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"Google Reader founder Chris Wetherell said that if the idea came to him in today’s Google, he would leave the company and build it on his own rather than put i

"Google Reader founder Chris Wetherell said that if the idea came to him in today’s Google, he would leave the company and build it on his own rather than put it at the mercy of Google leadership." Guess what dude?! If I were in that position and I were primarily worried about my project "being at the mercy of Google" (or any company that I don't have sufficient control over, for that matter), I would have left _anytime_. It should not be something you realize _today_. This is just whining over a "wrong" (presumably; assuming you would have pulled it off well) tradeoff you, yourself, made back in the day. It's not "today's Google vs. back then's Google". This is the tradeoff that you make anytime you decide to work for someone else; this is obvious and was obvious back in the day. If you had not seen it, the blame is wholly on you. Google Reader would not have been a guaranteed success that it was without Google's resources. If one does not have the balls to take the risk of working at his or her own startup, he or she is not entitled to the benefits either. In hindsight, it's too easy to say "I would have gone and pulled it off independently". I personally think Larry overall has been focusing on what matters and under his awesome leadership, Google is performing far better than Eric's time and this whole situation is not dissimilar to what happened at WWDC1997 and Steve's response to the random questioner in the audience: "...the hardest thing is how does that fit in to a cohesive larger vision that's gonna allow you to sell 8 billion dollars... 10 billion dollars... a product a year." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE

epistasis 13y ago
> This is just whining over a "wrong" (presumably; assuming you would have pulled it off well) tradeoff you, yourself, made back in the day. It's not "today's Google vs. back then's Google". I don't see any whining about a wrong, I see somebody saying that Google is different today from when it was back when he first made Reader. I don't see him regretting making Reader, just saying that today, because of cultural changes at Google, he'd do it outside of Google rather than inside of Google. This is not somebody regretting their actions, this is somebody saying that Google's culture is different today then it was back then. Clearly you're a fan of this new culture, and that's just fine, but don't miscontrue his words.
- mehrdada 13y ago
  >> I don't see any whining about a wrong I don't think it was a wrong decision either--hence the quotes. I think it was not easy to pull it off outside Google. >> I see somebody saying that Google is different today from when it was back when he first made Reader I do not deny that there might have been a fundamental culture change at Google. My point, precisely, is that a culture change is orthogonal to the fundamental fact that at someone else's company, they have the ultimate control over your invention. That's one big reason people go (and went) start start-ups. This is what has never changed and it's the employee's fault if they do not realize this when they accept their employment offer. >> Clearly you're a fan of this new culture I've never accepted an offer from Google. What I said does not necessarily imply that I'm a fan of the internal culture, or would have liked new Google management better if I were an employee. I am assessing the overall vision of Google leadership and their output from the outside and believe they are doing a very good job, and the credit for a company doing well should first and foremost go to the utmost leadership. I like the new management better because they seem to have a much more coherent and focused vision, waste less resources, and while they obviously make mistakes too, overall, they have shown boldness in their actions. Even if I'm not particularly happy with the act of shutting down Google Reader, I like that they are bold and have the courage to execute what they think is right. Cutting a fairly successful product does not directly imply good leadership, but it does imply boldness which is highly correlated with good leadership.
  - epistasis 13y ago
    > This is what has never changed and it's the employee's fault if they do not realize this when they accept their employment offer. My point is that he already realizes this. And that within one Google culture, he felt comfortable handing it all over to Google and taking advantage of all their resources and clout, and that in today's different Google culture, it's not a clearcut decision anymore, and in particular, pursuing a project that management sees as being at odds with the core mission of Google+ would probably be a bad idea. So I don't think you have any news for him, despite your initial claims.
    - 13y ago
wisty 13y ago
> Guess what dude?! If I were in that position and I were primarily worried about my project "being at the mercy of Google" (or any company that I don't have sufficient control over, for that matter), I would have left _anytime_. If you don't have a boss, your boss is either your VC, or your customers. Guess what - they can suck more than Google (at least, Google back in 'the day').
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
wpietri 13y ago
Why in the world are you being a dick about this? The whining and lack of balls are all things you are brining to the article; they're not in the text. The guy did what he thought was right at the time. He's not complaining about it. He's just saying that under today's conditions, he would have chosen differently. He also didn't say he would have pulled it off independently. Just that today he would leave and build it on his own. Given that other people are doing that successfully (I just paid good money to NewsBlur), it seems like a pretty sound evaluation to me. And I'll note that the guy did leave and do something independently, so it sounds like he has plenty of balls to me.
- mehrdada 13y ago
  The title implies all that. At least that's how I see it. My main point: in my view, the logical reasoning process that leads to the decision of inventing Google Reader inside Google or outside Google should be independent of Google culture at the time. It is a function of how much control you have over the company and your situation and goals, but not the company culture, so the correct decision with respect to the goals should not have changed over time. Logically, he should have always assumed that his product may get axed at the king's will and should have accounted for this risk in his calculations. The fact that leadership/culture can change against your will is a risk that existed from the start. (To be honest, I don't have anything personal against this guy. I liked his product. What I meant to say was much more general when I mentioned "having balls": I really meant you cannot retrospectively claim credit for something you did not actually go and do, and the tone of that article irritates me in this respect. It might very well be the article writer's fault, not the guy himself.)
  - massless 13y ago
    Actually, mehrdata, I think you might be reading a lot more into my statements than are actually present. While cultures evolve, I feel lucky we were able to make Reader within Google. I think that its being at Google made it a better product. When asked if I would build it in today's Google my answer was "no" given that Google is clearly uninterested in this project at the moment. Seems kinda obvious, really. I feel that epistasis more accurately guessed at the unpublished feelings I've had. The following are all things I think simultaneously right now... Google is a great company Google makes great things Google is not interested in pursuing Reader Communication around Reader's value (or how to improve it) within Google was unclear There may be confusion for inventor-types within Google on how to proceed in today's Google, though that's possibly remedied by better communication internally I'm glad you liked Reader. No need to guess about my actual thoughts about the past since I can summarize: Thanks to a great company with great people, Google Reader was made into a service that was many times better than I ever could have built alone in my apartment. There's no way to know if that success could have been achieved somewhere else. Everyone working on Reader knew it could have been cancelled at any time. It wasn't cancelled for a long time. I'm glad we got to experiment with the idea and the experience.
cmpxchg8 13y ago
Au contraire. This is exactly the Google of today vs back then's Google. The Google of today focuses only on social and mobile and, GoogleX aside, will not green-light anything that will not benefit those two. You can ask anybody who works there how the 20% project time policy has changed or how certain teams have all the resources and cool stuff while others struggle. Android under Sundar Pichai is not much better than it was under Andy, although I'm glad the latter is gone. And Vic Gundotra, well, he's one big hypocrite. Google is still a great place to work, but the politics and trying to create the next Facebook have pretty much ruined its culture.

epistasis 13y ago

> This is just whining over a "wrong" (presumably; assuming you would have pulled it off well) tradeoff you, yourself, made back in the day. It's not "today's Google vs. back then's Google". I don't see any whining about a wrong, I see somebody saying that Google is different today from when it was back when he first made Reader. I don't see him regretting making Reader, just saying that today, because of cultural changes at Google, he'd do it outside of Google rather than inside of Google. This is not somebody regretting their actions, this is somebody saying that Google's culture is different today then it was back then. Clearly you're a fan of this new culture, and that's just fine, but don't miscontrue his words.

mehrdada 13y ago
>> I don't see any whining about a wrong I don't think it was a wrong decision either--hence the quotes. I think it was not easy to pull it off outside Google. >> I see somebody saying that Google is different today from when it was back when he first made Reader I do not deny that there might have been a fundamental culture change at Google. My point, precisely, is that a culture change is orthogonal to the fundamental fact that at someone else's company, they have the ultimate control over your invention. That's one big reason people go (and went) start start-ups. This is what has never changed and it's the employee's fault if they do not realize this when they accept their employment offer. >> Clearly you're a fan of this new culture I've never accepted an offer from Google. What I said does not necessarily imply that I'm a fan of the internal culture, or would have liked new Google management better if I were an employee. I am assessing the overall vision of Google leadership and their output from the outside and believe they are doing a very good job, and the credit for a company doing well should first and foremost go to the utmost leadership. I like the new management better because they seem to have a much more coherent and focused vision, waste less resources, and while they obviously make mistakes too, overall, they have shown boldness in their actions. Even if I'm not particularly happy with the act of shutting down Google Reader, I like that they are bold and have the courage to execute what they think is right. Cutting a fairly successful product does not directly imply good leadership, but it does imply boldness which is highly correlated with good leadership.
- epistasis 13y ago
  > This is what has never changed and it's the employee's fault if they do not realize this when they accept their employment offer. My point is that he already realizes this. And that within one Google culture, he felt comfortable handing it all over to Google and taking advantage of all their resources and clout, and that in today's different Google culture, it's not a clearcut decision anymore, and in particular, pursuing a project that management sees as being at odds with the core mission of Google+ would probably be a bad idea. So I don't think you have any news for him, despite your initial claims.
  - 13y ago

wisty 13y ago

> Guess what dude?! If I were in that position and I were primarily worried about my project "being at the mercy of Google" (or any company that I don't have sufficient control over, for that matter), I would have left _anytime_. If you don't have a boss, your boss is either your VC, or your customers. Guess what - they can suck more than Google (at least, Google back in 'the day').

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

wpietri 13y ago

Why in the world are you being a dick about this? The whining and lack of balls are all things you are brining to the article; they're not in the text. The guy did what he thought was right at the time. He's not complaining about it. He's just saying that under today's conditions, he would have chosen differently. He also didn't say he would have pulled it off independently. Just that today he would leave and build it on his own. Given that other people are doing that successfully (I just paid good money to NewsBlur), it seems like a pretty sound evaluation to me. And I'll note that the guy did leave and do something independently, so it sounds like he has plenty of balls to me.

mehrdada 13y ago
The title implies all that. At least that's how I see it. My main point: in my view, the logical reasoning process that leads to the decision of inventing Google Reader inside Google or outside Google should be independent of Google culture at the time. It is a function of how much control you have over the company and your situation and goals, but not the company culture, so the correct decision with respect to the goals should not have changed over time. Logically, he should have always assumed that his product may get axed at the king's will and should have accounted for this risk in his calculations. The fact that leadership/culture can change against your will is a risk that existed from the start. (To be honest, I don't have anything personal against this guy. I liked his product. What I meant to say was much more general when I mentioned "having balls": I really meant you cannot retrospectively claim credit for something you did not actually go and do, and the tone of that article irritates me in this respect. It might very well be the article writer's fault, not the guy himself.)
- massless 13y ago
  Actually, mehrdata, I think you might be reading a lot more into my statements than are actually present. While cultures evolve, I feel lucky we were able to make Reader within Google. I think that its being at Google made it a better product. When asked if I would build it in today's Google my answer was "no" given that Google is clearly uninterested in this project at the moment. Seems kinda obvious, really. I feel that epistasis more accurately guessed at the unpublished feelings I've had. The following are all things I think simultaneously right now... Google is a great company Google makes great things Google is not interested in pursuing Reader Communication around Reader's value (or how to improve it) within Google was unclear There may be confusion for inventor-types within Google on how to proceed in today's Google, though that's possibly remedied by better communication internally I'm glad you liked Reader. No need to guess about my actual thoughts about the past since I can summarize: Thanks to a great company with great people, Google Reader was made into a service that was many times better than I ever could have built alone in my apartment. There's no way to know if that success could have been achieved somewhere else. Everyone working on Reader knew it could have been cancelled at any time. It wasn't cancelled for a long time. I'm glad we got to experiment with the idea and the experience.

cmpxchg8 13y ago

Au contraire. This is exactly the Google of today vs back then's Google. The Google of today focuses only on social and mobile and, GoogleX aside, will not green-light anything that will not benefit those two. You can ask anybody who works there how the 20% project time policy has changed or how certain teams have all the resources and cool stuff while others struggle. Android under Sundar Pichai is not much better than it was under Andy, although I'm glad the latter is gone. And Vic Gundotra, well, he's one big hypocrite. Google is still a great place to work, but the politics and trying to create the next Facebook have pretty much ruined its culture.