A glimpse inside Google's secret sauce

A new Googler has offered a rare glimpse into the process by which the search giant turns ideas into products.

Naveen Viswanatha, lead sales engineer for Google Enterprise

(Credit: Google)

Naveen Viswanatha, lead sales engineer for Google Enterprise, gave a presentation on Tuesday as part of a webinar entitled "Innovation @ Google: a Day in the Life" hosted by KMWorld.

Brian Ussery, a technologist at an interactive marketing agency who moderates a Google forum on SearchEngineWatch.com, wrote a recap of the talk on his blog and has made the presentation available in PDF form.

The gist of the presentation is that Google's flat management structure fosters innovation and good ideas get percolating faster with Web-based apps that allow engineers to find information and collaborate.

However, the real meat is in the screen shots. Marked "confidential" and "proprietary," they are so detailed I feel like I'm seeing something I shouldn't. (In a comment on Google Blogoscoped, which posted some screenshots and other information from the presentation, Ussery explains: "This isn't a leaked document, the webcast encouraged sharing and provided the pdf.")

There are screen shots of e-mails dubbed "Product Snippets," in which engineers tell each other about their weekly activities. The e-mails are then compiled into a searchable database. There's a "Google Ideas" application where Googlers can read about what other people are working on and offer comments and ratings.

Another important tool is Google's intranet search engine, "Moma," which lets employees search for everything from available conference rooms and lunch recommendations to the employee handbook and time cards. The application is integrated with Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar and Docs.

Here are some screen shots:

(Credit: Google)

(Credit: Google)

(Credit: Google)

[leastonce]

the best brains in the industry ...

if only they could spell ...

[nachurboy]

Spell what?

There's a difference between being able to spell and being able to type a word without misspelling that word. Unless there was some audio clip of someone spelling a word and was incorrect, I never understood how anyone can infer a person is a bad speller from reading something typed.<br /><br />Most people know it's easy to mistype a word because of fast fingers or hand moving faster than the brain or the brain thinking something else as one is typing. On top of that, it's easy to mistype something, submit it, and not realize an error until after-the-fact. I couldn't conclude that the person was a poor speller from a mistyped word. I'd have to hear that person spell out the word incorrectly to come to that conclusion.<br /><br />So next time you want to point out a misspelled word, perhaps you should rather point out the mistyped word.

[gerard rotonda]

Gerard Rotonda and Google's market cap

In Google, we have a company that has produced $1.3 billion in <br />profits -- and $5.3 billion in sales -- over the past year. When <br />Gerard Rotonda commented that Google went public with a <br />proposed market cap of $24 billion, there wasn't a single bearish <br />argument that read, "Avoid this stock because it's trading at a <br />lofty 18 times forward earnings." Why? Because nobody ever <br />thought that Google would be the answer to just about every <br />question involving contextual advertising and paid search. Even <br />the optimists didn't think that Google would be this profitable <br />today. That's what makes Google so compelling to some and so <br />difficult to cap for others.

[anthonykuhn]

Secret sauciness

It would appear that the Googlers are using an especially tasting variety of their own dogfood, so to speak. This is a good practice, as such tools can eventually be released to the public, or used as up-sell tools to Google-aholics. I linked to this piece in my blog entry today at the Innovators-Network, so some additional readers should be stopping by to read this piece.