Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

pandodaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 301 posts

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

#271

Post by robk »

mvgoogler wrote: post #244
barrkel wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seldom make spelling mistakes. I'd estimate that easily 95% of Google's "suggestions" are incorrect in my use case; and having to put the problematic word in quotes, rather than merely prepending a '+', is an editing chore. The one thing that annoys me most these days, however, is that it also searches for "bike" when I type "motorbike"; I get endless irrelevant results about cycling in many longer queries. I recal…

The search quality team loves to get specific examples of search results that you don't find helpful. If you are getting low quality results the best thing you can do is send them feedback. You could use the form at - https://www.google.com/quality_form?q=google+search+quality&... I doubt Amit Singhal would object to receiving a specific report about bad search results.

There's little incentive in filling out a form that disappears into the ether. Given that Google's other web-based support tools are mostly useless and unanswered (Gmail support for example), this is not much an incentive to waste time filling out another form and likely getting no reply whatsoever.

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

#272

Post by lrobb »

_delirium wrote: post #267
Aloisius wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

I was going to make the same comment.

I've known plenty of really sharp, talented developers that have zero interest in ever even looking at a P&L sheet.

When you've immersed yourself in a certain sub-culture (say startups), it's sometimes easy to forget that not everyone out there shares that model of thinking.

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

#273

Post by YesThatTom »

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?

I work for Google and I eat a bagel every morning at the Google cafeteria. WTF are you talking about?

The perks have been getting BETTER in the last few years.

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

#274

Post by lmm »

amstr wrote: post #171
yanw wrote: post #58

So instead of commending the CEO on articulating a vision and being determined about it the author somehow spins the words to fit the Google bashing theme of her previous posts. To be clear: "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" != “Fuck off”. There is plenty that could be said about the sad s…

The disturbing thing is that people here at news.yc -- hopefully a fairly informed bunch -- seemingly aren't able to see past the infuriatingly self-serving nature of a "Don't Be Evil Toolbar" created by "Facebook & Twitter" employees. And, Facebook, which happily used its dominance in social to lock out users from bulk-exporting contacts during the Google+ launch now complains that Google is leveraging its dominance…

Anything a capitalistic company does is self-serving. I'm using, and liking, the "don't be evil" thing because it makes my search results better rather than worse.

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

#275

Post by mayanksinghal »

squarecog wrote: post #262
joebadmo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is true that Google rated them on top for 'Organic' results, but the use of following someone on Google+ is not just that you want to see what they publish (use it just like a social network). There is more to it, what they +1 and share has direct effect on how things are ranked for you in later queries. This information is not available for other cases - not realtime/easily anyways. (Twitter closed their hose, Facebook is tricky to parse and their APIs are incredibly slow!).

Not related to you, but I did some experimentation on my own and published it at: halfaclick.blogspot.com/2012/01/focus-on-thy-users.html. It is not that FB (contributors from where helped develop the FOTU) shows any more focus than Google.

Also the way Focus On The User portrayed the entire thing was not that they are giving a tool that makes Google better but that Google was not using their information. And why just Facebook, Twitter and MySpace? Why not HN, Quora, SO and others?

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

#276

Post by pca »

CJWelle wrote: post #108
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?

I see many great suggestions here, but calendar replacement has not been suggested yet.

Windows Live Calendar nowadays is very similar to Google Calendar. It should be possible to sync it e.g. with Android via ActiceSync. Some time ago I managed to do this with Android 2.3. I don't have this setup any more, so if you need details try searching for "windows live activesync" or something similar.

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

#277

Post by hrktb »

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…

Totally agree, and this whole thread allowed me to understand very clearly my gripes about the evolution of google search.

I use search at home, when going out, at home, everywhere. And in every different context I have very different expectations. Precisely sharp results for anything in my domain of expertise, blurry and "good enough" results for generic searches, multilingual results for broadly relevant searches, very local results for everyday related searches. And these expectations might change depending on any random factor.

I don't think google can weasel out what I want in what context. And I don't feel like adjusting dozens of options everytime I do a different kind of search.

Before google started making search smarter, the burden was on my shoulder to do the work to get relevant results for my queries. Now that the algorithms do more and more assumptions, I get to fight with it more and more, and before the blame lies on my search skills, it goes to google for making it hard.

My solution was to use separate engines (including multiple instance of the same ones, like ncr, US only, jp only etc), but a fast a dumb engine is really the way to go.

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

#278

Post by joering2 »

danilocampos wrote: post #251
jeffreymcmanus wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure this is going to be unpopular, but sorry, when it comes to corporate success, values don't mean shit. The HBS case study on Google won't even mention "don't be evil" except maybe as an example of how amateurs shouldn't be permitted to do corporate communications. There are plenty of companies that we love (hello, Apple) that don't pretend to have lofty corporate values. Yet we keep buying their products and…

> I'm sure this is going to be unpopular, but sorry, when it comes to corporate success, values don't mean shit. The HBS case study on Google won't even mention "don't be evil" except maybe as an example of how amateurs shouldn't be permitted to do corporate communications. ...Huh? You appear to be replying to me, but I'm puzzled by what you've typed. Who mentioned anything about values? This is about ruining a core…

I think that their "dont be evil motto" played crucial role in their PR and popularity. Net was new back then, google was tapping into new areas, collecting info on every search you do, everywhere you go. they needed their DBE slogan. IT was rather a PR genius than an amateurish marketing.

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

#279

Post by myko »

tedivm wrote: post #249
myko wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has a team whose job is to make sure privacy needs of the user are met: http://www.dataliberation.org/

The Data Liberation program is all about being able to move your data from google to anywhere else. It has nothing to do with privacy.

How is removing one's data entirely from a product not related to privacy?
Post reply on HN