— Marissa Mayer on her penthouse and the similarities it shares with Google. Fascinating read about an interesting individual.
Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.
I can’t fault Google for this reliance on data. And I can’t exactly point to financial failure or a shrinking number of users to prove it has done anything wrong. Billions of shareholder dollars are at stake. The company has millions of users around the world to please. That’s no easy task. Google has momentum, and its leadership found a path that works very well. When I joined, I thought there was potential to help the company change course in its design direction. But I learned that Google had set its course long before I arrived. Google was a massive aircraft carrier, and I was just a small dingey trying to push it a few degrees North.
”— Douglas Bowman’s last day at Google. Interesting to see when design is controlled by engineers.
After the demise of Dodgeball it should come as no surprise that Google came out with an almost identical concept. Instead of using SMS they went straight to GPS and smartphones. What an obvious way to promote Android! But sarcasm aside, it’s nice to see some movement in this sector despite the awkwardness in the demo video (your mom can track you on her GMaps? really? kinda-creepy). I can’t wait to see this hit the iPhone and non Android, Blackberry platforms for some growth.
This isn’t the ideal solution to see friends in realtime but it’s a start.
This is an excellent post on the end of Dodgeball. Google’s experiment was flawed to begin with and this is exactly why it never got off the ground.
