职业与工作方法blogs.msdn.com
我为什么离开 Google
Why I Left Google
2012 — 2013，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
前 Google 工程师 James Whittaker 在微软 MSDN 博客上撰文，讲述自己离开 Google 的原因：他认为 Google 在 Facebook 崛起的压力下失去了工程文化，转向以 Google+ 为中心的产品策略，并开始向开发者收费、废弃免费 API。文章引发关于 Google 是否已失去早期精神的广泛讨论。
为什么经久不衰：它记录了 Google 从'不作恶'的工程文化转向商业化的转折时刻，多年后回看仍是理解大公司文化变迁的经典样本。
HN 评论精选
为作者辩护：这是真诚的个人反思，而非微软公关稿。
我觉得大家对这个作者太苛刻了。这个故事听起来很真诚，不像微软授意的公关稿。这更像是一个人在试图理解过去，为他所相信的'老 Google 之死'而哀悼。作为专业人士这值得我们尊重，因为我们迟早都会遇到类似的处境，需要从过去中学习并寻求同行的理解。
arkitaip查看英文原文
I think people here are being ungenerous towards the author. Too me this story sounds genuine and not like a pr move dictated by Microsoft. It strikes me to be a personal account by someone who's trying to make sense of the past and actually mourning what he believe is the death of old Google. This deserves our respect as professionals because inevitably we are all going to find ourselves in a similar situation, trying to learn from the past and seeking understanding by our peers.
公司满十年后容易从服务用户转向自我膨胀，Sun 的前车之鉴正在 Google 重演。
唉。很少有人思考'公司十岁'的问题——那时公司已有许多巨大成功，就像青少年突然发现找工作不再是可选项。James 的抱怨让我想起 Sun 十周年时类似的内部抱怨：他们出了一本讲 Sun 头十年的书，却抹去了 386i 工作站的失败，只强调成功、掩盖错误。Sun 从'把技术带给能用的人'变成了'打造更耀眼的 Sun Microsystems'。我在 Google 短暂任职时也看到了 James 所见的许多现象：很多人更关心'The Google'而非做酷的东西。听到 Marissa 关于社交的'战斗动员'，我心想：如果她说不清那是什么，怎么指望员工去实现？
ChuckMcM查看英文原文
Ouch. Not enough people think about year 10. You know, that's when you're 10 years old as a company and you've got a lot of huge successes behind you. Kind of like teenagers when they realize that finding a job is suddenly not an 'optional' thing in their lives. James' rant here reminded me of a similar rant I read (internally) at Sun on its 10 year anniversary. They had published a book all about Sun's first decade, and somehow excised the fact that Sun had built a workstation called the 386i. It emphasized the successes, and papered over the mistakes. The rant was about how Sun, who had kicked DEC in the nuts and had them retreating to the data center, was walking right into that same data center because Microsoft was starting to make PC's as useful as workstations. (there used to be a real distinction there.) I remember thinking that somehow Sun had gone from bringing technology to the folks who could use it, to being all about being a more impressive Sun Microsystems. Sun's "Google+" moment was the day they announced they were going to merge System V and SunOS. In my brief time at Google I was exposed to the folks who had become more about 'The Google' and less about doing cool stuff. I saw many of the same things James did, and I hear Marissa's 'call to arms' about Social and said to myself "If she can't say what it is, how can she expect the troops to achieve it?" If you read the stuff about Mark and Facebook (and I have to believe that at least some of it is true.) the man is on a mission. And his mission was to make a new place in the universe that didn't exist before, he left it to others to figure out how to monetize it. Google did the same with search, make it real, then monetize. But I think at some point the operating committee at Google looked at monetization of all the things Google has done and if you included search advertising the in the bar graph everything else looked like zero. And you ask yourself "We've got all these smart people doing all these projects and not a single one even comes CLOSE to the income that search advertising does? Give me one good reason I shouldn't just fire all of them?" The sad thing is that I saw multimillion dollar a year businesses get tossed under the bus because they just didn't move the needle. Ten years on, ask yourself, "What value do you bring to the table?" if you don't know, that is a big problem.
Google 对独立开发者越来越不友好，Google+ API 的封闭就是明证。
App Engine 涨价、多年免费的 API 被废弃或收费——从我这里看，Google 最近对独立开发者相当不友好。最能体现他们不关心（或不理解）独立开发者的是 Google+ API：只读可以理解，但你甚至拿不到用户的动态流，只能逐个获取资料。Buzz API 关闭后，我找不到任何以编程方式在 Google 上'分享'东西的途径。没有分享 API，谈何社交？
taylorbuley查看英文原文
> App Engine fees were raised. APIs that had been free for years were deprecated or provided for a fee. From where I'm sitting Google has been pretty rough on independent developers recently. I think their lack of caring (or understanding?) indy devs is best summed up by the Google+ API. Read-only is understandable as they get off their feet, but you can't even get a user's profile stream (you can only fetch profiles one by one). Now that the Buzz API is shut down I have yet to find a way to "share" anything programmatically on Google. How can you be social without a share API?
Google+ 由不懂普通用户的人设计，注定无法撼动 Facebook。
依我看，可悲之处在于 Google+ 对普通人来说并不比 Facebook 更好。对他们而言'更好'意味着更温暖、能更简单地表达自己。Google+ 显然是由一群在心理上并不贴近普通 Facebook 用户的人设计的，所以非技术人群没人想迁移过去。另外我认为 Google 在电子邮件领域也快输了，时机已经成熟，它唯一的护城河是反垃圾邮件方面的优化能力。
antirez查看英文原文
IMHO what's sad is that Google+ is not better than Facebook for average people. Better is, for them, more warm, where you may express more about you in a simpler way, and so forth. Google+ is clearly designed by people not exactly in touch (mentally speaking) with the average person using Facebook, that's why nobody of the non tech guys want to switch to it. p.s. IMHO Google is going to lose in the email space soon as well, times are mature to beat it in simple ways, only protection they have in this space is that there is a big "optimization" part in email that is anti-spam and they are good at it.
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