Google Thinks Like a Small Company
December 22, 2009
I like irony. Read “Interview with Google’s Alan Eustace” in Forbes. I don’t suppose you know Dr. Eustace. He is like most Google wizards, low profile.
First, he rates a picture on Google’s “Execs.html” page. He has participated in a Google fireside chat with Dave Girouard. He has a Wikipedia reference. Here’s what Google officially says about Dr.Eustace:
Alan Eustace is one of Google’s senior vice presidents of engineering. He joined Google in the summer of 2002. Prior to Google, Alan spent 15 years at Digital/Compaq/HP’s Western Research Laboratory where he worked on a variety of chip design and architecture projects, including the MicroTitan Floating Point unit, BIPS – the fastest microprocessor of its era. Alan also worked with Amitabh Srivastava on ATOM, a binary code instrumentation system that forms the basis for a wide variety of program analysis and computer architecture analysis tools. These tools had a profound influence on the design of the EV5, EV6 and EV7 chip designs. Alan was promoted to director of the Western Research Laboratory in 1999. WRL had active projects in pocket computing, chip multi-processors, power and energy management, internet performance, and frequency and voltage scaling. In addition to directing Google’s engineering efforts, Alan is actively involved in a number of Google’s community-related activities such as The Second Harvest Food Bank and the Anita Borg Scholarship Fund. Alan is an author of 9 publications and holds 10 patents. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Central Florida.
I like the gentle reference to the Western Research Lab, one of those context free Google references that I find amusing. There is also a genetic link to Digital Equipment, a source of a number of Google wizards. He has some interesting connections; for example, Cluuz.com reports this:
The key point for me was this statement from the Google interview:
Google is not interested in solving the small problems of the world. Its vast engineering talent (roughly half of the company) is eager to work on large problems that have a big impact on its users, says Alan Eustace, the senior VP of engineering and research for Google, who has been with the company for seven years.
The question for me is, “What’s “small problems” mean? Flip it around, what’s a “big problem”? The comment “big impact” does not help too much.
My take on this interview is that the Google is going to disrupt more than online, advertising, telephony, and publishing in 2010.
You can dig through the interview to find your own nuggets. Here’s one I found:
We’re well positioned on most of the things that we’re doing. But in hindsight we were a little slow in the mobile space because the ecosystem was very difficult to penetrate.
Ah, the irony of the “were”. So, now that the telcos have been converted into spaniels, what’s next? Clues abound in Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 22, 2009
A shameless pitch for my 2007 Google study. I don’t think I have to report that I pay myself to write swill about my impenetrable monographs based on patent documents.
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