The Final Days of Google 177
theodp writes "Robert X. Cringely speculates about The Final Days of Google, making a compelling case that when the end comes, it is going to be an inside job. To find the founders of a Google-beating start-up, Cringely suggests looking no further than the thousands of entrepreneurial geniuses currently working for Google, who will inevitably be driven to leave the company to realize the dreams of their rejected ideas. 'The real money is in taking existing ideas and twisting the idea just far enough to make it work in a fantastic new way. Think Google vs. AltaVista; Apple vs. all previously existing laptops and mp3 players; YouTube vs. all previously existing video sites, etc. In addition to ideas, you need creativity, resources, connections, and luck -- none of which appear to be in short supply among Google worker bees. Much of the next influx of ideas to Sand Hill Road will come not just from former Google employees, but also from groups of former Google employees who are planning their future companies over free sushi and Diet Coke late at night in Google cafeterias.'"
So..... (Score:5, Insightful)
But Google wasn't the end of MS, MS wasn't the end of IBM, the markets big. A new player doesn't mean the 'end' of old players.
Yeah, no... (Score:4, Insightful)
I am sure Google ignores many of the 20% ideas that are actually quite good, but I doubt the ones they ignore are the kind of things that make search better; that is the kind of thing these geniusses spent 80% of their week on, after all.
Interesting, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
To destroy Google, someone would have to beat them at what they make their money on - search and ads. First off, 95% of the people in the company probably do not work in this division, and don't have the background and aren't surrounded by it enough to get ideas about it. The 5% who do probably could not start a company without running in trouble legally given all the Google trade secrets they are privy to.
flawed thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
So that's what Microsoft did, huh?
Maybe it's just a combination of pure dumb luck (being in the right marketplace at the right time) and the tenacity and money to keep going.
New ideas are ten-a-penny. It's having the business acumen and vision to get them off the ground and make them profitable that's the real skill.
Cringely may want to do a little more reading (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Developmen
The most pertinent part of the article I've linked is:
Some of the perks that google gives its employees are quite devious. Why risk your money and time starting your own venture when you have it made at google?
Why do you think that the most innovative and radical ideas come from unemployed hungry developers? Who has made a concerted effort to hire said hungry developers? That's who I'd bet on to hurt google's bottom line.
Bungee.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cringely makes a good living talking out of the ass, so the sanest thing is to ignore him. Just because it was a slow enough day on Slashdot to let him get the front page, doesn't mean you have to take it as news. Have a good chuckle and move on.
Second, well, there's more to Google than having the right idea. They also know how to _keep_ talented people working there, and how to invest in R&D done by talented people. Both are skills lost on todays "your job could be the next to go to India" and "let's fire some people to make Wall Street happy" PHBs.
If you will, Google's _real_ secret sauce isn't even one of good engineering, it's one of good management. And that'll be hard to steal because most PHBs try to just pretend it doesn't exist. They're looking for something else that must be the secret, because, don't be silly, noone ever got rich by treating their employees right and offering customers what they want. So before they'd be able to steal it, they'd first have to acknowledge that it exists. It's like getting your car stolen by someone whose whole life revolves around pretending that cars don't exist. It's just not going to happen.
Even if it were to get stolen, I'm not betting the big money on it being stolen by someone who currently is a R&D guy at google. From my experience, most nerds are not good managers, and don't do well when (self)promoted to management. It's simply different skills. It's like promoting a passionate pilot to be an archaeologist. Chances are his interest, experience, effort, etc, were spent on the former, not the latter.
In fact, the absolute worst PHBs I've ever had to work with... were brilliant (ex)nerds. It's guys who once were able to code a whole OS via the front toggles on a mini, and come with brilliant algorithms that cut a one week batch job to a couple of hours job. (When most of your memory is on a magnetic tape or drum, such kinds of optimizations are actually very possible.) Then someone went and moved them to a job they don't understand and which gives them an ulcer: management.
So if anyone did leave Google with a brilliant new idea... let's just say that for 99% of them, let's hope they can do it alone, because they won't be able to be good managers.
Re:So..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, wait... I guess I just answered my own question.
Same theory didnt hurt Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Great post, I would equate your car analogy to more along the lines of the Amish stealing your car, not to say that the Amish are as ignorant as the (majority, not all everywhere are bad) pointy hairs but it (Amish:Cars / Management:Customer Service and taking care of their people) is just something they don't believe.
Re:Final days (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Google is EVIL (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh no! Don't let Google pay them the agreed-upon amount with shares that recently increased in value! Oh, the humanity!
Re:Remember Ken Olsen (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically the study concluded that young entrepeneurs were more successful than older entrepeneurs because the elders were more risk averse. A young entrepeneur would tend to see everything as the next big thing, leading to lots of mistakes, of course, the older entrepeneur would have more experience and perspective, and so wouldn't fall into that trap.
The problem for the older entrepeneur was that they would tend to overlook the next big thing, whereas, through sheer youthful ebulliance, the younger entrepeneur would jump at it, and that fact alone was seen to be the deciding factor in success in this area - noticing the next big thing, and jumping on it.
That it happened to be because of the recklessness of youthful over-enthusiasm, didn't take away fromthe success and profit derived from it.
Translate that into businessess which need the next new thing to continue to grow and evolve, and companies that have been around a long time, unless they listen to the voice of inexperience, will miss the next new thing.
Or so the theory goes.
Re:Yeah, no... (Score:2, Insightful)
> spam rubbish on the search results then I'm sure almost everyone
> would switch overnight. It's that risk of 1 truly great idea being
> missed that should worry google investors.
I'm sorry, but this just isn't going to happen. Sure, PageRank was a great idea that changed the search engine game, but even an idea that revolutionary (in search engine terms) wouldn't be enough to topple Google. Search is a balance of having the right algorithms AND having the huge infrastructure needed to run the algorithms over most of the web.
It seems to make a lot of sense for somebody with a really new and great idea about search to just sell it to one of the big three search engines. If it's an ex-Googler who left on good terms, great, go back to Google. If they left on bad terms, maybe Yahoo or Microsoft. It'd take years to develop it any other way, by which time it'd likely be too late.
Re:look further (Score:3, Insightful)
Free markets are not zero sum (sigh) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Does Google have Stupid written on its forehead? (Score:4, Insightful)
So, my bet is that Google is or will become a resume stain for anybody who was in a development role there. Venture capitalists will be unsure whether Google would come down on them if they developed the idea. Why go with that risk when there are plenty of other ideas clamoring for support? If somebody does pitch and develop an idea, Google can sue them and there are no pockets deeper than their's. If you carry it farther, how would one prove that the idea didn't originate from Google, since obviously you can't appeal to them for proof. So, I think Google is safe and probably they have better control of their IP than most any other company.
Re:So..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Google, the ad agency (Score:3, Insightful)
It's "Cringeley", so don't take it too seriously, but...
Google has a fundamental problem. It became successful as a search company that ran a few ads to defray expenses. Now it's an ad agency that offers services to build ad traffic. This limits them.
How? You can do a better job at search if you don't have to suck up to the pay per click advertisers. Just throwing out most sites with pay per click ads is a good start. But Google can't do that - that's where the revenue to support their bloated operation (been to Shoreline lately?) comes from.
Google seemed to undergo a big change starting about two years ago. That's when they first started cozying up to the "search engine optimization" people. Google used to view "search engine optimization" as evil. Now they are the major sponsor of SEO conferences. [searchengi...tegies.com] And, of course, they bought DoubleClick, an advertising company so obnoxious that most Firefox users blocked their ads long ago.
Consider Craigslist, which is rapidly destroying newspaper classified advertising. Craigslist has an edge - they're cheap. They only have fifty or so employees, and the owner has no ambitions to become a Fortune 1000 company. This drives their competitors nuts, because they aren't annoying their customer base with ads and nobody can afford to compete with them. They're devaluing ad-supported media.
Re:Free Sushi! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Easier to Kill Intel or Microsoft than Google (Score:4, Insightful)
You'll be really shocked when you find out how old integers are.