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

[dwell]

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 know people at Google and had a few offers from them over the years. It's very much run by geeks and most of the management are geeks. They need more MBA types and creative types. They simply only hire mainly type A personality coding nerds.

 

[thepd7]

This guy certainly burnt his bridges with Amazon, that's for sure.

Going to read it later, but man that guy's profile pic is kind of creepy/stalkerish looking.

This works as a response to both: didn't you see the guy works at google?

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."

End Solution vs. Enabling others to create end solutions

 

[Zee]

Yeah, that made me lol.

I definitely found the sony reference funny but what's a dagger quote mean?

 

[KMFJD]

I thought Steve Y was GM of the Tampa Bay Lightning?

 

[BrokenVisage]

First of all, Steve Yzerman is the ONLY guy who can be called Steve Y.

Secondly, no way I'm reading all that.

And third, Amazon does a pretty good job for being so much worse than Google.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I definitely found the sony reference funny but what's a dagger quote mean?

Idiom. It's a sharp insult against Sony for their PSN debacle.

 

[Ichinisan]

First of all, Steve Yzerman is the ONLY guy who can be called Steve Y.

Secondly, no way I'm reading all that.

And third, Amazon does a pretty good job for being so much worse than Google.

His post praises something awesome that Amazon did. You NEED to read it.

 

[Vic Vega]

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.

No offense, but this is not correct. I don't think you understand what is being conveyed or the difference between a platform and a product. There is absolutely direction at Google, lots of it, it's simply how they organize the direction. Google may be one of the best companies with terms of product direction and consumer direction in the world today.

It's not about Google copying anyone. It's about each Google product essentially being a separate entity, and the difficulty or near impossibility of third parties to integrate with each product on a separate level. What the gentlemen is saying, is that in order to get the level of integration that MS, Amazon, FB, etc have, Google needs to move away from separate world products and move to a modular platform in which all of it's products reside, allowing 3rd parties a single platform to interface with to access each product.

I'm guessing the rant didn't make much sense to non dev and/or IT people.

 

[Raduque]

I'm guessing the rant didn't make much sense to dense and/or dumb people.

I'm neither a developer nor IT, and I picked up on what he was saying.

 

[dwell]

It's not about Google copying anyone. It's about each Google product essentially being a separate entity, and the difficulty or near impossibility of third parties to integrate with each product on a separate level. What the gentlemen is saying, is that in order to get the level of integration that MS, Amazon, FB, etc have, Google needs to move away from separate world products and move to a modular platform in which all of it's products reside, allowing 3rd parties a single platform to interface with to access each product.

It's like feudal Japan over there. One hand does not know what the other is doing. Plus a lot of projects get bootstrapped off of personal initiatives (20% time) so random stuff comes out of nowhere and there's seemingly no filters.

The list of flops by far outweighs the list of successes because they just throw random stuff at the wall to see if it sticks.

Google flops:

Answers, Audio Ads, Buzz, Catalogs, Checkout, Chrome OS, Coupons, Desktop, Dodgeball, Google Plus+, Google TV, Jaiku, Knol, Labs , Notebook, Orkut, Page Creator, Print Ads, Public DNS, Realtime Search, SearchWiki, Google Video, Video Player, Viewer, Wave, Web accelerator

 

[MrPickins]

Very good read. I'm gonna forward it to some other developers I work with.

Read it all. Agree. The success of Gmaps made me think they understood perfectly well and now he points out that it's pretty much just Gmaps. :/

Same here.

After playing around with the maps API, I just assumed that most of their other products were similar.

 

[Pliablemoose]

So, this poor dude, who is right on a ton of those points accidentally posted it publicly on Google +, further proving his point.

BTW, he's sooooo fired. And he will never get rehired by Amazon now...

 

[Gooberlx2]

Follow up. Summary: guy wasn't fired. Jeff Bezos is an alien.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzVeRq

 

[vshah]

didn't expect him to be fired from what i've heard from friends who work at google.

 

[Jodell88]

didn't expect him to be fired from what i've heard from friends who work at google.

I wasn't expecting it either. If he was at Microsoft or Apple, then he would have been fired.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Google should eat this PR up .

 

[darkxshade]

So, this poor dude, who is right on a ton of those points accidentally posted it publicly on Google +, further proving his point.

BTW, he's sooooo fired. And he will never get rehired by Amazon now...

He has Facebook to fall on.

 

[mcmilljb]

Was an interesting read. Platforms, the real web 2.0. He should write a damn textbook.