Anyone know what he actually did at Google? Was it an active role, did he publish anything interesting? Or was it more of an Institute for Advanced Study kind of position?
He was involved in the design, planning, and future-proofing one of the major redesigns of Google's data center fabric. Google, AFAIK still uses a derivative of the fabric today.
He worked on a few X projects and had some free reign to push next gen ideas. Delay tolerant networking is the one I interacted with the most, as well as Google Loon, if you recall that.
Contract-graph routing (a core part of dtn - where do you send packets when there are delays in your route graph) was spec'd to be used, and I believe they may have done an experiment. The balloons had schedules or predictable winds, and satellites come and go (at least back then), so forwarding packets to the right carrier (or two) to get the next hop home was a big part of it.
He was hired to go to meetings and state “I’m vint cerf, I work at Google” then blab for 2 mins and introduce the actual speaker for a meeting/conference.
maybe this is a good thing though, where someone with a huge, legitimate contribution and legacy gets to cash in on their status, vs. the typical influencer.
Disc: Former Googler, Cloud Networking.