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Google's Turn To Be The Villain
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Aug 24, 2005 11:36 AM
from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
caesar79 writes "The New York Times has an article titled "Relax, Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn as the Villain" (also evil but at least free registration required) According to the article, the "go-getting" attitude of Google is coming across as arrogance to many people in the Valley. More importantly, it draws attention to the fact that Google has drained the market of talent, caused a 25% to 50% hike in salaries and made it difficult for startups to get funding."
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Damn you Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
So, Google is a villain for improving the wages of technologists, and also retroactively (circa 2000) making it harder for startups to get funding?
<emote=plea style=Jon Stewart> Oh Google, why must you be so evil?<
Mox
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:5, Interesting)
The startups are offering worse working conditions and so they have to pay more to tempt people away.
Parent
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of the benefits might be difficult to reproduce for smaller companies (such as the cafeteria), but there is no shortage of very nice office space in the valley nor is there any great difficulty in allowing engineers a certain amount of time and resources for their personal projects.
Parent
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's certainly evil if you are an investor, they're behind the great outsourcing spree of Y2K. It's not evil to John Q. Public. (Now whether Google remains the free and helpful search engine we're used to, is still dubious)
But seriously, who in the hell seriously believes they've drained the market of talent? How many readers honestly do not know at least a dozen people who want to leave but cannot due to a poor job market or fear of a pay cut?
The job market still sucks, it's not as awful as it was a few years ago, but it's not good. People aren't going to float their resume's around until they're sure they won't put their existing job in jeopardy.
Parent
25-50% hike in salaries? (Score:5, Insightful)
To me this seems like one of those times where someone just threw out a number and that number instantly becomes the focus of everyone's attention because they don't have any better numbers.
Parent
The "google evil" index seems flawed (Score:5, Insightful)
In contrast to Microsoft's image of industry dominance at all cost, Google has cultivated a friendlier image with its adoption of open source technology and its philosophy of "do no evil"
'tis an amusing graph, but completely meaningless.
Parent
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:You call yourself a geek? (Score:5, Funny)
Klink would be more like HOOOOOGAN!!!!
Parent
25-50% hike in salary (Score:5, Funny)
Re:25-50% hike in salary (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, the point is there. Startup company's over there hem and haw about not finding talent this, or talent that. Get a CLUE, most of us don't want to live in Overpriced-everything land, ok ?
So if that there aren't enough engineers in the valley is the excuse start ups are using to try to get in more H1B's then they deserve to crash and burn like they did during the DotBomb Boom. There is NOT a shortage of qualified engineers in the United States of America ( and Canada ). What there IS a shortage of, is legislators who will stop being namby-pamby's whenever someone like Bill G complains that it's costing him 2 Million more to drill out a new wing for his house, and his financials won't look right because he can't get the number of UNDERPAID H1B's and F1's that he wants.
There isn't a shortage of skilled engineers, it's not like we're picking tomatoes out of the ground people, it's that company's have come up with progressively sneakier and more loop-hole clinging ways to try to maintain the pay scales down.
Hence, why I've gone back to contracting. As long as you're going to think you're going to run your company with impunity, I'll charge you for the privilege of that false sense of power.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again,....more power to the company who is prepared to pay for a skill, they will keep that skill longer, and get more ROI dollar for dollar, out of that person, than the company who isn't. Sure, some of you younger guys are willing to work for "wheatgrass" drinks, but just wait until you have a family and have REAL bills, we'll see if that extra indoor basketball court is really worth that absense of a commensurate salary.
Parent
Or MOVE (Score:5, Insightful)
Well one option is to leave freaking California! There are a lot of talented programmers that for whatever reason do not want to live in CA. Find a place where a lot of them are and go there.
If you can't stand the heat then move somewhere cold.
Parent
Google isn't the Borg... (Score:5, Funny)
I disagree. I think Microsoft earned their title, and I doubt it's gonna go away. I'd like to think that the Google invasion is going over more like the story in Doom3:
Or something to that effect, anyways.
Re:Google isn't the Borg... (Score:5, Funny)
Us: What happened?
Us: Someone set up us the applications!
Google: Hello Gentlemen!
Google: All your searching are belong to us.
Google: You are on the way to destruction.!
Us: What you say?!
Google: You have no chance to survive make your time.!
Us: For great justice. !
Parent
So they are bad because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So they are bad because... (Score:5, Insightful)
"I've definitely been picking up on the resentment," said Max Levchin, a founder of PayPal, the online payment service now owned by eBay. "They're a big company now, doing things people didn't expect them to do."
Obviously hoarding engineers and paying them well is something that the rest of the industry isn't doing so why shouldn't they resent Google?
Especially when Google releases well-received products that are "free".
Kinda ruins the business model for everyone else.
Parent
Re:So they are bad because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:So they are bad because... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Salaries bad for the employ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Increased salaries is bad for business and the number of employ hired, but you can't quote a 25-50% hike in salaries as a bad thing... c'mon!
-M
Blah (Score:5, Insightful)
"How dare google make better offers for top quality programmers! Who am I gonna hire at 10$ an hour with no overtime for 80 hours a week?!? Google is Evil!"
Re:Blah (Score:5, Funny)
I know Google is now competing with MSFT, YHOO, and AOL. But when did they take on EA?
Parent
Re:Blah (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't know my manager read slashdot!!
Parent
Evil is as Evil does (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is doing more damage to innovation in the Valley right now than Microsoft ever did," said Reid Hoffman, the founder of two Internet ventures, including LinkedIn, a business networking Web site popular among Silicon Valley's digerati. "It's largely that they're hiring up so many talented people, and the fact they're working on so many different things. It's harder for start-ups to do interesting stuff right now.
I see, they are damaging innovation through creating so many products.
What?
What he really means is "I can't get top engineers so I can't innovate as much". But that doesn't mean innovation is not occuring. And how are we to be sure innovation at that company would have been as skillfully executed or as good for the industry as it might be at Google.
People complain about Google "hoarding" good engineers. But programmers are not slaves, to be bought as sold as property. Each person makes a choice and it just so happens people want to work at Google. If other companies want to hire the same calibur of people they either need to figure out how to attract programmers OR get the heck out of Dodge and go to a market where obtaining labour might be easier.
If only the heads of whiny companies consider Google evil, then I would say that slightly improves Googles rep with me. So far Google's behaviour has been far better than most other companies - and after all, Evil is as Evil Does. As long as Google continues to compete through excellence then I have no issue with them.
Re:Evil is as Evil does (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Evil is as Evil does (Score:5, Insightful)
Couldn't agree more.. Except I think he really means "I probably could get the engineers, except I don't want to pay them what Google does, and I'm not willing to match the working conditions whereby they have proven to be effective and creative.".
For some reason people seem to believe that the only people worth looking at are the 'names in lights'. Years ago, companies used to take people on, train them, educate them over years in apprenticeships until they fulfilled their full talents. Then they were looked after while they spent years producing works of art, and the company made back what they invested in the apprenticeship period.
For some reason, they now believe that highly skilled and trained people suddenly grow on trees, and should be available as and when they want them, whether colleges train them or not, or whether activities such as outsourcing mean that people just don't want to put their time into training for a job where they believe they'll spend two years designing something innovative, then have the foot work of incremental changes and maintenance shipped abroad while they get laid off until some company decides they need a highly trained innovative person for a while.
Perhaps this is a long awaited wakeup call.
Parent
To read this story without registering... (Score:5, Funny)
Irony? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
ironic (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah right... (Score:5, Funny)
Industry whiners go "WAHHHHHH....." (Score:5, Insightful)
and the B.S. about it hurting startups is insane. No startups worth a damn started by hiring expensive people... you do not create a business by spending money like mad, that is something everyone learned from the 90's. Every sucessful startup started with self made people with others they knew or could talk into starting a business with them.
Google Vs. Microsoft - No Bloody Battle Here. (Score:5, Insightful)
The attitude of Google reminds me a lot of the early days of Apple Computer. Out to win big - yes, but villian - no. At least not yet.
PR at it's finest (Score:5, Interesting)
Paul Graham has an essay about this: The Submarine [paulgraham.com].
"Suits make a corporate comeback," says the New York Times. Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because the suit was also back in February, September 2004, June 2004, March 2004, September 2003, November 2002, April 2002, and February 2002.
Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.
We have seen this before with anti-Linux campaigns. Nothing new.
NYT reg bypass (Score:5, Funny)
2. Paste into google search
3. click on link that appears on the google search page.
4. ???
5. Profit
Better story link? (Score:5, Interesting)
Econominc Dawianism at Work! (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between how this applies to Microsoft and Google is in the end products and services each produces. Google's place in the market is the result of quality applications, a building of a trust relationship with its users, and a eye towards putting out the best software and services it can.
Microsoft on the other hand owes its place in the market to luck, the laissez-faire attitude of govt. during the early days of its development, and a focus on corporate marketing double-speak that focuses on the "message" rather than the quality of their products.
Google may be evolving into a corporate giant, but that doesn't equate with them being evil. They are far more similar to early Apple, but with better leadership.
Boo, fucking, hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
Choicest quote (Score:5, Funny)
Geez, I wonder why the VC's always think of Google during our presentation for a search company named Oodle??
Since when... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is pretty frustrating to see people constantly complain about large, successful companies. What the article fails to mention is that Google likely hires the best of the best. So I would guess that the talent level of the employees dictates the pay, instead of the company name dictating the pay. Make sense?
Google to Monopolize Web Applications? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that their efforts do stiffle web entrepenuers who are trying to break into new areas such as hosted groupeware for email, file, photo and video sharing etc. (I know this from personal experience). Keep in mind that not all web application developers are looking for a "good Salary" from a benign giant like Google. Some of us actually want to be masters of our fate and make a living on our own. But now the real fear is "Will Google invade my market and make a free version of my Widget?"
That's becoming more real every day. I can't buy bandwidth at the same cost as Google, and I can't leverage massive Advertising revenues to give away my products for free either.
"Do no evil" doesn't mean "don't crush small start-ups".
-Adam
When evil is good -- life in a dynamic economy (Score:5, Interesting)
Although economies aren't zero-sum games (many activities do grow the pie, or raise the tide that floats all boats), some aspects do have a win-lose component to them. Successful companies can afford (and should afford) to pay their workers more than unsuccessful ones. This means that successful companies will inevitably harm less successful companies by "draining" the labor pool and seem "evil."
If Google is evil it is because change is evil (to some) and because competition (for money, workers, customers, etc.) can be evil -- at least in the eyes of the less successful.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Google shareholder (their stock seems very overpriced relative to the long-term risks of Google's business model and the high expected earning built into the current stock price), but they do seem to be very successful.
Business and Academia (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies in Silicon Valley are a dime a dozen anymore. There's always some kid sitting in an apartment dreaming up The Next Big Thing. Some of them do come up with great stuff, but for whatever reason they just never get to the point where they're selling or distributing what they dreamed up. Those that do often do it on a limited basis because they lack the resources to go bigger. Those who really are onto something neat get bought out.
Google is hated by these guys now for the same reason academics look down their noses at their equivalents in the professional world. Because Google successful in ways others could only dream of. It's jealousy really. They claim it's because Google has lost its small-company spirit, that it's no longer doing what they do for the pure reasons of doing "cool" stuff or whatever. Google has taken the spirit and the drive of so many startups and they actually went somewhere with it.
We tend to hate, or at least target, those who do better than us.
So outsourcing doesn't cut it eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google - The Old Yahoo! (Score:5, Interesting)
Then somewhere along the line, the free email accounts and home pages got so choked with ads and bloat that I couldn't stand using them anymore.
I like Google's stuff. Lots. I've just got this nagging feeling that I've been here before, and I hope I'm wrong.
It's not arrogance... (Score:5, Insightful)
Research labs like Xerox PARC back in the day were viewed as arrogant, in large part because of their technical success and lack of business success - "if you're so smart, home come you're not rich?"
Microsoft is viewed as arrogant because they're wildly successful commercially, but their technology is middle-of-the-road at best - from a purely geek point of view they don't deserve their success.
Google is an almost unheard-of beast that does truly technically innovative things and profits by doing so.
Re:Villainy will be temporary (Score:5, Funny)
Wait a minute...
Parent
Re:Villainy will be temporary (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM is cool now because they're actively 1) paying for linux advertising (related to IBM, but still), 2) writing lots of Linux articles, 3) contributing to linux, etc etc.
Google Talk is cool because it uses an open, standardized protocol. You can't really go after Google under the Sherman Act for using the Jabber protocol.
It's still possible for Google's management to change, and for them to start leveraging their massive marketshare in a way that directly inhibits search engine competitors. Until they try something like this though, I'm going to sleep well.
(and note that MS is still, by far, the least likely to contribute to open source, or even seriously grok open standard protocols)
Parent
Search monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
If Google has a monopoly on search engine services, it's a very fragile one.
Parent
Picking up patterns (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's where everyone gets confused, though. Google isn't forcing its software onto nearly every computer manufactured. They aren't trying to force any sort of vendor lock-in or commit evil business practices so they can continue to give you "good enough" software either.
Forgive me for quoting people's gripes with Microsoft, but that's the difference between the services provided. To the end user, Google isn't costing us much of anything. People wanted a company to kill Microsoft, and now they might get it...and it scares them because the company they're tired of wanted to 'Think Big' and have big ambitions a long time ago too. People are trying to attribute the track history of MS to Google simply because of how quickly Google has taken off, and the fact that both companies were open about having great ambitions early-on.
Who hasn't? Can a company honestly succede without big goals to reach for? No.
On the other side of things, I was waiting for the day that Google would start getting bad press for anything and nothing. So far, every search engine that soared after it's IPO sunk not too long after and was quickly tossed to the wayside. Yahoo! actually survived surprisingly enough, but Google seems to be going another route: They're still worth money (and lots of it) but now some are turning from curious to suspicious about their former favorite. The little child with lots secrets can be seen as cute, the rich and powerful social elite with lots secrets must be hiding something malignant.
The only part about the negative press that annoys me is that nobody is giving Google the flexability to be a new company. They have to know how to behave like a giant from the start, and giants obviously must behave like monsters as far as the press is concerned.
Parent
you're partly right- and totally wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
And: is the same reason applicable to Google?
Well, Both MS and IBM were perceived to be bullys. They used their overwhelming advantages in one market to extend control to other markets. Typically, they cut prices in the new markets in order to drive competitors out, even competitors with superior products. The investment community saw this, and feared investing in excellent products and technologies whenever Microsoft trumpeted that they were moving into a market. I can only think of two products that survived that onslaught: Oracle and Quicken. This is the fear, uncertainty, doubt (FUD) strategy.
The other bullying tactic which both used was to offer low ball buyouts to companies with promising technologies. They would, at the same time, threaten to buy similar technologies elsewhere, and then overwhelm their target company. In many cases, Microsoft seemed to steal technology outright, both from buyout targets, as well as from partner companies. In short, they were thugs, and were known as such.
IBM has changed over the last 20 years. Bill Gates still sings the same tune that he did 20 years ago. I haven't heard those notes from Google.
Parent
Re:Higher Salaries? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sorry to say it (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, yeah. Did you read the story? It's not that Google is outright EVIL(TM), it's that the other tech corporations think Google is EVIL(TM) because Google is bigger and more powerful. Techies still love Google, because they raise the general salary and promote good working conditions.
Microsoft was once A Good Company.
No, Microsoft was once an upstart. i.e. "The Underdog." They were never a "good" company. Their primary product (Microsoft BASIC) was a complete ripoff of University code. That started a trend in Microsoft history where every product was either a stolen or bought-out design. (Which isn't to say that Microsoft employees don't work hard. It's just that Microsoft as a corporation doesn't have an honest or original bone in its metaphorical body.)
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