Obama is 'Google-like'

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama made an impressive showing at the Googleplex on Wednesday, joking about the casual attire of the audience and correctly answering a standard Google engineering interview question.

Asked by Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt what the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers is, Obama said the wrong way would be the "bubble sort method," which is a basic but inefficient method for sorting numbers. "You answered the question correctly," Schmidt said.

(Credit: Google/YouTube)

"He's fresh, he's new, there's something about him that's Google-like," Nicole Resz, a 26-year-old who works in Google's advertising department, gushed to Reuters.

"I've never seen so many people at a Google event. We've had everybody, we've had Mikhail Gorbachev," she said.

Googlers have also hosted Hillary Clinton, John McCain, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Mike Gravel, and Ron Paul in Mountain View, Calif., according to the Google Public Policy Blog.

Obama hit on some topics that are of interest to the techie crowd, including support for: Net neutrality ("The Internet is perhaps the most open network in history. We have to keep it that way."); expanding high-speed broadband; and freeing up wireless spectrum. He also said he would provide citizens better visibility into the workings of government and promised to appoint the country's first chief technology officer.

And he showed his humorous side, quipping as he looked at all the T-shirts in the audience: "It's good to see Google is maintaining its strict dress code."

His fireside chat with Schmidt is on YouTube.

[WillSimpson62]

He Didn't Even Answer the Question (Smart Politics, though)

He didn't answer the question, just gave an example of a wrong
question.

Scary that he could be President...

[timwaitsfornoman]

Well, yeah...

What do you expect from a Democrat. They can always spot the incorrect answer (invasion of Iraq was a mistake), but they don't have any right answers.

[AndrewRich]

What is it then?

So what is the right answer?

Just in case I ever get that interview, ya know.

[uhhuhsure]

could hilary have answered it?

it's scary that you think his answering the question would be a reason to elect him president. Could any of the candidates have answered. I think he's on point for the important issues.

[Trerro]

Actually, that's a good answer to a trick interview question.

If there was a perfect sort algorithm, there would be no need for companies like Google to constantly come up with better ways of doing basic comp sci tasks.

If you're applying for a job at Google, sure it's great if you know whatever the currently fastest known sort is (though that's likely to both change quickly and in some cases, depend on exactly what you're sorting.) What's far more important is to know not to rely on a very simple method that doesn't work well on huge data sets (and yes, the bubble sort would be a great example of that.) So his answer is essentially "I know what doesn't work, and I'm going to try to figure out - or create - what does." I would think that's exactly the kind of answer they'd want to hear.

[logan1337]

I'm actually pretty impressed that he knew that. Obama is not a computer scientist. Do you really think McCain, who has admitted he's actually computer illiterate, would even know what the term bubblesort means?

[William Crow]

Mr Straw Dog

The straw dog set up to make Hillary look "really tough" when she
finally beats him at the polls.

[flickrz]

not voting for u

not voting for you anymore....

[j_a_s_p_e_r]

Why was my original comment removed? It was not offensive. Here is what I posted

"The wrong answer would have been anything but the O(n log(n)) (quick, bucket, hash, etc) sorting algorithms. The wrong answer could have been "by hand". Why be correct by defining something by what it is not. Is Obama the right guy because he is not Hillary? Geez, talk about going Schmidt going gaga stupid over Obama "