The Next Google? NOT Created by ‘Ex-Googlers’
By DONNA BOGATIN • Apr 22nd, 2008 • Category: BIG PICTURE
Move over Ivy League! Stand aside Wall Street: The only professional pedigree that appears to matter now is a souvenir W2 with the Google logo on it.
Contrary to headline grabbing CNET, TechCrunch…“ex-Googler” worship, however, a working stint at the all mighty Googleplex does NOT result in everlasting mighty Web 2.0 powers, ex-Google. Nevertheless, page-view chasing mainstream media and blogs tantalize with the “news” of the lives of “ex-Googlers.”
“Ex-Googlers working on stealth social search.,” the world is informed, while thousands of Web 2.0 “stealth” startup efforts underway in-the-trenches around the country persevere in obscurity, unable to hail a former Google employee on board or without a PR agency in tow to seize the limelight.
“Ex-Google employee # 23” leads the way in keeping the ex-Google dream alive. Paul Buchheit is not only eating his own proverbial Googley dog food, he is drinking his own Google koolaid, big time. It is NOT Halloween season, but Buchheit can be seen these days dressing up as an “angel” for Conde Nast Portfolio, fluffy wings included. Along with parading in an angel costume, Buchheit dutifully scribbles the words “don’t be evil,” for the magazine, nearly 100 times!
IS Buchheit really a Googley “angel,” though?
The Buchheit costume show not only flies in the face of Portfolio’s tag line–“Business Intelligence” –it is WRONG on the facts, according to recent comments attributed to current, powerful Googler, “employee # 20,” Marissa Mayer.
Buchheit was a salaried employee at Google, but brands himself as being “responsible for Google’s famous ’Don’t be evil,’” slogan and credits himself for being “the” engineer behind Gmail and the one responsible for AdSense, to boot.
Google has somehow managed to keep engineering sans Buchheit. Moreover, Mayer has recently “explained” that “Don’t be evil” was coined in 1999 by one of Google’s first engineers, one named Amit Patel, who shared Mayer’s work space, according to The Sydney Morning Herald:
She said Patel and other early employees were resistant when staff with business skills began joining the engineer-driven company. The engineers feared they would be pressured into moving certain clients higher in search results listings or building products they did not want to build. Patel voiced his fears via the whiteboard in the conference room where Google sales people met clients.
“In this incredibly neat handwriting in tiny little letters on the bottom right hand side of the white board, he wrote ‘Don’t Be Evil’,” Mayer said.
The Portfolio tale recounts that it was in 2001 that Buchheit “first uttered those three words”: Apparently well after Patel, Conde Nast missed that part of the “evil” story.
Buchheit is milking his “ex-Google” franchise, perhaps at the ultimate expense of his stab at engineering ex-Google, FriendFeed. CondeNast spilled much ink replaying the Googley Buchheit Gmail and “evil” schtick, but showed scant interest in what “Google employee #23” is actually doing now, without the Google brand leading his way.
The principal interest in most “ex-Googler” endeavors is the supposed celebrity quotient. Media attention will indeed come easy to former employees of Google, but independent success will not.
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DONNA BOGATIN is the Founder & CEO of STARTUP ALPHA
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