>I can expand beyond 140 characters if you like. The OP claimed that in the past ten years, as a result of their hiring practices, Google's product output quality has noticeably declined, presumably as compared to the search product on which their name was made, and gmail, which they launched in 2004. And it's easy and fashionable to knock Google because maps is not as good as you remember it used to be, or because they shut down reader, or because plus didn't manage to unseat facebook.
I don't necessarily blame them for plus (facebook was clearly a marketing success, not a technology success), but maps' decline isn't anybody else's fault. It has declined in quality and that is plainly an engineering failure not a product failure.
>Well, in 2006 Google was a 10 billion dollar search and ad company with a fledgeling email business without a revenue model, who had just bought youtube. In 2008 they shipped a mobile phone operating system. That's now a thirty billion dollar business which has been built up through talent within google. They undermined Microsoft's office monopoly with an online office suite (okay, some acquisitions underpinning that).
Well, yes. Acquisitions underpinned all of that success.
>I've got no particular reason to stand up for Google, they're quite big enough to look after themselves, but the idea that their product flops in the last decade outweigh those product successes, and can be held up as evidence that there is something deeply rotten in their hiring model, seems to be cherrypicking to me. 70% mobile OS share, 70% search share, and 50% of global online ad revenue... that's a pretty good kind of mediocrity.
All predicated upon outside purchases or the original self-reinforcing search monopoly developed before 2004.
What's worse is that they've often used their search monopoly to try to break into other markets (flights, shopping, etc. - plenty of stuff like this got preferential SERPs treatment) and failed because what they released was crap. That is, they failed even with a huge home ground advantage - the kind of monopoly advantage that let Microsoft make IE6 (IE6!) the industry standard for years and got them slapped by the DoJ couldn't even be put to good use by Google.
I'm not denying that they have some good engineers but the idea that they're the creme de la creme of the industry with the best hiring process is way way off base.