James Whittaker: Focus on Ads and 'Social' Destroying Google 236
theodp writes "In June 2009, Google welcomed James Whittaker as its newest Test Director. In February 2012, Whittaker rejoined Microsoft. On Tuesday, Whittaker explained why he left Google: 'The Google I was passionate about,' Whittaker writes, 'was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus ...The old Google was a great place to work. The new one? -1.' Welcome to the real world, quips CNET's Charles Cooper in response to Whittaker's still-awesome-even-if-a-tad-naive rant."
More from from his post: "It turns out that there was one place where the Google innovation machine faltered and that one place mattered a lot: competing with Facebook ... Google could still put ads in front of more people than Facebook, but Facebook knows so much more about those people. Advertisers and publishers cherish this kind of personal information ... Larry Page himself assumed command to right this wrong. Social became state-owned, a corporate mandate called Google+. It was an ominous name invoking the feeling that Google alone wasn't enough."
huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
So he moved back to Microsoft? Huh? Don't get it.
Now he'll experience a "corporate mandate called $variable"
where $variable = { "the cloud" , "Windows 8" , "whatever marketing thinks up next" }
Re:huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the battle of who's more of a technology company, Microsoft or Google, the winner is...the one that doesn't make its money from ads?
Wouldn't that be Apple in this case? (at least it makes less of its money on ads)
Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I suspect he also learned that Microsoft really does care as much about testing as any major software company. It didn't stop them from producing Vista, but that disaster was due to forces beyond the control of the testing folks.
It seems as if his experience at Google (not being able to influence Larry Page's new strategic focus) was not particularly better than at Microsoft, and Microsoft wanted an innovative leader in it's quality area. Good for them. Hopefully, his experience at Google will make him bett
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I've worked with a few ex-Microsoft employees over the year, including the CEO at the last company I worked for (he came up through the ranks to be one of their managers overseas.) The one thing I found surprising is not one of them complained about Microsoft as a place to work.
And from the two Microsoft-trained managers I've worked for, I can see why -- they do a damn good job of training their managers to listen to people and to prioritize rationally with a solid understanding of the importance of tec
Re:huh? (Score:5, Funny)
I guess Microsoft doesn't have a new social media pony it's pushing on everyone at the company.
...yet!
Never underestimate Microsoft's ability to be behind the curve in consumer services.
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So he moved back to Microsoft? Huh? Don't get it.
Now he'll experience a "corporate mandate called $variable"
where $variable = { "the cloud" , "Windows 8" , "whatever marketing thinks up next" }
Whatever marketing thinks up next? Marketing at Microsoft is just baffled at the size of the finger they gave to Google. It just showed up, and they're still looking into it with remote desktop.
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Well, Microsoft is going to need someone to test the Metro UI on all their new ads and social features in Windows 8. He sounds like he has the experience.
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It is a case of better the devil you know, from what I read he was *expecting* Google to be a 'technology company that empowered its employees to innovate' - turns out they aren't....they are only interested in making money from information gained through their technology.
His perception of Google has changed, his perception of Microsoft has little to do with this.....
Re:huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, Google has changed in recent years. That's been obvious even from the outside. At one time I was a big supporter of Google, recommended their stuff to friends. A month or two I deleted my Google accounts, and avoid using Google as much as possible now.
The change? It seemed they used to be dedicated to producing the best technology, and in making the ads that supported that as unobtrusive as possible. The "Do no evil" phrase was idealistic, but believable.
Now, I feel that Google is dedicated to spying on us all. They have information on me that I don't understand how they got, and I resent them having it. I believe they've crossed the line into spyware. "Do no evil" is now a ridiculous joke.
Re:huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you have Facebook? If you do, you're living in denial.
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Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty easy: first, pay for a non-free email account. I chose fastmail.fm and like it. If you are all, "waaa, I don't want to pay" then you will pay with something else - your data, in this case.
2nd step: use an alternate search provider. I use DuckDuckGo. It's not perfect and sometimes I have to revert to Google, but it's better than getting sucked into the Google ecosystem.
It's so easy to avoid getting sucked into the blackhole. You just steer around it before its gravitational pull (waaah, I want an Android phone) sucks you over the event horizon. Buh-bye.
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What is more evil about it? You say "arguably" but frankly Apple take more responsibility for iOS and iPhones than Google ever does for Android and the associated phones. Android users' problems are not their problems, not theirs to support...
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In what way is paying for your own domain and hosting your own email not a good answer? Why is an "other than" needed?
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I ran my own domain out of my basement for years, but gradually all the ISPs stopped letting me do that on an affordable connection. The amusing part is that they blocked my 100% uptime, 100% reliable, 100% spam-free mail servers and forced my mail traffic to proxy through their virus and spam riddled mail hubs in the name of fighting spam.
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Re:huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years ago I got a Droid X phone, switching over from Blackberry. I had to create a gmail account (apparently I was one of the few without gmail) in order to register the phone. No big deal, I don't hand out that email to anyone.
Somehow Google linked my youtube account (which was registered to a 15 year old hotmail account) with my new gmail account even though I had never used youtube on my phone. The only way I can conceived the match being made was from me being logged in on youtube from my home computer and checking hotmail from both home and my phone.
It makes me very leery. If I ever run for public office (no plans to do so, just hypothetical) I'm sure someone would be able to look at my youtube viewing history.. pick out some questionable content, and use it for character assassination.
Other than being a luddite, I think anyone in the public eye is going to be haunted by their internet history.
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Hi, I work on the Google accounts team (on spam and security).
I just want to clarify something. We don't merge accounts using non-explicit / ambient information like you are suggesting. I suspect what happened is that at some point, you used your Gmail account on YouTube and we noticed you already had a YouTube account (you were logged in to both). When YT was acquired it obviously had its own account system and over time, that has been integrated with the regular Google account system. As part of that accounts have been merged together. It may be that you don't remember this happening, but we definitely don't try and spot related accounts and merge them without some explicit user action.
I'm not sure why you think people would be able to see your YouTube viewing history. That's a private part of your account, it's hard to imagine that ever changing. Unless your account gets hacked nobody else can see it, and we put a lot of effort in to try and stop account compromises (it's what I work on all day, in fact).
Anyway, a lot of peoples concerns about privacy boil down to (a) transparency and (b) control. That's what BasilBrushes concerns seem to be about and it's completely understandable. The Dashboard (www.google.com/dashboard) might help. This stuff is discussed in the privacy principles [google.com] document, which is the official voice of the company on the topic. I actually think Google has got a lot better at these principles (transparency, control) over the last few years - we have made things like Chrome incognito mode, the Dashboard, the Ads Preferences Manager, added better security against hackers (no.1 privacy threat) etc. But peoples expectations have gone up even faster, so there's still lots of work to do.
Re:huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hi, I'm User, from the Internet, and I'd just like you to know that I tried to keep my accounts separate so that getting banned from one of your services doesn't ban me from other services. During your Google+ Name Rage (where you banned people for not using their REAL NAME), my youtube account that I use to post Videos of my game studio's content (Which has a REAL name, just not an INDIVIDUAL's name) was somehow linked to my Google+ service -- I suspect I accidentally clicked a link to Google+ while using the Internet and signed into Youtube or Google+... Point being, I wasn't presented a page with a giant: "LINK THESE ACCOUNTS TOGETHER" button (which I never would have clicked, and such a thing should require re-authorisation).
The aforementioned ridiculous ACCOUNT BANNING you did for Google+ caused me to lose access to Youtube, Gmail and Docs services. Way to fail being business friendly.... Now that Google has shown us the unpredictable and dangerous LIGHTNING that lives in their "cloud" I'm scared to even recommend your services to anyone.
FYI: The sooner you STOP UNDERMINING OUR TRUST, the better.
Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm not sure why you think people would be able to see your YouTube viewing history. That's a private part of your account, it's hard to imagine that ever changing. Unless your account gets hacked nobody else can see it, and we put a lot of effort in to try and stop account compromises (it's what I work on all day, in fact).
I'm not sure why you should retain that history. If you didn't retain it, it wouldn't matter as much if my account were hacked. That "nobody else can see it" (for now, until the money equation changes) comforts me not at all.
Re:huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, my problem is that Google is spying on me. I was first alerted to it when Google+ suggested friend to me, and 2 of the suggestions were only linked to me because they are the authors of blogs that I visit from time to time. I don't visit them by searching on Google. They are not hosted on Google's Blogger. And I'd never posted any links from those blogs on my Google+ account.
Then more recently Google was asking me a question about security, and presented me a list of all the searches I'd done on Google for the last X months. Well, that's not information that I believe Google ought to be storing, and at that point deleted my account, and switched to using non-Google services.
THEN I found out that Google will continue to store my searches against my name even though I don't have an account any more.
At one time "Don't be evil" meant something. Now Google is a creepy spyware company. I want nothing more to do with them.
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Indeed. Spying, as it were, has been how Google has made its money almost from the moment it came into existence. What shocks me is how many seem to believe that it just started happening.
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Spying, as it were, has been how Social Media has made its money almost from the moment it came into existence. What shocks me is how many seem to believe that it just started happening.
FTFY. Has to be said. It amazes me that anyone can tar Google with that brush without tarring all the rest of them along with them. WTF does anyone expect to get from corporate doled out "free" services?
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He probably feels that when Google was doing the things that he thought they were doing, they would long-term, be a better company.
However, he probably feels now that since there is much less of a difference between Google and Microsoft than he thought there was, he's going to bet on the model that's been around longer and is clearly successful, despite its missteps.
That or he got bitchy when had a disagreement with the Google people, so he resigned and went back to somewhere he could get back into a job fa
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He's got experience from a (serious) competitor, so I'm guessing Microsoft offered him really good conditions if he came back.
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Google seems to be less interested in innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
Who thinks they would have made that push into automated cars if they had the choice to rethink that today?
The whole company is getting focused on profits rather then innovation.
That might be valid. However, it might also be possible that the best way to ensure future profits is to take risks now on new ideas.
Re: Google seems to be less interested in innovati (Score:4, Insightful)
To keep the profits growing, you have to innovate because the copycats come fast; especially with a non-tangible product - like everything software related.
If they were strictly focused on profits, they'd be making cuts exclusively to boost their bottom line - like what 90% of corporate America has been doing in the last few years. But that's pretty much a one shot deal - it's a just a bump in profits: not growth. Hence, that is one of the reasons (Asian operations is another for some) why corporate America has record profits -cuts mostly people. Now, we have this very high unemployment rate that for the life of me, I don't see how it's going to abate anytime soon - regardless of who's in the Whitehouse next year.
Re: Google seems to be less interested in innovati (Score:5, Interesting)
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We'll see, I hope you're right.
We count upon large corporations for doing the research that moves our society forward. So it is sad when they lose all ambition to innovate.
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We count upon large corporations for doing the research that moves our society forward.
Well, there's your mistake. Nowadays, we count on large corporations to outsource, litigate, and obsess over their stock price, not innovate.
I count on the two smart, ambitious guys in a garage to innovate.
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You're not getting advances in genetic engineering, cpu design, or a thousand other fields out of a garage.
Again, it took google dumping billions into that whole automated car project to get it to work. And then we have Richard Brandson with his Virgin Galactic nonsense... we do depend on these institutions to innovate. Hate on them all you like but like a group of men sitting around dissing women... or vice versa... understand that at the end of the day you need them. You will come back to them and you wil
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I think Regina Dugan's reputation at DARPA relates directly to the focus Page has been seeking at Google with his "more wood behind fewer arrows" approach (which has, no doubt, been disruptive to many Googlers and is
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The thing I've seen her most praised for in her work at DARPA has been specifically shifting away from blue-sky projects to projects that rapidly provide value to business end of the organization the research arm serves (warfighters, for DARPA.)
I can't imagine that she would be brought to Google to drive more effort behind pure blue-sky projects, rather than finding a wa
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Normal lifecycle... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exciting startup with a couple of people does exciting things, attracts excited developers because they can do exciting things.
Over time company gets big, has to worry about shareholders and lots of internal politics with growing levels of management.
Company is grown up, things slow down, life becomes boring, bored developers seeking excitement move on to next startup.
Are there any exceptions?
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Google missed an even bigger opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
Google wants access to all the data, and that means selling as few turnkey systems as possible, because they want more people to outsource, which will inevitably lead to many of them outsourcing to google, at which point google can sniff through their data for their own purposes, whether nefarious or not.
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Facebook is showing them that sniffing the data is where the value is at.
Re:Google missed an even bigger opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
They didn't miss that opportunity, they dismissed it. They went on the path of becoming a search appliance, back when they were trying to find a stable business model. The 20% was also a way to fund research and development into new or orthogonal markets, and it made their employees happy to boot.
For a while it all looked good and the strategy seemed solid.
Then the advertising money started flooding their profit margins. All of a sudden, it became clear which direction they should go.
From that day on, they became a one-trick pony.
It's not that they sucked at everything else, it's that nothing that they have produced so far could match the rate at which advertising fills their coffers. There was no way to return to being an engineering or technology company if by doing so they had to lower their profits.
It didn't matter if they could succeed, they needed to make more money!
Eventually, this brutal mentality trickled down to the engineers and the rest of the crew. It's clear to most people now that, for all their perks and occasional technical brilliance, Google is no longer a technology company.
-dZ.
Google Search Appliance (Score:2)
In fact they do make a product like that; its called the Google Search Appliance [wikipedia.org].
MySpace is the killer app (Score:4, Funny)
If Google can't compete with MySpace they're FINISHED!!!!1!!
Google is always experimenting, nothing new here (Score:3, Insightful)
They have a bunch of failed experiments--Buzz, Wave, Health, Google wifi, and probably 100 others that died in the vetting rooms at Google.
They also have some stunning successes that started out as private projects within the company--Gmail, notably.
That's not a sign of a dying company--it's a refreshing sign of a company that dares to experiment and isn't afraid to fail occasionally.
So this guy retreats back to a safe, old-school software corporation--Microsoft. 25 years ago, Microsoft must have been an exciting place to work. Today, it's stodgy, rigid, backward thinking, corporate-focused, a follower and not a leader in most areas. He'll feel right at home in his safe, easy corporate 9-5 job.
Google reminds me of the old AT&T Bell Labs organization, where you were expected to put 25-50% of your time into your own projects. It wasn't for everybody; some people need to be basically told what to do 8 hours a day, while other people could feel free to create amazing (or stupid) things, and management just knew that sooner or later something useful would result.
The real question is, how does a large corporation preserve its startup mentality. You really can't, but at least you can try to make the place fun for people who are chasing new ideas all the time. Me, I'd work for GOOG any time. It would be a blast being around so many smart people!
Re:Google is always experimenting, nothing new her (Score:5, Insightful)
I know that not RTFA is considered the norm, but how did you manage to interpret even the blurb as the exact opposite of what it said? Or did you just assume that if two different parties complained about google within 24 hours then they must be complaining about the same thing?
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You're correct, that's exactly what the article is saying. And the gp is correct about MSFT.
As a (recent) ex-employee I can testify that there is definitely nothing exciting or innovative about MSFT now, coupled with the age-old problem of thinking if it compiles then ship it (that's why I left). As far as products go, they're stuck in the backwaters of stale tech and middle management seems to be ok with it as long as the big dollar enterprise contracts are renewed.
Of course the research division is fine
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Google+ is awesome (Score:3)
Google+ is awesome, it's a great way to talk to Google employees.
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BTW, this is not true. I work for Google, have a 20% project that has nothing to do with social or sharing (in fact it's an open source Bitcoin related project [google.com]), and before this one I had a different 20% project which now has a team of two
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bad omen for Google (Score:2)
Nothing to see here (Score:4, Insightful)
Happens all the time. Move along.
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd put it differently:
Man leaves job for higher paying opportunity and doesn't want everyone else to think he's a sellout.
There are a number of theories, though I don't really think this is newsworthy. Frankly, I'd be surprised if the situation was reversed: someone working for Google but saying they'd rather be working for Microsoft. Badmouthing your current employer is rare and interesting. Badmouthing your past employer, especially when it's a major rival of your current one, not so much.
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Frankly, I'd be surprised if the situation was reversed: someone working for Google but saying they'd rather be working for Microsoft.
Er, just a quibble, but wouldn't the reverse be someone who went back to Google when MS didn't turn out to be the neat place they thought it was going to be?
When will the users start leaving? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google has gone nuts with the ads. A few years ago there were plenty of text ads: nice and non-intrusive ones, but noticeable. Then they moved to images and then flash! It used to be the innocent child of the web, now it is the creepy old man hanging around the playground. I have been gradually moving away from their products - my default search engine is duckduckgo - but gmail still has me by the balls. Its only a matter of time though.
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To answer your question: AdBlock
I rarely ever see ads on any of Google services. When I do it is usually once every few years when I do a 100% clean install of Firefox.
Last time this happened I was SHOCKED by how many ads it filters out.
My guess is that if AdBlock and similar extensions did not exist Google would have hit the upper level of Ad tolerance among its users long ago.
O RLY? (Score:2)
No, it doesn't, at least not in the advice page you link. That page provides a "heat map" that shows what Google believes are, in general, the relative values of different placements of ads on a page relative to a typical "nav bar across the page near the top, primary content in the middle both vertically and horizontally, footer
Yes, really. (Score:3)
Yes, Google has been sending out notifications encouraging sites to fill more of the screen with Google ads. [webpronews.com] I'm trying to find the link where someone reported getting a notification that they should put more ads on their page, because they had less than 3 "ad units". That included the "heat map" referenced above. I haven't found that yet, but I found this Google video "Monetize your content" [google.com]. "Ideally, every page on your site should have some form of AdSense on it". Yes, the Google sales rep actually say
Saying 'Don't be Evil' while holding a Death Ray.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google should be all about advertising, because that is their only business which makes money: They made $35 billion or so last year on advertising, and $1.3B on everything else . Assuming 1 Billion on-line people, thats $35 a year for every man, woman, and child on the Internet.
And the way for more effective advertising is more effective stalking, err, profiling of people. Google is very good about tracking its users when there are advertisements, but was losing out to Facebook on non-advertising pages, thus the advent of +1.
It also explains a huge amount of the change in Google's privacy policy: before they would silo data, but now its all-inbounds. If its beneficial for them to data-mine your email (or email sent TO you from gmail users), including paid email accounts and to correlate it to the advertising tracking cookie for DoubleClick, they now can do it. Even services like Cloud Storage and App Engine are under Google's privacy policy. Fun, hu?
"Its hard to believe in a company that says 'Don't Be Evil' when they are busy firing a death ray"
We've seen it all before (Score:3)
internet is becoming the TV of the 21st century (Score:4, Insightful)
the internet of the late 20th century and the first few years of the last decade was you go find the information you want. Google flourished because they were able to organize it better to make life easier for you.
Facebook, twitter and the rest of social is the new internet. You "like" or follow brands and then read the stream of their updates/news feed. sort of like a custom RSS feed. the point is that you no longer find the information, you are fed a stream of data. just like TV of the 20th century where you sit in front of a box and consume the content.
this is where google is having problems. the whole idea of fighting spam in gmail was to force those companies to use google for advertising. Yes, all the shady loan companies and no prescription drug companies used google almost 10 years ago to advertise. but with SEO the spam problem is coming back and the only way to solve it seems to be social where people crowd source the content filtering.
that's the whole point of Plus, to filter the content. but lately Plus is crap as well. Just a bunch of bloggers/internet oprahs and you are supposed to comment on how cool they are when they post something
Re:internet is becoming the TV of the 21st century (Score:5, Insightful)
No, before Adwords Google was a modest sized company with decent growth - no Yahoo! or MSN, but still a rather decent third place. Then, in 2000, came Adwords. And then Google 'flourished', at least in the sense of cash flow... which blinded everyone (even Google itself) to reality - they were still a distant third in terms of eyes on their own pages.
Then along came Facebook, and beat Google and everyone else at their own game. Not only garnering more eyeballs, but also getting more time on the page per eyeballs, *and* gathering more data allowing for more accurate (and more profitable) advertising.
That, fed by geek hubris, is a popular mythperception. It makes the geeks feel better about themselves, and gives the pundits something to holler about to endear themselves to the technorati... but it's bullshit. If you actually watch things like Yahoo Buzz [yahoo.com] and Google Trends [google.com] you see the daily ebb and flow of people seeking information. Yeah, the shallow readers will only see the shallow people searching out Hollywood buzz, but discerning readers following them over time will note the searches for more serious information as well.
What you, and other shallow readers miss is that there are two kinds of information people use the web to seek. The first is their 'daily dose'. News on their favorite sports teams, their favorite bloggers latest posting, sales at their favorite stores, following the latest trends etc... etc... That's why (among other things) RSS feeds were invented. One stop for everything. (Hold on, more on that in a minute.) Millions of people search daily for these, and thus they dominate search trends - most of the time. The second is "situational searches", what do if your 1996 Taurus breaks down?, what do these purple spots on your forearm mean?, how to cut a rabbet without a tablesaw?.... Literately an infinity of different detailed searches, with millions of people each searching for millions of different things. These, they don't show up in 'top results', misleading those who mistakenly take top search results for the whole of the search universe. Though the hints have always been there for those with eyes to see... Like the guy who sued google over the ranking of his flower shop. Or JC Penney's being slapped by Google for their misleading methods of getting to the top of their categories.
The other thing missed by the shallow and short of memory is that the portal, one stop for everything, has been the Holy Grail of the commercial internet since practically Day One. Even Google has tried their hand at this early on, first by making their site(s) easy to use by introducing a single username/password for all their services. Later, they introduced Google Homepage (since rebranded as iGoogle) to the great joy of the geek community. ("Now we can use Google instead of Yahoo! or MSN!" Oh, the irony - since much of the same community derided portals.) Alongside that came their RSS reader, Google Sites, Google Business, Picasa, etc... etc... Ever more services and sites trying to keep eyeballs on Google's ads and trying to gain even more personal information to more accurately target those ads.
I have a Google+ account (Score:5, Funny)
Facebook too entrenched (Score:3)
When Google took over search engines- there were other companies at play- but no-one had an emotional attachment to them.
Now Google wants to take over social media- but Facebook is entrenched. It's different than conquering the search world because Facebook has an emotional value for people- and the less technical people that anchor it are less likely to switch than the early adopters of the internet that switched to Google's search engine.
Going social and creating Google+ was a good idea too late for Facebook. If they wanted to do it they should have done it before every non-techie auntie and granny had it.
(I still refuse any social network of that ilk)
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When Google took over search engines- there were other companies at play- but no-one had an emotional attachment to them.
Now Google wants to take over social media- but Facebook is entrenched. It's different than conquering the search world because Facebook has an emotional value for people- and the less technical people that anchor it are less likely to switch than the early adopters of the internet that switched to Google's search engine.
Facebook doesn't have an emotional value for people. Facebook has all the friends that people want to share things with while Google+ doesn't. People have no problem switching social networks, but they are not going to do so unless there is a reason to switch and people are there. Google hasn't filled either of those criteria.
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Google doesn't want to "take over social media". Google wants to retain its position in online advertising. Social media position is a means, not an ends.
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there were other companies at play
The other companies were doing a terrible job at useful search though. Result placement was sold to the highest bidder, some were open about it [smithfam.com] but most pretended to rank results by relevance. Google stepped into the market with a search engine that did what people wanted and blew everyone else away.
Their problem now is that when you know a lot about the person doing the search, building a reasonably good search engine is pretty easy. Facebook has the potential to eat Google's lunch.
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Their problem now is that when you know a lot about the person doing the search, building a reasonably good search engine is pretty easy. Facebook has the potential to eat Google's lunch.
I beg to disagree. I have yet to see any 'targeted ad' tools successfully present new and appropriate ads to me. Ad placement is marginally better done than, say, Amazon's useless 'recommended for you' page. I suspect it'll take another giant step in AI for anything I do, write, or visit on Facebook to be translatable i
C|Net? Seriously? (Score:2)
Immature. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Immature. (Score:5, Insightful)
When I search for “London pub walks” I want better than the sponsored suggestion to “Buy a London pub walk at Wal-Mart.”
This is the single reason I almost never use Google anymore. Ten pages of links like THAT before something relevant comes along. Yahoo used to find exact quote matches in pages from 2002. Google is under the impression that if it's not RECENT and it's not visited by 1 million web crawlers or 1 billion naive people who don't realize a search result is an ad until after they clicked it, well then it shouldn't be returned as a search result at all. I was "researching" the effects of amphetamines on DNA/RNA mutations (want to have a kid, don't want to have an autisitic kid, nevermind the details) and I found nothing but links to paywalls on Google. Why did google give me a direct exerpt from the page which, once I click, does not contain that exerpt without a fee?? Fuck that! I used Yahoo and then Bing and I have a veritable library of PDF's on the subject, scientific peer reviewed publications from 1984 through 2011, and I'm still sifting through (then I found out my local university has all this stuff in its Reserved books section, oh welll...) (and I realize now my 2 years on Adderall won't likely be a deterrant to my choice to try to have a kid)
Google. Sucks. It hasn't been useful to me since 2009 or so. If ads are its business, it's not getting it from me, and that's because it isn't offering me anything in return.
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"Things just aren't as good as they once were". Unless you're 15 years old, that sentiment rings true for most aspects of our lives.
Actually, that's a middle aged thing. When I look back I see going to the outhouse when visiting my grandparents, having a TV dinner take half an hour to cook because there was no microwave oven, having three blurry, ghosty, black and white channels on the 19 inch TV set, no remote control, no VCR or DVR, no computers, no cell phones, no CrystaLens implants, young men (but not
The Punchline (Score:2)
Whittaker explained why he left Google: 'The Google I was passionate about,' Whittaker writes, 'was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate.
Whittaker rejoined Microsoft.
I'm not trying to discredit anything he's said, but how is Microsoft better than Google? (or vice versa?) :/
You just switched from one corporate entity to another
Re:The Punchline (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, love them or hate them, Microsoft is a software company trying to apply engineering to diverse software problems.
Ultimately, they make their money through the sale of products, so their interests tend to align with their users'.
Google, on the other hand is an advertising company trying to apply engineering to, um, data mining algorithms; and acquiring start-up companies for the purpose of increasing data collection and improve the targeting of ads.
Ultimately, they make their money through better and more targeted advertising, so their interests tend to align with those of advertisers'.
-dZ.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for clearing that up for me!
Re: (Score:3)
If he joined Microsoft Research, they do a lot of amazing things. I wish I worked over there. Granted I don't know where in Microsoft he went. Though working at Microsoft in general I hear is actually a rather nice experience save for a few departments. (I have a friend who works there and is quite happy)
Google should be thinking of opening up its index. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
There aren't too many organizations public or private left in the world, that can replicate Google's indexing capabilities.
It's not necessary to have a company the size of Google to do Google's web search. CPU power and disk space have been increasing faster than the amount of content on the web. Indexing the web isn't all that big a job any more. Cuil, despite their problems, did it with about $20 million, 50 people and about 1000 servers. Their relevance algorithm was terrible and their crawler hit the same pages too often, and by the time they had those fixed, it was too late for them. But they did index all the pages they
Breaking stuff that used to work (Score:2)
Personally I think that breaking stuff that used to work [lawrenceperson.com] is destroying Google...
My only complaint with Google... (Score:3)
...is that now they are making interfaces changes that make no sense, or add little value over the previous interface. Google has taken a page from FaceBook and begun pushing some horrible page design onto unsuspecting users. And no amount of complaint helps. Their support just laughs because they know there are no other real options to run to.
Smart people can be dumb. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google could still put ads in front of more people than Facebook, but Facebook knows so much more about those people.
Knowing nothing of James Whittaker other than what is in the summary, and having not RTFA, I'll assume he is a very intelligent and successful person.
He is also missing the obvious (and he's not the only one).
Facebook knows more of what people want other people to know. Google knows about what is really going on with people. People lie in surveys, whether it's to say what they want to be true or what they think is expected. Facebook is like a survey you create yourself.
Facebook has your holiday photos, knows you've been to an island, like partying on the beach. Google knows you're reading up on herpes treatments.
Maybe Facebook knows you're married. Google knows you're trying to find a divorce attorney.
If Google is relying on + to compete with Facebook, it has already lost the battle.
Smart people can be dumb -- about Google+ (Score:2)
This relies on a misconception of what Google+ is. Google+ isn't a distinct set of pages on Google that presents a Facebook like interface (though that's part of it, though its rely the tip of the iceberg.) As Google reps have said many times, Google+ is "the next version of Google", and the focus for Google+ is integration of data across Google services and integration of social features with existing Google services.
So, whi
Re: (Score:2)
I would not underestimate Facebook in such away. Look how far and wide their little buttons, and such are spread. Also remember beacon, it might not go by that name anymore because it got politicized but the technology is still there in various forms. To say nothing of "Facebook login" which obviously creates all kinds of track-ability for people who use it.
They can certainly track you if your logged in, probably track you when you are not in many cases even if its with a little less certainty. They mig
Won't people eventually start noticing? (Score:2)
If increasingly the currency of the digital world is information aggregation, collection, and targeting, won't people eventually start to realize that *this* is their valuable asset and they should be compensated for giving it up, assume control in some meaningful way of their online persona?
I know there are several startups trying to move in this direction, and I don't know if any of them have it figured out yet, but it seems that Facebook's blunt approach and Google's ham-handed attempts should eventually
If I were CEO of Google... (Score:2)
I'd put a billion dollars and 1000 devs on taking Open Office and making it way better than MS Office, and making it work seemlessly with Google Docs and GMail. This would steal Microsoft's main cash cow.
Why the hell aren't they doing this?
Re: (Score:2)
I'd put a billion dollars and 1000 devs on taking Open Office and making it way better than MS Office, and making it work seemlessly with Google Docs and GMail. This would steal Microsoft's main cash cow. Why the hell aren't they doing this?
Because Microsoft offers no meaningful competition for Google in areas where the latter earns 99% of its income (i.e. ads); so why should Google start an all-out war? what's the goal?
Re: (Score:2)
Google already charges for Google Apps, which is clearly in direct competition with Microsoft, with over 4 million customers. But they are half-assing it, which is precisely why they are not making much income off of it. I want the benefits of the web (only one version instead of multiple uncontrolled copies flying about; real-time collaboration; version control; history; permissions control) in a native app (fast, feature-rich, offline). Why is that so hard to grasp? If someone came out with an amazing
Re: (Score:2)
You are very short sighted if you think that using drop box is a reasonable way to collaborate on docs. Version control? Locking? History? Very stupid idea, I'm sorry.
I think a LOT of people would kill to be able to do proper document collaboration within a real native application environment without having to spend an arm and a leg.
If you aren't aware, google already has over 4 million companies on Google Apps, including some very big ones. The last two companies I've worked at used it as their main do
FUD? (Score:2)
Considering the source company, it's kind of hard to say this isn't more about spreading FUD over Google's ability to offer exciting new products, than it is about telling how things really are.
Another way to make search results less useful (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
James comes to us most recently from Microsoft. He has spent his career focusing on testing, building high quality products, and designing tools and process at the industrial scale.
Was he in charge of testing Vista?
So, why do we care what the QA Manager thinks about this? You don't often see a lot of innovation coming out of QA, but you see a lot of vague bitching about it with no offer of a solution.
Re:Test Honcho? (Score:4, Informative)
You don't often see a lot of innovation coming out of QA,...
Well, perhaps you should look a bit deeper at what Dr. Whittaker has done in the past before saying stuff.
This particular QA Manager is also a CS PhD.
You might be perhaps interested in his dissertation:
Markov Chain Techniques for Software Testing and Reliability Analysis
Perhaps that would by why we care about what this QA Manager thinks about software testing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Nice rant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice rant (Score:5, Insightful)
Rant? Please. I know ranting, and this isn't it. The guy didn't like his job, and a billion people were bugging him about it, so he tried to articulate his reasons. Maybe he didn't do a great job there, but trying to argue with somebody about the validity of personal decisions like why they chose one job or girl or car (yes, a girl is like a job and expensive possession all wrapped into one, deal with it. imaginary girl that may be reading this, you may substitute guy. unless you're gay, then don't. unless you're a gay guy, then do. and if you're bi, pick one or both depending on ... jesus christ I don't care. see, I told you I know ranting) is the very essence of immaturity. They're always going to be right--it was their decision. If it doesn't seem "right" to you, then you're just not able to get into their head well enough. Even if it ends up making them less happy in the end, they made the best decision they could with the information they had, which is their entire lifetime of experience.
The real rant is in the response. Somebody is all upset because somebody else left a company they don't even seem to like that much, but they're pursuing their own happiness and that just needs to be nipped in the bud. This is the real world! Things don't work that way! A company's gotta make money! Aristotle younger generation cliches!
Seriously? You're going to go there, but you don't realize that people rarely make solid arguments in defense of personal decisions? I guess if it's not something that's repeated a thousand times as if it's some sort of amazing insight that you can parrot, it's not worth thinking of on your own.
The greatest shows occur when the person being attacked for their decision doesn't realize that theirs wasn't the objectively correct one for everybody in the world, and tries to further defend their position as if it was. Increasingly specious arguments fly back and forth, people on both sides burrow further and further into their own heads, and the argument just gets weirder and weirder. The only way out of it short of running out of steam is for somebody to both realize what's happening and not care at all what either their opponent or spectators think, because all you can do is go, "it was my decision, I don't give a fuck what anybody thinks" and then stop defending yourself. Or, "wait, I'm trying to convince somebody that they aren't right about their own desires." Either one needs to just deal with everyone too wrapped up in the argument to realize that it's completely changed from where it started, thinking they "won". My prediction: Whittaker will have at least an intuitive understanding of this and shut up, the internet will continue to argue. Blog author will move onto a new inflammatory subject. But sometimes ... sometimes magic happens, and it escalates for everyone to see, until it explodes in some self-destructive chest-beating. On the internet, where it can be watched by everyone and remembered forever. Or until something else shiny and loud comes along.