
Why I Left Google - cangencer
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2012/03/13/why-i-left-google.aspx
======
arkitaip
I think people here are being ungenerous towards the author. Too me this story
sounds genuine and not like a pr move dictated by Microsoft. It strikes me to
be a personal account by someone who's trying to make sense of the past and
actually mourning what he believe is the death of old Google. This deserves
our respect as professionals because inevitably we are all going to find
ourselves in a similar situation, trying to learn from the past and seeking
understanding by our peers.

~~~
georgemcbay
I agree the responses seem a bit harsh.

Also as someone who never worked at Google but has been a pretty big Google
"fanboy" (of the search, Google Apps, Android, etc) his waning enthusiasm for
the brand as an employee seems to have taken a very similar dip to my waning
enthusiasm for them as a user, though due to personal investment his dip was
probably faster and deeper than my own.

I've loved Google in the past precisely because they weren't Apple and they
weren't Facebook. It seems increasingly like they are trying to be Apple and
Facebook rolled up into one, which (most importantly for me) sucks because I'm
not a fan of Apple or Facebook and (most importantly for them) sucks because
they aren't a very good Apple nor a very good Facebook, so they're trading in
their old fans for the hope of new fans that probably aren't interested
anyway.

Larry Page, I am disppoint.

~~~
timr
_"I've loved Google in the past precisely because they weren't Apple and they
weren't Facebook."_

I absolutely do not understand this frame of mind. Why not just like a company
for its products, rather than liking them because they're "not" some other
company?

Life is too short to get caught up in the identity politics of corporations.
Google is a business, not your buddy.

~~~
pragmatic
Trust.

If you invest time/money in something, you want to have a good feeling about
it. I want to know I'm not going to get screwed down the road.

I think of if like a relationship with person. Do you want to be
friends/lovers with a thief/liar/cheater?

Reputation matters.

~~~
timr
_"I think of if like a relationship with person. Do you want to be
friends/lovers with a thief/liar/cheater? Reputation matters."_

It's entirely possible to have good feelings about products, value the
reputations of brands, and trust companies (or not) without getting caught up
in politics. I like Whole Foods because they have really good produce, not
because they're "not Safeway".

You don't have to choose sides in a religious war to make product judgments.

~~~
oblique63
It's not necessarily always about 'choosing sides'. We are at the point where
buying a product from one of these large companies no longer simply means
"buying a product" (like you would produce at a Whole Foods). Popular tech
products are so intertwined with their parent companies, that it basically
implies more of a wager. As a user, when you make a purchase, you place a bet
that in your commitment to use this product, the company behind it won't do
something that will decrease the enjoyment/utility you get out of the product
during its lifecycle. Now this doesn't have to be some new policy/action that
literally occurred after your purchase, but rather something that was not
obvious upon purchase, and might not even have to do directly with the product
itself. Either way, this type of assessment still fits into what you're saying
about evaluating a product on it's own merits, but at a certain point, the
politics behind a product actually DO affect the product's merit, because they
are so intertwined.

In my case for example, I just recently got bit by the fact that iPads are
restricted to syncing with only one computer while I was developing an app for
it. The iPad on its own is a fine piece of hardware, and is a generally nice
product, but this one detail devalued it for me significantly. Can you
honestly say this detail is completely detached from the fact that it is an
apple product? I wouldn't think so, that move is completely expected from
apple; it's part of the locked-down ecosystem you buy into with apple
products. I actually like apple's products 'on their own', because they are
well made and have attention to detail; however, I will [most likely] never
again buy one due to apple's aforementioned politics, which directly affect my
experience with their products as a user. Similar thing happened with
Samsung/T-mobile and my Vibrant which they never even updated Gingerbread;
awesome product on its own, but the service I got with it (part of my
'experience') was poor, and totally determined by the politics behind it.

So while it might be easy to detangle product from company for something as
simple as produce, it gets a bit trickier when looking to purchase a longer-
term tech product. If you're ok with lock-down, and/or lack of updates, that's
great, Apple and Samsung products are totally awesome, they're just not for
me.

------
ChuckMcM
Ouch.

Not enough people think about year 10. You know, that's when you're 10 years
old as a company and you've got a lot of huge successes behind you. Kind of
like teenagers when they realize that finding a job is suddenly not an
'optional' thing in their lives.

James' rant here reminded me of a similar rant I read (internally) at Sun on
its 10 year anniversary. They had published a book all about Sun's first
decade, and somehow excised the fact that Sun had built a workstation called
the 386i. It emphasized the successes, and papered over the mistakes. The rant
was about how Sun, who had kicked DEC in the nuts and had them retreating to
the data center, was walking right into that same data center because
Microsoft was starting to make PC's as useful as workstations. (there used to
be a real distinction there.)

I remember thinking that somehow Sun had gone from bringing technology to the
folks who could use it, to being all about being a more impressive Sun
Microsystems. Sun's "Google+" moment was the day they announced they were
going to merge System V and SunOS.

In my brief time at Google I was exposed to the folks who had become more
about 'The Google' and less about doing cool stuff. I saw many of the same
things James did, and I hear Marissa's 'call to arms' about Social and said to
myself "If she can't say what it is, how can she expect the troops to achieve
it?"

If you read the stuff about Mark and Facebook (and I have to believe that at
least _some_ of it is true.) the man is on a mission. And his mission was to
make a new place in the universe that didn't exist before, he left it to
others to figure out how to monetize it. Google did the same with search, make
it real, then monetize.

But I think at some point the operating committee at Google looked at
monetization of all the things Google has done and if you included search
advertising the in the bar graph everything else looked like zero. And you ask
yourself "We've got all these smart people doing all these projects and not a
single one even comes CLOSE to the income that search advertising does? Give
me one good reason I shouldn't just fire all of them?"

The sad thing is that I saw multimillion dollar a year businesses get tossed
under the bus because they just didn't move the needle.

Ten years on, ask yourself, "What value do you bring to the table?" if you
don't know, that is a big problem.

~~~
6ren
Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" was motivated by DEC getting
killed. He claims that DEC was a victim of a disruption: a new technology that
offered something that didn't seem to be a threat, become successful in other
markets and eventually improved enough that it was threat - then it was too
late. There, the old technology was minicomputers; the new technology was
workstations.

The new technology isn't perceived as a threat because it is not as good and
will never be as good in the old market. It manages to survive in a different
new market (because it really can't compete in the old pond). As it improves,
it never catches up with the old technology - but it becomes _good enough_.
That is, the old technology has also improved, and is definitely better - but
the old market doesn't care for that extra improvement. You can see there are
a few things that have to happen for disruption to occur.

One of the reasons for Google's 20% was to try to prevent this kind of thing,
but it never worked out. Some business types redefine terms, so that
"invention" is a new technology (make something), and "innovation" is a new
business (people want). Google's made a lot of stuff, but most isn't wanted
and didn't create a business. They aren't innovations. Closing down businesses
that aren't making enough to move the needle is the classic mistake of
disrupted businesses: Christensen suggests setting up separate, autonomous
business units (even separate businesses; startups), with limited resources,
that _will_ get excited by small wins - because new disruptions start small.
(YC is pretty much doing it right...)

However, right now, Google is fighting for its life. At the beginning,
facebook didn't seem threatening - or at least not _that_ threatening. Then
again, I'm not sure that Google ever could win this fight; social is such a
different kind of business. Perhaps the best that google could hope for is to
settle back into owning search forever.

My only disappointment is that google didn't manage to transform its internal
inventions into innovations. I'm not saying it's easy or that I could do
better, it's just that unlike winning social, it seems _possible_... and who
knows what new disruptions might have come from that?

As it is, Google seems closer to Xerox: one fantastic invention/business,
invents the future, makes no money from it.

~~~
jrockway
Here are my thoughts as an engineer at Google. These are my own thoughts, not
Google's :)

I don't think Google is fighting for its life; people are not defecting away
from search to use Facebook's search or Bing or whatever. Right now, Google+
is something like, "let's see what happens if we build a social component and
integrate it with our products". It doesn't seem like much right now and it's
certainly not killing Facebook, but that's not the goal; the goal is to have
something in case being able to post pictures and "interact with brands" turns
out to be important in the future. (Do people like ads? I say no; I avoid them
at any cost. But many people like ads and like companies and like products. So
we'll see how that goes! Look at the brand Apple has built. That's
advertising, my friends.)

It's easier to understand if we look at past events. So let's take Picasa, for
example. It was never as popular as Flickr or even SmugMug. Why bother
maintaining it when it's clear that Google "lost" to Flickr? The answer is
because it could later become relevant. Now that people are running around
taking pictures with Google phones, sharing them with GMail and Google+, it's
logical to have a Google-owned picture repository. That way, we get total
control over the user experience and can make a really integrated product.
Take a picture on your phone, instantly share it with your friends from your
computer. Pretty neat!

Google Play is similar. People loved iTunes' integrated payment system, music
store, book store, movie store, app store, and phones. Google had all the
infrastructure for these things (Checkout, Music, Books, YouTube / Video,
Android Market, and Android), but not integrated, so people didn't tend to buy
Android phones to get apps and content. But, time allowed Google to unify
these discrete components into Google Play, and now users have access to
something very much like iTunes. It was a very slow incremental thing, which
people aren't as excited by as "one more thing" style announcements, but now
we have something that's pretty cool and will make Google products more
attractive than they were before. It was worth keeping stuff like Checkout and
Books alive, even if they were not exactly putting PayPal and Amazon out of
business.

So today, Google+ is maybe not the best thing ever. But some day, it might be
a useful piece of software to have, and so we have it. Right now, I think it's
really great as an internal bulletin board that I can fine-tune to exactly my
interests. It may not be as cool as Facebook, but it's still a useful piece of
software that was worth writing. (I've never seen an internal bulletin board
system that lets me subscribe to certain topics and people, after all.) Rather
than ensure that everything we push is an epic success on day one, we're
putting it out there for people to try. Some people don't like Google+, some
do. I use it as a better Twitter; the interface is nicer, I can write more,
and so I use it more than I used any "social" products before Google+. So
there's one data point, though I realize I am not the average user. (Facebook
never excited me and I didn't have an account. Google+ was interesting enough
to entice me into trying social networking.)

Yes, management sounds a lot more excited about Google+ than I do, and that's
fine, Google is not my company and I am more practical :) Worst case: G+ is a
nice internal tool for Apps customers. Middle case: something that's good to
have if we want to play with social ideas. Best case: a new way to use
computers that people love. All are good.

(Remember Google Checkout? It was a nice foundation for Google Wallet. So it's
worth trying things and having products that may not be the industry leader,
because you can always improve them!)

Personally, I'm working on a new product at Google that will make computers do
something that they've never done before, something that many people have
wanted for a long time. I have no idea how it will ever make money, but we're
doing it anyway because people will like it. And no, this is not some rogue
20% project. :)

So to summarize; I'm not upset with Google for creating products that are not
overnight successes. Yes, social is where your friends are, and everyone is on
Facebook today. Clearly Google+ isn't enough to get people to abandon their
friends for a while. But it's worth continuing to develop, because it will
only get better with time. I don't think that means the end of Google :)

~~~
danielhunt
Actually, speaking as an android user who LOVES that I can auto upload my pics
to the GOOG, I absolutely _hate_ that Google has any social platform at all.

Because G+ exists it makes Facebook a competitor. Can I easily share my auto
uploaded pics with my Facebook friends? Not at all. Can I change where I
upload my pics to? (Ie : not picasa) not at all.

Picasa is about lock in. Not about user experience.

~~~
vibrunazo
You can upload all your pics from your phone to facebook with a couple of
clicks from the Android Gallery app. A lock in would be if you were not
allowed to, or at least if they went out of their way to make that harder for
you. But instead they go out of their way to put the share button and inter-
app communication (intents) to allow you to easily share your pics with third
parties.

I understand your frustration, and I too would like some kind of API to let us
better control auto-upload. But "lock in" seems a bit of a stretch. You're
asking to go out of their way, again, to better support competitors. When
there's already a lot of support for them in place.

~~~
Drbble
Can facebook or flickr or whatever poll the pictures directory to support auto
upload, if they (app writers) want too?

------
taylorbuley
> App Engine fees were raised. APIs that had been free for years were
> deprecated or provided for a fee.

From where I'm sitting Google has been pretty rough on independent developers
recently.

I think their lack of caring (or understanding?) indy devs is best summed up
by the Google+ API. Read-only is understandable as they get off their feet,
but you can't even get a user's profile stream (you can only fetch profiles
one by one).

Now that the Buzz API is shut down I have yet to find a way to "share"
anything programmatically on Google. How can you be social without a share
API?

~~~
JS_startup
Google's recent behavior was central in our decision not to embrace their
technologies and APIs. If they're going to either be suddenly shut down or
have prohibitive, anti-startup pricing applied to them then why should we
hitch our wagon to their horse?

------
antirez
IMHO what's sad is that Google+ is not better than Facebook for average
people. Better is, for them, more warm, where you may express more about you
in a simpler way, and so forth. Google+ is clearly designed by people not
exactly in touch (mentally speaking) with the average person using Facebook,
that's why nobody of the non tech guys want to switch to it.

p.s. IMHO Google is going to lose in the email space soon as well, times are
mature to beat it in simple ways, only protection they have in this space is
that there is a big "optimization" part in email that is anti-spam and they
are good at it.

~~~
pragmatic
^ this.

G+ is a worse Facebook (and not in the worse is better sense).

Gmail is getting slow and the recent changes haven't been for the better. In
fact it's hurt usability for common users for the (dubious) benefit of "power"
users.

The unified google interface is rather crappy. I don't know which which i have
to click/hover/etc to get to my account settings.

------
CurtHagenlocher
As a Microsoft employee, I wish this hadn't been posted to a Microsoft-branded
website. Other than that, I thought it was an interesting perspective and I
loved the money quote:

"I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social
isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and
the people are on Facebook.”"

~~~
nextparadigms
But "the people" were on Myspace, Hi5, Friendster and other social networks
before Facebook - hundreds of millions of them. So clearly it's something
about the product, too.

~~~
nirvdrum
While that's true, I don't think any of them really had critical mass. Of
those you mentioned, I had precisely one friend on Myspace, none on Hi5 or
Friendster. I had two friends on Orkut. I think Facebook played it smart by
making it an exclusive network on college campuses at first, then opening it
up.

~~~
colonel_panic
I don't think the exclusivity was a long-term strategy, but rather a natural
progression from its beginning as a site for Harvard undergrads. It was really
useful at providing specific needs for college students at the start. It was
easy to find who was in your classes so you could ask for homework help or
invite people to work on a group project back when everybody listed their
classes through Facebook's central app. But after it opened up to everybody
and a whole bunch of apps appeared, there were multiple competing class-
listing apps with no clear winner and you needed to use all of them if you
wanted to see everybody in the class. It became less convenient and most
students no longer bothered to list their classes at all.

Once Facebook understood the appeal the site had to the general population,
they realized that it would be better for them to create an ecosystem where
network effects were optimized for the decentralized user base as a whole
rather than the centralized subnetworks that made the site take off in the
first place. At each step, they focused on what worked for the users at the
time.

Google+, on the other hand, really did deliberately start out as an exclusive
network, largely for people in the tech world, and it hoped to quickly
transform into something with universal appeal. You can draw your own
conclusions about how well that worked.

------
paul
I also miss the old Google.

I think it's a mistake to blame this on ads though. I don't believe that the
G+ crusade is being driving by advertising (though I'm sure it looks that way
to people who assume that everything is about ads).

~~~
rickmb
Really? Please enlighten me, what is Google+ (or Facebook for that matter)
about if it isn't about advertising?

Because as far as I know, every service that isn't about being so great people
would pay for it is about advertising and nothing else.

~~~
vibrunazo
It always seemed to me that social is the evolution of search. And google
knows this very well. Social signals are very important for finding what
you're looking for. The idea of g+ was always to implement something like the
new "google + your world" on a larger scale on all google products. If they
didn't do this, they would fall behind to the competition. They felt forced
to.

Erick Schmidt once said something like "we only want facebook to open their
data so people can search for it, failing that, we'll find other ways to get
it". It was clear from that day, that they were building a facebook
competitor. Not because they were looking for new ways to spam people with ads
(that's an overly simplistic generalization). But because they found it
important to keep their existing business relevant. Independent of which
monetization they were using. Even if google search was a paid premium, they
would need social anyway. It's clearly not "about the ads".

~~~
MatthewPhillips
There's nothing evolutionary about "social signals". It's very, very old.
Since the beginning of time advertising companies have used big data to better
target their ads. Facebook obviously makes this easier, but it is not new. 20
years ago advertisers knew, within a margin of error, what type of car you
drove, how much money you made, and whether your wife was pregnant.

Social signals are less valuable than search terms. Search terms very often
lead to a direct purchase. Social is just another avenue, like TV, to build
brand awareness. It's very valuable, but it's not search-valuable.

~~~
vibrunazo
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not implying they need
social signals to better target ads. But to give better search results. (as in
google + your world)

The competition was already doing this, Google was threatened. Bing had a deal
with Facebook. Users were already using Facebook to look for information
instead of Google. They tried to outsource social to facebook and twitter.
That proved an unideal strategy. Social was too important for their business
to rely on the good will of another company. _Social is the future of search._
Google saw this coming a mile away and got into social before they could
become irrelevant.

Social is the future of search, this fact is independent of advertising. Even
if Google had a different business model for their search engine. They would
still need social. They didn't get into social because of ads, they did
because search needs it.

~~~
zyfo
> Social is the future of search

Says who? The fact is that arguably the most hardcore googlers are here on HN,
and I would imagine that most of us don't care for, and even dislike, social
search.

That's not enough to prove that social isn't the future of search, but it's
enough to think twice about it.

------
pradocchia
I do miss the old Google. They had some good products. Search was search, and
it was clearly designed to provide the very best search possible.
Unadulterated and honest. Same story with Gmail, despite the ads. No lock in,
no rent-seeking.

Too bad, really. The new Google is obnoxious in a "why-are-you-doing-this?",
Facebook kind of way.

~~~
bo1024
I would put the difference this way. I used to feel like Google was providing
me cool, useful services. Now I feel like Google is trying to figure out ways
to collect my data.

I think they will learn to their cost that trust doesn't grow back.

~~~
gnaffle
This pretty much sums up my feeling about Google, too. It's the same feeling
that made me stop using Facebook.

------
AmericanOP
Google should focus on their product- the search bar.

Google Plus Me should mean I can find anything of mine via the search bar. If
I want to find a file on my computer, I should be able to search for it using
google.com instead of spotlight. I should be able to do this even if I'm not
on my normal machine.

It's not just desktop files. If I want to show my dad pictures of my trip to
Cabo, I shouldn't have to log into Facebook, find the always moving Photos app
button, find the album, find the picture.

I should be able to search 'My cabo pictures' in Google.

The omnibar should really become omnipotent. That would be compelling, cool,
futuristic must-have UX. That's what Google Plus Me means to me.

~~~
jdpage
They have that: Google Desktop. If I recall correctly, it even lets you do it
from your other machines. Admittedly, it's been a while since I've used it, so
I might be wrong there.

(Methinks that it would be vastly improved if they got simply got rid of the
big clunky desktop widget engine. Possibly even got rid of the search box and
just let you use a web view -- as you described above.)

~~~
jurjenh
I'm pretty sure that has been shut down in one of the last few culling rounds.
I agree that it was very useful, it also had a good sidebar that seemed to
learn which rss feeds were likely to be interesting among other things, but I
stopped using it quite a while ago...

------
pasbesoin
An observation from the inside of what I've been seeing/feeling from the
outside.

When Google started killing the "cool" stuff, I perceived (rightly or wrongly)
the writing on the wall as far as attracting and retaining top talent. And
they lost my semi-hesitant... "devotion". I wanted to believe they really did
care about e.g. next generation energy sources, at a time when even our lame-
ass federal government can't get its act together on that front. And Earth,
Maps, various API's (Translate, for example), and the like produced
fundamental changes in various environments and endeavors, both professional
and hobbyist.

Now, sliding into "corporate", lame-ass Google. So sad. Perhaps inevitable;
nonetheless, if so, then "just another".

P.S. As I reflect a bit more, I still have more respect for them than e.g.
Facebook (manipulation) or Microsoft (domineering, monopolistic, and (perhaps
resultantly) now fumbling senior management). But I fear the arrow is pointing
in the wrong direction.

And yeah, this is just one random guy's observation. I guess I've added it
because in the past Googlers (and "Google") seem to have occasionally observed
and perhaps absorbed some of the collection sentiment expressed on HN.

------
Steko
G+'s problem at it's root is that it's a FB clone. They copied the core
functionality and tacked on a few specs that make it, literally, FB+1. The
problem is no one is going to move their whole social network for FB+1 or
FB+2. Google needed to build a product an order of magnitude better to win
social.

There are plenty of colas that are +1 better then Coke but to take away Coke's
base you'd need to be Coke+100.

The obvious solution is to stop trying to make a FB clone and do something
else to get your ad demographics. I think they should stick with their core
advantages and innovate in the vein of their own Adsense product:

(1) Users sign up with Google and volunteer their demographics.

(2) While signed in, Google tailors searches to them.

(3) Google gives the user a tiny percentage of the increased ad revenue. It's
peanuts for most people so make it Google Play credit.

(4) If you're not signed in everything is anonymous.

Test run the whole thing on a smaller scale with Android users that already
have Google accounts and (for many) credit card info on file.

Nielson families give up a lot of personal data about their viewing habits.
This is rewarded with free cable, internet and cell phone service, heck they
may even be paid. Even people that just take an hourlong phone survey about tv
or radio are rewarded with $50+ checks. The reason market research companies
pay this is because the data is extremely valuable to them and their clients.
Obviously every web company wants to get that data "for free" like they do now
but the giant tracking databases and all the personnel behind that certainly
aren't free and create an adversarial relationship that can dilute your brand.

~~~
justinru
I don't think giving users a percentage of ad revenue is a feasible business
model. How/why would that work?

~~~
Steko
Shrug I thought I made the case already.

If Google makes X on untargeted ads and X+Y on targeted ads then it comes out
ahead by offering Y/10 of that money to the user somehow.

Yeah it's peanuts so you make it Google Play credit. For some people maybe
it's only one song a month, for others it might be one movie a quarter.

~~~
MarkMc
Or Google could make a deal with Facebook: If Google makes X without
Facebook's data and X+Y with their data, they can offer Facebook Y/3.

~~~
Drbble
But Facebook is gunning for that X+Y. There are only 12 billion * 24 eyeball
hours in each day.

------
defen
If life were a movie, all the "advice" Steve Jobs gave to Larry Page toward
the end of Jobs' life was completely bogus, and part of a long con aimed at
destroying Google in retaliation for Android being a "stolen product"
([http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/20/steve_jobs_vow...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/20/steve_jobs_vowed_to_destroy_google_android_called_it_a_stolen_product/))

We all know Jobs was enough of a mastermind to pull it off; but was he that
malicious?

~~~
marshray
He may have truly believed in what he was doing.

After all, this is the guy who believed every computer with a switching power
supply was ripping off the Apple II. [http://www.arcfn.com/2012/02/apple-
didnt-revolutionize-power...](http://www.arcfn.com/2012/02/apple-didnt-
revolutionize-power.html)

------
gamebit07
Today google is doing what MS did some years back. Google wants to be facebook
and some years back MS wanted to be Google(when they started bing).

People at google say "don't be evil", you cant run business without being
evil, google in its early days tried being the least possible evil, but as
Shakespeare said: "lowliness is young ambitions ladder".

But the ambitions of MS were clear from start and they did not even care about
what was evil, they wanted their supremacy all over. By joining MS you have
come to a place that is more evil, more evil than putting ads or compromising
slightly on privacy of users, look at the open source initiatives that Google
takes, agreed google labs has been shut down, app engine prices have gone high
they have dedicated some of their focus working on Social Networks, but which
company would not want to have a chunk and share in what is hot. By the way,
what do you see on MS being done, even they are wannabe in their approach.
free 90 days trial for azure and the sun will rise from west if they offer
anything that is not free/freemium. The point i want to make here is

When you talk about privacy, i am sure you would curse facebook for privacy,
won't you. The only reason that compelled you to leave google, was you did not
get a project that you would like to work on, more geeky, irrespective of what
the company gave you, you should have tried paying it back by being proactive
in your efforts and pointing out the errors. I respect google for what it has
built, i am sure the amount of effort it has put, the horizons that it has
opened the initiatives it has brought remains unsurpassed, yes there is a
tinge of evil air that currently surrounds it, but again as you mentioned
Google learns from its mistakes, and rectifies them.

By joining MS you have done more bad than good, probably you will be given
some hardcore engineering project, but you could have got them as google as
well, with some efforts.

------
whiletruefork
The author states that in his time at Google he realizes it was always a
company funded by ads, but that he did not have to personally feel the need
for Ads in all products. That's a fair point. Where I lost him is his
connection of Google+ with Ads.

I disagree that G+ is an Ads play. It's a play for staying relevant on the
internet. When you think about it, Facebook is a closed system. They want CNN
to post articles into the CNN FB stream. They want people to read those
articles on the CNN page (yes, this currently links to outside FB... that will
change). They want to do this so that you never have to leave FB, and in fact
if you look at the user behavior of 13-17 year olds you will see disturbing
trends that this is the case.

Facebook is a danger to a free and open internet by becoming the de-facto
internet. I concede that this is a stretch, but it is within their power to do
so and from my understanding is how their strategy is lined up.

TL;DR: G+ is only about Ads in the way that Google needs users to serve Ads to
and there is a threat that all users of the internet only go to Facebook and
nowhere else.

~~~
natrius
_"When you think about it, Facebook is a closed system."_

People say this all the time without any justification. As far as I know, all
content within Facebook that has no privacy restrictions can be viewed without
being a Facebook user. Facebook has an API that can be used to both read and
write.

Facebook is stingy with phone numbers and email addresses, which is a
significant failing in my opinion. Other than that, I can't imagine a more
open social network that allows users to control who can see their content.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
So what you're saying is that Facebook is open because you are allowed to
fetch information that Facebook allows?

~~~
natrius
You're allowed to fetch data that _users_ allow, with few exceptions.

------
cromwellian
[http://www.quora.com/Who-is-the-Bing-Director-of-Test-
that-l...](http://www.quora.com/Who-is-the-Bing-Director-of-Test-that-left-
Microsoft-for-Google-twice-over-a-span-of-a-few-days)

Maybe the third time will stick?

~~~
ryanmolden
Is that the same guy (I honestly don't know)? There is no answer on Quora that
I saw. If so, then yeah that post would be viewed in a very skeptical light.
If not, well then unrelated.

Edit: Looking at other responses about his history I doubt it, it sounds like
he previously worked in DevDiv (my home), not OSD (the home of Bing).

------
pessimist
Valid reasons to quit Google, but then he joins Microsoft?

~~~
tikhonj
My impression is that Microsoft is actually _very_ diversified and focused on
technology. There was an article a while back about where the various large
companies (Google, Apple and Microsoft) make their money; Microsoft had the
most diversity by far.

Microsoft is also not afraid to fail or try random things, which makes it much
like the "old Google" in this blog post.

~~~
vineet
Microsoft's diversification is not really a good thing. IMO, it is no use
building lots of technology without being good at any of it.

My belief is that Microsoft will improve, but I would not go there because
they already have their technology goals right. (I would go to Microsoft as an
intrapreneur trying to fix their technology/innovation story).

------
tambourine_man
I dream of a day when the world will wake from this social sharing bad trip.
Facebook is not only making the web worse, by breaking most of its core
assumptions, but it's destroying one of the greatest companies to arise in
recent years.

Google has made accessing the world's information transformatively faster and
easier. Facebook has made blogging more pervasive and closed.

~~~
Karunamon
>Facebook has made blogging more pervasive and closed.

I've got to disagree with you there. Blogging in general refers to longer-form
posts than the average status update field on Facebook is comfortable for.

If you're going the angle I think you are, you could make the same argument of
Twitter.

~~~
tambourine_man
Facebook inspires a shorter writing than a typical blog post, yes.

But Facebook is in a completly different category than Twitter.

Tweets are encouraged to be public. You don't need to fill in a form a agree
to EULA to follow a link.

Anyone can compete with Google because the information they are indexing is
public. Last “App” I did for Facebook required me to give them my cel phone
number to access the information the user consent in giving.

------
MatthewPhillips
Larry Page is killing his company to chase after a market that is less
profitable that the one he currently owns.

~~~
koalaman
Larry Page, like anybody else with any chops in the business, understands that
the internet is about communication, and communication is about identity,
data, and a sharing protocol. If Facebook owns those things, they own
everything.

As long as all the users are on one identity and sharing platform you can
develop all the open social APIs you want but it's totally pointless. We need
at least a duopoly and angry users wanting to share with people not on their
platform for any kind of standards to emerge.

You're thinking ad money, ad money, ad money. And Microsoft and others are
quite happy to feed that theory with there substantial PR budgets and lack of
ethics. But I don't think that's what's on Larry's mind. I might not agree
with his strategy, or particularly like Google+, but I think if you study the
man you would come to the same conclusion.

~~~
philwelch
I'm reminded of the term "architecture astronaut". When you're discussing
business strategy in highly abstract terms, I'm not sure whether you're onto
something or whether you're being a business strategy astronaut.

At first blush, Facebook's got a stronger foothold in "identity, data, and a
sharing protocol". At second blush, they still make less revenue/profit than
Google, which in turns makes less revenue/profit than Apple. And it's hard to
see how that will change without flying up into the stratosphere talking about
ungrounded abstractions.

Facebook gets more buzz and is considered hotter shit because it's newer. It
doesn't mean anything.

What _does_ mean something is that Facebook can provide targeted advertising,
and obviously an amalgam of Facebook and Google could provide the most
targeted advertising. For instance, if I googled something about online dating
but my Google+ account said I was married, the CPC/CPM on Adwords for my
search should be different than if my Google+ account said I was single. If
Google has any business sense, Google+ is about targeted SERPs and targeted
advertising, it's not about vague abstractions that may or may not have
anything to do with turning a profit.

------
bane
" As the trappings of _entrepreneurship_ were dismantled, derisive talk of the
“old Google” and its feeble attempts at competing with Facebook surfaced to
justify a “new Google” that promised “more wood behind fewer arrows.”"

Simply put, Google stopped investing in it's future through building
entrepreneurship in its engineering ranks. This is bad for Google's future
growth prospects, full stop. They've drawn a line in the sand "we're about
ads, not technology innovation!" and that is where the company will slowly age
and die.

Google is no longer about where it's going, but about how it ages.

------
cromwellian
Why does he even bother bringing Wave into this? As a Googler he should know
that Wave was never meant to be a social network. It didn't even have the
subscribe of 'friends', it was an attempt to create a new kind of Email.

He worked at Google but didn't realize that all that innovation, be it GMail,
Android, Chrome, Search, Maps, Google Car, etc was paid for by ads?

------
davemel37
I think Google+ 's mistake, like the author, has to do with a changing
doctrine, but i think it has more to do with a branding issue than an
innovation or technology issue. (it could be both, but i would argue
perception comes before reality when it comes to success)

I think "Google+ is a dud," has less to do with whether social is broken, but
rather with human perception and branding. Much the way Google owned the
category search in peoples minds, Facebook owns the category social in peoples
minds.

Google made two fundamental mistakes. 1\. Using their brand that stands for
Search on something else. The human mind is like wet cement, once a brand owns
a category, that impressions is almost impossible to change. (Ever try to
change someones mind from his political philosophies? almost impossible).

2\. Building a product in a category that is already owned by another brand
without positioning themselves opposite it.

This is classic... Burger King will never take over Mcdonalds market share
because they are trying to convince people that they are better. Since the
category is owned already, they need to claim, "We are different"

When it comes to branding, its all about human perception. Like the authors
daughter said, "Facebook is where the people are." Even if that statement
weren't true, the perception is ingrained in peoples minds.

A good example of competing with an established brand is Coke vs. Pepsi...
coke was the real thing, original coca cola, so pepsi came out and said were
for the new generation. Why be old when you can be young and fresh.

Avis didnt say we are better than hertz, they said, sine we are number 2, we
try harder.

Dominoes didn't say we have better pizza than pizza hut, they said, we will
get it to you faster.

Listerine didnt say we taste better than scope, they said, "the taste you hate
twice a day."

This is branding 101. A brand can only stand for One Thing. (a brand that
stands for everything, stands for nothing.)

If google wants to compete in the social game... They either need to create a
niche of social like twitter, foursquare, and pinterest did, or they need to
use a new brand name, and position themselves opposite facebook, not claim
they are better...

Big executives always talk about convergence, but the Human perception just
doesn't work that way. When you combine two things, people assume you are
compromising on quality on both sides. When you separate things, people assume
you do that one thing much better than everyone else...

Google owned the search brand because that was all they did, Search. The new
ways of trying to get into other businesses like Paul Graham said," is a chink
in their armor."

Just my two cents.

~~~
zmmmmm
Agree totally.

However I think G+ did in fact differentiate itself at the start. They made a
big play out of how circles were there so that you weren't sharing things
publicly all the time. But the nymwars hit and it went horribly wrong at that
point. You can't sell a message that you're the champion of people's privacy
and _then_ kick them off your network for not revealing their identity to you.
They basically lost all credibility as being differentiated from Facebook and
became just "the same" as Facebook but worse because none of your friends were
there.

~~~
davemel37
Very valid point. Brands are built by third party validation, not by your own
claims. If there is incongruity between your message and your product, you
wont be able to get over the initial hump of credibility. Without credibility,
it doesn't matter how well you try to position yourself, no one will believe
you.

Nobody believes what you claim about yourself, but they believe what others
say about you. This is why PR is such an important element of building a
strong brand.

~~~
zmmmmm
> Brands are built by third party validation, not by your own claims.

I actually think what a company claims about itself is tremendously important,
but not because people believe it, rather because it influences how people
frame their ideas. It's like the public are viewing you through a magnifying
lens and what you can influence is where the lens points. What is actually
seen through the lens is then what you really _do_.

So claiming something about yourself that is authentically true and then
behaving genuinely in accordance with that is quite powerful. But you can't
fake it, you have to really do it. Claiming G+ is about privacy and then doing
things like forcing real names and public profiles is extremely harmful (and
not just to G+, but the whole Google brand).

Google has to figure out the good things that are really true about themselves
and then talk about those. If they can't think of anything then they have to
really take a serious think about where the company is heading.

------
kprobst
Social seems to be to Google what mobile is to Microsoft... they might have
good stuff here and there, but nobody's ringing the bell.

------
vineet
I am not a Google Employee - but I do want to defend Google here. Yes, Google
used to be a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate.
However, in the process they built a huge amount of UX Debt.

Bad UX was forgivable a few years ago, but that is no longer the case. Google
has not figured it out yet, but with the web maturing, I am glad that they are
trying to evolve to be a more UX focused company.

~~~
redthrowaway
I disagree. Search used to be fast and clean. Ditto GMail. Even Maps has
gotten slower and more cluttered.

Google's recent UI changes are about _branding_ , not UX.

~~~
vineet
I agree with your points. I categorize them under growing pains. Good UX is
not easy - especially when you have such a large number of users and products.

If you look into the reasoning for many of the cluttered items, you will see
things like "doing X would make it more readable/useful/etc for the general
population".

Perhaps I am just an optimist. My fingers are crossed.

------
InclinedPlane
I think advertising has a lot to do with google's growing pains.

Google clearly has empireitis and that alone is causing them to grow into
something that the google of, say, 2000 would look on and despise. But aside
from that the incentives of being an ad focused company are harmful to what
used to be google's core values.

The problem with any ad-focused company is that your users aren't your
customers. Your customers are the ad companies, and your users are your
product. There's less reason to make a product that people love passionately,
deeply, and value greatly. There's only a reason to make a product that people
use frequently. This is a subtle but hugely impactful distinction. It's the
difference between a newspaper full of hard-hitting investigative journalism
married to solid, thoughtful analysis and an run of the mill tabloid rag. When
all that matters is how many eyeballs are looking at ads then it makes the
most financial sense to maximize that at the cost of everything else.

------
jballanc
Granted these charts are 2 years old now, but 2 years ago when I first saw
them I thought they might be a pretty good indicator of the future for the
respective companies...

Google revenue broken down by product:
[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-02-24/tech/29964449...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-02-24/tech/29964449_1)

Microsoft revenue broken down by product:
[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-02-10/tech/29961217...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-02-10/tech/29961217_1)

Apple revenue broken down by product:
[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-04-21/tech/29988935...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-04-21/tech/29988935_1_iphone-
revenue-apple)

I know which company I would want to work for if I was interested in the
opportunity to work on and be passionate about a variety of different
projects.

It also boggles my mind that the Apple chart is pre iPad...I would love to see
what that chart looks like now.

------
robocop
This individual joined Google in 2009, and left before he'd been there 3
years. He's in no position to be waxing nostalgic about the "good old days" of
Google.

------
eliasmacpherson
To be very honest I am glad he left google. The googletesting blog went to
shit as soon as he came along. It was very enlightening to read it until he
showed up.

Whittaker reminded me of one of my over enthusiastic handwaving lecturers,
very short on substance. Compare and contrast the articles written by Misko
(Hevery) and Whittaker. I don't think his departure is a manifestation or
representation of anything at Google, and I think it's telling he returned to
MS.

------
jroseattle
Google has really taken it on the chops these last few years. I remember back
in 2006 or whenever the time was when they were the shiznit, and were easily
the most admired company in tech. And I remember thinking, let's see how well
it goes when everyone is NOT cheering you on and you have a tailwind in your
sails. Google is definitely in that situation now.

------
Tichy
Weird choice to post such an article on msdn.com, of all places.

~~~
sbisker
It's sort of a cultural thing amongst a lot of Microsoft employees, especially
older ones (or in this case, ones that have returned), to run their blogs off
of Microsoft's blogging platforms.

In this regard, Microsoft's culture actually does a very good job of
encouraging its employees to blog from the inside - I've never felt quite the
level of direct engineer access and communication working on Google platforms
as I have on MS platforms, even in cases where Google's platforms are actually
superior. (Chalk it up to Google groups being a little opaque and Google
product blogs being run by product managers.)

~~~
Tichy
So he ran from Google to Microsoft because Google did not live up to his
ideals anymore. I am not actually a Microsoft hater, but I'll take that story
with a grain of salt.

------
talmand
Is it me or does several of his complaints about the overly-aggressive
targeted marketing apply to Facebook as well? He must really hate Facebook
then. Personally, I think all this targeted stuff is not as good as stated by
the people selling it.

I can understand that he felt the need to leave because something changed for
him and his attitude towards his employer. But I seem to remember the big
statement someone made not too long ago that Google+ was the future of the
company and if you didn't like it you were welcome to leave. I suppose he took
their advice.

As for any meaning or message one could get out of this about the future of
Google, Facebook or even Microsoft; I see very little substance. It's one guy
explaining to anyone who wishes to know why he left Google. That's it, let's
not make more of this than what it is.

~~~
talentdeficit
for the most part, facebook can only target you when you're on facebook.
google now targets you across their properties some of which have significant
lock in. it's not as easy to escape google being creepy as it is to escape
facebook being creepy.

~~~
cromwellian
Facebook can target you across any site that has a Facebook Connect or Like
button, and eventually they will turn those Like Buttons and Comment plugins
into display ads.

------
crag
Every company grows up. I'm old enough to remember when Microsoft was cool. I
remember my first copy of Windows 286; all 12 floppy disks worth. I was
excited. Now I fight with the MS sales team over MSDN prices. :)

My point; it's part of the process. Google's grown up. Do I like it? No.

------
toddnessa
This article could easily be paired with the Godman-Sachs article to teach a
business class on the value of having right priorities in business. Often
businesses lose themselves placing the pressures of business ahead of the
priorities that got them to where they are in the first place. Sort of the
proverbial "putting the cart before the horse" analogy. Google should focus on
being itself. It sounds as if they have lost touch with what they really were
in the first place. After all, they were the search engine that changed the
world to such a degree that most everyone now says "google it" in reference to
searching the web.

------
gruseom
I wish Google had focused on being the champions of the open, pluralistic web,
instead of on Google+, which ironically seems like Bing.

------
tmsh
I think the problem with larger companies is that they have something to lose.
So fundamentally, almost at a physics level, they become less flexible. They
have more momentum in a given direction.

The problem with larger _technology_ companies is that technology don't give a
s*. And it's fast. Things iterate quickly. That's just how automation and
computers work.

------
damian2000
There is a ring of truth to this blog post. Especially in Google's seemingly
blind, dogged attempts to beat Facebook at their own game, in the social
space. It reminds me of how MS went after AOL with MSN - and we all know how
that ended up.

------
cinquemb
I thought google used to be a company of innovation (and still had potential
to become better) and now that they find themselves competing with Facebook
just brings them down from where they started.

Rant:

A company with so much money, and still no idea what to do with it. Here's a
hint, use all that brainpower you waste optimizing advertising machines and
make something that solves a problem that many people face using technology?
maybe seek to reach out to a new audience? maybe quit sucking on the corporate
tit that thinks advertising works in its current form? It's barely working for
fb and thats because they dont care about user privacy (facebook actually
sounds like a legal phishing company for advertisers, and i rather be shot
than to put any of their API's on any site i create). Whatever, sheeps will be
sheeps. And google isn't immune it seems.

------
juandg
Smart move to leave Google b/c it was buying its way into social and then go
to Microsoft who's trying to buy their way into relevance #fail

------
ssn
Google is at trouble. They are following Facebook on the web/search front, and
following Apple on the mobile/media front. What are they leading?

------
Mordor
Why didn't they just buy Facebook?

------
chj
when the best a company can do is copying, no wonder people are leaving.

------
michaelochurch
To understand why Google isn't what it used to be, one has to understand what
happened in 2009-2011. This is the era when Google decided to get "real
managers" and they hired a bunch of executives from places like Oracle, IBM,
and Intel. If Google had told them to wipe their fucking feet off before
tracking shitty culture into the place, it might have survived. It didn't.

Google has an immense amount of talent "under its roof". Unfortunately,
there's a necrotic layer of useless and counterproductive middle management
coming up with a series of "innovations" that each have made the company
worse. For a few examples:

* 20% time is dead. It requires managerial approval. More on that later.

* Until recently, people were hired "between levels" on the engineering ladder (which is generally a disaster at Google; see this: <http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/04/promotion-systems.html>) and then about 2/3 of them were "downslotted" to a lower level. It didn't affect their pay, but it blocked future raises, was a career kiss-of-death, and generally shat all over morale. What's amazing to me is that no one ever said, before this bit of syphilitic idiocy could reach implementation, "This is a terrible idea and you need to stop abusing cough syrup on the job." Fucking California culture, man. In New York, terrible ideas cause buildings to fall down kill people and so we refuse to tolerate them. Unfortunately, Google's executives seemed to lack the insight to recognize an obviously horrible idea as horrible. (Downslotting was abolished last year, but I'm astonished that such idiocy got in the door in the first place.)

* Engineers (not just managers) literally drop everything for 1-2 weeks each year to write "Perf" (for themselves and peers). The high-stakes performance review process is just that important.

* Google is resistant to any change that might improve engineer productivity beyond the rather plodding rate it has now. C++ and Java are the real house languages; Scala's not even on the table. Python is listed as a house language so Google can still hire people but it's rarely used and nearly deprecated in production.

* Managers have free rein to fuck over an employee in Perf if they believe him to be "distracted" or at risk of future distraction by 20% time, even if that employee's performance is otherwise strong. This doesn't make Google any worse or any different from more traditionally managed companies. It does deprive them of the right to market 20% time as a perk without being called out as liars.

* Last summer, it was announced that every employee had to have a 3-word "mission statement" that managers could change, and a 63-word quarterly summaries of their work. This was the infamous "7/20" all-hands in which the deprecation of 20%-time was announced.

* HR ignores severe ethical lapses by influential managers, including a person who was outright proven to be using low performance scores and PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans, which stop transfers) to block transfers.

To make it clear, Google still has some really great people and could turn
itself around if it just fired most of the middle layers. The company still
has an incredible number of immensely talented engineers of whom I think quite
highly, but the company is so horribly managed that I see nothing but a cold,
miserable twilight in its future.

~~~
anthonydchang
You are truly either delusional or an attention-monger that needs to troll to
feel better about yourself.

Like cletus mentioned, many people reached out to offer you constructive
advice. You ignored everyone, thought yourself superior to everyone.

I bet you were just waiting to be the first to comment, no? You did well...not
only did you throw Google under the bus, you also threw California under the
bus. Learn to have a little class.

~~~
michaelochurch
I'm going to take you seriously even though you don't deserve it.

Any rip on a state with 50 million people in it is somewhat in jest. Anyway,
there are a lot of great things about "California culture". When applied to
technology, an open-minded and experimental "Let's try it" mentality is great.
Necessary, even. When applied to management without enough attention paid to
the fact that some of the people posing ideas have bad intentions, some awful
ideas get into implementation and it damages companies. It hurts people. So
more conservatism in selecting what to implement is in order, and discussing
ideas that might be harmful (with thousands of people) until they've been
explored is a bad idea.

The problem with Google is that it's got the conservative New York culture
technically (I mean, even Scala isn't allowed) and the California culture with
respect to hare-brained managerial ideas like downslotting-- the exact
opposite of how things should be.

Put it this way: technological and managerial innovation are utterly
different. If you do a tech demo and it's slightly rough around the edges,
that's fine. You're awesome for having the courage to put yourself out there.
If you're putting forward suggestions that are going to affect the way
thousands of people work, the traditionally sloppy (for tech, I mean "sloppy"
in a positive sense) tech demo is _not_ how you should be communicating.

~~~
apenwarr
I think I agree that the existence of downslotting was a mistake. However, the
problem it was attempting to solve (you got hired at one level, but performed
at a lower level, because you managed to fool people in the interview) is a
real one and there _is_ no good solution for it. So I appreciate that they
tried to find one, and realized their attempt didn't work, and tried something
else.

If management was easy, we could all read a book about how to manage a company
and then all do it optimally. Since that's not the case, experiments are
necessary, and I admire the attitude that leaves them open to things that
might not work. I disagree that it was "obvious" that the downslotting
mechanism would not work - or rather, that it was obviously worse than any
other alternative, because once you have the "not performing as expected"
problem, all your options suck.

And BTW, I'm in New York :)

~~~
michaelochurch
_However, the problem it was attempting to solve (you got hired at one level,
but performed at a lower level, because you managed to fool people in the
interview) is a real one and there is no good solution for it._

These levels are a convenient fiction. Performance is way too context-
dependent to believe that there's some "platonic" level for each engineer.
This ([http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-
trajector...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajectory-
of-a-software-engineer-and-where-it-all-goes-wrong/)) is the best model I
could come up with for the software engineer trajectory, and even it has a 0.2
to 0.4 point (out of 3.0) swing for most individuals based on technology
choices, interpersonal topologies, motivational flux, etc.

What you mean is "some people don't work out". Right. So there are people you
"manage out" (that is, try to get them to find another job and fire them after
~6 months if they don't get the hint and you absolutely have to) and there are
people you work with to bring them up to speed, or to figure out what's
blocking them. Typical management stuff. What doesn't work is to keep people
around but at a lower level than they were promised in the hiring process.
That just creates a class of miserable, shafted people who hate their jobs and
the company they work for.

By the way, a lot of the idiots on this subthread think I'm airing personal
gripes. I joined _after_ slotting. I'm just pointing out what kinds of
ridiculous results come from an out-of-touch management culture. What drove me
insane at Google was being at a company where the engineers were so good at
their jobs and yet the people making important decisions were so epically bad.
The disconnect was shocking. I was watching an awesome company self-destruct
in front of me.

Also, on downslotting: careers are sensitive things and once you make one
overt move so directly against an employee's interests, you've essentially
lost that person. Loyalty is pretty much binary. Once you make a move like
that on someone, you now have someone whose full-time interest is career
repair, which usually involves getting the fuck out and lining up the next
job. If this is what you want, then fine. (If someone really is a bad fit, for
that person to begin full-time job searching is the best thing.) That category
doesn't encompass most of the company. Downslotting only makes sense as a
mechanism for managing people out, and (1) there are better ways of doing
that, and (2) you shouldn't be managing out over 50% of new hires.

The real reason for slotting, I think, was to put a better job title in the
offer letter than people were actually expected to get, since the upper title
is what was used. This works only because of Google's brand: what keeps it
from doing major damage is that downslotted people have the Google name on
their resumes and can get the fuck out long before they become "problem
employees".

------
yanw
Between attack ads and blog posts it seems like Google is all that Microsoft
have to discuss lately. Not sure if Google is flattered by this obsession.

Wonder why the author chose not to post on his personal blog, a Microsoft
employee bashing Google on an official Microsoft blog rings hollow, specially
with the use of the same generic talking points.

And using engineers as PR people isn’t the most sepathetic thing either.

~~~
vibrunazo
I avoid making generalization and try to stay away of anthropomorphizing
companies. But this isn't the first, nor second, nor tenth time I watch
Microsoft trying to smear the competition. Which doesn't seem to be common
among other companies. It does gives us outsiders the impression that it's
part of their company culture to try to sell more by smearing the competition
instead of by building better products.

How does that work on the managing level? Are Microsoft engineers encouraged
from top down to do this? Is it just a culture that gets passed indirectly
through informal conversation between employees that influences this behavior?
Or is just the PR firm they hired that keeps insisting on the same weapon?

~~~
Splines
> _Are Microsoft engineers encouraged from top down to do this?_

I'm an IC, and while there is bit a "boo Google" going on in the kool-aid, we
don't sit around shaking our fist at them every moment we get.

I try to use the best tools I can, whether it be that made by Google or MSFT
or someone else. I look up MSDN documentation using Chrome, and I wouldn't
have it any other way.

~~~
mayanksinghal
This might just be a one off case that I heard of, but isn't not using IE
shunned at MS? A classmate of mine interned there and was asked to use IE
instead of FF. He did end up not hating the product, but I am not sure if the
reason was love for IE or hatred towards not-MS products.

~~~
awa
No it isn't shunned... i regularly use chrome at Microsoft, Some peers stick
to Microsoft products but I see a lot of people carrying iphone/androids
around and using chrome and FF

------
beatle
Google's Focus On Beating Facebook Is Wrecking The Company, Says This Former
Engineer. Google's Focus On Beating Apple will seal the company's fate.
Google's Motorola acquisition is going to be a disaster for Google.

------
wilfra
On the bright side, now all Google has to do to defend against antitrust
claims is link to that post.

------
iamgilesbowkett
I think it's problematic to find this kind of story on Hacker News. The
biggest problem I have with it is that it's very difficult to write an
automated filter which rejects stories for being excessively corporate and
insufficiently entrepreneurial, at least within the limits of my current
skills. I can understand why people debate the strategies of very large
corporations, it's kind of like discussing football teams, but it's not what I
come here to read at all.

~~~
Steko
No aggregation site is going to please everyone all the time.

Don't click on the stuff that doesn't interest you, problem solved.

~~~
iamgilesbowkett
I have an automated filter site at <http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com/> \--
"don't click on what doesn't interest you" is way inferior to "don't see what
doesn't interest you."

~~~
Steko
That's interesting but I'm not sure what your asking of us to solve your
inability to filter the things you don't want to see. Site would cease to
exist if everything one user wasn't interested in was removed.

Your filters will always turn up some things you want to just like they'll
always filter some things you wish they wouldn't. You'll have to live with
that degraded experience the rest of us have and not click on those things.
Bellyaching about unsolvable problems is just lowering the sites signal to
noise ratio unnecessarily.

~~~
iamgilesbowkett
Actually I made minor progress on it by just banning the msdn domain.

I think I've also figured out a pretty cool product idea from this as well.
However I'm not going to get into it here because people have taken my product
ideas and turned them into products twice now (actually one of them was a
Hacker Newspaper iOS app which looks very, very, very similar to my
<http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com/>).

In terms of what I want, well, any ideas on how to improve signal/noise on HN,
whether via automated filtering or some other method.

------
brindle
So you quit Google and headed over to M$. Hacker News, this should be Wanker
News.

