I worked at a few tech companies before 2000 that had a company cafe but they all required payment. It was cheaper and closer but not free, and not nearly the same level of quality. Charlie's et al. were all free, and I remember even seeing a TV news spot about the free food at Google specifically, in the months before I started there. I think I'd be okay crediting Google with the free lunch (and the nod towards TANSTAAFL that I suspect it was).
But dogfooding, yeah that had been around for a while. Originally from Alpo, iirc. The first tech company to adopt the term as well as the practice was Microsoft in 1988.
A/B existed before Google but 2000s era A/B testing and user research were unparalleled until Facebook also started putting serious capital into it. Nowadays it's considered table stakes but it was revolutionized in the beginning of the millennium. Maybe not entirely by Google but substantially so, and driven heavily by their product launch review process.
But dogfooding, yeah that had been around for a while. Originally from Alpo, iirc. The first tech company to adopt the term as well as the practice was Microsoft in 1988.
A/B existed before Google but 2000s era A/B testing and user research were unparalleled until Facebook also started putting serious capital into it. Nowadays it's considered table stakes but it was revolutionized in the beginning of the millennium. Maybe not entirely by Google but substantially so, and driven heavily by their product launch review process.