5 ms·

There are aspects to early Google that have been memory holed because they are no longer fashionable or even acceptable and yet may have been key to early succe

There are aspects to early Google that have been memory holed because they are no longer fashionable or even acceptable and yet may have been key to early success. Firstly they were allergic to design and marketers. The whole data driven approach yielded interfaces that were gawky but highly functional, the extreme opposite of today. The iPhone caused them to throw the baby out with the bathwater on that. More controversially Facebook broke the old SV salary cap agreement, and with that came floods of people that should have tormented Wall St who all landed in tech instead. That agreement was bad but the absolute avarice among modern tech people is stunningly depressing for those of us that have been around to see the change. Google mainly remind me of SGI, and it is their office after all.

fancyfredbot 3y ago
> floods of people that should have tormented Wall St who all landed in tech instead Hmm, would these people have inflicted more or less damage on society if they had worked for Wall Street firms?
- DanielHB 3y ago
  More
  - fancyfredbot 3y ago
    Another great service big tech has provided to the world then!
- yedava 3y ago
  I would say less if they had stayed on Wall St. The past decade has laid the groundwork for an Orwellian society. Digital communication and commerce is now centralized to a few big firms and that is going to hurt us as a civilization.
mlrtime 3y ago
>Facebook broke the old SV salary cap agreement And 1000's of non Google and Meta employees have benefitted from this, so I say this is good. The argument may be that this invited the wrong type of people to VC. I would say, They were already there, just not as obvious.
lxgr 3y ago
I don’t know about marketers, but being allergic to design by itself does not yield a good product. At best it’s orthogonal to it; at worst – see Amazon.
Apocryphon 3y ago
The articles about how Google uses A/B testing to determine the optimal shade of blue are what ended data-driven design.
jra_samba 3y ago
My take on this: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jeremyallison_wither-google-fyi-this-is-my-recollection-activity-7153117822452158464-60MO?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jeremyallison_wither-google-f... Wither Google ? FYI. This is my recollection of events, but it's been twenty or so years now, so if my memory is fuzzy on the details, please forgive the ramblings of an old engineer :-). Many years ago, I was working at SGI when the company started to do poorly under the leadership of Rick Belluzzo. In those days the company sponsored the Friday afternoon "beer-bust", when all the employees hung out on what is now the Google volleyball court, drank beer and socialized. Rick cancelled the beer busts as a cost cutting measure. One of SGI's lead engineers, Casey Leedom (known internally as Mr. IRIX, for SGI's version of UNIX - a codebase he knew inside-out) took it upon himself to self-organize replacement beer-busts with the rest of the engineering staff. We all chipped in to buy the beer, and the Friday afternoon festivities continued as normal. Rick Belluzzo heard about this, and embarrassed, called Casey into a meeting. "Things aren't that bad", he told Casey. "We can fund the beer-busts again". "No", said Casey. "We know the company is having some hard times, and we're all in this together, so the engineering staff are happy to continue to self-fund the beer-busts". "There is one thing you could do", Casey added. "I know you are a busy man, but if you could take it upon yourself to occasionally attend a beer-bust, it would be much appreciated by the employees". "Great idea !", said Rick, and promised to do so. Six or so months later, Rick Belluzzo ran away from SGI over a weekend, and on Monday it was announced that Microsoft had a new VP. "We appear to have lost our CEO" was the email announcement from now acting CEO Bob Bishop. In the time since Casey asked him to the time he joined Microsoft, Rick attended zero self-sponsored beer busts at SGI. For some reason I can't see Sundar attending any self-sponsored Google beer-busts either.
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  Coincidentally that's pretty much what Sundar has done to TGIF

fancyfredbot 3y ago

> floods of people that should have tormented Wall St who all landed in tech instead Hmm, would these people have inflicted more or less damage on society if they had worked for Wall Street firms?

DanielHB 3y ago
More
- fancyfredbot 3y ago
  Another great service big tech has provided to the world then!
yedava 3y ago
I would say less if they had stayed on Wall St. The past decade has laid the groundwork for an Orwellian society. Digital communication and commerce is now centralized to a few big firms and that is going to hurt us as a civilization.

mlrtime 3y ago

>Facebook broke the old SV salary cap agreement And 1000's of non Google and Meta employees have benefitted from this, so I say this is good. The argument may be that this invited the wrong type of people to VC. I would say, They were already there, just not as obvious.

lxgr 3y ago

I don’t know about marketers, but being allergic to design by itself does not yield a good product. At best it’s orthogonal to it; at worst – see Amazon.

Apocryphon 3y ago

The articles about how Google uses A/B testing to determine the optimal shade of blue are what ended data-driven design.

jra_samba 3y ago

My take on this: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jeremyallison_wither-google-fyi-this-is-my-recollection-activity-7153117822452158464-60MO?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jeremyallison_wither-google-f... Wither Google ? FYI. This is my recollection of events, but it's been twenty or so years now, so if my memory is fuzzy on the details, please forgive the ramblings of an old engineer :-). Many years ago, I was working at SGI when the company started to do poorly under the leadership of Rick Belluzzo. In those days the company sponsored the Friday afternoon "beer-bust", when all the employees hung out on what is now the Google volleyball court, drank beer and socialized. Rick cancelled the beer busts as a cost cutting measure. One of SGI's lead engineers, Casey Leedom (known internally as Mr. IRIX, for SGI's version of UNIX - a codebase he knew inside-out) took it upon himself to self-organize replacement beer-busts with the rest of the engineering staff. We all chipped in to buy the beer, and the Friday afternoon festivities continued as normal. Rick Belluzzo heard about this, and embarrassed, called Casey into a meeting. "Things aren't that bad", he told Casey. "We can fund the beer-busts again". "No", said Casey. "We know the company is having some hard times, and we're all in this together, so the engineering staff are happy to continue to self-fund the beer-busts". "There is one thing you could do", Casey added. "I know you are a busy man, but if you could take it upon yourself to occasionally attend a beer-bust, it would be much appreciated by the employees". "Great idea !", said Rick, and promised to do so. Six or so months later, Rick Belluzzo ran away from SGI over a weekend, and on Monday it was announced that Microsoft had a new VP. "We appear to have lost our CEO" was the email announcement from now acting CEO Bob Bishop. In the time since Casey asked him to the time he joined Microsoft, Rick attended zero self-sponsored beer busts at SGI. For some reason I can't see Sundar attending any self-sponsored Google beer-busts either.

Rebelgecko 3y ago
Coincidentally that's pretty much what Sundar has done to TGIF