Science and Engineering: Innovation, Research, Education and Economics
October 21, 2007
Larry Page and Sergey Brin Interview Webcast
This interview and audience question and answer took place last week at the end of the Google Zeitgeist conference. Some interesting notes from Sergey:
I like to see us not focus on maintaining Google’s culture but to improve it - continuous improvement (he specifically mentions how the infrastructure they have in place now allows them to experiment in ways that were not possible before - a reminder of Google’s focus on the scientific method and Experimenting Quickly and Often).
Google still follows their model of focusing 70% of the effort on core business (search) and 20% on related activities and 10% on “anything goes” (new business areas).
While not directly related to Google he is very interested in the innovation in nanotechnology and carbon nanotubes and the present time.
on moving toward universal power supplies - we are talking to some companies about solutions “but I gotta be honest with you it is a harder problem than I thought”
Larry:
focus on Google’s mission - to organize the world’s information
believes there is great potential in solar power and would love to see successful companies in that industry
discussed poor web usability practices based on sites that adopt flashy technology that make it slower and more difficult for users - flash, excessive Ajax… Larry also mentioned doing testing on the user experience - no surprise for Google and no surprise that most poorly overly fancy sites care more about what a pointy haired boss might think on seeing the flash than on users experiences and testing.
Google has done an exceptional job of allowing engineers to do what they do best. And I think there is a chance they can translate that into effectively managing such a project as this…
“There’s a reason we talk about 70/20/10, where 70% of our resources are spent in our core business and 10% end up in unrelated projects, like energy or whatever…”
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Google has done an exceptional job of allowing engineers to do what they do best. And I think there is a chance they can translate that into effectively managing such a project as this…
April 30th, 2008 at 11:08 am
“There’s a reason we talk about 70/20/10, where 70% of our resources are spent in our core business and 10% end up in unrelated projects, like energy or whatever…”