Former Google employee gives company a "-1"

[ShareShiz]

Former Google employee gives company a "-1"
By John Callaham

In 2009, Google made a big deal of James Whittaker coming on board as the company's new test director. Whittaker came to Google from Microsoft where he was previous Software Architect for the company's Visual Studio team. Now Whittaker has not only returned to Microsoft (this time as a web futurist) but has written a long and very critical blog post about his time at Google.

Whittaker's main point is that the Google he joined in 2009 is not the same company he left in February 2012. He states:

The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.

Whittaker said he enjoyed working at Google at first, saying that there was a lot of focus for innovation and taking on challenges. According to him, the problems began with the rise of Facebook. He claims that Google felt threatened by Facebook, mainly because the site could take away much of Google's advertising revenues.

Whittaker says that Google started to put in more social features in all of its products. He states, "Even worse was that innovation had to be social. Ideas that failed to put Google+ at the center of the universe were a distraction."

Ultimately he says that Google was no longer a good fit for him, saying:

The old Google made a fortune on ads because they had good content. It was like TV used to be: make the best show and you get the most ad revenue from commercials. The new Google seems more focused on the commercials themselves.

Whittaker signed off on his blog post with this simple statement: "The old Google was a great place to work. The new one? -1."

ShareShiz Reviewed by ShareShiz on 14th Mar 2012. Former Google employee gives company a "-1" Former Google employee gives company a "-1" By John Callaham Rating: 5

[Mr Happy]

This guy worked on testing stuff and areas like Google Labs and App Engine. When Google closed that part of course he'd be pissed. He was working in an area of Google that didn't know anything about money or revenue. The area where he worked spent millions.

App Engine which he claims was great is dead. It was going nowhere. It was a bridge between HTML4 and HTML5 but as we have HTML5 now it's not needed and Google was right to drop it.

It sounds like he was working too long on stuff that never had to make money and when transferred to an area that had to actually work and make money he cried and left.

As he said
"The fact that all this was paid for by a cash machine stuffed full of advertising loot was lost on most of us." which shows he wasn't living in the real world. Somebody always has to pay.

Anyway with 20,000+ employees if one leaves is it that big a deal? Most of the time we hear stories of people leaving Google to start their own companies. The fact he's leaving to go work for Microsoft, an even worse company in terms of inovation, shows his state of mind.

[Daniel]

Read http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/a...ft-google.aspx
Read http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/28/te...ore/index.html

---------- Post added at 02:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:55 PM ----------

All I have to say about G +. a HUGE failure.

[Mr Happy]

Read http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/a...ft-google.aspx
Read http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/28/te...ore/index.html

---------- Post added at 02:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:55 PM ----------

All I have to say about G +. a HUGE failure.

I don't know if it can be defined by a fail. Depends on how you look at it. Remember it took both Chrome and Android 3 years to become noticed and gain main stream popularity.

As a social network sure it's not used by a lot at the moment but their are other sides. See without you even realizing it Google now has better targeted adverts to user on YouTube, Search, Gmail, Maps etc. They are all linked. If someone signs up to G+ but never EVER returns it doesn't matter as they have your profile for every other G+ product. The way G+ is everywhere means targeted adverts are everywhere. Even if you never visit G+ Sandvik (OJ) I know you have an account which means when you Search or use Gmail or Youtube Google (and G+) learns more about you even though you never returned to use the G+ account. From a money point of view I'd say it's working.

It's mobile where it's not working as people click less adverts on mobiles on all Google products but that's the same for everyone. People pay more attention and click less adverts.

[Daniel]

Yes, they make good money, but I could not care less. I have nothing to hide.