Interesting to see how Google employees rate their own services, especially when they think that their post will be dealt with internally… See what comes out when Google software engineer Steve Yegge speaks his mind – and releases a very critical article about Google+ – accidentally, of course.
A Google software engineer, Steve Yegge, had some less than favorable things to say about his employer’s social networking service Google+. You know, the one that Google says “is Google.”
He crafted a lengthy and very critical post about Google+ to share within Google, but accidentally shared it publicly (hat tip to Frederic Lardinois). Of course, others were able to capture it before he deleted it.
Here are some quotes from the rant.
“I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I’ve been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies — an impression that has been reinforced almost daily — is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right.”
That’s how it began. Good start, in Google’s eyes no doubt, considering the building rivalry between those two companies. In fact, much of post talks about how Google does most things better than Amazon, except for a few. Eventually, he talks about how Google’s “doesn’t get” platforms.
Here are some of the Google+-specific quotes:
“Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don’t get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call. One of the team members marched in and told me about it when they launched, and I asked: “So is it the Stalker API?” She got all glum and said “Yeah.” I mean, I was joking, but no… the only API call we offer is to get someone’s stream. So I guess the joke was on me.”
Read the full story here.