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Jeremy Allison Column Archives

The Low Point — a View from the Valley — Column 19

In Search of Google

Since I've started working at home I don't get out to see people much, so an invitation to lunch at Google is always welcome. I know quite a few people there, as Google has sucked up much of the free-floating talent in the valley, and that includes many ex-colleagues from places like VA Linux and Silicon Graphics (SGI). Going to lunch at Google is always a strange experience for me, as the center of the Google campus is one of SGI's old buildings at Shoreline in Mountain View. As I walk across the courtyard I see the ghosts of old Friday afternoon SGI beer and barbecue parties where Google's volleyball court now stands. There are five on-campus restaurants each with its own five-star chef. The food of course is free.

No one could accuse Google of being parsimonious with their employees. Driving onto the site I commonly see a van offering “Instant oil change” or “Internet haircuts” or other personal services camped out in the parking lot, which is always so full it's like trying to find a parking space at a busy shopping mall on Christmas Eve. As you get on-site, the generosity begins to seem ludicrous, such as the little motor powered scooters available for Googlers to get between buildings; heaven forbid they should have to walk anywhere. I suppose I should just be grateful they're not Segway tricycles, America's answer to the Sinclair C5, although I'd imagine class-conscious Californians would rather crawl on hands and knees than be seen balancing on the vehicle Steve Jobs declared would be “bigger than the Internet”.

Money just drips out of the pores of the place. It's everywhere: in the larger than life technology displays, or the multiple flat screen hi-resolution monitors everyone uses, or even the small touches like the extra laptop power supplies generously provided in every conference room; permanently connected so you don't have to stoop down to plug into a power point below the desk. Who knew Internet advertising could be so profitable ? To give them some credit though, their Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is one of the easiest to refuse when you sign in, you just have to hit the “Escape” key after signing your name to get a “visitor” badge. Things like that are important to a Free Software developer who doesn't want to be accused of stealing any of Google's secrets.

It reminds me of the glory days of the Dot-Com technology bubble, where how many different kinds of soda you provided free to your employees was more important than the company business plan. After all – the Venture Capitalists would give money to everyone. I do worry about how things will be at Google when the money gets tight. And the money always gets tight. I've played the role of Banquo's ghost at enough Silicon Valley startup feasts to know how these stories can end.

People often compare Google to “the next Microsoft”, and in some ways that's very true, especially in the appalling way they treat any of the press who are impudent enough to criticize them. But I visited a little up at Microsoft, back in the early 1990's and they never treated their employees this well. There was always an innate meanness at Microsoft, a sense that although things were good “this couldn't last”, and money had to be saved, just in case. I have since read, and easily believe, that Bill Gates had a gnawing fear that Microsoft had to be able to survive for a year without any revenue. Not just without profit, but without actual revenue. There was palpable hostility between different development teams on the Microsoft campus. You always got the feeling that the Microsoft Word team didn't care about beating WordPerfect (their once mighty competitor), they just wanted to get one over on the Microsoft Excel team by grabbing more market share in their field than Excel did. The company was a group of warring tribes only held together by the force of will of the Great Khan Gates.

Google employees just don't seem have this level of aggression. People there are, well, nice. The campus is nice, the food is better than nice, the weather is nice (hey, it's California). Many employees still use Windows on their desktop. In contrast, one thing Microsoft never does is underestimate the competition. Google don't seem to have learned yet that a dollar spent on a Windows license is a dollar being reinvested in destroying them. Maybe there's a hidden Google SWAT Team training somewhere for the fight to come but you don't see them conducting field exercises on the Volleyball court.

Some Googlers get it. The Open Source people, the smart ones, the ones you can thank for the Linux versions of Google Earth, and the graphical software Picasa, and of course for the Google sponsored “Summer of Code” program. Summer of Code is a program designed to encourage vacationing Computer Science students to spend that time writing more Open Source software instead of lounging on the beach in Cabos San Lucas. It's one of the most far-sighted and efficient ways to spend money on improving Open Source code I've ever seen. Donating money on Open Source projects is usually counter productive, but this is a way of dumping source code on them instead, which is what they actually need. A big thanks to Google's Chris DiBona for that. Google runs on Linux, but they don't see the need to evangelize it to their own customers. I think that's a big mistake.

I once asked some Google people what they would do when Microsoft Vista, the next version of Windows, was released upon which people would strangely find it difficult to get to google.com anymore. In my naïveté I thought Microsoft would have to use some technical obfuscation to prevent people from getting to google.com. It turns out all they had to do was to change the default search page to point at their own search engine, MSN search, and people wouldn't know how to change the default. Microsoft never lost money underestimating the intelligence of their users. I didn't get a good answer from the Googlers, and now I know what they had decided to do about it. Google recently complained to the USA Department of Justice about Microsoft's actions in Windows Vista, and their complaints were summarily dismissed. These is the same Department of Justice which snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the Microsoft vs. the USA anti-trust case, so it wasn't a surprise. I did think Google might have something a little smarter up their sleeve though. Maybe they only hire technical, not legal PhDs.

But it's very hard to compete with a series of warring tribes, who consider violations of anti-trust law just one of the trivial costs of doing business, who have a war chest large enough to go a year without revenue, and who donate far more to the US Republican party than Google does.

I really hope Google makes it though, and they don't turn out to be a one-trick Internet Advertising pony. The people there are so nice they deserve better than that. And where will I get a decent free lunch without them ?