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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

#261

Post by robryan »

Stormbringer wrote: post #179
danilocampos wrote: post #56

A few decades from now, when someone writes up an HBS case study on Google, how will it read? My suspicion is that Google is going to treat us to a very painful object lesson: what happens to your business when you compromise the values of a beloved core product. Here's the thing: having the most complete, most accurate, most relevant search results means never having to say you're sorry. You can add ads, you can do…

I think Digg is an excellent comparison. Putting paid ads in the stream of Diggs basically killed them dead. Then they had to start pretending that things had more upvotes than they really did, which made it worse. The place ghetto-ised in a scarily quick fashion. I'm not sure though how much the earlier 'Digg-revolts' over senselessly mucking around with the UI contributed. Had they already destroyed or eroded a lot…

Digg had plenty of competitors, even when they were at their peak. Arguably Google clearly has the best product, and they have become synonymous with searching the Internet.

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

#262

Post by squarecog »

joebadmo wrote: post #155
surferbayarea wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do people disagree that social signals can add to relevance? If not, then how does Google get these social signals, if they're locked out of FB and twitter? Let's say fb/twitter release a public api to access the social signals. So things like number of likes on a particular news page. In return, is google willing to release the data on number of clicks on a particular search result for all queries? Seems a bit hyp…

Your comment is very confusing to me. If it's a public API, why would Google have to return anything? And Google's proposition to all web sites everywhere is that in exchange for indexing their content, they provide exposure through the best search engine and the main interface to the web for most people. This is also what FB and Twitter are complaining about: that they aren't receiving proper exposure. It seems like…

Disclaimer 1: I work for Twitter. Disclaimer 2: Not a twitter spokesperson, opinions are my own.

I don't understand how so many people are missing the point demonstrated by http://www.focusontheuser.org/. It uses information available from Google search to inject twitter, facebook, etc results into the "your world (as long as it's google+)" module. The ranking it uses is Google's ranking of the relevant results. No special API access. No back-end deals. No money. It's stuff that's available to Google and that Google already has and has already ranked.

If they choose to dilute the worth of their search engine by injecting less-than-relevant (according to their own relevance algorithm) results in order to attempt to grow Plus (presumably hoping that'll ultimately increase the revenue to offset the losses on the search engine side of the business), they are perfectly within their rights to do so. Just don't buy their "oh we'd be happy to show more stuff but boo-hoo we don't have the data" line -- they totally have the data, and it doesn't require sweetheart deals. The only thing they can't do is grab your personal social graph and re-rank according to it. So they use something they know is sub-par (Plus's currently very partial graph) and don't bother dialing in relevance signals against their own best-in-the-world search engine.

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

#263

Post by mindcrime »

jeffreymcmanus wrote: post #253
mindcrime wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of companies that we love (hello, Apple) Speak for yourself... there are plenty of us who cheerily invite Apple to go straight to hell. You can certainly count me among their number, for one. I have no use whatsoever for their anti-hacker ethos, their locked-down, proprietary, "no user repairable parts inside" attitude, and the arrogance with which they presume to know more about what the customer ne…

"Plenty of us" where plenty equals...how many? Apple was crowned as the biggest PC maker in the world this week.

Plenty of us" where plenty equals...how many?

Honestly, from my point of view, just myself counts as "plenty" in this context. But I'm pretty sure the number is actually higher than that. Just count up all the F/OSS ideologues who refuse to use closed-source / proprietary software as a matter of principle, for starters. And I'm guessing there are a handful of folks who don't count themselves as total GNU hippies, but still prefer to shy away from companies that sell products based around such a locked-down, proprietary, closed-off ethos.

Apple was crowned as the biggest PC maker in the world this week.

I never said they weren't successful... I'm just saying that not everybody buys into their bullshit or likes their shitty proprietary products, that's all.

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

#265

Post by vetler »

rryan wrote: post #74
brador wrote: post #21

Leaders should lead with a unique style. Their way. Larry's playing catchup with Facebook while thinking he can be Steve Jobs, and that, together with guarding the cents by removing the little things that made life @Google awesome (bagels anyone?) has led to low morale among the workforce. Geeks with low morale don't get shit done. They don't innovate. They don't create. Google staff aren't code monkeys, they're not…

Bagels. Really? That's what it takes to make life at $COMPANY awesome? What about working with smart people on interesting problems?

First they came for the bagels, and I didn't speak out because I was on a low carb diet.

Then they came for the micro kitchens, and I didn't speak out because I didn't mind walking a little bit further.

Then they came for the free meals, and I didn't speak out because I could buy my own meals.

Then they came for the Google time, and I didn't speak out because I worked on personal projects on the weekends.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.

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

#266

Post by bgeorgescu »

moocow01 wrote: post #256
staunch wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's necessarily sad. Think how much better Ubuntu is because of OS X or how awesome it is that Android exists in its current form because of iOS. Proprietary technology may even give back more to open technology than it takes.

I think it should be pointed out that both OS X and Android are based upon Linux. That point probably makes the discussion about who gives more to who a lot more complex.

OS X is based upon BSD, not Linux

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

#267

Post by _delirium »

Aloisius wrote: post #89
pg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 befor…

Hrm. AppJet and ReMail were both acquired by Google though. Greplin and Optimizely Googlers both had years at other companies between Google and the founding their companies. I guess Biz Stone came directly from Google to found Twitter. Given Google's size and the quality of the people who go in there, I'd have expected dozens if not hundreds of companies to be spawned by ex-Googlers. I often wonder if certain compan…

A minor observation corroborating your hypothesis is looking at how many people Google's accumulated from the old Bell Labs (Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, etc.). In some ways the Bell Labs culture was the diametric opposite of startup culture, with a typical career path of "stay in this job for life", and little interest in business or striking out on your own. I believe a few have said as much, that they moved to Google because it was a place where they had the resources and freedom to just focus on technology.

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

#268

Post by paganel »

augiehill wrote: post #134
joebadmo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your premise. The two previous "compromises" you cite are both examples of giving you what you want, instead of what you said you want. While your anecdotal data says that you are annoyingly misled by that, I'm sure there's a measure of selection bias there, and I'm sure Google has a lot more than anecdotal data. I'm a bit confused by the recent outcry about relevance. Do people disagree that social s…

I agree! Thank you for making this comment. Google is only doing what it must to compete in the social search market. Google has all the incentive to bring Facebook and Twitter directly into their search results, but Facebook and Twitter have the incentives to create silos. The only option was for Google to do it's own thing! Now Facebook and Twitter are just bitching and moaning about having some stiff competition.

> Google is only doing what it must to compete in the social search market.

But, is there really such a market? I remember reading a blog post from a FB employee (don't have the link at hand) saying that Google over-dramatized FB's willingness to go into search, be it "social search" or whatever. What brings people to FB, and more to the point, what makes them spending hours (literally) each day on that site is not their search feature (which I'd say is not that good) but the fact that everyone and everything has a profile or a page or something (yes, maybe even the stray-dog from around my building's corner that a lot of my neighbors feed regularly - try creating a page for him on Google+).

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

#269

Post by code_pockets »

glimcat wrote: post #230
code_pockets wrote: post #210

I think duckduckgo works like google should. That's why I changed , and will never go back.

Using bang syntax in the address bar is awesome. I still use Google fairly often, but via DDG. It shaves about 30 seconds off of the time it takes me to get a result. Most search tasks I do are "hand me that spanner" tasks. I don't want you to give me a big spiel about how great your business is or to show me how thoroughly you can erase all semblance of privacy via data mining - I just want the damn spanner so I can…

Agreed.

I also use DDG in the same way you mention, though only going to google for the rare image I can't find anywhere else (which is about once a month).

Such is the reason why I'm always promoting DDG to others. It just works.

I plan to contribute (code) to DDG as soon as I finish some open source projects I'm working on. They openly invited hackers to create stuff for them, which is a fantastic idea.

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

#270

Post by salimane »

what I haven't seen in the previous comments is that people naively don't learn from past experiences or other failures. Now let me explain :

- CURRENTLY, we can safely say Google core product is search and at least CURRENTLY people still needs "google search".

- will it be the same in the FUTURE ? well, you don't have to know the answer, but I'm sure some crazy numbers crunching happen every day at Google and those would signal some trends about "google search" in favor or not.

- Now let's learn from "some failures"...Microsoft didn't want to reinvent itself, they thought their cash cows (windows & office) will always give them a foot ahead, so never wants to let them go and try something totally new without "windows" in them...well u know their history.

- Apple once was "Apple Computer", changed to "Apple Inc", entered new industries, created new ones, planning to enter new ones, never cared about "ideals, fair treatment, transparent", never care about what their users think they want, they controlled all their products like never seen before, they basically do what they want and their customers just take it or leave it...basically in short, 13 billions of profits in a quarter!!!

Now with all above, assume you're smart, can learn quickly, , you're Larry Page and you don't want to become something of the past, what will you do ?

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