

Inside Google's Secret Lab - tonez
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/118812-inside-googles-secret-lab

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ChuckMcM
Perhaps it is just late and I'm cynical but this screamed "hey we're still
cool, c'mon see?" There were a series of articles about Microsoft's research
projects that had the same vibe. Perhaps it is the BusinessWeek lens. Hard to
say.

I cringe though on that title, if its a "secret" lab then you wouldn't know
about it, so it isn't secret, so what is it?

~~~
nhebb
It's easy to get cynical about business articles and anything with "secret" in
the title. I get that way myself. But since the demise of Bell Labs, it feels
like there's a big void to be filled. It probably never will be filled in the
same way, but I'm happy to see a big company take on big projects. Other than
CERN or NASA, I don't hear too much in the news about big budget R&D / science
projects.

~~~
dm2
University teams around the country have partially filled that void.

DARPA is doing some pretty neat things as well.

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rdl
The UAV or aerostat balloon broadband relay thing heavily hinted at in this
article is one of the more amazing ideas. Totally feasible with current
technology and highly beneficial; it seems like an obvious thing to do even
now.

I guess I'd care about it more for disaster or conflict zone operations vs.
ongoing operations in poor countries (since vastly more money is available in
the short term in the first case), but it would probably make sense
everywhere. At 50k feet, you can cover a pretty large area with spot beams,
and probably do aerostat to aerostat relays. Combined with undersea fiber, you
could do a good job of providing high speed communications services to some
underserved markets.

I assume you'd use high altitude aerostats to provide low bandwidth coverage
to large areas, and then local, lower altitude balloons or uavs, fed by the
high altitude stuff, in areas of high user density.

~~~
cinquemb
Another use case I see is their potential use at sporting arenas for high
profile events, cause you know people get bored/distracted at their football
games and congest the network with massive traffic.

~~~
rdl
Or even more usefully, in random places which have concerts/festivals only
infrequently. You'd think a sports stadium could have permanent RF
reinforcement gear installed (and just turned on sometimes).

~~~
cinquemb
Possibly, but maybe it would be cheaper for them to pay for the service from
google or whomever (depending on how frequent their network is overly
congested) and not have to worry about having special staff on hand to manage
something themselves (maybe even the not having to worry about it is enough to
shell out cash in itself).

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julianpye
I am reminded of my former company's CTO who once told me that true and
disruptive R&D can only be done by a company with a monopoly power, so they
can hide their true margins in blue-sky work. I for one hope they can do this
as long as possible, since I love Google and I love Google X and I worked for
two great R&D departments that were cut short on all long-term projects by
controllers looking to post higher margins in competitive environments.

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gregparadee
This sounds like something straight out of Wayne Enterprises. I wish more
companies could do things like this and see what can be created and achieved.
An area that I could see being able to do something like this without having
to face Shareholders, management, etc. that most companies have to do is
Universities. University students should be able to take advantage of the
resources that universities have and universities should encourage this. They
could essentially have a new flock of minds every year to help innovate
projects. I believe Georgia Tech started something like this a few years ago.

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andrewlynch
The awesome things you can do when your key product masquerades as a mint.

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michaelochurch
Here's an honest question: how do the unluckier 90 percent, who face
calibration scores and Perf and closed allocation, not find themselves in
revolt when they learn that others work in a blue-sky environment on
challenging problems that will build their careers?

How is the fact that most people at Google won't get to work on stuff like
this not a gigantic HR issue?

~~~
jholman
Your "honest question" contains several false assumptions, as you well know,
Michael. Who do you think you're fooling?

I'm not sure who the "unluckier 90 percent" are, because a) X is much, much
smaller than 1% of the company, and b) you're not laying out any other
90%-sized subset of the company with your other comments.

People inside X also have calibration and perf, of course.

Your ongoing ranting about "closed allocation" is more complicated; I think
you make (elsewhere) an in-theory-mildly-interesting point, but you hugely
overstate the significance. It's true that new googlers get relatively little
control over allocation (though often not as little as you claim), but it's
well-understood, even by you, that 12 to 24 months of good work at your
starting post gets you a lot of flexibility. (Most knowledge workers, at least
those past the first blush of youth, accept that a year or two of merely-
awesome work are a fine stepping stone; we already know that you disagree and
claim to want to change the world immediately, starting today.... how's that
approach working for you?) If people don't want to work on something, they
don't work on it.

Nearly everyone at Google works on challenging problems (well... I have no
idea if the cafeteria staff think their work is challenging, so let's restrict
this to engineering, sales, legal, and finance). Everyone at Google is
building their careers. Can anyone doubt that?

Some of us are jealous of the people who work in X (I am!), most of us are not
(I don't know why), but in what universe does it make sense for the existence
of X to make me _less_ happy than the non-existence of it?

\----

More generally, most people do not believe that they are entitled to dictate
their salary AND what they work on. And that goes double for people who don't
yet have a proven track record of success.

I can pick what I want to work on, if I'm willing to accept whatever salary
comes, including $0. (I've tried that, heh. What a surprise, no one wants to
pay me for my opinions about board game design, nor my amateurish programming-
language-design skills. I know, I know, I can't believe it either.)
Alternately, I can make a great wage, working on something that's pretty
awesome, but not exactly what I want to work on. Why would I be angry about
that choice? If I want the best of both, obviously I'll have to work on making
myself valuable enough that it makes sense for X to hire me.

~~~
nostrademons
"I have no idea if the cafeteria staff think their work is challenging"

The cafeteria staff works amazingly hard at their jobs and there're a bunch of
challenges involved in feeding 30,000 employees well on a weekly budget. Go to
Chef's Table at Jia (if you're in Mountain View) and ask about the job, or
even just find the cafe's head chef (they're usually standing around the food
looking proud of it) and strike up a conversation. They usually love to talk
about their work.

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o0-0o
Here's hoping the lab is NOT ONLINE. Because maybe it seems that China might
possibly want to kind of hack it.

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smallhands
come on google glass in china ! so that the cizitens will photograph and video
all the abuse that they are subjected to with the world in real time . i do
not think so

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DigitalTurk
they already have cellphones, you know :)

