Google Offers Staff Engineer $3.5 Million To Turn Down Facebook Offer. In September I wrote about Google’s “extraordinary” efforts to stop employees, particularly engineers, from resigning to join pre-IPO startups like LinkedIn, Twitter and especially Facebook.
In one case we confirmed an engineer making around $150,000 turned down a 15% raise plus $500,000 in restricted stock and left for Facebook anyway. How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today. Remember three years ago, when Microsoft paid a quarter-billion dollars for 1.6% of Facebook and the exclusive right to run banner ads across Facebook.com?
Tell the truth, how many of you thought that was a killer business decision? Analysis: Google v Facebook Is About . . . Fast versus Sticky - Which Strategy Will Win? Posted by Tom Foremski - October 4, 2010 Google's most important launch this year was its recent debut of Google Instant search which cuts user search time by as much as 40%.
Google users are collectively saving 11 hours per second. That means 11 hours per second being spent away from Google search. Google is betting it that if its users spend less time on search then it will make more money. This is a far different strategy from that of Facebook which wants to be the stickiest place on the Internet. Nielsen estimates that each month, an average US internet user spends around 2 hours on Google, and more than 7 hours on Facebook. It'll be interesting to see the latest Nielsen numbers following the launch of Google Instant Search. Details Of The Google Social Layer Emerge. Facebook may have known all the details about Google’s new social product for months, but we’re just now getting our sources to talk.
On Tuesday Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave additional details on the plan. We posted the entire press conference video then, but we’ve pulled out the part relevant to social and embed it above. The key text: Social Layers and Social Intention. I read Mike Arrington's post on Google's social efforts just now.
I have not seen any of Google's work. I have not been briefed. I really have no clue what they are building. But this quote got my attention: Google Is From Mars and Facebook Is From Venus. One of the notable things about the question-and-answer site Quora is the quality of answers that are posted to interesting questions.
One recent example is the in-depth response posted to the question: “Which is better to work for, Google or Facebook?” The answer comes from David Braginsky, who worked as a developer at Google for four years, then moved to Facebook, where he’s worked for three years. His take? The search company is like graduate school, filled with big brains working on complicated problems, while the social network doesn’t think as much about the deep implications of things; it just does them. Braginsky says when it comes to culture, Google is more technically focused, in that staffers there “value working on hard problems, and doing them right… things are often done because they are technically hard or impressive [and] on most projects, the engineers make the calls.”
At Facebook, however, the attitude is “something needs to be done, and people do it. Interview: Nova Spivack On Facebook, Google And Microsoft - Who Will Triumph? Another Piece To Google’s Social Puzzle: To Acquire Jambool For $70 Million. WAR! It’s Patton v. Rommel: Vic Gundotra Will Lead Google To Victory In Social War With Facebook. Google has chosen a General in their War With Facebook – VP Engineering Vic Gundotra, we’ve heard from multiple sources.
This is the person who will control overall product strategy and execution around their new efforts to find relevance in a quickly changing Internet landscape that is increasingly dominated by Facebook. Gundotra has previously been involved in a slew of product efforts at Google, but has focused largely on Android and Google’s mobile phone applications. Other product leads were considered, we’ve heard from sources, including other Google vice presidents and outsiders. But Gundotra is now firmly in control. Google hasn’t officially revealed any of its plans in social, but we’ve heard to expect them to be making a significant effort. The type of effort that suggests they’ve mortgaged the farm and have just the one crop left to plant. Lose and they give control over the way the web is organized, and monetized for the next decade or so. Google vs iPhone and Facebook. Slide, Vic Gundotra & The Un-Social Reality of Google.
It was a nearly a decade and a half ago that I fell in love with America’s pastime, baseball.
I loved the sound of the ball hitting the bat. I loved the juxtaposition of green grass and red clay on the baseball diamond. While it wasn’t quite like the cricket I grew up playing in the streets of Delhi, it was something that evoked similar emotions. I longed to play baseball and wanted so badly to learn how to hit and pitch. Then I joined Red Herring magazine. When it came time to bat, I suddenly realized that I was holding the baseball bat as if I was playing cricket. Ain’t Got That Swing I love baseball and will always await the first day of spring training with the ardor of a lover coming home after an exile. Google will do just about anything to get social, like spend a rumored $182 million on San Francisco-based Slide, a head-scratcher of a deal. I think that Zynga and Playfish both started with gaming as their sole focus.
By the Engineers, for the Engineers. Google Invested In Zynga To Weaken Facebook.