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Google Businesses The Internet

Rob Pike's Excellent Adventure 181

Posted by timothy from the good-work-if-you-can-get-it dept.
Frisky070802 writes "The Newark Star-Ledger has an article about Rob Pike's move from Bell Labs to Google. The article has some interesting points, such as how Pike took a "huge pay cut" to go there just to work on cool things. And in a nostalgia trip for those others of us who've walked the halls of Bell Labs, the article compares earlier days at Bell Labs to the heady days at Google (Claude Shannon on a unicycle, and the famous Penn & Teller trick on Arno Penzias, then the head of Bell Labs research). Most of all are the differences in real-world impact: 'But products trickled slowly, if ever, from [Bell Labs]. They blast from Google at hyperspeed.'" (Painless demographic-only jump-through screen to read it.)
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Rob Pike's Excellent Adventure More

Rob Pike's Excellent Adventure

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  • Captain Pike! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06, 2005 @09:54PM (#12743011)
    How does the guy interact with other workers if he only has a single light to communicate with?

  • For anyone else wondering... (Score:5, Informative)

    by still_sick ( 585332 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:00PM (#12743043)
    ... what the Famous Penn and Teller trick was...

    http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:xJ536HFTXwIJ: cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/labscam.html+penn+t eller+arno&hl=en [64.233.167.104]

  • "trickled slowly from Bell Labs"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:01PM (#12743050)
    Perhaps, but then again, weren't they responsible for a few minor things such as ... the Transistor? The Laser? Unix? Arguably 3 of the most important inventions of the past 100 years?

    • Re:"trickled slowly from Bell Labs"? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JohnTheFisherman ( 225485 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:21PM (#12743166)
      Yeah...I've seen the soaring stock price of Google (market cap beats AOL/TW now, yeah, uh...wow) and I'm wondering when it's going to collapse. They provide some nice free things for the web, but their advertising revenue can't come close to justifying their $80B value.

      What do they do that makes money? Believe me, I know there's more to life than money, but that's pretty much the main factor in the stock valuation.
      • Their Adsense program has pushed their revenue through the roof. They make several hundred million dollars a year from their advertising sector.

        It's not really the revenue that makes them worth so much though, it's their profit margins. The way they publish high quality software has made them into a company that only needs a fraction of what it earns. This means huge potential for growth.

        I'd say the current ruler of the internet with an outrageous income could easily be worth $80B.
        • It's got a P/E of 115. that's almost 10x what most investment resourses will tell you is a reasonable level. Think of it this way: if all those earnings were profit and they issued that to shareholders as dividends, you'd make less than 1% on your money. You would do better in a bank account. Its price is rising faster than that can only mean one thing: it's going to burst.. it has to.. unless they grow a lot. and quickly.
          • > it's going to burst.. it has to.. unless they grow
            > a lot. and quickly.

            And the question is, grow how ? take over which market ?
            • I agree they are overvalued, but to be devils advocate, its speculated they may start taking over MS's consumer application market. Offering a light OS with free ad sponsored word processors etc..
            • I should have probably clarified above I understood the simple P/E ratio stuff. This is the point I was driving at...so they take over all online ad revenues. Great. Their P/E goes down a bit....

              Their valuation obviously means that investors expect TONS more from them than just taking over online advertising. I see lots of free stuff that they offer, but nothing that justifies the price.
          • P/E of 115 is based on earnings for the last 12 months. While the exact time period isn't such a big deal for a stable company, for one growing as fast as google, there's a big difference between whether you take the last 12, or the last 3, or what. By comparison, the P/E based on projected earnings is 44.41 (as reported on yahoo). Of course the fishy part about this one is that word "projected", but on the whole it is probably a fairer number than the 115.

            By comparison, Microsoft, IBM, and HP are in th
      • Their current stock price is justified by the acceleration in revenue growth. Once (if) it slows down to a linear rate, their valuation will come back down as well. The common wisdom is that whatever you pay for it now, the up-side exposure is worth the risk.

        Then there's always the sentimental buyer. I bought 5 shares (@221, yeah!) because I've wanted a piece of them since I started using the page back in what? '97? '98?, and saw how relevant the results were; "I'm feeling lucky," ruled. My first tho

      • Re:"trickled slowly from Bell Labs"? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Screaming Lunatic ( 526975 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @11:10PM (#12743488) Homepage
        Yeah...I've seen the soaring stock price of Google (market cap beats AOL/TW now, yeah, uh...wow) and I'm wondering when it's going to collapse. They provide some nice free things for the web, but their advertising revenue can't come close to justifying their $80B value.

        The stock market is not about revenue. It is about expected revenue. Currently Google's P/E ratio is at about 115. However, their one-year Forward P/E ratio is about 45. Which isn't that bad for a company that just had an IPO.

        Plus, they also have quarterly revenue growth of about 95% and quarterly earnings growth of 475%.

        AOL/TW has never done that. AOL/TW will never do that.

        What do they do that makes money?

        I don't know. But they have revenue of $3.79B and a gross profit of $1.73B for the last 12 months.

        http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=GOOG [yahoo.com]

        • Seeing as though we're talking in expectations, 50% of G's revenue comes from AdWords. Y! has their contextual ad engine in public beta. MSN is working on their own. G is where they are today because of the low supply of clicks and contextual ads. That's about to change.

          In this thread we're comparing Bell Labs to Google - G Maps is no transitor, and AdSense is no Laser. Does anyone else think this whole thing is strage?

    • Re:"trickled slowly from Bell Labs"? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Seraphim1982 ( 813899 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @11:08PM (#12743480)
      Were those things really invented by Bell Labs? I know Unix was devolped there, but I thought the transistor and laser were invented elsewhere.

      AFAIK:
      The transistor was invented by Julius Lilienfeld in the 1920's.
      The first (microwave) laser was built at Columbia University.
      The first optical laser was built at Hughes Research Laboratories.

      • Re:"trickled slowly from Bell Labs"? (Score:4, Informative)

        by larry bagina ( 561269 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @12:40AM (#12744045) Journal
        Lilenfeld had a schematic and a patent, but he didn't have a working prototype (he was ahead of his time and the technology prevented it).

        Bell Labs actually built a working one. Although it turned out to have a lot of uses outside telephony, Bell Labs provided the need for it and the R/D funding.

        • Well, personally I think you do a great deal of disservice to the actual inventor of the transistor. For example, his name is spelled "Lilienfeld".

          Secondly, do you have a source for these claims of yours? They sound like Bell Labs propaganda. Beyond Wikipedia please (which has gotten this information significantly wrong in the past). I've seen it claimed that Lilienfeld used to demonstrate his tubeless radio. I've also seen it claimed that he actually worked with the materials. One has to question your cl

    • Google will never, ever come anywhere close to the importance of Bell Labs. Ever.

      And I can't think of a single real innovation that came from Google. What, a really effective way of indexing web pages? That's not innovation.
      • Indexing based on a mutual ranking system isn't innovative? Caching pretty much the entire web isn't innovative? Sure, it's not nearly as amazing as what Bell Labs used to do, but it is innovative. And BL (now Lucent) is no longer in its heyday.
      • You just have to wait. All the inventions from Bell labs and other companies on the previous years have been "technology" inventions by "technology" research companies.

        Google is an "information" company, you have heard it somewhere else, we are in the "information" age... the one who controls the information controls power, google is making it easy to "control" (i.e. it it not enough to have it, if you can not really use/handle it).

        So, in these years, Google's technology will come with something really ou
    • Bell Labs was responsible for an enormous number of breakthroughs. The problem is that AT&T and Lucent were never very good at making money off them.
    • The Laser?

      The laser was first demonstrated at Hughes Research Labs. www.hrl.com

  • New Google product coming? (Score:5, Funny)

    by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:01PM (#12743053) Homepage
    VOIP GooglePhone? They could combine it with their search engine and social networking. I can't wait to try that I'm Feeling Lucky button on my dialing screen, woohoo!

  • Love Rob Pike (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:02PM (#12743056) Journal
    With him over at Google, it will be pretty cool to see the Google system ported onto Plan9.

  • products? where (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:04PM (#12743069)
    "...products blast from google..."

    uh, where? i can't think of one tangible product google has ever produced...

    bell labs on the other hand... oh lets see... how about... THE TRANSISTOR

  • A bit premature to compare to Bell? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dabacon ( 221175 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:06PM (#12743080) Homepage
    Isn't it a bit premature to compare Google to Bell labs? I mean here are some things that happened at Bell labs: the invention of the transistor, the discovery the cosmic background radiation, a major role in the invention of the laser, the discovery of the mathematical theory of communication, the invention of the solar cell, etc. etc. While I love Google, I don't think they've quite lived up to Bell labs legacy quite yet (but here's hoping they decide to spend billions on fundamental research!)
    • But they _are_ spending billions on fundamental research. What do you think the "20% of your time on personal projects" is?

      They get to do fundamental research much more cheaply than places like Bell Labs do. This is partly because you're projects could go on for years and never get cancelled. And you get a massive amount of computing resources at your disposal.
      • What fundamental research is this? All I see from Google is web applications that have been done a million times before, but with slightly different interfaces. Excuse me if I'm not blown away by that. That 20% is only one day a week. What can you do in one day a week?

        I wouldn't describe them working at hyperspeed either. I mean gmail has been at the beta stage for how long? Remember this is a WEBMAIL service we're talking about, not a fusion reactor. It's a service which has a million equivalents on the I

        • What fundamental research is this? All I see from Google is web applications that have been done a million times before, but with slightly different interfaces.

          Oh, you mean to tell me you don't think HCI (Human/Computer Interfaces) is a vital "fundamanetal research" topic? You seriously think that the computer itself is a signifigant enough tool to handle massive amounts of data?? Alright, boys, this man has just asked to have DOS and QBASIC again; it seems all the advancements since are of no value to

          • Wow, great strawman. Slightly tweaking an interface of largely insignificant software is hardly comparable with inventing the transistor. The GUI was a great innovation. Google hasn't invented the GUI, they've just moved the buttons about and changed the colour of the writing. And if they're doing fundamental research into HCI, why are their services not that user friendly? Gmail is pretty slow and awkward compared to other webmail services. The search engine is OK but nothing special. The interface for Goo
            • I'm sorry, but your argument is the real strawman.

              Flemming discovered penicillin via experimental contamination; neuroscience was a chance discovery by Galvani; Roentgen discovered Xrays by coincidence too. The history books don't list many coincidental discoveries and yet the transistor was just the that. (FYI, the scientists were doing 'pure' research into crystal surfaces.)

              REAL (e.g. directed, purposeful) scientific research is slow, halting, and sometimes seems 'backwards' -- case in point, Einstein

        • Are there any companies doing fast-paced, ground-breaking research these days?
          Were there ever? Research generally seems to involve long periods of slow progress with only occasional breakthroughs.
      • But they _are_ spending billions on fundamental research. What do you think the "20% of your time on personal projects" is?
        A few hundred thousand, a couple of million tops. Nowhere near a billion, lets alone billions, and almost none of it (from the evidence to to date) on fundemental research.
      • Personal projects and fundamental research are not the same thing. No structure, no team, to start with.

    • Re:A bit premature to compare to Bell? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ebuck ( 585470 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:21PM (#12743170)
      I agree.

      Google came up with the idea that popularity (in terms of links) makes a good algorithim to index the Internet, also they came up with the idea that you could serve such an index on a large cluster of cheap machines, instead of a few big expensive ones.

      All the other stuff they came up with afterwards wasn't very revolutionary. Web mail? Weather service? Statistic / Index pages? Educational indexes? Specific domain searches? Good services, but not revolutionary.

      Bell labs came up with a lot of theory. They created programming languages (B anyone?), operating systems (UNIX and Plan9), compilers, tools, and much, much more, like:

      # The first synchronous-sound motion pictures
      # Stereophonic sound
      # Speech synthesis
      # The cathode-ray tube
      # The radio altimeter
      # Radio astronomy
      # The laser
      # Solar cells
      # Coaxial cable
      # Radiotelescopes
      # Radar systems

      And that's not counting the nearly 25000 patents (most filed way before the great US patent give-away). They've made significant contributions to the fields of Physics, Mathematics, Communications, Computer Science, Astronomy, Aviation, Military Defense, and Power Generation, just to name a few.

      Google's got some good stuff, don't get me wrong, but they need to expand thier scope, double thier output, and hang around for another 80 years if they want to top the accolades Bell Labs has accquired.

      ---
      Yes, yes, we all know who invented the transistor.

    • Re:A bit premature to compare to Bell? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:22PM (#12743177)
      Having also recently left Bell Labs it's safe to say at least Bell Labs is dead. You can tell when they close 70% of the bathrooms and shut off every other hallway of lights. All the smart people left, or are semi-retired, most of them before I even joined. It did so many great things in the past century but the executives have a very short memory and sadly ignore any new ideas originating from their own R&D, instead relying on "wall stree sources" or ambiguous "industry trends" which fly in the face of common sense to most of us.

      It's probably worthwile to use this latest defection to hold a belated funeral. Plan 9 is probably the last semi-useful project we'll see from that place. I'm also not real sure that Google is the future, so far they're short on product and long on ambiance. Research is fine but unless it's funded by academic sources you gotta have a product too. Ultimately that's what did Bell Labs in.

      • I don't know that much detail about his work history, however, it seemed that he and Bill Cheswick had been at AT&T / Lucent / Bell Labs forever, working away on information security. I noticed he recently left, as had Bill, which, after staying with an organisation for 15 or more years, usually means something significant is happening.

      • My Dad worked at Bell Canada for many years. He claims that the high profits on military contracts did Bell Labs in for producing commercial products because the engineers lost cost discipline skills. Ma Bell broke a long term association (not sure when, 70's 80's?) because they weren't getting good product stuff.

        It's one thing to be not mind boggling strong on current products when you are doing basic resaerch and kicking out things like transistors every decade or so. But making money hand over fist w
        • Bell labs suffered from the breakup of AT&T on January 1, 1984. As part of a regulated monopoly, funding basic research was easy, and everyone had to pay for it on their phone bill. After the breakup, AT&T lost the regulated revenue from the operating companies, so it could no longer pad the regulated bills with Bell Labs expenses.

          And then the wizards at Lucent made Dense Wave Division Multiplexing hardware, and the capacity of the already-laid fiber optic cable increased by an order of magnitude
    • The comparison isn't so much about the specific value of what Google's done in a couple of years vs. Bell Labs over many decades. The real comparison is that Google today and Bell Labs back in the day were Really Really Cool Places to Work. I was there from ~1978-1993 (not in Research, but I got to deal with the research folks on occasion), and there was an exciting culture of doing really amazing technical stuff. We were also The Phone Company, so there was also a culture of doing really dull gold-plate
    • You're absolutely right. But I think a lot of the "I have met Bell Labs, and you, Google, are no Bell Labs" commentary I see in a responses here are missing the flip side of the equation here.

      If the article is correct, this is a vote of confidence in Google from a lot of bright people going to work there. The fact that what they're doing right now is just making snazzy web applications doesn't mean that they're not amassing some pretty serious talent. Whether that potential is going to go anywhere remains

  • Oh Brother (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jfonseca ( 203760 )
    Oh Big Brother that is!

    If Google is to become what it seems to be morphing into we may well be staring at the next Microsoft.
    Remember Microsoft had similar early days, chaotic work environment, great brains, a management that hired more great brains....

    And...guys....they now have Rob Pike on the team. C'mon, concede already! Google has style.

    The question is...why not just go with the already existing Microsoft? Do we need another giant? I guess we do.

  • How did he get a job at Google? (Score:5, Funny)

    by nxtr ( 813179 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:24PM (#12743186)
    Did he get an invite?

  • Trickle (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    'But products trickled slowly, if ever, from [Bell Labs]. They blast from Google at hyperspeed.'" (Painless demographic-only jump-through screen to read it.)

    Well, I guess:
    1) ISDN
    2) ATM
    3) SONET
    4) SS7 with respect to use external links to control messaging (aka out of band-signaling)

    Well, that is to name a few. Don't forget, Lucent is former bell labs and at one point they were putting out 2 patents a day. Not that I support pattens, but their is a lot of technology that comes out of the labs.

    5) Somethin
    • Yeah, how about the transistor and about 60% of the stuff they print in EE textbooks these days? I don't think Google's nifty map software or text ads can quite match that.

      • Re:Trickle (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Forbman ( 794277 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @12:39AM (#12744039)
        Maybe not the software, but if we could look at the algorithms and system management software they use, it might be a different story.

        Part of their skill seems to be identifying and developing efficient and simple ways to do what everyone else has done so far in a bloated, complicated fashion, both in execution and implementation.

  • "Trickle" from Bell Labs? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by birge ( 866103 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:29PM (#12743212) Homepage
    Bell Labs has produced some incredibly important things: The femtosecond laser, which is one of the most important tools of chemistry and physics today. The radio telescope. Modern communications theory. A lot of basic electrical engineering theory from microwaves. I'm missing a ton of stuff, obviously, but you catch my drift.

    I suppose it's a little harder to come out with stuff once a week when what you're doing is a little more significant and deep than pretty scrolling maps. Comparing Google to the old Bell Labs is ridiculous, and suggesting that "PageRank" somehow compares to the scientific breakthroughs that occurred at Bell Labs is an insult to the people that worked there. I love Google, but it's not particle physics.

    Let's wait to see how many Nobel prizes come out of Google labs.
    • Maybe a Nobel prize will come out of the telescope work he does in his free time?
    • Let's wait to see how many Nobel prizes come out of Google labs.

      I agree with you, broadly speaking. But I'm sipping a glass of good red wine, I'm feeling expansive, let's conduct a thought experiment.

      If Google Labs were to win a Nobel, it would be ...

      * Economics: the new digital economy;
      * Peace: "Do No Evil" put into practice.

      As to the remaining categories -- Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature -- I don't see anything coming from Google.

      -kgj

  • Timothy, be clear man! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What kind of geek-speak is this. What are you saying in your post? Speak English man. And if the reason of using this kind of language is that you think that otherwise it is not 'cool' or interesting - then just don't post it.

  • Wow (Score:3, Funny)

    by asciiRider ( 154712 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:48PM (#12743352)
    So every time I read an article about how great google is, it is usally about how the greatest minds in computer science are mostly having lunch and working on 'personal' projects .....

    No wonder they come up with such mind boggling products like: Email, News, News Groups, Online Shopping.

  • Dear Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)

    by learn fast ( 824724 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:55PM (#12743389)
    Please stop making me feel bad for not working at Google.

    Thank you,

    learn fast

  • Wuss (Score:2)

    by Alomex ( 148003 )
    The article has some interesting points, such as how Pike took a "huge pay cut" to go there just to work on cool things.

    If this is true then he is a wuss. There is no reason why Google could not have matched his salary at Bell labs.

    • and he may have also received stock options, which can technically not be called "salary", as they may, although unlikely in Google's case, end up worthless (like my Worldcom Options).

      • I know money isn't everything. Still there is no reason why $80B market-cap Google could not match Pike's Bell labs salary, other than being cheap that is.

        • Uh... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by keepper ( 24317 )
          did you miss the part about him being hired PRE IPO.?

          In any case, that little gesture of him taking lesser salary, probably got him a few tens of thousands more options at the cool price of $0.99... So guess who is the "wuss" now.

          HEH
          • Even pre-IPO they were offering over $200K to some not-so-well known academics. C'mon, part of being a good corporate citizen is paying people what they are worth.

            • He might be "complaining" about taking a salary cut (although I doubt he is actually complaining), however, he could have turned down the job if he didn't like his package. He's obviously quite happy with the situation, otherwise he would have left. I'm sure he could find another, higher paying job if he wanted or needed to.

              Google wanted him to work for them, he sounds like he wanted to work for Google. An amicable deal was struck, which doesn't have to reflect the market value of his skills at all ...

    • From talking to both recruiters at Google and people who interviewed there (some of which went to work there), I've come to believe part of what makes Googlers happy is making people take paycuts to come work there. Makes them feel more leet.

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