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Comment by pessimist | Hacker News Reader

Valid reasons to quit Google, but then he joins Microsoft?

Well, say what you will about Microsoft, but their business model is primarily to sell technology. Google's business model is to use technology to sell ads.

But remember, you are Microsoft's product, not their customer. When you demand to use Windows, it means that the OEMs have to negotiate Windows licenses for new computers, or you'll buy some other OEM's box. That means the OEM is the customer that Microsoft gets money from, meaning you are only tangentially important. (The Office market is the same way: Office is sold as being the "don't retrain your staff" solution. Companies then buy site licenses, leaving individual users relatively powerless. Microsoft sells to your IT department, not to you.)

quite right, but "you are the product" is obviously even more true of Google, selling you to advertisers, right?

Microsoft just wants you to want their product. Google wants to know everything about you so they can sell you to advertisers.

More and more, to all companies, especially tech companies, we are commodities to be sold.

Nice to see the stupid "you are the product" meme subverted.

He used to work at Microsoft before he joined Google, here's his farewell blog from MS:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/james_whittaker/archive/2009/05/21/t...

He used to work for the Developer Division, was Architect for "Visual Studio Team System – Test Edition", and Chair of the "Quality and Testing Experts Community at Microsoft", so going to MS isn't such a stretch.

That was my reaction too, but then I thought: everything he outlined in his blog post is everything that MS is not. In fact, it's what MS is often criticised for- that it has no central authority, teams that don't cooperate, so on and so forth.

The conventional wisdom is that people leave big companies to form startups. If he did that, Whittaker wouldn't be able to do anything that he wants to do- startups do not have the resources for large-scale "big thinking" and idea testing. They have a laser sharp focus on one thing. It sounds like Whittaker has no interest in that.

My impression is that Microsoft is actually very diversified and focused on technology. There was an article a while back about where the various large companies (Google, Apple and Microsoft) make their money; Microsoft had the most diversity by far.

Microsoft is also not afraid to fail or try random things, which makes it much like the "old Google" in this blog post.

Microsoft's diversification is not really a good thing. IMO, it is no use building lots of technology without being good at any of it.

My belief is that Microsoft will improve, but I would not go there because they already have their technology goals right. (I would go to Microsoft as an intrapreneur trying to fix their technology/innovation story).

Microsoft is unlikely to shut down MS Research.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/research/default.aspx

[edit] If I have my James Whittaker's straight, he worked at Microsoft before going to Google. If I don't, he probably didn't.

Looks like you have your Whittaker's straight: http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2009/06/james-whittaker-jo...

Google Research is alive and kicking: http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html

I think you mistook Google Labs with Google Research, Google Labs was sort of a playground for engineers more than a research division. Google Research is as serious as an academic division is inside a big company.

I'm not in any way affiliated with any of both, though I know people who interned/work at both. In fact I would take Microsoft Research over Google Research if I had to choose a "favorite" one... but I'm just clearing a common misconception with the Google Labs closure and people thinking Google closed their entire research division.

>"Google Research is alive and kicking:"

Alive, yes. Kicking?

I figured out what was bothering me about the comparison between Google Research and MS Research in light of the shutdown of Google Labs. The Google Research site is essentially a bibliography for academics, Microsoft Research site has papers, blogs, and downloads -- in true Microsoft tradition, it is a BLOB not an RDBMS table.

Microsoft Research is clearly reflects a hacker culture, Google's reflects a culture where the idea that labs are not necessary to research holds sway. Google Research reflects an approach more akin to the social science of sociology, than physics.

Joining Microsoft can also be interpreted as "let's help (re)creating the third pole", with the first two being Apple and Google. A stronger Microsoft could surely advantage users.

From the perspective of wanting to work for a technology company, and not an advertising company, I suppose it makes sense.

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