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- Anonymous3, on 10/20/2007, -3/+62One engine to rule them all, one engine to find them.
16000 people to change the lightbulb and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mountain View where the Startups lie. - mcc123, on 10/22/2007, -0/+42You might not have a choice when she finds out what you search for...
- inactive, on 10/20/2007, -4/+37Whenever someone puts a search query, one of the 16000 types in the results back to us.
- jacquesm, on 10/20/2007, -2/+31one thing they don't do is concentrate on the quality of the search results which have been steadily declining over the last couple of years.
- sapo916, on 10/20/2007, -2/+26My girlfriends mom just started working at Google a while ago. Now I can't break up with her, haha.
- hobgobbler, on 10/20/2007, -3/+24Two words: R and D
- crash128, on 10/20/2007, -0/+20"Half the company has been hired in the last 12 months. That's chaotic,"
A bit of an understatement. - newl, on 10/20/2007, -1/+21Yes you can. Just break up with her and date her mom instead. MILFs need loving too.
- aatom8, on 10/20/2007, -4/+23those are letters
- keozen, on 10/20/2007, -4/+20They look at their paychecks and grin :)
- breezyflight, on 10/20/2007, -1/+11Here's the mentality in modern business:
"On Thursday, the company reported gains of 50 percent or so in quarterly profit and revenue from a year ago, beating analyst expectations. It wasn't a stellar quarter,
50 percent gains in profit are not "stellar." That's the mentality in business now:
1. Winning record? Yeah but you didn't win the wild card.
2. Wild card? Yeah but you didn't win your division.
3. Won the division huh? Yeah but you didn't win the semi-final.
4. Won the first round? Yeah but you didn't win the conference.
5. Conference champs huh? Super bowl?
6. World Champions huh? Yeah but you didn't repeat.
7. Back to back huh? Where's the threepeat?
8. Three straight titles huh? Still not a dynasty.
9. Five titles in seven years huh? Yeah well your quarterback didn't get MVP last year.
10. 14-2 record huh? Quarterback is getting old...
Then after all of that, companies like Google are criticized and punished for HIRING PEOPLE which is what they are SUPPOSED TO DO. The whole point of a good economy is to provide good jobs so people can afford the products that all of these perfect companies build and market. All the economists piss themselves if the "jobs report" doesn't come up with tens of thousands of new jobs every three months yet they gripe and whine and cry when companies like Google hire people.
As for what 16,000 people do at Google? They probably don't sit around and bitch because someone else got a good job. - vangogh71, on 10/20/2007, -4/+13What's your guess for the level of employees in 1, 3, 5 years? 50000? Just crazy how fast they are growing, but great for my investment portfolio!
- CaptnHector, on 10/21/2007, -5/+13R&D my ass. 16,000 is enough to run a large university. Google will soon discover that a huge R&D lab isn't worth the money, and they'll eventually go way of Bell labs and IBM's research division. 15,000 of those employees are resting on the laurels of a successful search algorithm, and the other 1,000 are busy replacing hard drives in Google's datacenters.
- jacquesm, on 10/19/2007, -6/+11until the keyword ads market collapses. Google once was a great search engine, now they're a huge advertising company that also does search. But they're joined at the hip and if the one goes the other goes with it. What goes up can come down, it's not a law but it is a definite possibility. For the number of people that work there the amount of ground breaking research that comes out of google is pretty low.
- cobaltblue12345, on 10/19/2007, -0/+5Market cap is a terrible way of measuring the size of a company. Those billions only exist as stock and could all disappear tomorrow if the price crashes. Which very well could happen since a $200 billion market cap is ridiculous for a company that only has $10 billion in annual revenue. It certainly doesn't justify a massive hiring binge.
- Aharoni, on 10/19/2007, -0/+5I'm hoping that the 16,000 people at Google work on better tying up all their different services... Google has some separate services that alone are simply "meh", but combined together could make another revolution...
I'd love to see Google tie up Google Maps, Google Pages, Google checkout and Froogle, allowing any merchant to very simply create a merchant page, with an up-to-date stock listing. Think about it. Lets say you need some sort of an adapter. Today Froogle, shopping.com and the rest will give you results of only online merchants. But what if it also told you that across the street you can find the same adapter for only $1 more than online? wouldn't the price difference be worth it?
In order to even simply things even more - Google can acquire/team up with software developers of stock-management software. The moment something is on stock - it is automatically added to the merchant's page. The next time there's a Wii-craze you won't have to call all kinds of places to find if its on stock - you can simply search for it and it will give you a list of stores near where you are.
Going forward with it (further integrating the service with Google Checkout) some merchants may allow people to reserve, or even order (if they do shipping) - from the page itself. This can open up a lot of opportunities for even "mom and pap stores" who don't have the resources to open up their own online merchant page with back office tools and a dedicated person to update stock changes.
This is only something Google can really deliver. Microsoft and Yahoo will have to partner with even more companies, such as Paypal, as they don't offer a similar service. - lonesomewolf, on 10/19/2007, -0/+4Just for comparison, Microsoft has 78,565 employees world wide according to MSFT's own site. They have 47,646 thousand employees in the US. Not surprisingly 75% are male and almost 50% are 30-39 years old. See more stats on the MSFT site below.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/inside_ms.mspx# ... - covertbadger, on 10/19/2007, -1/+5Maybe it's just where I work, but I don't know anybody - anybody at all - that's jealous of people that work for google. In fact, numerous people (myself included) have rejected attempts by headhunters to recruit for them. Perhaps the appeal of working for an advertising company on a bunch of beta products with no business model other than ad-revenue isn't as universal as commonly thought; or perhaps some people can be bought for the price of a few bowls of free M&Ms.
- graemee, on 10/22/2007, -3/+7You shall not toolbar me!
- swaxhog, on 10/19/2007, -0/+4That's the job I was born to do!
- ehelbush, on 10/19/2007, -1/+5That was a pretty weak analysis. Bury.
- semiotix, on 10/20/2007, -6/+9Answering that question is the job of employee #14,283. His answer, which will feature a revolutionary user interface and will be Web 3.1 compatible, will enter public Beta in June 2014.
- zyklon, on 10/19/2007, -0/+3Well then. You and your pals seem like self-righteous pompous *****.
- henrikakselsen, on 10/19/2007, -3/+6Counter strike?
- jav1231, on 10/20/2007, -1/+4Apparently they spend a lot of time censoring ads they disagree with.
http://www.examiner.com/a-989716~Why_the_silence_o ... - drobati, on 10/19/2007, -1/+4Its not just that they hire the best people for the job, they also take care of them the best once they are part of the group. No other company takes care of its employees like google does. THAT is crucial.
- inactive, on 10/19/2007, -3/+5how long until google offers upper and lower GI's?
- yujie, on 10/20/2007, -3/+5Making babies?
- inactive, on 10/19/2007, -3/+5Buried for saying "modding me down"
Its called burying. - ADVIZR, on 10/19/2007, -1/+3I didn't digg you down but I'll explain why you're completely wrong. Your comment is rather laughable to act as though Google is a small operation that doesn't intend to expand its services and reach.
16 thousand employees is absolutely nothing, considering where Google is headed. You mentioned IBM. IBM employs 355,766 people and has a market cap of ~$156 billion. Google employs 15,916 and has a market cap of ~$200 billion. Yes, a market cap isn't everything. IBM currently does generate much more profit. Even so, do the math.
it's safe to assume that Google will someday eclipse IBM and maybe even Microsoft, as they branch out into more (all) areas of "information." Google has the largest amount of user attention and data storage of any corporation in the world from which they can leverage their future. It's their game to lose. You can bet Google's longterm plans are to be the platform of people's lives in any way they can, not unlike the goal of MS. MS, of course, spends billions per year on R&D alone. It's necessary to compete on these scales, globally. - ggoyal, on 10/21/2007, -1/+3If Google "eclipses" IBM, it automatically goes past Microsoft. There's no 'maybe' there. As of now, IBM > Microsoft in every aspect.
- zyklon, on 10/19/2007, -0/+2And I see their paycheques and cringe.
- jmerox, on 10/19/2007, -0/+2Wouldn't be surprised if Google just buys up 'smart people' to eliminate competition... which is probably a fine strategy even if the people don't do anything on the job.
But in general, the more people you hire, the more the intelligence of your company just averages down; I'd say that's true no matter how careful you are of hiring, especially at a fast pace.
Google still seems on the ball with their products though, but I'd guess those are managed by very small groups. - orangysb, on 10/21/2007, -2/+4Because R&D is extremely important in discovering technological breakthroughs and keeping innovation. Years of R&D might bear not much result, but no R&D definitely means no result.
- zeejay, on 10/19/2007, -0/+2another two: "black ops."
- maloventevil, on 10/19/2007, -0/+2hello? microsoft? genentech?
- lonesomewolf, on 10/19/2007, -0/+2Agreed. A quick comparison when looking at employee count might be (Annual Revenue) / (Total Employees) = (Revenue per Employee)
- jeffcon0, on 10/20/2007, -0/+2We read Digg all day.
- RajAtWork, on 10/20/2007, -0/+2Article, sadly, does not answer its own title question. What do they actually do?
I have no idea what it takes to run search operations, but the rest of Google things should not take more than 10 people per product, if done right. - sega01, on 10/20/2007, -0/+2I know this without even reading the article. They scheme to rule the world, through aptly-worded advertisements!
- theplaz, on 10/20/2007, -0/+2I thought this article was going to be some sort of break down what they all do ([Fake] Example: 500 work in food service; 200 on core search, 200 in Gmail, 100 in China, etc.)
- pak314, on 10/19/2007, -0/+1Most of the breakthroughs that Google has put out recently have been through companies they acquired.
- flipmeat, on 10/19/2007, -0/+1Google is very actively trying to prevent the averaging down effect. They apparently have, I kid you not, a hiring algorithm designed to prevent such things. I'm told managers do not do any hiring, there's a central hiring team that says 'here's your new employee'.
- acidbass, on 10/20/2007, -1/+2Their motto is: "Dont Be Evil"
Excuse me for sounding crass, but that is a load of SHYTE!
They are nothing but evil and will do whatever it takes to make more money, HELLO! They are still a company and only care about one thing...$$$$$$$
Who was that again that filtered searches for democracy and Chinese tiananmen square protests from China? Who was that?
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&resnum=0&q=t ...
I forget, i think it starts with a G and ends with an E and in the middle is Oggl.
Ya know, their company motto is really their response to the question: "Will you be a good company while you're making profit?" and the response reads: "Don't! Be Evil!"
That pause after "Don't" really is the difference between a nice company logo and an evil one.
I think it wasn't by accident either. - edebolt, on 10/19/2007, -0/+1so put your money where your mouth is and short the stock
- covertbadger, on 10/19/2007, -0/+1What, for actually evaluating a job on its merits rather than swooning over the current fanboy favourite du jour? You think I'm self-righteous and pompous because I'm not jealous? You go right ahead and work for companies that the internet tells you are trendy, hope it works out for you.
- iXam, on 10/19/2007, -1/+2Because they are outnumbered by the people trying to get higher ranking for their ***** blogs... Like me.
- bacon_skoda, on 10/19/2007, -0/+1and better exchange rate
- davidrossiii, on 10/19/2007, -0/+1$650 a share
- kaelyiesta, on 10/19/2007, -0/+1Judging from their employees work space on campus, they do pretty much everything. And they play with a lot of fun puzzles.
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