Steve Y's Google Platforms Rant - Extremely interesting read/rant by Google Engineer

[CRXican]

Good stuff, I should really read more often. Now I see how Amazon still makes money with all that crazy Prime shipping.

And I like this part:

Their facilities are dirt-smeared cube farms without a dime spent on decor or common meeting areas. Their pay and benefits suck, although much less so lately due to local competition from Google and Facebook. But they don't have any of our perks or extras -- they just try to match the offer-letter numbers, and that's the end of it.

Clearly Google isn't the norm. Spoiled bastards.

 

[Gibson486]

Good stuff, I should really read more often. Now I see how Amazon still makes money with all that crazy Prime shipping.

And I like this part:



Clearly Google isn't the norm. Spoiled bastards.

Hahahaha...I thought the same thing...

 

[Miramonti]

I read about 1/3 (or less?)...articulating Amazon and Bezos...freaking great stuff. Looking forward to having time to read the rest. :thumbsup:

 

[IronWing]

But I still dont get the difference between "platform" and "product."

My limited experience in programming for a collaborate project might shed some light. I wrote a calendar addon for a online forum program. Folks (forum admins) asked if there was a way to show upcoming events on their home pages (outside their forums). So I wrote a script that could be added to any webpage on the same server as the forum that would list upcoming events pulled from the forum calendar's database. This was a product.

In writing the script I realized that the technique I used to pull the events had broader application. The forum was designed to use templating which allowed the admin to redesign the screen appearance of the forum by simply rearranging tags in the template. The tags called the scripts that generated the actual content. By rewriting my script I was able to show the content generated by any of the forum tags on other webpages. So now admins were able to show just about any info that could be displayed in the forum throughout their sites. I had no idea how they would use the tool but it was there. This is more of a platform where the internal calls of the forum scripts were exposed to external use.

 

[Patranus]

Wow is that how you distill political information as well because that would explain a lot.

People, read the actual blog entry itself if you want some insight from someone who knows what the fuck they're talking about.

Please elaborate.

I did read the blog entry. The entire blog entry is about how Google's business units are disjointed. This is because the company has now "plan" or direction. Another company launches a platform (Groupon/Facebook/Apple/ect.) and Googles sees them being successful and they want to emulate it. They play catchup at the expense of direction and planning.

Service APIs should have been one of the first things planned with Google+. Instead, Google saw Facebook and decided it needed to get into social networking and rushed their product to market.

Google is a reactive company.

 

[roguerower]

i read it all. liked reading it, thought it was really interesting. Went to msdn.com, aws.amazon.com, and developer.google.com....and I see his point about the lack of platforms at google. But I still dont get the difference between "platform" and "product."

+1

I'm not involved with IT or Development in any way but simply going to those three sites made what he was saying easy to understand. The first two (to an uneducated eye) looked thorough with hundreds of possibilities. Google...not so much.

Very interesting read.

 

[ViviTheMage]

quality rant, apparently he did not mean to make it public though ... and has posted an apology.

 

[Ns1]

long fucking read but I read it all.

loved what they said about FB and Amazon.

+1

I'm not involved with IT or Development in any way but simply going to those three sites made what he was saying easy to understand. The first two (to an uneducated eye) looked thorough with hundreds of possibilities. Google...not so much.

Very interesting read.

I think the FB example was pretty clear - stock FB vs what FB COULD be via Apps

 

[Aharami]

I think he means platform is more of term used to have something where you can easily make additions to it (like an OS, you add a program to it easily because it has built in functionality where you can interact with it). Product is just that. A product. It has this use, and it does it. To add anything to it, you have to rely on someone to make it easy for you to implement it because the means to do it is not readily available. Google+ has this use, but if you wanted to integrate with anything else, you have to go out of your way to do it. The platform is just a product with the tools to make it easy to integrate.

My limited experience in programming for a collaborate project might shed some light. I wrote a calendar addon for a online forum program. Folks (forum admins) asked if there was a way to show upcoming events on their home pages (outside their forums). So I wrote a script that could be added to any webpage on the same server as the forum that would list upcoming events pulled from the forum calendar's database. This was a product.

In writing the script I realized that the technique I used to pull the events had broader application. The forum was designed to use templating which allowed the admin to redesign the screen appearance of the forum by simply rearranging tags in the template. The tags called the scripts that generated the actual content. By rewriting my script I was able to show the content generated by any of the forum tags on other webpages. So now admins were able to show just about any info that could be displayed in the forum throughout their sites. I had no idea how they would use the tool but it was there. This is more of a platform where the internal calls of the forum scripts were exposed to external use.

ah gotcha. thanks.

 

[Aharami]

quality rant, apparently he did not mean to make it public though ... and has posted an apology.

whats the apology he posted? I cant visit G+ at work

 

[busydude]

whats the apology he posted? I cant visit G+ at work

Pretty long one.

Hi external-world folks,

I posted a long opinionated rant tonight about how I think Google could be doing a much better job of thinking from the ground up in terms of services rather than products. Sadly, it was intended to be an internal post, visible to everybody at Google, but not externally. But as it was midnight and I am not what you might call an experienced Google+ user, by the time I figured out how to actually post something I had somehow switched accounts.

I've taken the post down at my own discretion. It was kind of a tough call, since obviously there will be copies. And everyone who commented was nice and supportive.

I contacted our internal PR folks and asked what to do, and they were also nice and supportive. But they didn't want me to think that they were even hinting at censoring me -- they went out of their way to help me understand that we're an opinionated company, and not one of the kinds of companies that censors their employees. That was cool and all, but I still didn't know what to do.

So I made the call myself and deleted it. Part of the reason is that for internal posts, it's obvious to everyone that you're posting your own opinion and not representing the company in any way, whereas external posts need lots of disclaimers so people don't misunderstand. And I can assure you, in case it was not obvious, that the whole post was my own opinions and not Google's. I mean, I was kind of taking them to task for not sharing my opinions.

The other reason I deleted it is that it's really a private conversation between me and my peers and co-workers at Google. I love working at Google, and I especially love the fact that I'm comfortable posting something as inflammatory as my post may have been. The company is super open internally, and as I said several times in my post, they really try hard to do everything right. That includes being open to strongly differing opinions, and that has certainly not been true at every company I've worked at.

There are of course lots of parts of my post that I'd love to talk about externally, except I'm kinda lazy and complacent these days. Please realize, though, that even now, after six years, I know astoundingly little about Google. It's a huge company and they do tons of stuff, and I work off in a little corner of the company (both technically and geographically) that gives me very little insight into anything else going on there. So my opinions, even though they may seem well-formed and accurate, really are just a bunch of opinions from someone who's nowhere near the center of the action -- so I wouldn't read too much into anything I said.

Anyway, as soon as I've got a good night's sleep (unlikely at this point, but I can try), I'll repost it internally.

 

[Specop 007]

It pretty much boils down to Google trying to copy what other people are doing and those other people building platforms.

These other companies have a product/platform and release it. Google see that and tries to emulate it. There is no direction at the company (outside of search) and that is pretty much what this rant is about.

What? Did we read the same article?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

He's made the same mistake that many talented passionate professionals make. He's assuming that all/most of the management cares about long term growth and profitability of the company. This is simply not true not, at Google or, the majority of corporations whether tech oriented or not.

 

[purbeast0]

But I'll argue that Accessibility is actually more important than Security because dialing Accessibility to zero means you have no product at all, whereas dialing Security to zero can still get you a reasonably successful product such as the Playstation Network.

lol ... dagger.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

He's made the same mistake that many talented passionate professionals make. He's assuming that all/most of the management cares about long term growth and profitability of the company. This is simply not true not, at Google or, the majority of corporations whether tech oriented or not.

I don't know if I'd say that the head guys at Google aren't interested in long-term growth; I think it's obvious that they are, but their attempts to attain it are somewhat scattershot and lack a clear strategy. This "rant" (which is a bit of a misnomer) is a really good take on the notion of long-term strategies that successful technology companies need to employ to remain competitive.

 

[datalink7]

lol ... dagger.

Haha, I came here to post the same part

Great read.

 

[freegeeks]

Google has just become another big company run by guys in expensive suits with a MBA with a business card that says Marketing Manager of some sorts

 

[dwell]

Google has just become another big company run by guys in expensive suits with a MBA with a business card that says Marketing Manager of some sorts

Not really. It's just a bunch of geeks throwing a bunch of shit at the wall to see what sticks. It's chaos there. There's no filter as to what goes out or what projects should be canned. They need *more* MBA types and less clueless geeks.

 

[freegeeks]

Not really. It's just a bunch of geeks throwing a bunch of shit at the wall to see what sticks. It's chaos there. There's no filter as to what goes out or what projects should be canned. They need *more* MBA types and less clueless geeks.

That's not what I read from this blog. Geeks love API and being "open" and all that stuff. What he describes is the opposite so I would say that it is just a bunch of suits running the show. His blog describes in fact that Google is very "closed", that's not very geeky at all

 

[slag]

That's not what I read from this blog. Geeks love API and being "open" and all that stuff. What he describes is the opposite so I would say that it is just a bunch of suits running the show. His blog describes in fact that Google is very "closed", that's not very geeky at all

I don't think that google is closed, I think they are just stuck. Not sure what to do next, what the next big piece of technology is. Companies like Amazon have built a modular system to where you can easily write pieces to plug into their code. Their code does the heavy lifting, you just write your custom app and pay them a fee to use their infrastructure. Google doesn't do this, and maybe they don't need to. Google needs to reinvent themselves and figure out what the next big thing is going to be and just do it.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Please elaborate.

I did read the blog entry. The entire blog entry is about how Google's business units are disjointed. This is because the company has now "plan" or direction. Another company launches a platform (Groupon/Facebook/Apple/ect.) and Googles sees them being successful and they want to emulate it. They play catchup at the expense of direction and planning.

Service APIs should have been one of the first things planned with Google+. Instead, Google saw Facebook and decided it needed to get into social networking and rushed their product to market.

Google is a reactive company.

He does touch on the points you mention, but it's not what the blog was about.

It's about how Google should be implementing and offering its products as platforms/services, regardless of if/when they emulate another company's product/service. In fact, this way it doesn't matter how disjointed the units are since they access data via standard API calls and don't have to give a fuck about what's going on behind the curtains.

Additionally, these platforms get to be offered as interfaces to google's backend services and ecosystem. External developers come in and implement these APIs/platforms/services in their own products for a fee; a huge reason why Facebook, for example, has been so successful (mafia wars, farmville, etc...).

He was arguing they need to implement a fundamental and company-wide shift in their design philosophy.

 

[WelshBloke]

Firstly I cant believe Patranus is not trolling.

Secondly I'm impressed mostly by Google PRs reaction. I really cant see Apple or Microsoft reacting like that.

 

[Lifted]

lol ... dagger.

Yeah, that made me lol.

 

[OOBradm]

That's not what I read from this blog. Geeks love API and being "open" and all that stuff. What he describes is the opposite so I would say that it is just a bunch of suits running the show. His blog describes in fact that Google is very "closed", that's not very geeky at all

True, geeks love open API's. But they hate spending time exposing their stuff as an API. It really takes external motivation to force that to happen.

 

[Argo]

Their facilities are dirt-smeared cube farms without a dime spent on decor or common meeting areas. Their pay and benefits suck, although much less so lately due to local competition from Google and Facebook. But they don't have any of our perks or extras -- they just try to match the offer-letter numbers, and that's the end of it..

That statement is not true.

1) SDE pay at Google is not higher than Amazon. Check out http://www.glassdoor.com
2) I just looked around my cube and I don't see any dirt smeared on the walls.
3) I personally don't care about silly perks like free lunch. I'd rather get higher salary that would allow me to eat lunch at a nice restaurant, instead of sitting in office cafeteria with 95% male SDE population.

Just my $0.02