enough revenue to make money. But it was 'nominal' since at the time Google didn't charge internally anything for using the physical infrastructure which clearly did have a cost associated with it.

So when they started figuring out their costs (which they needed to do if they were going to charge for AppEngine) they got a kind of rude surprise (a nuanced description of that surprise is covered by NDA but suffice it to say they learned new stuff about themselves).

At the time I suggested that rather than penalize folks who were running their product on infrastructure that was ill suited to them, they allow those folks to change the infrastructure, and I might as well have been telling the Church that the Earth revolved around the Sun. That is where Clayton would have said, "Guys, you aren't looking at this like an entrepreneur..."