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Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
San Francisco office rides the wave
May 23, 2008
Posted by Todd Curtiss, Director of Engineering, Site Reliability (SRE)
San Francisco has been attracting freethinking writers, artists, instigators, and entrepreneurs for more than 150 years. The people who built, experienced, and created this diverse place have all shared a passion for innovation and extending beyond the conventional. San Franciscans kicked off the gold rush and made the first pair of
jeans
, received the
first transcontinental telephone call
in 1915, came together for the
Summer of Love
and the
original Burning Man
, and played a major role in the dot-com and Web 2.0 booms. The City always seems to blaze new trails.
Sure, our summers are cool and foggy, our hills are steep, and our streets are twisty. But SF Googlers think this is the perfect place to work. Earlier this year, our own "Father of the Internet"
Vint Cerf
launched the office by inspiring the assembled engineers to think about today's challenges at scale, speaking about the challenges of interplanetary IP communication, the future of the Internet, and who's to blame for IPv4's limited address space (Vint says it's him).
We in the
SF office
contribute to a broad cross-section of the Google world in a number of ways: we write software for managing big computing clusters and keeping them efficient; we analyze vast piles of data to understand how the web works; we engineer reliability, scalability, and security into the apps many people rely on; we share our tools and methods with the open source community; we create internal productivity apps to support our engineers.
And that's just in engineering. The SF office also supports ad agency customers, local markets and classifieds. We're home to our philanthropic arm
Google.org
, and we make time to participate in community volunteer programs through our employee-created Google Cares-SF program. We have an active green committee, access to the GFleet car-share program, and we're the first plastic-bottle–free office among all of the Googleplexes.
Here's what some of us have to say about working here:
While we may be new, Google SF is growing fast. With close proximity and access to Mountain View and the rest of the Silicon Valley, we span the best of worlds: local and global, campus and city, 'burbs and urban, highways and dirt roads. We're always looking for talented and passionate people to
join our team
, so if you want to be part of building the next big thing, we'd love to hear from you.
And in case you need another reason to come visit us in Shaky Town,
Google I/O
, our largest developer conference to date, takes place at the
Moscone Center
on May 28-29. It's not too late to
register
-- we hope to see you there.
Ten years and counting
September 26, 2008
The Google doodle tradition started a long time ago (in
summer 1999
, in fact) when Larry and Sergey put a
stick figure
on the homepage to signify that they were out of the office at
Burning Man
. Nothing against stick figures, but our logo designs have become rather more varied since then. Today you'll see a special design that commemorates our 10th birthday. We've incorporated a little bit of history by using the original Google logo from 1998. And since everyone keeps asking what we'd like for our birthday (besides cake and party hats) -- the first thing we thought of was a nice new server rack.
Update:
Added image.
Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience, and Dennis Hwang, Webmaster
Oodles of doodles
June 8, 2004
One of the things I like best about Google is that we're the kind of company that, when a user writes in to suggest that we honor the once-every-122-years Transit of Venus on our home page, we actually do it!
My name is Dennis, and I'm the guy who draws the Google doodles. But the doodle tradition started here before I did. The first doodle was produced by (who else?) Larry and Sergey, who, when they attended the Burning Man festival in
summer 1998
, put a little stick figure on the home page logo in case the site crashed and someone wanted to know why nobody was answering the phone. By the time I began an internship here in the summer of 2000, the company was producing doodles on a regular basis. At the time I was a Stanford undergrad majoring in art and computer science, and, although I hadn't been hired to do anything remotely related to logo design, I eventually stumbled into my first doodle gig (Bastille Day, July 2000, for which I did a fairly boring flag motif).
And I've done all the doodles ever since; I've produced
almost 150
by now. The doodles are only a small part of my actual job (as Google's international webmaster, I'm responsible for managing all our international site content, which keeps me plenty busy), but it's definitely my favorite. Holding up my mockups and then holding my breath while Larry and Sergey do their "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" emperor thing is never boring, and I love the fact that my little niche within this company turned out to be something so cool and creative and, well, Google-y.
What doodles will I be doing next? Well, telling you in advance would spoil the fun of it, and I have no idea anyway. If you've got any ideas of your own, feel free post them in the
Web Search Help Forum
. Who knows; you may just make a little Google history yourself.
-- Dennis Hwang
Update
August 2009: Contact information updated; date and link corrected for first doodle.
Saying thank you to our Google Top Contributors
October 10, 2013
Every day, Google
Top Contributors
from around the world share their product expertise with people in
Google’s official forums
, from sharing helpful tips to answering burning user questions. Top Contributors not only help users directly, they champion user feedback, which gives our teams valuable insight on opportunities for improvement across various products. They contribute to 250 product communities in 26 different languages, and their expertise touches hundreds of millions of users each year. These Top Contributors are a critical part of the Google family and we brought many of them together at this year's
Top Contributor Summit
to say thank you.
Building on our
first
summit in 2011, we kicked off the second Top Contributor Summit last week near Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Over three days, Top Contributors came together to discuss their favorite Google products, meet with our engineers and product managers, see demos of new products and collaborate with fellow Top Contributors.
Sebastian Miśniakiewicz, Top Contributor in the Webmasters Polish forum, talks with Program Manager Oahn Nguyen and Map Maker Program Manager Nicole Drobeck
Top Contributors met with product managers and community managers to learn the latest about some of Google’s products, and had the unique opportunity to give their feedback directly to the product team. They also sat down with designers and support team members to discuss the long and short-term vision for various products. Multi-product Top Contributor Manny Barwin (known as “The C Man” in our forums) said, “what impressed me most was the interest taken in our feedback.”
Yogi Anand, Docs Top Contributor from Michigan, tries Google Glass
Top Contributors also got a sneak peek at recently released Google products. After hearing a presentation directly from the Google Glass team, each Top Contributor was given the opportunity to try Glass for themselves. AdWords Top Contributor Adam Briggs said, “I found the best part was being able to try out Glass; it's such an awesome product and I'm really looking forward to it becoming public."
We also put on several social events where the group was able to meet Googlers, chat with their fellow Top Contributors, and have a little fun!
Top Contributors play air hockey during a social event at the San Jose Convention Center
Photograph by Paciano Triunfo
We had a great time at the summit saying thanks to our Top Contributors for all they do for our users. If you’re interested in becoming a Top Contributor, get started by becoming active in your favorite Google product’s
forum
or
learn more
about the Top Contributor Program.
Top Contributors and Googlers show their excitement on campus
Photograph by Paciano Triunfo
Posted by Sarah Claxton Deming, Top Contributor Summit Organizer
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