Category Archives: Google

Prediction Markets with Google Employees

Posted on January 10, 2008 by John Hunter

Another interesting experiment from Google: Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence from Google In Google’s terminology, a market asks a question (e.g., “how many users will Gmail have?”) that has 2”5 possible mutually exclusive and completely exhaustive answers (e.g., “Fewer than X users”, “Between X and Y”, and “More than Y”). Each answer corresponds to a security that is worth a unit of currency (called a “Gooble”) if the answer turns out to be correct (and zero otherwise). … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Data, Economics, Google, Psychology, Statistics, Systems thinking

The Google Way: Give Engineers Room

Posted on October 23, 2007 by John Hunter

The Google Way: Give Engineers Room Google engineers are encouraged to take 20 percent of their time to work on something company-related that interests them personally. This means that if you have a great idea, you always have time to run with it. … These grouplets have practically no budget, and they have no decision-making authority. What they have is a bunch of people who are committed to an idea and willing to work to convince the rest of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, IT, Management, Software Development | 1 Comment

Search Share Data – Checking the ACSI

Posted on September 20, 2007 by John Hunter

Last month, in a long post criticizing the ACSI I took issue with, among other things, the implications being drawn from an ACSI rating. The ACSI rating of Yahoo was higher than that of Google (though statistically insignificantly so). Anyway, here is some new data on search volumes of the leading providers: Top 5 Search Providers for August 2007, Ranked by Searches (U.S.) Provider Searches (000) Year over Year Growth Share of Searches 1. Google Search 4,199,495 39.8% 53.6% 2. … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Google, Statistics | 4 Comments

Kaizen – Yahoo Mail Style

Posted on September 19, 2007 by John Hunter

Yahoo Mail Innovates, Gmail Stagnates Yahoo Mail has begun rolling out of beta after releasing an onslaught of innovative feature improvements along the way. On the other hand, a whopping three years into their beta release, Gmail remains one of the most popular but stagnant web-based beta email apps around. To me Yahoo is really continually improving the service, not innovating. Still an interesting exploration of visible improvement. Related: Kaizen Online – Kaizen definition –Innovation Examples – Google Innovation webcast … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, IT, Management, Software Development | 1 Comment

Google Video Customer Service

Posted on August 21, 2007 by John Hunter

Google Video sold digital videos that were controlled by Digital Rights Management DRM (so the purchaser didn’t buy something they bought the right to view the digital media according to a set of constraints. I, and many others find these DRM deals a bad deal for customers. I think Google realized that DRM made their Google Video a bad business (though maybe they decided it was a bad business for other reasons). Well Google’s original method of existing the business … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Google, IT, Management | 1 Comment

Data Based Blathering

Posted on August 17, 2007 by John Hunter

Ok, this is one of those posts you might want to ignore or you might enjoy. Before blogs there is little chance this would reach you. But I am tired of seeing the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) promoted as if it were some encouragement for better management when all it seems to do to me is encourage superficial, non data based claims. And since it my blog I can rant if I feel like it. ACSI: Flat Customer Satisfaction … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Economics, Google, Toyota Production System (TPS) | 3 Comments

Great Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation

Posted on August 9, 2007 by John Hunter

Marissa Mayer speech at Stanford on innovation at Google (23 minutes, 26 minutes question and answers). She leads the product management efforts on Google’s search products- web search, images, groups, news, Froogle, the Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Labs, and more. She joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer. Excellent speech. Highly recommended. 9 ideas: (inside these are Marissa’s comments) [inside these are my comments] Ideas come from anywhere (engineers, customers, managers, executives, external companies – that Google … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, Management, Popular, quote, Software Development, webcast | 6 Comments

Hiring: Silicon Valley Style

Posted on August 6, 2007 by John Hunter

Interviews on how to hire in Silicon Valley. I especially like Guy Kawasaki’s comment – “the key to getting great people to work for you is to have a great product. That is why Google does so well. That is why Apple does so well.” I agree with the concept that a huge part of hiring good people is offering them a place where they feel proud of what they are working on. This is even more true when you … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Google, IT, Management, Software Development, Systems thinking, webcast | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Google Exceeded Planned Spending on Personnel

Posted on July 19, 2007 by John Hunter

Often people have trouble understanding Dr. Deming’s disapproval of arbitrary numerical targets. What he was trying to prevent is what many see every day, such as managing to quarterly earnings targets. There are several problems with numerical goals but in here lets focus on one. The change from managing for what is best for the business to managing to hit a target. Google Profit Trails Analyst Estimates; Shares Slide: The company hired more people than expected last quarter, Chief Executive … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Google, Investing, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, quote | 3 Comments

Funding Google Gadget Development

Posted on June 28, 2007 by John Hunter

Google Gadgets are small tools and toys that integrate with iGoogle. Google is funding developers to work on creating gadgets through Google Gadget Ventures. Great idea. They offer: 1. Grants of $5,000 to those who’ve built gadgets we’d like to see developed further. You’re eligible to apply for a grant if you’ve developed a gadget that’s in our Google gadgets directory and gets at least 250,000 weekly page views. To apply, you must submit a one-page proposal detailing how you’d … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Fun, Google, Innovation, IT, Management, Software Development | 4 Comments

Eliminating Quarterly Earnings Guidance

Posted on May 25, 2007 by John Hunter

It is good to see more people understand the bad practice of excessive short term focus on quarterly profits. It is also a bit amusing to see the Chamber of Commerce pushing an idea Deming was called unrealistic for pushing. The right way to handle a surprise: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is calling for companies to halt “earnings guidance,” or coaching analysts, toward a precise target for quarterly profit. “The incentive to meet that number is an incentive to … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Google, Investing, Management, Systems thinking | 1 Comment

Reduce Computer Waste

Posted on May 24, 2007 by John Hunter

High-efficiency power supplies for home computers and servers [the broken link was removed] (pdf) by Urs Hoelzle and Bill Weihl – Google: Most likely, the computer you’re using wastes 30-40% of the electrical power it consumes because it is using an inefficient power supply. It’s difficult to believe that something as basic as a power supply could be responsible for that amount of waste, but it’s true. … The opportunity for savings is immense — we estimate that if deployed … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, IT, Lean thinking | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Google Customer Service

Posted on May 14, 2007 by John Hunter

Google and Ice: A service story: “Ice.com has been very vocal with its criticism. It’s a classic case of a dissatisfied customer. So from a PR dimension this was a problem for Google.” … “We got a call from Google in February asking us what they could do to help us,” Gniwisch said. He said Google put together a team of people who flew to Ice.com’s headquarters in Montreal. “We were also on the phone with them two to three … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Google, Management | 1 Comment

Google Software Engineering

Posted on April 11, 2007 by John Hunter

An interesting series of posts on Google NYC, Top Google engineer talks to NYC software industry [the broken link was removed]: Google NYC is not a specialized engineering operation, its 300 engineers work in teams of three on the full gamut of Google products and services. Currently, Google NYC engineers are working on about 100 different projects. … Of Google’s 8000 employees worldwide, approximately half are engineers. Warren stressed that Google pro-actively seeks to keep an engineering-centric culture and does … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Management, Software Development | Tagged | 2 Comments

Interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Posted on April 9, 2007 by John Hunter

This interesting interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt covers many topics: Sergey gives this nice speech about what is the biggest cost to Google. And everybody assumes it’s like engineers or something. He says, ‘opportunity costs‘ … The trick is to have everybody participating in the decision and make sure everybody has been heard. The book Wisdom of Crowds (by James Surowiecki) says that you have to have two things to make better decisions in groups. One is you need … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Management

Google Website Optimizer

Posted on April 7, 2007 by John Hunter

Google’s Website Optimizer allows for multivariate testing of your website. Website Optimizer, Google’s free multivariate testing application, helps online marketers increase visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction by continually testing different combinations of site content (text and images). Rather than sitting in a room and arguing over what will work better, you can save time and eliminate the guesswork by simply letting your visitors tell you what works best. We’ll guide you through the process of designing and implementing … Continue reading →

Posted in Design of Experiments, Google, IT, Management | Tagged , | 3 Comments