[rachelbythebay]

Sergey Brin doesn't matter any more. He's been off in his own little world, making acquisitions and having them report directly to him. They don't get integrated into the normal engineering environment, and they wind up in more buildings which normal badges won't open. Look up building 1489 for an example.

When I heard about this non-integration, my interpretation was that normal eng is where things go to die, so they were keeping the new things separate so they would not die. Then I realized, hey wait, if the core engineering area is sufficiently broken to where one of the founders is purposely keeping his own toys away from it, what does that say about us?

[donw]

That sounds so fundamentally broken that it's hard to believe you're not referencing a Joseph Heller novel.

As a non-Googler, I would love to hear more about this... if you won't write the blog post, mind if I interview you so I can? :)

[rachelbythebay]

I'm also a non-Googler, although of the Xoogler persuasion. After nearly five years I finally said "enough" and left earlier this year, although after trying in vain to get people to realize just what was happening.

On the outside world, Buzz was seen as a joke, and it was for individual accounts. However, on the inside, corp Buzz was lively, and there were a great many Yegge-rant-type posts flying around earlier this year. They didn't get much done, given that G+ launched with the whole real names fiasco, even after an unprecedented amount of push-back from inside.

You might find some of my writing on these topics enjoyable. A URL to them is in my profile, and there is a contact link on those posts.

[mahyarm]

Reminds me of Jobs and how he handled the Macintosh team.