Why I left Google - James Whittaker

[ChromeFoundry]

Ok, I relent. Everyone wants to know why I left and answering individually isn’t scaling so here it is, laid out in its long form. Read a little (I get to the punch line in the 3rd paragraph) or read it all. But a warning in advance: there is no drama here, no tell-all, no former colleagues bashed and nothing more than you couldn’t already surmise from what’s happening in the press these days surrounding Google and it’s attitudes toward user privacy and software developers. This is simply a more personal telling.

It wasn’t an easy decision to leave Google. During my time there I became fairly passionate about the company. I keynoted four Google Developer Day events, two Google Test Automation Conferences and was a prolific contributor to the Google testing blog. Recruiters often asked me to help sell high priority candidates on the company. No one had to ask me twice to promote Google and no one was more surprised than me when I could no longer do so. In fact, my last three months working for Google was a whirlwind of desperation, trying in vain to get my passion back.

The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.

Technically I suppose Google has always been an advertising company, but for the better part of the last three years, it didn’t feel like one. Google was an ad company only in the sense that a good TV show is an ad company: having great content attracts advertisers.
...

Read the entire article here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2012/03/13/why-i-left-google.aspx

Hummm, still trust Google with all your data???

[truedelphi]

1. All I know is that my computer's HD spins endlessly ever since the Big Three Companies

Started their data mining. (Google, FaceBk, Yahoo)

I also found out that the way Mozilla pops you back into your last internet session means you have to go through the trouble of signing out of your accounts if you don't want them following you. (Maybe they follow us even if signed out?)

Why do I have to let them mine me for data? I knew them before they required I let them do this. I used their email systems BEFORE they asked for the ability to "sniff around" my contacts in my email.

I feel like all of us had the imputed understanding that what we did with their services was not part of any agreement to be totally transparent with them. I sign a lease with a landlord - I don't expect nine months later that there was a paragraph at the end of the contract that stated I had to let the landlord's brother-in-law move in with me.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. They aren't seaerching your hard drive. Why bother?

You give them your data on the Internet. They don't have to bother with possibly criminal activities like that when you just hand over the goods to them all on your own.

You could have other problems, actual malware for example, but it is rather unlikely that the Internet giants are searching your disks.

[truedelphi]

4. Well part of the spinning that goes on is even recorded for me on the

Bottom let hand side of the internet.

Moving here from Huffington, for example, and the left hand bottom of my internet screen had at least a half dozen of these websites shooting and cycling around - everything from "ad something" to "google" to several other thingees. And those are just the ones I am being told about. (My eyes cannot read as fast as the names are presented.)

[Blue_Tires]

3. brilliant...

Google+ and me, we were simply never meant to be. Truth is I’ve never been much on advertising. I don’t click on ads. When Gmail displays ads based on things I type into my email message it creeps me out. I don’t want my search results to contain the rants of Google+ posters (or Facebook’s or Twitter’s for that matter). When I search for “London pub walks” I want better than the sponsored suggestion to “Buy a London pub walk at Wal-Mart.”

[truedelphi]

5. That was a very clever part of the article. n/t