Gawker
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googleplex
Google Moves in with Founder's Wife's Company
Google's complicated relationship with its founder's wife just got more tangled. Anne Wojcicki's genetic-testing startup, 23andMe, not only took a second round of funding from the company — it's now cohabitating with the search giant. More »
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By Ryan TateComment by TouchedByAnOctopus: Anne had irritable bowel syndrome through the whole pregnancy. You would be in a conference room with her and she... 2 Responses | Other threads
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cubicle culture
Facebook Heckling Rampage By Kara Swisher
As co-host of the Wall Street Journal's $5,000/head D conference, reporter Kara Swisher demands best behavior from her guests. Invite her to your startup, though, and she'll taunt your chef, heckle bizdev and mock your taste. More »
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By Ryan TateComment by babyjesus: who gives a fuck about kara swisher or anyones cafeteria? why don't you give us something juicy (intended) like why facebook... 2 Responses | Other threads
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cubicle culture
Jeering Googlers Bring Entitled Coworkers In Line
Google is reportedly flooded with Yahoo résumés. We'd recommend an overtly modest approach to anyone who scores an interview: Google has lately been brutal in handling presumptuous, entitled transplants. More »
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By Ryan TateComment by pepelicious: What the fuck? This sounds like the first half of Full Metal Jacket with it's balls cut off. more » | Other threads
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googleplex
Is Working at Google a Brain Malfunction?
Blogger Joe Clark, still fuming over the mathematical mistreatment of Google designer Doug Bowman, explains that Google is populated by people with cases of "extreme male brain."
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By Owen ThomasComment by cassiemajestic: I'd hate to characterize brains by gender. That said, all my friends who work at Google are extremely arrogant and entitled.... 5 Responses | Other threads
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layoffs
Google Execs in Secret Layoff Meetings
More layoffs are coming to Google, employees there believe. A Googler tells us top executives abruptly cancelled meetings across the Googleplex Friday.
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By Owen ThomasComment by uncle_wiggly: Hey, where'd you get this photo. I didn't see any cameras in the room for that meeting. That's me with... 2 Responses | Other threads
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geeks gone wild
Who's Saying 'Fly Me' to Eric Schmidt?
How does Eric Schmidt do it? The computer nerd runs Google, has Obama's ear, parks his jet fleet in a NASA hangar, and has a rocking girlfriend. Is she the reason he flies so much? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by MisterHippity: Owen, I don't know if it was intentional or not, but your headline recalls this 1970s advertising campaign for National... 4 Responses | Other threads
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Cupcake Princess
Lesley Stahl Investigates Marissa Mayer's Matchless Fashion Sense
After having her image frosted by the New York Times and Charlie Rose, Google VP Marissa Mayer, the cupcake princess of search, is hungry for more press. Luckily, Lesley Stahl arrived to spread more on! More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Jennifer Savage: I don't see anything wrong with her fashion. Her sense of style is pretty consistent, and it seems to fit... 8 Responses | Other threads
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free
Google, No Longer the Land of the Free
The accountants have taken over the Googleplex, once a hotbed of amiably unprofitable innovation. The notion that ads would pay the way for everything has been dropped — and "fee" is replacing "free." More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by unclevanya: What the hell is Google Checkout? I use the Web, Image, Video and Map searches. Anything else is delusional meat... 4 Responses | Other threads
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googleplex
Google Serving Up Hubris at Shuttered Café
Since Valleywag broke the news that Google was closing two of its free cafés this week, they've been busier than ever as hyperentitled Googlers race to get one last taste. And complain about the lines. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by The Evil Beet: "Can you believe this? They make 50 highly paid engineers wait in line for one lowly paid chef." I don't understand... 11 Responses | Other threads
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food fight
Google Closes Two More Cafés
Google's nerd-heaven Mountain View, Calif., campus is losing two more of its free-for-employees cafés this Friday when Jean-Claude Balek's Basic Deli, well-reviewed for its house-made charcuterie, and 5ive shut their doors. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Swordfish: I had the chance to visit Google and lunched at one of their cafeterias and it was the best meal... 2 Responses | Other threads
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cutbacks
Fear and Loathing on the Google Shuttle
Googlers, used to being coddled by the luxuries of the Googleplex, now worry they'll have to pay to ride the company shuttle bus. It's the latest sign of the giant search engine's nervous breakdown. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by pepelicious: So companies like Google are forced to devote an unreasonable amount of engergy figuring out how to trim costs to... 3 Responses | Other threads
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perks
Google Launches "School of Spiritual Growth"
How soul-draining it must be to work at the world's best company! Hence the introduction of Google's School of Spiritual Growth, an arm of the search engine's in-house university. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Auntie_Meme is outta here: Chade-Meng Tan is also known for this: "When it's 'normal' that every workplace offers massage, meditation, three organic meals... 6 Responses | Other threads
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perks
Filet mignon on menu at Google's NYC holiday party
Google is throwing not one, not two, but three holiday parties for its New York employees this year. Such is the cash-flush search engine's definition of austerity.
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By Owen ThomasComment by Beausoleil: Lemme guess...the Yahoo holiday party will serve Salisbury steak? 1 Responses | Other threads
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perks
Google's austerity campaign
The best place to work in America is becoming like every other big corporation. Google, at its heart an overgrown advertising agency, is most famous for its lavish perks. Now those are disappearing.
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By Owen ThomasComment by its_a_feature: And so it begins! I'll be curious to see the fallout when googlers realize their perks have fallen back... 3 Responses | Other threads
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real estate
Google's shrinking NYC office pampers the Lego-and-scooter set
The immense former Port Authority building where Google now does business in Manhattan has an impressive history. Truck drivers once drove onto elevators and motored around the building's upper floors. Today, the place has been Googlefied with snacks, ping-pong tables, and a jillion Legos. Free scooters let staffers zip one part of the supersize building to another. But the best thing about this video? Google Docs manager Jonathan Rochelle talks up his office for 2 minutes and 42 seconds without once using the word "cool." We just wish The Big Money's camera crew had shown us the 50,000 sq. ft. Google is emptying out for sublease, too.
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By Paul BoutinComment by AirliaKoliha: Umm...who wouldn't want this work environment? It's not childish -- it's just not being the same boring pewter-colored office you... more » | Other threads
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Ramsey Allington
Googlers gone wild in India
Ramsey Allington, the bad-boy manager of Google's book-search operations who stands accused of sexism and discrimination by his employees, has turned electronically shy after Valleywag's exposé of his misdeeds. His blog, Ramsey's World, is now friends-only — which just suggests he's got more to hide. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by ektorp: What a complete tool. Ramsey is indeed a big lottery winner with his gig at Google, and he's lucky... more » | Other threads
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food fight
Google New York hit by cost cuts
Google's offices in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood are the latest to feel the pinch, with hours curtailed and snack service cut back, according to an internal memo. To understand what a shock to the system this is, remember how, when Google went public four years ago, cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin swore they would increase employee perks over time. Since then, Google PR has built the company's great-place-to-work reputation largely on its free meals. How fast things change: Just a year ago, the luxe perks of Google's New York office were a selling point, as the search engine courted the city's fashionistas. Now the food is just another cost to cut. Starving artists, don't count on mooching off free meals courtesy of your Googler friends: Google New York is also cracking down on guests. Here's the memo New York Googlers received Tuesday around lunchtime: More » -
Ramsey Allington
The rotten manager behind Google Book Search
A coalition of book publishers and authors have extracted $125 million from Google in settling a copyright lawsuit they filed in 2005. The agreement should make Google Book Search vastly more useful, as millions of books get added to Google's index. The team at Google which deals with publishers should be busier than ever. Too bad it's run by a sexist tyrant who's seen 7 of his 13-person team — all women — leave in a year's time. Googlers who formerly worked under Ramsey Allington, the head of Google's book operations, say he's a terrible manager who has actively discriminated against women in his employ. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by QADude: Is it just me, or does the woman next to him look really, really drunk? 2 Responses | Other threads
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toogle many googlers
Google waffling ahead on monster office building
"A space-age structure that could be the greenest office building of all time." "A living building that has no carbon footprint." That's the spin. So is this: Google spokespeople are telling reporters that plans are on hold. Charleston East, site of Google's planned superplex, used to be a parking lot for Mountain View's Shoreline Amphitheater, just up the road from Google's main campus Now the lot is idle, pending a bunch of paperwork by the city. But here's the truth: The building was planned when Google was growing by more than 100 employees per week worldwide. Last quarter, it added 500 Googlers to its ranks — about 40 a week. That's why Google has shuttered a café. There's green, and then there's green. Eric Schmidt, America's CTO, is not thinking about the tree-hugging kind right now.
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By Paul BoutinComment by nirreskeya: Not to gang up on you Paul, but 500 / 12 = 41.6 employees added per week... 3 Responses | Other threads
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commenter of the day
random_play
Google's changes in the seclusion and segregation of its workers tempt us to invoke Godwin's Law — or at least Martin Niemöller's. Will cutting perks and benefits and firing people help push Googlers to wake up in Larry and Sergey's geek playland? Today's featured commenter is random_play, who waxes poetic about the pain of Google's cost-cutting: More » -
layoffs
Google herds contractors into "zones"
Life has been good on the Googleplex, even for contractors; the search engine's legendary perks, spread across its luxuriously infantilizing office parks, have been enjoyed by all. Next month, that changes, a tipster tells us: Contractors will have to stick to designated "zones" based on the building they work in. The main object is to cut the cost of offering foods and other perks by preventing contractors from visiting cafés meant for employees, or using gyms and other facilities on the main campus. But the "zones" have another benefit for management, as Google girds for deeper cuts. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by BrawlerBarbie: This figures. Pretty soon they'll ban contractors from any food service (or make them pay), have separate bathrooms for them,... 4 Responses | Other threads
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food fight
Financial apocalypse leads Google to lay off a cafe
Food is at the center of Google's corporate culture, a sign of the company's Pollyanna worldview and the outsized financial success which enables this largesse. So why is Google is closing a café? Off The Grid, one of Google's 18 in-house eateries at its headquarters, abruptly shut its doors this week. Employees are being told the cut is "temporary," but workers are removing the café's fixtures, which suggests a permanent closure. What this means: Despite CEO Eric Schmidt's protestations, Google is being hit by the recession. And the blows are harder than the company has admitted to shareholders or employees. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by TiddlyTwinks: Google closed Pacific Cafe over a year ago and replaced with an undoubtedly cheaper Andale franchise. Sushi prices >>... 4 Responses | Other threads
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food fight
Googlers' free-food privileges slashed
Food is part of the Google myth: All you can eat, three meals a day, with plenty of room for your friends and family. No more. Following the curtailment of dinner service, Google is now restricting employees to two guest meals a month. Contractors and temps will not be allowed any guests at all. Google HR chief Laszlo Bock announced this change in a memo obtained by Valleywag. Some Googlers, we've heard, treated their families to free dinner every night; others took large amounts of food home with them on Friday nights, to last the weekend. The move is consistent with Google management's war on abuse of the company's perks; cofounder Sergey Brin, especially, has complained about Googlers' sense of entitlement. Yet it's likely to spark grousing. Googlers outside engineering are often poorly paid, and sneaking food home amounts to part of their salary. Google seems caught in a vicious circle of worsening morale: Discontent sparks abuse of perks; crackdowns on perk abuse sparks discontent. Read the memo to see Google's latest schoolmarmish turn: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by LeviCachimba: Janitors at Google earn $11 an hour. They should be allowed to take home a truckload. 1 Responses | Other threads
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food fight
Google food manager charged with double-dealing
The brouhaha over Google's once-legendary, now troubled free-meals perk has bubbled up more charges of wrongdoing in the search engine's kitchens. An anonymous poster has taken to Craigslist to air charges against Google's former global food manager, John Dickman. (The post refers to him as "Dick," but it's obviously Dickman being discussed.) The Craigslist poster claims Dickman, left, who is married to Lisa McEuen, right, an executive at the parent company of food-service operator Bon Appétit, with leaking inside information which helped Bon Appétit win a contract to run Google's in-house meal service. More » -
food fight
Googleplex cafes staffed by illegal workers
One of our sources with Google's ready-to-boil kitchens, whom we've nicknamed "Deep Fried," tells us that the employee-coddling search giant has a much bigger food problem than cutbacks on dinner — and a much bigger labor problem than a lack of work visas for its programmers. More than half of the contract workers who prepare and serve Googler's vast quantities of free food, our source claims, lack documentation that proves they have a legal right to live and work in the United States. Are they illegal aliens? The point is that Bon Appétit, the management company which runs Google's cafes, has turned a blind eye — as has Google, until recently. A former chef tells us Google would frequently let workers who didn't have proper credentials return to work with fresh documents, under new names. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by weissadam: what happens when: a) you have the dumbshit idea to start a "silicon valley gossip blog" b) you know nothing about tech... 2 Responses | Other threads
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food fight
AdWords customers receive Google cookbook
Google's cafeterias have become such a point of pride for the company, even if it has to close a cafe now and again, that longtime AdWords customers recently received a spiral-bound copy of the Google cookbook title "Keyword: Delicious." If anything, the cookbook proves just how much fat there is to trim at the company's cafeterias — not one, but two of the recipes call for super-rich and expensive foie gras, or fatted goose liver. Included in the gift basket was a black apron emblazoned with Google's logo. Want to pick up a copy and eat like a Googler? More »
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By Jackson WestComment by Goose Spruce: I wander why I didnt get a copy. more » | Other threads
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food fight
How Google's cafes turned into hell's kitchens
Live by the fork, die by the fork. Now that Google is cutting back on its free food, where will its flacks woo journalists? Morale in Google's kitchens is rock-bottom, as leaderless workers try to keep understaffed cafes running, even as Google management insists they open new eateries. The last place Google's PR staff should want to entertain a reporter is in their cafes. The tragedy of it all: As we learn more about how the Googleplex's food operations fell apart, it sounds like Google executives' ego got in the way of thinking about the needs of employees — or the workers who keep them fed. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by dodgit: Bon Appetit ruined Stanford University's dining halls and cafes during the late 90s. High prices, crappy food. I would never... more » | Other threads
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perks
Dinner saved for Google's geeks
Google's food cutbacks are more targeted than we'd first heard. Dinner will still be served in buildings which house engineers, according to a former Google chef who's made his own inquiries about the changes at the Googleplex cafeterias. Google's only eliminating the evening meal in cafes frequented by nontechnical employees. Somehow, this strikes us as worse for morale. If there were any doubt that Google's non-engineers were second-class citizens, consider it erased. No comp-sci degree? No dinner for you. (Photo by brettlider)
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By Owen ThomasComment by SangitaRaphman: This decision only makes sense: people aren't eating dinner in certain buildings; so dinner will not be offered there. ... more » | Other threads
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Kinderplex
Daycare for another 330 Googler rugrats
Palo Alto's architectural review board approved plans for a new three-building daycare center on San Antonio Road, just off Highway 101. The new facilities will hold 250 kids, along with another 80-kid daycare center planned for East Bayshore Road on the other side of the freeway. A report in the Palo Alto Daily News says, "A continuous driveway running from East Bayshore to San Antonio would link the planned complex to the one already approved." What I want to know: Where would that driveway cross the freeway? (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma) -
googleplex
Google's food perks on the chopping block
There's no such thing as a free dinner. A worker at Google tells us the company is taking evening meals off the menu: "Google has drastically cut back their budget on the culinary program. How is it affecting campus? No more dinner. No more tea trolley. No more snack attack in the afternoon." The changes will be announced to Googlers on Monday. Workers at the Googleplex will remain amply fed, with free breakfast and lunch — dinner will be reserved for geeks only — but it's still a shocking cutback. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by stuckinthetrenches: Easy Haters... 1 - Meal time is typically spent with team members discussing work and promotes efficiencies and bonding 2 - You... more » | Other threads
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googleplex
Google retrenches in Dallas and Denver
This is not how the Google's story supposed to go: Google is closing offices in Dallas and Denver. The locations may well be duplicative — a Google Maps search shows three Dallas-area offices — but it doesn't fit the narrative of relentless, candy-colored expansion around the globe. What's next — overcharging employees for needlessly luxurious childcare? Oh, wait — that already happened. -
caption contest
Spoiler Alert: Eric Schmidt Named As Final Cylon
And I thought I was joking about Robot Steve Jobs — Google is already developing the Cylon army that eventually attempts to destroy humanity. Can you suggest a better headline? Do so in the comments. The best one will become the new headline. Yesterday's winner: "Yeah? Is this Yahoo HQ? I heard you are running low on people." by G2GdoB2B. (Photo by Marcin Wichary)
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By Jackson WestComment by LongAgoYahoo: "He was hiding behind Six when that explosion hit his house." So what? You can shoot a skin job cylon and... more » | Other threads
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toogle many googlers
Employees now getting dirty asses washed by downmarket bidets at the Googleplex
Back in 2005, when I first made inquiries into the high-tech Japanese bidets now well-known to be installed around the Googleplex, the company was using the Toto Washlet S300. Now? The E200. What's the difference? $230 less in luxury, with the S300 selling for $749.99 at Faucet Depot and the E200 selling for a mere $519.99. [San Francisco Citizen] (Photo by Jim Herd)
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By Jackson WestComment by raincoaster: What, they ran out of ass-kissers? more » | Other threads
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leaks
Google's daycare debacle: the Kinderplex memos
Google no longer advertises subsidized daycare as a benefit to its employees. So why is the company building luxuriously unaffordable child-care centers at the behest of Susan Wojcicki, the sister-in-law of Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and closing down Kinderplex, a more affordable center operated by an experienced Silicon Valley daycare provider, CCLC? If you can answer that one, you're probably clever enough at solving puzzles to qualify for a job at the Googleplex. According to internal memos obtained by Valleywag, Google executives promised in May that its new centers would not see a price hike of 75 percent. Instead, Google management hiked rates 68.34 percent — at the cost of reducing hours and increasing the ratio of children to teachers. Google is phasing in the hikes for currently enrolled children, and offering a scholarship program for the least well-off, writes Laszlo Bock, Google's top HR executive. What Bock never addresses: Why is Google spending shareholder money on a perk that it is now so ashamed of that it doesn't market it to its potential recruits as a reason to work at Google? The memos: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by skinnyme: This is sad for Googlers. Anyone who has children can understand what they are going through when the rug is... more » | Other threads
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perks
Google daycare now a luxury for Larry and Sergey's inner circle
Life inside the Googleplex already resembles a daycare center, with its primary colors, bouncy exercise balls, and free food. But if you're a parent working at Google, daycare has become a nightmare. As recently as last July, Google advertised its Kinderplex child-care center as a perk, though the rates it charged weren't much below the market price. The reality: Googlers haven't been able to get their kids into the Kinderplex, thanks to a long waiting list, and the facility is now closing, being replaced by overpriced facilities designed at the behest of Susan Wojcicki, the multimillionaire sister-in-law of Google cofounder Sergey Brin and mother of four. Google employee-parents are up in arms — not over the price hike itself, but over the way the decision came down from on high. More » -
toogle many googlers
Google's suburban sprawl
Google's announcement today of a massive campus expansion was inevitable. Having taken over every last scrap of office park around it not occupied by neighbor Intuit, Google is expanding the Mountain View Googleplex to the west — and, more controversially, to the east, on land owned but poorly used by Nasa. Ignore the happy talk about Google and Nasa's scientific partnerships; those are an obvious fig leaf to cover the use of public land by a private entity. (Let's not even get started on Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt's sweetheart deal to park their party plane on Nasa grounds.) Google has grown to be a powerful employer in the Bay Area, and its wealthy executives donate freely to local politicians, so we should hardly expect the powers that be to stop it. What's good for Google is good for America, or so we'll be told. More » -
google i/o
Google misspells binary message — or does it?
Google's developer conference in San Francisco, Google I/O, is a temporary geek paradise, a replication of the Googleplex's lavish perks. Flight of the Conchords played last night. Google also provided puzzles. TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington noticed that a binary code sequence on Google's T-shirt for the event spells "GOOGLE KO". A mistake? Or a test to see if readers are clever enough to notice that the top half of a "K" looks like an "I" and a slash?
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By Owen ThomasComment by null: Would have been cooler with a real slash in there anyway (/ = 00101111) more » | Other threads
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flackery
Google's Secret Lego-Made Logo
Intrepid Jennifer 8. Lee has defied Google's blackout on photographs of the lego sculptures at its offices in New York's Chelsea. The New York Times reporter, stymied by Google's publicists, obtained images from a brave insider—who will no doubt soon be sweeping the floors at one of the internet monolith's server farms.
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By Nick DentonComment by Gadget-Mouse: I'm pretty sure the logo is made of Legos as a reference to Douglas Coupland's book Microserfs, which features a... more » | Other threads
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airship ventures
$8 million for blimp rides from Google HQ to Napa Valley
With a parking space at the giant hangar on Moffett Field run by NASA, Airship Ventures plans to buy a blimp and run pleasure cruises from the Googleplex's back yard to Napa Valley's wine country. To that end, the startup has secured $8 million in funding from wealthy sorts, including lead investor Esther Dyson. Airship Ventures can surely count on the legions of local steampunk fetishists to keep the waiting list for seats well padded, not to mention corporate-expensed junkets from Valley tech companies. After the jump, video of a Tokyo flyover in one of the Zeppelin NT airships the startup will use. (Illustration by Martin Luechinger) More »
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By Jackson WestComment by LongAgoYahoo: Blimps and Zeppelins are not the same thing. Zeppelins have rigid airframes, blimps keep their shape via pressure differential. Macon, Akron,... more » | Other threads
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