Google

CollegeHumor's "Truth in Website Logos"

Recently departed Google designer Jeff Veen may think the company's logo is "childish" and "ugly," but in their "Truth In Website Logos," CollegeHumor's Streeter Seidell and Amir Blumenfeld demonstrate that after a few tweaks, it's just right.

1:40 PM on Tue May 13 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
205 views, 2 comments

Latest by FiveStarEggRoll: They are not that humorous. Harry "where'd I leave that Photoshop CD" Wang more »

pop quiz

Google and the seven dwarfs

Google's collection of Web properties somtimes seem unconnected and disorganized. But there's a common thread between Print Ads, Audio Ads, TV Ads, Checkout, YouTube, Postini and DoubleClick. Can you guess what it is? More »

1:20 PM on Tue May 13 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
173 views, Comment

finance

Turns out Google also owns $259.6 million in securities no one will buy

We've reported that Monster, Palm, Intuit, EarthLink and MetroPCS bought $856 million in auction-rate securities. The credit market being what it is these days, these companies are having a hard time getting cash for their paper. Add Google to the bunch. According to a filing with the SEC, Google owns $259.6 million worth — or worthless — of auction-rate securities. More »

10:20 AM on Tue May 13 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
549 views, 3 comments

toogle many googlers

Report: At Google, "resource allocation is a laissez-faire mess"

Lots of Googlers are leaving Google. To find out why, Fortune magazine profiled Sean Knapp, who along with friends left Google to cofound Web video startup Ooyala, "leaving behind the perks, the 20 percent time, and a combined seven-figure pile of unvested options." But as Blogoscoped notes, the most revealing part of Fortune's article is the bit where it describes Google Apps VP Dave Girouard's struggle to get anything done: More »

9:20 AM on Tue May 13 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,703 views, 4 comments

10 best workspaces

Rank tech's 10 best workspaces

After reviewing our post "Tech's top 10 workspaces" commenter Dweezil complained that our choices were full of "to much modernism bullshit." Commenter Web2PointOhShit tore at everybody:

Six Apart's offices seem pretty ordinary to me. Their meeting space is *tiny*. Googleplex's niceties are all about enticing their workers to stay at work longer — yeah, that's real HAWT!. Valleywag offices look like a dump to me.

So, OK, not everybody goes for our taste in brick, exposed ceilings and Googley amenities. Let's find out who's in the minority. Below, vote for your favorites and help us rank tech's 10 best workspaces. More »

7:00 AM on Tue May 13 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
2,504 views, 9 comments

Latest by matto: I still have no idea how "Tocquigny" is supposed to be pronounced. I tried phonetically, but ended up with a sprained tongue. more »

google

High schooler warns of transhuman dystopia

Ignoring Google's seeming endorsement of IM speak, or tweener, invading the English language by titling the company's logo art contest "Doodle 4 Google," the entries present a striking glimpse into the fears of typical American children — from deforestation to global war. Finalist Mariam Hovhannisyan, a high schooler at the International Community School in Kirkland, Washington, laments an irreversible slide into the mechanization of humanity: More »

6:00 PM on Mon May 12 2008
By Jackson West
993 views, 2 comments

hires

Toogle many Googlers -- at Facebook

Despite her protestations of innocence, it's pretty obvious that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg had a hand in getting top Google flack Elliot Schrage to follow her to her new employer. She's not alone. One Facebook insider recently observed that for every Googler hired at Facebook, they pull another four former colleagues with them. The place is getting "overrun," says one close observer of the company.

5:00 PM on Mon May 12 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,183 views, 9 comments

once you're lucky, twice you're good

L is for Levchin, who never goes slow

Max Levchin, the cofounder of PayPal and the CEO of Slide, measures nearly everything, down to the optimum price to pay for an engagement ring. If he needs a metric for self-importance, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, Sarah Lacy's new book about Web 2.0, provides one. He occupies 78 out of 294 pages, more than anyone else. Here are the index pages for "F" through "M": More »

3:20 PM on Mon May 12 2008
By Owen Thomas
967 views, 5 comments

don't be evil

Italians mistake Google Street View car for prowling Gestapo

A former neo-Facist, Gianni Alemanno, is the new mayor of Rome. He got the job promising to bulldoze homeless encampments, deport foreign criminals and install surveillance cameras, all in an effort to be tough of crime. So it isn't surprising to read reports that when Google's black Street View car, with its 360-degree camera mounted on top, came rolling down Viale Trastevere in Rome, citizens on the street immediately fled as though it were a horde of brick-wielding blackshirts chanting Me ne frego!

3:00 PM on Mon May 12 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
764 views, 4 comments

Latest by DJCarbon43: "one only hides when they know they've done things they should not have." B*llshit. Not where I'm from (philly). Here the cops with arrest you just for sh*ts and giggles... probably beat you down for good measure too. We here learn more »

google

The $179 billion worth of free advice Larry Page got from his Stanford advisor

When Fortune magazine asked Google cofounder Larry Page what was the best advice he ever got, Page said that while at Stanford he couldn't decide which of his 10 projects to focus on until his advisor, Terry Winograd, looked at one them — something to do with "the link structure of the Web" — and said "that one seems like a really good idea." Since, the advice has paid off for Winograd; he's landed a consulting gig at Google and even took a sabbatical to work there from 2002 to 2003. Google's recent market cap: $179 billion. (Photo by boltron)

12:20 PM on Mon May 12 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
921 views, 6 comments

Latest by cyc: @sample032: What discrete math classes were you in?? more »

hires

Facebook CTO Adam D'Angelo's next move

Adam D'Angelo's departure "broke my heart," one Facebook insider told us. But Facebook's backers are shedding no tears. We hear that both Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Accel Partners are considering D'Angelo for an entrepreneur-in-residence role — a sinecure venture capital firms offer Valley executives while they're looking for a new startup idea. He's also talking to Google, which is surely eager to reverse the flow of its employees to Facebook.

11:20 AM on Mon May 12 2008
By Owen Thomas
897 views, 5 comments

caption contest

Robot CEO smuggles human wife into movie premiere

We'd grown so accustomed to seeing Google CEO Eric Schmidt squiring girlfriends to events that we couldn't believe our eyes. Was that attractive blonde on his arm actually his wife, Wendy? The couple eschewed the red carpet when entering the Castro Theater for last night's Vanity Fair-sponsored screening of Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson for the San Francisco International Film Festival, but our paparazzo still managed to snap a shot of the publicity-averse Mrs. Schmidt. (Some insiders suggest that Wendy, a graduate of UC Berkeley's journalism school, was behind Eric's temporary boycott of News.com after the website published their home address.) Can you suggest a better caption? Do so in the comments. Yesterday's winner: "Handvertising is the new banner ad," by loganvision. (Photo by Steve Rhodes)

4:00 PM on Fri May 9 2008
By Jackson West
3,125 views, 14 comments

Latest by Owen Thomas: @hopelessdeskmonkey: I'm going to accept an edited version of this one. more »

leaks

Who's going to TechTalk Menorca, the Balearic boondoggle?

Martin Varsavsky, the founder of Wi-Fi startup Fon, has concocted another excuse for Web 2.0's jet set to rack up frequent-flier miles and buy carbon offsets: It's called Menorca TechTalk, held on Varsavsky's ranch on the Mediterranean island this weekend. The website is password-protected, but Valleywag got a list of who's going. It's a curious mix of professional conference attendees, like Rapleaf's Auren Hoffman, Loïc Le Meur of Seesmic, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, and David Sifry of Technorati, mixed in with a few people who have day jobs. There are even Googlers on the list — and when have you known those lot to leave the protective bubble of Mountain View? Oddly, Jimmy Wales did not seem to make the cut, though his New York patroness, Louise Blouin MacBain, is listed. In the comments, sort the TechTalkers into your preferred categories. More »

3:20 PM on Fri May 9 2008
By Owen Thomas
782 views, 3 comments

Latest by sggrf: is this a joke? any list that michael arrington, with his tiny blog, as the most successful makes me very queasy. more »

airship ventures

$8 million for blimp rides from Google HQ to Napa Valley

With a parking space at the giant hangar on Moffett Field run by NASA, Airship Ventures plans to buy a blimp and run pleasure cruises from the Googleplex's back yard to Napa Valley's wine country. To that end, the startup has secured $8 million in funding from wealthy sorts, including lead investor Esther Dyson. Airship Ventures can surely count on the legions of local steampunk fetishists to keep the waiting list for seats well padded, not to mention corporate-expensed junkets from Valley tech companies. After the jump, video of a Tokyo flyover in one of the Zeppelin NT airships the startup will use. (Illustration by Martin Luechinger) More »

3:00 PM on Fri May 9 2008
By Jackson West
915 views, 3 comments

Latest by LongAgoYahoo: Blimps and Zeppelins are not the same thing. Zeppelins have rigid airframes, blimps keep their shape via pressure differential. Macon, Akron, Hindenberg and Graf Zeppelin were Zeppelins. Goodyear and Snoopy One are blimps more »

don't be evil

Scientology critics say Google banned them to win Scientology's advertising business

Google's video-sharing site YouTube began hosting a channel for The Church of Scientology last month. It's a "sponsored" channel, so Scientology pays for the privilege as well as for the Scientology ads YouTube also began serving in April. Now a group of Scientology critics have accused Google of banning users critical of Scientology in order to win the Church's advertising business. More »

2:00 PM on Fri May 9 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
855 views, 10 comments

once you're lucky, twice you're good

F is for Fitzpatrick, and "hookers and blow"

LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick is a prankster, as evidenced by his Halloween costume last year, when the new Googler dressed up as Facebook to mock his coworkers' fears of the social network. I'm told that in Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, Sarah Lacy's new book about Web 2.0, there's an anecdote about Fitzpatrick submitting an expense report — successfully! — for "hookers and blow" when he worked at blog software startup Six Apart. That was likely a reference to the early days of LiveJournal, when users made ridiculous accusations that Fitzpatrick was spending money meant for servers and bandwidth on "hookers and blow." We'd love to hear more, but alas, Fitzpatrick only got 8 out of 294 pages, according to the book's index. Here's the page for "D" through "F": More »

1:00 PM on Fri May 9 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,577 views, 7 comments

Latest by BobDope: The way to do this is a naming convention where your servers are named things like hookers and blow. more »

video search

Why Google should hurry up and buy Blinkx

Blinkx founder Suranga Chandratillake has always wanted his video search engine to be to online video what Google is to the Web. Here comes his chance. On May 24, a clause in Blinkx's IPO filings that requires the company to pay its former parent, U.K. search engine Autonomy, $50 million in case of any acquisition will expire. Both Google as well as News Corp. are said to be bidding to acquire the company. Google would be smart to cinch the deal. More »

12:20 PM on Fri May 9 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,307 views, 6 comments

Latest by happyfeet: Better if all the audio was turned on in search results. more »

Valleywag

Why online ads are getting ever cheaper

Valleywag team

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