Google Management: The Book Search Thing
April 13, 2017
I read “How Google Book Search Got Lost.” The write up in Backchannel was interesting to me for two reasons. First, the essay continues the revelations about Google as a balloon with a pinprick. After inflation, the pressure seeps out and one has a deflated balloon. What’s a deflated balloon good for? I suppose I could Ask Heloise, but I don’t care. Second, the analysis ignores the obvious; that is, Alphabet Google is not managed in the sense that GM is managing to develop an electric car or Boeing to use 3D titanium printing to get rid of pesky humans. Google, from its inception, wobbles. Few business schools teach students how to wobble. Bright folks discover this skill on their own, particularly when careening around with money readily available and Silicon Valley vapors in their nostrils.
I highlighted this passage from the analysis/essay:
Google Books has settled into a quiet middle age of sourcing quotes and serving up snippets of text from the 25 million-plus tomes in its database.
The reason is that time and legal hassles turned down the thermostat for Googlers. Who wants to work on a project which lacks the zip of inventing a self driving car or solving death? Not me for sure.
The write up includes a quote from a Googler. I circled this statement as well:
“We’re not focused on shiny features and things that are very visible to users,” says Stephane Jaskiewicz, a Google engineer who has worked on Books for a decade and now leads its team. “It’s more like behind the scenes work and perfecting the technology — acquiring content, processing it properly so that we can view the entire book online, and adjusting the search algorithm.”
Interesting, but I was mildly curious about how this Googler perceives promotion opportunities and compensation as part of the Books deflating balloon. Alas, no light shines on these issues.
I found this statement somewhat reassuring. Google does not evidence sticktoativity:
Maybe the quest to digitize all books was bound to end in disappointment, with no grand epiphany.
The epiphany at Google, as I understand the company’s business focus, is about revenue. Who at Google wants to pump big dough into dealing with figuring out how to deliver Google Book results in a way that sells ads? Who wants to crack the problem of Google’s formidable array of silo indexes? I am not sure a Googler wants to tackle this job because the cost of allow a person to search for a patent, a blog post with possibly relevant prior art, the book thing, and the general Google Web index is going to make Loon balloons and the self driving car guy’s bonus look like a really smart investment.
To put the Google into context, I think about these questions:
- Where did Google’s business model come from? What was the legal dust up with Yahoo about prior to the Google IPO?
- What manager at Google provided oversight and guidance to Google Books? How many leadership changes took place in the last 15 years?
- What was the issue with Kirtas scanners which triggered Google’s own research effort into high speed book scanning and the consequent patents such as US7,508,978? Was this a distraction? A business decision? An example of a science club project? What happened to the scanner whiz Wayne Rosling, Google’s one time vice president of engineering?
- How does the management of Google Books mesh with other Google decisions to orphan, abandon, or slow investment in other “interesting” projects; for example, Knol, Web Accelerator, etc.?
I have formulated my own answers to these questions. My thought is that sharper minds than mind may want to dig into these questions.
Google or more accurately Alphabet Google is interesting, and it has left a legacy for other Silicon Valley aspirants to follow. Is this legacy positive or negative? I suppose one could find some information to help answer this question as Google works its way through allegations about its behavior set forth by legal eagles in Europe, the way Google managed Anthony Levandowski, and the interesting search results Google search generates.
I am not sure if a series of searches across Google’s many indexes will be an easy task. There might not be too much information in Google Books or Google Scholar either. That’s too bad. Google’s bid to become the new University Microfilms seems to be a very long shot.
Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2017
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