
Larry Page Reorgs Staff, Anoints Sundar Pichai as New Product Czar - foobarqux
http://recode.net/2014/10/24/google-ceo-larry-page-reorgs-staff-anoints-sundar-pichai-as-new-product-czar/
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subpixel
I don't envy the man. Just last night I led a Google+ "Hangout On Air" for a
tech meetup I organize. The whole universe around Google+ products and related
tools is so dense, opaque, and counter-intuitive I felt like Bill Gates trying
to use Moviemaker(1) in 2003.

(1)[[http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2008/06/24/full-text-
an-...](http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2008/06/24/full-text-an-epic-bill-
gates-e-mail-rant/)]

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yuhong
Yea, I am glad Vic Gundotra was fired. I wonder why wasn't he fired earlier.

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salimmadjd
Yeah, I'm also glad they fired Vic. And yes, @selmnoo of course Vic is going
to say positive things. One, he has no reasons to say anything negative,
google gave him such an amazing opportunity; and two, he is a professional
executive and corporate savvy. He will never say anything negative publicly,
it'll be a career suicide.

Google has one huge problem in general when it comes to hiring. I call them
the China of tech companies. They have a lot of engineers and a large
infrastructure so they can copy anything that works and use their scale to get
market share.

Hearing from friends who have interviewed with Google, it seems to me they are
good at hiring great engineers, they've hired bunch of MBAs but they're not
able to hire product-driven entrepreneurs or give them space to shine.

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hkmurakami
_> they've hired bunch of MBAs but they're not able to hire product-driven
entrepreneurs or give them space to shine._

Possibly related to why they acquihire so much?

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justincormack
No, I don't think they can acqui-hire them effectively either.

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julianpye
This is purely speculative, but for me it looks like Larry Page may be
preparing Google towards becoming a more privacy-aware company that you can
entrust with information.

Why do I think this?

Trend: I think that 2014 has led to consumers becoming more actively aware of
privacy. Google will be aware of consumer behaviour changing in this space. I
have noticed in my general non-techie personal circle that people are far more
protective of personal data and changing their online behaviour compared to
two years ago. I think this is Google's current Achilles heel.

Tech: Google has so far got the best track record of security implementations
which are open to anyone using their end-to-end platforms. They could
seriously leverage this capability as a differentiator if it wasn't for the
perception that they 'snoop' on its users.

Mission: In contrast to this Trend Larry Page has always been enthusiastic
about a big vision of how consumers can benefit from sharing information to
the right people, for example in the health space. At I/O 2013 this was a big
topic for him: so many people's health could be improved if they would be able
to comfortably share their personal data with the right people. The true value
of this has massive potential.

Indications for a Pivot: Eric Schmidt is currently touring Europe, stating
that Google doesn't 'read' email and does not make its money from analyzing
your personal data. In the end Google's best bet may be to try to transform
itself into a personal, trusted data company.

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higherpurpose
Inbox looks to be going the other direction, though. For example, they are now
making it harder for you to delete e-mails. All are archived by default. Why
do you think that is? Because they want to mine them for as long a possible.
Unfortunately, for Americans, it also means that after 180 days the US
government can get access to them without a warrant (according to the outdated
ECPA).

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YokoZar
The threat of someone looking through ancient emails aside, there really is no
reason not to store old messages forever. They're incredibly small, and you
never know when you'll want to reference an old discussion because someone
comes back into your life.

In the bad old days before archiving, people got in the habit of deleting
emails because there was no better way to get them out of the inbox.

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Spearchucker
How long ago is "old days" to you? I've got every single email (other than
junk mail) I've sent or received since 1999. I use Outlook, and everything
older than 30 days gets archived into a local .PST file. Couldn't be easier.

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beaner
IMO Sundar has executed brilliantly at the things he's been tasked with so
far, so I'm excited to see him take on more responsibility.

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georgemcbay
They should have given him Maps too.

I've recently been using Nokia HERE Maps for Android and I am liking it a
_lot_ more than Google Maps (which on Android has been pretty crappy since the
6.x->7.x transition, IMO, and is forever crippled due to Google's continued
pretending that people's cellphones always have a usable network connection).
I've been enjoying using HERE Maps to the point where it has me considering
getting a Windows phone as my Nexus 5 replacement because Maps was the killer
Android app for me before they messed it up.

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lnanek2
I've noticed Google Maps has been getting really bad recently too. It seems
every quarter I notice features I used disappearing, it taking more clicks to
do anything, and basic functionality like loading the search points on the map
barely working (since they moved to these new card search results and you have
to scramble to get the map you want).

There are some good replacements out there, at least, like City Mapper.

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pitchups
Remarkably, 3 of the top 8 executives that run Google - the so-called L-Team
(Larry's team) are from the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology):

Amit Singhal(IIT Roorkee 89), Sridhar Ramaswamy (IIT Madras '89) and Sundar
Pichai (IIT Kharagpur '93)

[1] [http://theiitian.com/the-iitian-tech-trio-that-runs-
google-2...](http://theiitian.com/the-iitian-tech-trio-that-runs-google-2/)

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purpletoned
It's not so remarkable considering the IITs aren't a single university. They
are dispersed across all of India which is a fairly large country
geographically.

Also the fact these three people come from India isn't that remarkable
considering that there are 1 Billion people there. Now if they were from some
small developing country like say Sri Lanka or Bhutan, it would be really
impressive.

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hnriot
yeah, isn't it even quite the opposite, I'd be really surprised to hear
otherwise. The startup scene in SF is predominantly white, but SV is nothing
like that, pick any large software company and you'll find the split is
something like 80% Asian, split with varying amounts between south asian and
the far east (india and china/taiwan) with the remaining 20% being of european
descent. Whenever I interview for a position, I can guarantee one or more of
the candidates will be from one of the IITs. As someone said, with CS being
such a strong emphasis in two of the largest population centers of the world,
this really isn't very surprising at all. America was and continues to be an
immigrant's best opportunity for prosperity with the shift over the centuries
from europeans to asians.

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wiseleo
IIT as alma-mater gives the engineer an escape vehicle from India. That is
partially why you see so many of them at interviews in SV.

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g123g
Definitely an uphill task from here onwards for anyone other than Sundar
Pichai to become the next CEO of Google.

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general_failure
Well page still has quite a way to go

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Steko
Perhaps the price of keeping him from going to MS?

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purpletoned
I don't know. Being the head of the largest mobile operating system(that's
still growing) alone should be a big enough incentive to stay.

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AwesomeTogether
"Reorgs staff"

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mikepalmer
This is a strategic move to give Larry Page more free time for Mandarin
lessons...

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venomsnake
The only thing I was able to think about is how the whole article was send to
them by some PR and they just copy pasted it. The language. The horror.

