Schrade.Blog

So Google has purchased Writely and looks to be gearing up to take on Microsoft head on.

I think that this brings up an interesting question, what are all of the Google engineers doing with their vaunted "20% time"? Waiting for for their options to vest? Shouldn't they be building services like this in-house?

On Google's jobs page it says:

Google engineers all have “20 percent time” in which they’re free to pursue projects they’re passionate about. This freedom has already produced Google News, Google Suggest, AdSense for Content, and Orkut – products which might otherwise have taken an entire start-up to launch.

I don't think that it would be a stretch to say that if any of those were actual start-ups, they probably would be on their last legs by now.

Inside of my head I have an image of a hundred Google engineers working somewhere, spending one day a week working diligently on something that's going to blow us all away. I hope that's what's happening, although I'm fairly certain that it's not.

Ah well, at least they're rich.

Let me start off this post by saying that I love Google Analytics. I use it pretty much every day to monitor the traffic to this site and to several others. In concept, it's a great application.

Now if they could only just get the damn thing to work.

I'm not sure what they were expecting three months ago when they launched, but they must have been off by an order of magnitude or so with their estimates about the number of signups. That's the only way that I can explain taking 3 months just to get back to the point of letting people sign up again.

Did they do any load testing at all on this thing? I still find it to be a regular occurrence where the initial summary page just sits there, refusing to show me my data. Even after multiple refreshes I still end up with nothing. The solution? Come back in a few hours.

Now I know that this is a free service and I should be happy with what I got, but just because something is free doesn't mean that you shouldn't finish it and get it tested before you send it out the door. If you own the world's most powerful computer, I feel like you really shouldn't be having simple application load problems.

Oh well, I guess I'll just keep using it when it works and continue waiting patiently for a Measure Map invitation...

This is exactly what I imagine life inside of Google must be like lately.

Well Clicks and Bricks M+A is back. Buy a semi-digital asset with a semi-sorta-not fit, and use scrip + cash to buy your way out of high valuation, one revenue stream and a precarious P/E.

I've heard stories from people working there of sitting around all day, drinking beer, waiting for their options to vest, and of hordes of newly minted PhDs who are only interested in applying their theses to the unrelated area that they happened to get assigned to. Come to think of it, now might not be a bad time to dump some Google stock.

Google Mail surprised me this morning with an ad at the top of my email instead of a normal web clip:

I guess that Google is trying to eke a little more revenue out of Gmail. I wonder what the actual click through rate is though. I don't think that I have ever clicked on a Gmail ad. It doesn't seem like it would be part of the normal flow of reading email for most people.

Hopefully I never end up working for a company where people are irritated enough with the way management is doing things to inspire something like the Mini Microsoft blog. When your own employees aren't just telling people to not come work for your company, they're broadcasting it loudly on the Internet, then it's probably time for some big systemic changes.

Meanwhile, Google is now:

a "retirement cruise for Artificial Intelligence legends of the 80s and 90s."

Doesn't sound like a very exciting place either, and from what I hear from friends there who are just kicking back and waiting for their options to vest, it's probably a pretty apt description.

Richard MacManus on Read/WriteWeb:

Watching Google and RSS is like watching a high school student experiment with a chemistry set. Meanwhile Yahoo and Microsoft are busy inserting RSS into their DNA.

Thinking about it, I get almost all of the information I now consume via RSS. Currently, I'm even looking for a new apartment by using the Craigslist RSS feed, instead of heading off to their website for info like I used to do. I think that I'm using Google less now than ever, and I only see my usage of them continuing to slide. The train has already left the station here, Google better hurry up and get on board.

I was just reading the New York Times Article (via CrunchNotes) about the new Froogle Local shopping service and the following seems like an awesome feature:

Additionally, local merchants will be able to send Google product information that will be searchable from Froogle. For example, if users type "iPod Nano New York," they will see map information with the locations of stores that have the iPod Nano in stock.

except for the fact that it won't work. There are probably 50 places that I can buy electronics in my neighborhood in NYC and I bet that the only stores that will send Google this information will be Best Buy and friends.

If I already knew that I was going to buy at Best Buy or Circuit City, then I would probably just call there in the first place.

Hell, Google Local can't even find all of the electronics stores around my apt. If it can't even do that, then I have no faith in them keeping inventory data up to date.

Now that the eBay APIs are free, I'm betting that we'll see a sudden surge of innovation in that area.

Extra points to the first person who builds a Google mashup that shows me where to buy from to save on shipping.

Om blogs here about the general trend lately of one company copying another, copying another, copying another, ad nauseam. This most likely began when Google came along and looked at a field that was essentially dead, (search, and then eventually advertising) and then waltzed in and proceeded to dominate it.

I think this flipped the light on in everyone's head that, on the Internet, if you can do something better than everyone else and get some mind share, you can leapfrog them, seemingly overnight. I think we're just seeing this process continue to accelerate. Now people are trying to copycat before the site they're copying has even launched. Hopefully we'll continue along this path to it's natural end, where an infinite variety of all possible Web 2.0 ideas will all be launched simultaneously. I hope that I have the good sense to start a server farm before that day comes.