I can't tell if this is a joke or not. I know the Hacker News hivemind is hate Google / love Apple, but this is ridiculous.
You want to know what Google has released to great success in the past five years? Here you go:
Google Chat
Google Docs
Google Calendar
Google Checkout
YouTube
Android
Google Chrome
Google Voice
Google TV
Granted a few of these are acquisitions, but I'm leaving out a ton of tiny projects and the tremendous contributions to Open Source projects and the developer community over the years.
Yeah, they clearly haven't done anything useful in five years. They should be dying as a company any day now.
Only three things on the list I'd call great success, and two of them are acquisitions: Youtube and Android, third was build on the great work of others—Chrome.
The iPod was largely built on contracted work and Safari/Webkit was built off KHTML. I don't get this whole "if not built 100% in-house, it doesn't count" meme. You might have a point about YouTube being an acquisition, but giving credit to anyone but Google for Android and Chrome's (or Apple for the iPod and Safari's) success seems like intentionally looking for loopholes instead of acknowledging their work.
+1
As far as understanding the value of technology to people, this list clearly demonstrates that Google is trying to tackle hard problems and products to do just that. Compare this list of side endeavors (besides their obvious core competencies) to those of Facebook. Recent products are talked up as world changing innovations, (Groups, Messages, Places) however they haven't changed the game or significantly added value to their product. Yes these products are young, but in the last few years Facebook has done little to provide this "value of technology" besides the initial innovations of News Feed and the Like Button, both of which drew heavily from FriendFeed acquisition as well. Everything in tech is built off something, saying acquisitions don't count is ridiculous.
I'm confused how you'd classify anything a great success, considering that every product on that list except for their most recent (Google TV) has millions of active users.
You act like acquisitions and building on others' work means that Google didn't play a significant role in development and success of those products. That's like saying OSX wasn't made by Apple because it was built on Unix, or that the iPod isn't considered an Apple product because they released just another MP3 player, or that Facebook was just another social networking site so they don't deserve any credit by not coming up with the original idea.
YouTube and Android were nice proof-of-concepts back before they became under the Google umbrella. Have you taken a look at what Android was like way back when? It barely resembles the modern product, because that's how much work and dedication Google put into the software.
Once Chrome was released the commits to the WebKit source quadrupled. WebKit was based off of KHTML. Google took something good and made it great.
You trying to downplay their accomplishments because they didn't write the very first line of each of their products in-house is childish.
you are missing the point. the article was only criticizing hiring process at google.
when google makes an acquisition, they'll also gain people who built that technology/product too. these people usually went through completely different hiring process and it's entirely possible that early employees who made let's say youtube, would probably never make it through those tricky interview questions at google...
heck, most startup founders here wouldn't make it into google through their standard interview process. then google ends up buying their companies for millions. go figure.
Who says that it's wrong to have a two-tiered hiring system: the standard "interview then hire" system (though done more rigorously---thus all the "how many golf balls in a schoolbus" questions); and the "let the market see how they do, then hire them at market value" startup acquisition approach. You can't have everyone at an organization as big as google go through the second process, so the first one fills out the engineering ranks.
Comments
I can't tell if this is a joke or not. I know the Hacker News hivemind is hate Google / love Apple, but this is ridiculous.
You want to know what Google has released to great success in the past five years? Here you go:
Google Chat
Google Docs
Google Calendar
Google Checkout
YouTube
Android
Google Chrome
Google Voice
Google TV
Granted a few of these are acquisitions, but I'm leaving out a ton of tiny projects and the tremendous contributions to Open Source projects and the developer community over the years.
Yeah, they clearly haven't done anything useful in five years. They should be dying as a company any day now.
Only three things on the list I'd call great success, and two of them are acquisitions: Youtube and Android, third was build on the great work of others—Chrome.
The iPod was largely built on contracted work and Safari/Webkit was built off KHTML. I don't get this whole "if not built 100% in-house, it doesn't count" meme. You might have a point about YouTube being an acquisition, but giving credit to anyone but Google for Android and Chrome's (or Apple for the iPod and Safari's) success seems like intentionally looking for loopholes instead of acknowledging their work.
+1 As far as understanding the value of technology to people, this list clearly demonstrates that Google is trying to tackle hard problems and products to do just that. Compare this list of side endeavors (besides their obvious core competencies) to those of Facebook. Recent products are talked up as world changing innovations, (Groups, Messages, Places) however they haven't changed the game or significantly added value to their product. Yes these products are young, but in the last few years Facebook has done little to provide this "value of technology" besides the initial innovations of News Feed and the Like Button, both of which drew heavily from FriendFeed acquisition as well. Everything in tech is built off something, saying acquisitions don't count is ridiculous.
I'm confused how you'd classify anything a great success, considering that every product on that list except for their most recent (Google TV) has millions of active users.
You act like acquisitions and building on others' work means that Google didn't play a significant role in development and success of those products. That's like saying OSX wasn't made by Apple because it was built on Unix, or that the iPod isn't considered an Apple product because they released just another MP3 player, or that Facebook was just another social networking site so they don't deserve any credit by not coming up with the original idea.
YouTube and Android were nice proof-of-concepts back before they became under the Google umbrella. Have you taken a look at what Android was like way back when? It barely resembles the modern product, because that's how much work and dedication Google put into the software.
Once Chrome was released the commits to the WebKit source quadrupled. WebKit was based off of KHTML. Google took something good and made it great.
You trying to downplay their accomplishments because they didn't write the very first line of each of their products in-house is childish.
you are missing the point. the article was only criticizing hiring process at google.
when google makes an acquisition, they'll also gain people who built that technology/product too. these people usually went through completely different hiring process and it's entirely possible that early employees who made let's say youtube, would probably never make it through those tricky interview questions at google...
heck, most startup founders here wouldn't make it into google through their standard interview process. then google ends up buying their companies for millions. go figure.
Who says that it's wrong to have a two-tiered hiring system: the standard "interview then hire" system (though done more rigorously---thus all the "how many golf balls in a schoolbus" questions); and the "let the market see how they do, then hire them at market value" startup acquisition approach. You can't have everyone at an organization as big as google go through the second process, so the first one fills out the engineering ranks.
See also: http://paulgraham.com/hiring.html
Chat: uhhh, really?
Docs: fear of Microsoft
Calendar: uhhh, really?
Checkout: sucks
Youtube: Acq.
Android: Acq. but still sucks
Chrome: Awesome product.
Voice: haven't heard of it, and that's saying something.
TV: Also haven't heard of it (enough).
But, you left out one major thing, and what I think will be their saving grace (besides the obvious other 2):
Google App Engine: Getting Much Better!