To Figure Out Google’s Priorities, Just Look At Team Larry

http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/08/google-team-larry/

by bradgillespie • 15 years ago

24 28 15 years ago

I'm kind of rooting for him.

Again, aren't these just the people promoted? This isn't all of the org heads. There's still Location (Marissa Mayer), Google Apps, and others. I find it hard to believe that Page has no interest in Apps succeeding.

jasonshen• 15 years ago

For anyone interested, I just put together a link round up of some of the most interesting posts/articles of the CEO change starting from January till now.

http://www.jasonshen.com/2011/how-larry-page-returning-to-ce...

webwright2• 15 years ago

I'm rooting for Google-- would love to see them kicking ass on more fronts.

The SVP of Social seems like a strange choice... Should be someone like Ev Williams. Instead, it's a guy who was an open source evangelist who also helped lead Windows Vista when he was at Microsoft. I'm sure he's a really effective guy, but does he GET social?

wallflower• 15 years ago

He did have a famous tweet :)

#feb11 "Two turkeys do not make an Eagle". 7:45 PM Feb 8th via web

http://twitter.com/vicgundotra/status/35182523650801664

kenjackson2• 15 years ago

Honestly, is social that hard to GET? I think what Vic has shown at MS and Google (and I think its important that he showed this at both places) is that he can execute.

If Vic's mission is to make Google social big, period then he'll do well. If his mission is to make social big, and figure out how to monetize it too, then there will be problems. But I think Vic is bright enough to know that monetization is a second-tier priority right now.

webwright2• 15 years ago

If it's not hard to get, why hasn't Google gotten it yet? Certainly not for lack of trying or technical execution. It's a whole different beast. The first order problems (IMO) are around empathy, design, positioning, marketing, and community (things that Google is historically not good at).

trotsky2• 15 years ago

I'm glad to see Sundar will have the ear of the king, ChromeOS hardware may be the single most promising near term development in computer security for the common man. I expect to be buying several for my family once they become commercially available.

gbrindisi• 15 years ago

What do you mean with "most promising near term development in computer security for the common man"? Can you expand on that?

MatthewPhillips5• 15 years ago

Chrome has a very robust security model that includes, among other things, auto-updating and a verified boot (version numbers cannot go backwards). For example, if a device is detected as being hacked, an update will be initialized and then a reboot. And if a device is stolen, it's basically useless since ALL user data stored on the device is encrypted (and can be remote-wiped anyways). Here's everything:

http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/s...

trotsky2• 15 years ago

Everything that Matthew said plus the ability to easily reload from a cryptographically good backup copy of the OS if it detects anything has gone awry without disturbing your "applications". I'd highly suggest following the link he gave, it is a very interesting revue of many modern and practical security approaches.

divtxt• 15 years ago

Seconded. ChromeOS will join iPad as a computer "my mom can use".

ChromeOS's main disadvantage is that it is not available. This should be fixed this year.

iPad's main disadvantage is that it requires a traditional desktop to manage. You can bet Apple is looking to fix this.

MatthewPhillips5• 15 years ago

Agreed, he's an underrated genius. You can see it when he talks, he deserved every penny of that $50m bonus he got. I'll be buying many as well.

muhfuhkuh• 15 years ago

"If people shift from search to sharing as the primary means to find information, then Google needs to figure out how to tap into social, and fast."

Ah, but how are people going to _find_ this information in the first place? Links don't just grow out of a vacuum. Someone searched for it _then_ curated it.

And, really, if Google wants to own the _future_ of consumer "information sharing" in this era, they don't have to become a lumbering Facebook me-too clone. Just buy Twitter (be ready to pay a soul-crushingly high premium for them, though). Boom, they'll now have 4 of the top 10 global Alexa ranked sites (after Google, Youtube, and Blogger). Integrate them all with some non-trivial alchemy, and you'll rule the Internet.

sonnekki• 15 years ago

Google already tried to buy Twitter to some extent.

http://techcrunch.com/2009/04/02/sources-google-in-late-stag...

It seems like Twitter is the last piece of the puzzle for them. However, I think Twitter needs more time to mature from a good product to a great product.

sheffield• 15 years ago

> Ah, but how are people going to _find_ this information in the first place? Links don't just grow out of a vacuum. Someone searched for it _then_ curated it.

No. In the first place someone created that content, then shared the link.

fooandbarify• 15 years ago

It's not necessarily true that the person who created the content will share the link. Even if they do, if they are far removed from my social network then the only way I will find that content is still by searching for it.

stevenj2• 15 years ago

I think it's strange that Google is going after social.

Search isn't going away. It's here to stay. Will search become social? I tend to think it won't. But if it does, I think it'll only be a small component and it'll occur in niches. For instance, searching for a movie on Netflix based on what your friends like/recommend may become more common. Though, searching for a pair of new shoes online won't be a social activity. I like what I like.

But Google should worry most about search. Google.com. Searching on Google has gotten worse and worse for me over the past 2 - 3 years. To find what I want (if I find it at all), I have to try several queries and comb through several pages. This is time-consuming and my solution has been to just search less.

Google needs to stop worrying about what others are doing and focus on Google.

Make search better. Once you've done that, keep making it better.

I know Google wants to build new things, etc., but it shouldn't be social.

Edit: (1) I could be totally wrong about this. (2) I think of Google going after social meaning it wants to build something that replaces Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc. Perhaps its social strategy is different than that.

brudgers2• 15 years ago

>"I think it's strange that Google is going after social."

As a company whose revenue is based on data-mining internet traffic, it makes perfect sense because of the potential value of pushing ads to an individual based on knowledge of their social network, e.g. pushing Mercedes ads to a person whose friends all drive Porsches. And for Google, that's what better search means - it doesn't mean putting useful long tail information on the front page when such information is not easily monetized.

stevenj2• 15 years ago

>e.g. pushing Mercedes ads to a person whose friends all drive Porsches

That's a small demographic, in my opinion.

The bigger pie are the people who are actively seeking out information about Mercedes via search.

But if I'm searching less because it sucks, then that's a big problem.

Google is a search company. I hope it doesn't lose sight of that.

nissimk• 15 years ago

What's the difference between Google +1 and Facebook Like? How are they differentiating their service? Just because the +1 is integrated somehow into search results doesn't really make it better. A community cannot successfully determine the reputation of it's members if their only option is to give it a +1 or a like. If +1 also came with -1 or it morphed to thumbs up/thumbs down, it could become more of a reputation generator for any person or web based entity which I think could be much more useful.

flyt2• 15 years ago

The difference is context within my social network. None of my friends have Google Profiles and are unlikely to reconstruct their graph on Google Profiles. Clicking +1 doesn't have as much social distribution as the Like button because of this fundamental problem. Facebook already has all my friends on it, so clicking a Like button actually has weight.

yalogin• 15 years ago

I wonder how much Google worries about the popularity of niche sites like stackoverflow. I go there for all my programming queries now instead of searching on google. If more and more sites take up niches like this the over all search volume should decrease for Google. Though I would think its not a lot as a percentage.

MatthewPhillips5• 15 years ago

I use Google to search stackoverflow. "site:stackoverflow.com query", they do a better job at search than SO.

To Figure Out Google’s Priorities, Just Look At Team Larry

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