{"id":66,"date":"2007-12-20T23:25:21","date_gmt":"2007-12-20T22:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ewansilver.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/20\/is-the-fairydust-falling-from-the-googleplex\/"},"modified":"2007-12-20T23:25:21","modified_gmt":"2007-12-20T22:25:21","slug":"is-the-fairydust-falling-from-the-googleplex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ewansilver.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/20\/is-the-fairydust-falling-from-the-googleplex\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the fairydust falling from the Googleplex?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dare is right<\/a>. I have also thought that the Googleplex<\/tag> seems to have been shedding some of its geek lustre over the past few months. Don’t get me wrong – I think some of the fabled infrastructure they have (GFS<\/tag><\/a>, MapReduce<\/tag><\/a>, Big Table<\/a><\/tag>, etc) is beyond world class. Even if it did not exist and was purely vapourware, it has done the world a massive service by opening peoples eyes to what can be done with massively distributed systems. I cannot imagine living without my Gmail account. It wouldnt occur to me to use any other search engine. <\/p>\n

But there is a nagging doubt. Is it really the hallowed turf of engineers or have the MBA types started to ooze in? Take the Knol<\/tag><\/a>. I don’t get it. There are a billion and one different ways for people to put content on the web. I am not saying that our current tools (blogs, wikis, myspace) are the ultimate evolution of content authoring. Clearly they aren’t. But what does the Knol actually add? As Udi says: “it is still just a web page<\/em>“. The only thing I can see is that it is yet another space for adsense to pop up. Adsense<\/a> was a brilliant revelation and clearly works. But you get the feeling that Google, for all its glitter<\/tag> and fairy dust<\/tag>, is actually a pony with only a small repertoire of tricks (albeit very, very powerful).<\/p>\n

I have no doubt that they will come up with some more truly, truly amazing ideas. Having a brain bank the size of a small galaxy makes that an almost guaranteed cert – you would back<\/a> it at almost any price. But it doesn’t surprise me that people, who once would have sold their mothers hind legs to work there, are now looking elsewhere.<\/p>\n

PS: I am not sure about Dare’s other horse. I can see why the money types are so enthralled with Facebook<\/a><\/tag> but it is a big WTF? to me. Anyone that can put out Beacon<\/tag><\/a> scares me.<\/p>\n

PSS: Guess that is two companies I won’t be getting offer letters from then!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dare is right. I have also thought that the Googleplex seems to have been shedding some of its geek lustre over the past few months. Don’t get me wrong – I think some of the fabled infrastructure they have (GFS, MapReduce, Big Table, etc) is beyond world class. Even if it did not exist and … Continue reading Is the fairydust falling from the Googleplex?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ewansilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ewansilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ewansilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ewansilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ewansilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ewansilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ewansilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ewansilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ewansilver.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}