Category Archives: Google

Using Google to Eliminate Some IT Costs

Posted on March 24, 2007 by John Hunter

Computer Science 101: A Case Study In Google Applications [the broken link was removed]: Sannier plans to shut down the university’s own e-mail servers later this spring. When that happens, thousands more will move over. The portal provides access to other functions of Google Apps, including calendar (which users can now share online, something they couldn’t do before), instant messaging, and search. Within the next two months, Sannier expects to offer personalized home pages and Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets applications … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, IT, Management | Tagged , , , ,

Eric Schmidt Podcast – Google Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Posted on March 20, 2007 by John Hunter

iinnovate podcast interview with Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google. “Normal sales quotas” – oops maybe Google can learn from others in this area. I found it interesting that Eric Schmidt teaches at Standford even while being the CEO of Google, because as he says he learns from students questions. The podcast series, done by 2 Stanford students, has quite an impressive list of, I guess, visiting speakers at Stanford: Andy Grove, Alex Counts, David Kelley… via: Eric Schmidt Interviewed … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, IT, Management, webcast | 1 Comment

Google Millionaires

Posted on January 9, 2007 by John Hunter

Last week, in Google’s Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm, I mentioned Google’s turnover was only 4%. This is the context within which I thought that was impressive: O Googlers, where art thou? by Verne Kopytoff: For Google, the departures present a new hurdle. Enticing as many old-timers to stay as possible is a priority because, with each farewell party, a piece of the company’s institutional knowledge and culture is lost. “We take a lot of time and care, … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Management | 1 Comment

Competing On The Basis Of Speed

Posted on January 8, 2007 by John Hunter

Competing On The Basis Of Speed (webcast) [the broken link was removed] by Mary Poppendieck discussing complexity, queuing theory, and constant innovation. Google posts presentations given at the Googleplex (including this one). In this one, Mary presents lean ideas as they related to software development. Related: post on software development – lean software development – articles by the Poppendiecks – Competing on the Basis of Time

Posted in Google, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Software Development, webcast | 1 Comment

Google’s Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm

Posted on January 4, 2007 by John Hunter

Google Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm. First, from a “what should I do,” view, I believe, Kevin Meyer’s advice is more appropriate: The False God of the Almighty Algorithm. But Google can do some things well that are unwise for others to try. Desperate to hire more engineers and sales representatives to staff its rapidly growing search and advertising business, Google — in typical eccentric fashion — has created an automated way to search for talent among the … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Creativity, Google, Innovation, Management | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Management Improvement Search Engine

Posted on October 25, 2006 by John Hunter

Google has launched a nice new feature that allows users to create customized search results. I have talked about this idea before: Improve Google. Last year I posted about Rollyo, which allowed what Google now does (using Yahoo for the underlying search). I liked Rollyo but the new Google offering is better, so I have switched to using Google. Try our Management Improvement search engine This searches, using Google technology, over 50 management improvement web sites that I have selected. … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, curiouscat.com, Fun, Google, IT, Management | Tagged ,

Google Shifts Focus

Posted on October 7, 2006 by John Hunter

It appears Google has decided it is time to put more resources into improving their many existing products (Gmail, News, Video, Maps, Picassa, Spreadsheets, Checkout, GoogleTalk, AdSense for Radio, GoogleReader, BlogSearch, GoogleGroups,…). That makes sense to me. When Google had few other products I think it was likely wise to push a bunch of stuff out the door quickly. Now that they have a bunch of decent, but not really great products, adjusting and taking the opportunity to improve those … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, IT, Management, Software Development, Systems thinking

Meeting Like Google

Posted on September 29, 2006 by John Hunter

How to Run a Meeting Like Google [the broken link was removed], offers good advice like agendas distributed ahead of time, having a note taker… Instead, she encourages such comments as “The experimentation on the site shows that his design performed 10% better.” This works for Google, because it builds a culture driven by customer feedback data, not the internal politics that pervade so many of today’s corporations. Also definitely read: Most Meetings are Muda and meeting advice from 37 … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Management, Quality tools | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Chaos Management (by design) at Google

Posted on September 25, 2006 by John Hunter

Chaos by design by Adam Lashinsky: Sandberg recently committed an error that cost Google several million dollars — “Bad decision, moved too quickly, no controls in place, wasted some money,” is all she’ll say about it — and when she realized the magnitude of her mistake, she walked across the street to inform Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and unofficial thought leader. “God, I feel really bad about this,” Sandberg told Page, who accepted her apology. But as she turned to … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Google, Innovation, Management | 4 Comments

Google Videocasts on Customer Focus

Posted on August 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Google provides video webcasts of speakers that present at Google [the broken link was removed]. These videos offer a great way to take part in one aspect of work at Googleplexs [the broken link was removed]. Customer Centric Web Decision Making [the broken link was removed] (videocast) by Avinash Kaushik (Occam’s Razor – his blog) How can we better understand customers? [the broken link was removed] by Ely Dahan (related papers by him: The Predictive Power of Internet-Based Product Concept … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Google | Tagged | 1 Comment

Google Management

Posted on August 15, 2006 by John Hunter

Management a la Google [the broken link, wsj.com, was removed] by Gary Hamel This short article makes some interesting points, definitely worth a read. Google has invested heavily in building a highly transparent organization that makes it easy to share ideas, poll peers, recruit volunteers, and build natural constituencies for change. Every project team, and there are hundreds, maintains a Web site that is continuously monitored for peer feedback. In this way, unorthodox ideas have the chance to accumulate peer … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, Management, Management Articles | 1 Comment

How Google Works

Posted on July 9, 2006 by John Hunter

How Google Works [the broken link was removed] by David F. Carr An interesting look at the technology system behind Google. “But this is the start of the story,” he adds, part of an approach that says “don’t necessarily do it the way everyone else did. Just find some way of doing it cheap and effectively—so we can learn.” Google was driven from the beginning by engineers that sought to do what was best. Since those engineers were the founders … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, IT, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged | 4 Comments

Innovation at Google

Posted on May 7, 2006 by John Hunter

Turning Limitations into Innovation [the broken link was removed] by Marissa Ann Mayer: people working on it have spent so much time and are so personally invested that it’s too painful to walk away. They often know the project is misguided, yet they see the effort through to the painful, unsuccessful end. That’s why it’s important to discover failure fast and abandon it quickly. A limited investment makes it easier to walk away and move on to something else that … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, Management Articles, Psychology | Tagged | 2 Comments

Improved Web Search

Posted on January 14, 2006 by John Hunter

In my recent post on improving Google one suggestion I made was: Let me remove web sites from my default searches. Today while using Yahoo they provided this option (named “block” by Yahoo). Good. Using Yahoo Search I can now block site that hide content behind pay, or registration, walls and spam sites. Obviously it would be better if they blocked the spam sites themselves but this is a useful feature for those that sneak through. I would also prefer … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Google

10 Stocks for 10 Years Update

Posted on January 9, 2006 by John Hunter

In April of last year I posted on 10 stocks for 10 years. At that time I also setup an fund through Marketocracy, which allows for 3rd party tracking of investing results. See the results so far on Marketocracy’s site [the broken link was removed]. Thusfar the portfolio is up 20%, in under 9 months (versus 13% for the S&P 500 for the same period of time. The 10 stocks didn’t meet the diversification requirements for marketocracy, at the time, … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Investing | 3 Comments

Improve Google

Posted on January 7, 2006 by John Hunter

In response to a post by Matt Cutts: Is there a new product or feature that you wish Google offered? Is there anything on the web that annoys you because there’s not a useful product that does exactly what you need? Is there an extra feature of Gmail, AdWords, Google Maps, AdSense, Google News, or another product that you wish we offered? I can think of a lot of new features or products that I’d like to have, but I … Continue reading →

Posted in Google | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments