Why James Whittaker Left Google→

Edit: I should have guessed from the URL, but James Whittaker apparently left Google to work at Microsoft, so you should probably take what he has to say about his former employer with a grain of salt.

Former Googler James Whittaker wrote a nice post explaining his reasons for leaving the Big G. It’s worth a read since it offers a glimpse into how Google has changed over the years, but what I found even more interesting was his take on Google+, which I believe is spot on:

Officially, Google declared that “sharing is broken on the web” and nothing but the full force of our collective minds around Google+ could fix it.

…

As it turned out, sharing was not broken. Sharing was working fine and dandy, Google just wasn’t part of it. People were sharing all around us and seemed quite happy. A user exodus from Facebook never materialized. I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and the people are on Facebook.” Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn’t invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation. The fact that no one came to Google’s party became the elephant in the room.

I know it seems as if I share a lot of anti-Google posts, but believe it or not, I actually love Google. As Whittaker points out, the company seems to be shying away from its reputation as a “tech” company and becoming more like “an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus,” but they’re still working on some ridiculously cool and ambitious stuff too, and you have to respect them for that. [JW on Tech via Daring Fireball]

Google's new "batshit crazy" UX→

Google recently redesigned their sites so that users can no longer click on the top-left logo to take them “home.” First of all, this is not one of those “OMG I hate the new Facebook/Twitter redesign” overreactions — this is a legit UX gripe, and I am clearly not the only one.

Dustin Curtis recently linked to a post by former Google designer Kevin Fox on why this change is ridiculous:

The new Gmail and Google+ ‘clicking on the logo does nothing’ behavior seems just absurd. […] As long as there is a property logo on your page, clicking on that logo should take you to the top level of that property, and if you’re already on the top level and it’s a dynamic site, clicking on it again should perform the same action as clicking a refresh button on the same page.

This isn’t a Google convention that will be acclimated to if changed. It’s an Internet convention that predates Google’s existence by a good many years. It’s like if Audi started shipping all 2012 vehicles with gearshifts on the driver’s left, no matter which side of the road folks drive on in your country, because it creates a more consistant experience across Audi cars or supports a future Audi strategy.

I’m an amateur web designer at best (and nowhere near as smart as most of the people who work at Google) but even I’m familiar with the clickable logo convention. Even crazier is the fact that in Google Reader and Gmail — the two Google products I use most — the orange text underneath the Google logo doen’t take you “home” either:

While you actually can use the orange text to go “home” in Gmail (it takes two clicks instead of one, though), in Reader the text isn’t even clickable. Seriously? What a waste.

As someone who often clicks on a site’s logo to go “home,” this really grinds my gears. [dcurtis via Techmeme]

On Google, Apple, and "privacy"→

I’m not really too interested in last night’s WSJ “scoop” on Google and its mobile Safari practices, but if you want to read up on it, this piece by John Battell is probably the most balanced I’ve read so far:

In short, Apple’s mobile version of Safari broke with common web practice, and as a result, it broke Google’s normal approach to engaging with consumers. Was Google’s “normal approach” wrong? Well, I suppose that’s a debate worth having – it’s currently standard practice and the backbone of the entire web advertising ecosystem – but the Journal doesn’t bother to go into those details. One can debate whether setting cookies should happen by default – but the fact is, that’s how it’s done on the open web.

This is still a pretty young story, so I’m sure more details will surface in time. [John Battelle via Techmeme

Will the real Google please stand up?

Sarah Lacy of PandyDaily writes that Google should do itself a favor and just come clean already about its Search Plus Your World results:

This isn’t an issue of whether Google—as a for profit company—should have the right to push its own services over others. This isn’t an issue over what Twitter or Facebook would do in Google’s shoes. To me, the interesting issue isn’t even anti-trust. This is an issue of what Google promised users back when it went public, without a gun to its head, without any pressure from any competitors to do the right thing.

This is a Google v. Google issue.
We don’t expect for-profit companies to be martyrs. But Google chose this path. And cynics always said it would be tested once Google was under fire. There is a short window here for Google to either walk its own talk or redefine what the rules are.

I know I often link to (mostly) negative stories about Google/Android and (mostly) positive stories about Apple, but make no mistake about it: I love Google. All this Search Plus Your World stuff doesn’t actually bother me at all — at least not yet. And let’s face it, at the end of the day, I’m still going to be using Google (sorry, Bing!), Gmail, and all the other Google products that I’ve come to know and love.

This isn’t about criticizing Google at all, but the company does seem to be at a very tricky crossroads of sorts, and I’m actually really interested to see which path it takes. If Sarah Lacy’s latest article is any indication, Larry Page may have already given everyone a hint. [PandoDaily]

MG Siegler on why he hates Android→

MG Siegler wrote an article detailing the history of the Android platform, its original goals, and what it has since become. In doing so, he also explains why he hates Android:

Apple, for all the shit they get for being “closed” and “evil”, has actually done far more to wrestle control back from the carriers and put it into the hands of consumers. Google set off to help in this goal, then stabbed us all in the back and went the complete other way, to the side of the carriers. And because they smiled the entire time they were doing it and fed us this “open” bullshit, we thanked them for it. We’re still thanking them for it!

While you could argue that this is just one side of the story, there’s no arguing that Android has shifted a lot of power back into the hands of the wireless carriers.

For the record, I don’t really believe that Apple wrestled that control away from the carriers out of the goodness of its heart (or even for the benefit of consumers, for that matter) — it’s very possible that it’s just another case of Apple doing things on its own terms or not at all. That’s why I don’t really blame Google for doing what it did. This really isn’t an Apple vs. Google issue — it’s about carriers vs. consumers. Android is the carrier’s best friend. And that usually means it’s the consumer’s worst enemy. [parislemon]

No, you can’t search Google via their Facebook fan page

I wish I could say that I’m surprised to read this, but some people are actually trying to search Google through the Google fan page on Facebook. One Redditor decided to help them out. [Reddit]

Google Zeitgeist 2011→

I love these annual recaps of the year by Google. One day, I’m going to watch them all back-to-back, and I’ll feel like Mike Myers in Austin Powers after he got cryogenically reanimated. Except with (slightly) better teeth. [YouTube via Gizmodo]

The unintended effects of driverless cars→

I’m buried deep in Taxation of Corporate Transactions this weekend (I know you’re jelly), but I just had to escape for a second to share this post from Koushik Dutta on the potentially awesome side-effect of Google’s driverless car project.

Dutta compares cars, which are typically not in use most of the time, with airplanes, which are almost constantly in use. The implementation of driverless technology could make car usage much more analogous to airplane usage:

Cars will spend less time idle: why would a household buy 2 (or even 3) cars, when they only need 1? Ride to work, then send the car home to your spouse. Need to go grocery shopping, but your kid also needs a ride to a soccer game? No problem, a driverless car can handle that.

Awesome. Can it be the future already? [Koushik Dutta via Techmeme]

The Reason Android is Laggy→

This is quite possibly the geekiest link that I have ever shared (and that’s saying a lot), but if you’re wondering why some people claim that Android’s UI is “laggy,” Andrew Munn has posted his explanation (but first you should really read this post by Dianne Hackborn clarifying some of the misconceptions about Android graphics):

Work on Android started before the release of the iPhone, and at the time Android was designed to be a competitor to the Blackberry. The original Android prototype wasn’t a touch screen device. Android’s rendering trade-offs make sense for a keyboard and trackball device. When the iPhone came out, the Android team rushed to release a competitor product, but unfortunately it was too late to rewrite the UI framework.

This is the same reason why Windows Mobile 6.5, Blackberry OS, and Symbian have terrible touch screen performance. Like Android, they were not designed to prioritise UI rendering. Since the iPhone’s release, RIM, Microsoft, and Nokia have abandoned their mobile OS’s and started from scratch. Android is the only mobile OS left that existed pre-iPhone.

Andrew and Dianne are both way smarter than I am, and I barely understand half of what they write, but I still found their posts interesting. What’s even more intriguing is whether the Android team ever decide to solve this problem once and for all by rewriting the rendering framework:

[Android Engineer] Romain Guy doesn’t elaborate on what the downsides are, but it’s not difficult to speculate:

- All Apps would have to be re-written to support the new framework
- Android would need a legacy support mode for old apps
- Work on other Android features would be stalled while the new framework is developed

It’s an interesting situation for the Android team. [Andrew Munn and Dianne Hackborn via Daring Fireball]

Google Music spot→

Google officially launched Google Music today, and so it only makes sense for them to also release a video introducing their new service. I dig it.

Most people think of Google as a search-based company, but they’re really an ad-based company (that uses their search product as a means of showing you targeted ads). So it’s no real surprise that they know how to make great ads. Some of my past favorites: Parisian Love, Dear Sophie, and, of course, their Chrome speed test ads.