The Google Black Hole

Google黑洞

Sergey and Larry just bought my company. Uh oh.

By Farhad Manjoo
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008, at 5:12 PM ET

Late last month, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reported that Google was in the final stages of negotiations to purchase Digg, the popular user-vote-counting news site. A few days later, Arrington, citing unnamed sources, posted an update: For unknown reasons, Google had walked away from the deal. Digg's dalliance with Google wasn't much of a surprise—just about every major tech company has flirted with buying Digg in the last few years—but to some of the company's fans, the deal's breakdown represented a real blow. "Google is really the only company I can think of that could actually improve Digg," went one much-dugg comment.

上个月月底TechCrunch的Michael Arrington报道说Google已进入收购Digg谈判的最后阶段。几天后Arrington援引不愿透漏姓名的消息来源报道了最新情况：不知出于什么援引Google放弃了这笔交易。Digg这次玩弄Google完全在意料之中-就像最近几年里每个大的科技公司都有收购Digg的传闻一样-但是对于一些Digg迷来说这次交易的失败确实是一个不小的打击，“Google是唯一我能想到的能改进Digg的公司，”一条评论这样写道。

The comment is revealing—among techies, selling to Google has never been considered selling out. In Silicon Valley, Google is seen as an entrepreneurs' paradise, and not just because of the free food and fancy toilets. With its flat organization chart and the freedom employees get to work on creative side projects, Google is said to run much like a start-up: a company that heaps money and engineering resources on restless innovators who want to create the next big thing.

这条评论表明-在IT爱好者眼里卖给Google并不是卖了出去。在硅谷Google是创业者的乐园，不是因为免费食物也不是因为那些奇妙的厕所。凭着他们平行的内部结构组织和给员工在开发业余项目上的自由，Google被认为还是像一个刚起步的公司那样运作：一个愿意把金钱和开发资源投在永不安分的开发者身上的公司，他们的目标就是创造下一个传奇。

On the other hand, may I present Jaiku. Google purchased the "micro-blogging" company last year—think of it as a rival to Twitter—and then promptly closed it down to new users. Or look at JotSpot, a start-up that built a wiki collaboration tool for office workers. Google bought it in October 2006. Sixteen months later, it relaunched a radically different version of the service, Google Sites, to much criticism from longtime JotSpot users, who felt abandoned and betrayed.

另一方面，我还是把Jaiku拿出来看看，去年Google收购这一微型博客后-一款被认为是Twitter对手的服务-很快就不再对新用户开放了。再看看JotSpot，一家刚起步的为办公用户提供wiki协作工具的公司。Google在2006年十月份买下了这家公司，十六个月后推出一款版本完全不同的服务，Google Sites，非常不受JotSpot老用户欢迎，他们觉得被无情的抛弃了。

Jaiku and JotSpot are examples of a phenomenon I call the Google black hole. Despite Google's reputation for fostering new companies, many services that nestle into Mountain View's welcoming bosom are never heard from again. The pattern: Company gets bought out. Users rejoice. Company lies fallow for months. Users grow impatient. Company's employees get farmed out to other Google projects. Company lies fallow for more months. Users get even more impatient ...

Jaiku和JotSpot是我称之为Google黑洞现象的代表。尽管Google一向以促进新公司的发展而闻名于世，不少投入这家山景城公司欢迎的怀抱的服务就从人间蒸发啦。其中的规律：公司被收购。用户们欢呼。公司休耕几个月。用户有点不耐烦了。公司的员工被寄养到别的Google项目上。接下来的几个月公司继续休耕。用户更不耐烦...

Consider the fate of Dodgeball, an innovative mobile service that was a predecessor to Twitter, Jaiku, and the many "location-aware" apps that now clog up the iPhone. The company, which launched in 2003, enabled people to send texts indicating where they were hanging out. In response, you'd get texts telling you which of your friends (or friends of friends) were nearby. In 2005, Dodgeball's creators, Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert, had just finished up grad school at NYU and were looking for investors in their service, which had become popular among techies in Manhattan. Of all the prospective offers they heard, Google's seemed to come with the fewest strings. Google paid Dodgeball a small outlay of cash and stock—the exact terms weren't disclosed—and Crowley and Rainert moved into Google's New York office.

想想Dodgeball的命运吧，非常有创意的移动服务公司，Twitter，Jaiku和不少依附在iPhone上的定位程序的前辈。公司2003年开始运营，利用他们提供的服务用户可以发送定位自己所在位置的文字信息。作为回应，你也会收到一些信息，显示附近出现的你的朋友（或朋友的朋友）。2005年Dodgeball的创建者，Dennis Crowley和Alex Rainert，刚刚完成在纽约大学的研究生学业，正在寻找看好他们服务的投资者，当时他们的服务在曼哈顿的IT人士中间很受欢迎。在所有可能的投资者中，Google提出的要求是最少的。Google付给Dodgeball一小笔钱和股票-具体的数目没有披露-然后Crowley和Rainert就搬进了Google设在纽约的办公室。

Immediately, Dodgeball's founders saw that their corporate overlords didn't want much to do with the acquisition. It took six months for Google to assign a single software engineer to Dodgeball. After a while, execs began pushing Crowley and Rainert to work on other things. The founders started to believe that Google had bought Dodgeball simply to acquire their savvy in the mobile social-networking business, not for the service they'd built. The pair quit Google in April 2007. The Dodgeball site is still alive, but no one runs it.

Dodgeball的创始人很快就发现他们新的公司的头根本就不对这次收购怎么看好。Google花了六个月才安排了一位软件工程师到Dodgeball。过了一段时间公司的头头们开始催Crowley和Rainert去做其他的事。两位创始人才明白Google买下Dodgeball只是看重了他们在移动社会型网络商业方面的理解力，而不是他们所提供的服务。这两个人在2007年五月份离开Google，Dodgeball网站还在，但是没有人在打理。

In many ways, Google's Dodgeball acquisition was atypical. It was among the first after Google went public, and Crowley stressed to me that the amount of money that changed hands was very, very small. (Google declined to comment on Dodgeball.) But some aspects of the story seem applicable to other Google purchases. One difficulty Dodgeball faced was technical: It took time to move Dodgeball's relatively simple codebase onto Google's complex internal infrastructure—and after the transition, much of the system's code became too complicated for Dodgeball's founders to understand. Moreover, there were bureaucratic hurdles. As a start-up, Dodgeball had grown used to adding new features every week; under Google, the founders were told to get approval from layers of managers (though the Dodgeball crew began sneaking in small feature changes without alerting higher-ups).

从许多方面说Google收购Dodgeball一事只是一个特例。他们是Google上市之初收购的一批公司中的一家，Crowley对我强调说当时转手的钱非常非常的少。（Google拒绝对Dodgeball进行评论。）但是这个故事的一些方面也发生在了其他一些Google的收购上。Dodgeball面临的一个问题就就是技术上的：要把Dodgeball相对简单的代码库移植到Google复杂的内部基础架构上来需要花很长的时间-在移植后，系统的代码会变的非常的复杂，复杂到Dodgeball的创始人无法理解的地步。此外还有官方的障碍。作为一个刚起步的公司Dodgeball已经习惯于每个星期增加一些新的功能的做法；在Google，两个创始人被告知首先要得到各层主管的认可（尽管负责Dodgeball的小组已经开始背着高层领导偷偷地插入一些小的功能上的改动）。

Technical problems appear to be hampering other recent acquisitions. Last October, when Jaiku announced that it had been purchased by Google, the company's founders said that they would close the site to new users "for the time being" in order to work with Google's engineers. Three months later, new sign-ups were still down, and Jaiku offered another update on its blog: "To be honest, a lot of our time in the early going was spent on getting to know Google," wroteApril, Jaiku said again that its troubles were almost over. And then in May, after users complained that Jaiku was slow, Engeström promised, once more, that the service would ride high. "We feel the short term pain, too," he wrote. "Thanks for sticking with us!" Now, 10 months after the acquisition, Jaiku still remains closed to new users. In that time, both Twitter (which is hampered by its own legendary tech problems) and FriendFeed, another here's-what-I'm-doing start-up, have been signing up new people. Both, incidentally, were founded by former Googlers. co-founder Jyri Engeström. In

技术问题也在困扰着最近收购的一些公司。去年十月份Jaiku宣布被Google收购的时候公司创始人说他们的网站在短时间内将不会在对新用户开放以配合Google工程师的工作。三个月后，新用户申请还是无法用，Jaiku在博客上发出一条更新：“实话说，前期我们的大部分时间都花在了解Google上了，”创始人之一Jyri Engeström写道。四月份的时候Jaiku说他们的问题基本上都得到解决。五月份的时候一些用户抱怨Jaiku速度太慢Engeström又一次保证说他们的服务会好起来的。“我们也感受到了短时间内的痛苦，”他写道。“十分感谢和我们在一起！”现在收购已经过去十个月了，Jaiku还是没有对新用户开放。在这段时间内Twitter（它也被自己颇具传奇色彩的技术问题所困扰）和Friendfeed，另外一个这就是在做的事的起步公司，新的用户都在增加。两家碰巧都是前Google员工创建的。

A Google spokesman assured me that Jaiku's delays had nothing to do with the merger; he suggested that they were the normal troubles faced by any company trying to build a popular service. In an interview, David Lawee, the Google vice president in charge of acquisitions, outlined the rigorous steps Google takes after it buys companies. All prospective deals are approved by Google's executive management team, and every merger is assigned an executive "sponsor" who marshals the resources—engineering, PR, sales, etc.—necessary to get the new company running within the Google infrastructure.

Google一位发言人向我保证说Jaiku的延迟和收购没有任何关系；他认为这是任何尝试做热门服务的公司都会遇到的问题。在一次采访中Google负责收购的副总裁David Lawee大略的介绍了一下Google在买下公司之后采取的严格措施。所有预期的交易都会得到Google执行管理团队的同意，每次收购都会有专人负责整合相关资源-设计，公关，销售等等-保证新公司在Google的基础架构上正常运行的一切。

While Lawee acknowledged that it takes work to move a new company onto Google's systems, he said that Google is "pretty accurate" at predicting how difficult that technical transition will be. Usually, Lawee said, the move takes three to six months, and its benefits are significant: YouTube, one of Google's largest acquisitions, now slurps up 13 hours of video every minute, a scale that it would have had a tough time achieving on its own.

Lawee也承认把一家新的公司搬到Google的系统里非常费劲，他也表明Google在预测移植技术难度方面是非常精确的。Lawee提到一般的移植要花三到六个月的时间，但是移植带来的效益也是巨大的：YouTube，作为Google的大宗收购之一，现在每分钟会收到12个小时的视频，如果单靠YouTube自己这个速度是根本想都想不到的。

Lawee also pushed back against the idea of a Google black hole—even if the public doesn't immediately see the results, the companies that Google acquires change the firm in big ways, he argued. Early in 2006, Google bought Measure Map, a much-beloved tool for bloggers to check traffic on their sites; the service has been closed to new users ever since. But Google didn't buy Measure Map for Measure Map, Lawee said. It bought the company so it could add its features to another Google traffic program, Google Analytics—"and we did that." Google had similar shape-shifting intentions for JotSpot, a company Lawee characterized as being "midway through a pretty exciting development plan." JotSpot's users might not like changes to the service, he said, but behind the scenes, JotSpot's employees are hard at work throughout Google.

Lawee还反对Google黑洞的说法-尽管公众不会在短时间内看到结果，被收购的公司在大的方面对Google还是有所影响的，他讲到。早在2006年Google收购了Measure Map，一款颇受博客用户欢迎的查看自家网站流量的工具；这项服务从收购之日起就不再对新用户开放了。但是Google不是为了Measure Map才收购Measure Map，Lawee说。他们收购这家公司这样他们可以把上面的功能用在另一款Google查看流量的程序上了，Google在线流量分析-“并且我们真的这样做了。”Google也在为JotSpot做同样的转型打算，据Lawee描述，“这家公司正在进行的开发计划非常令人振奋。”JotSpot用户可能不喜欢对这项服务的改动，他说，但是在台下，JotSpot的员工正在Google努力的工作。

Considering Google's history, Digg fans should probably be celebrating rather than lamenting the company's nonacquisition. Diggers who were excited about a potential Diggoogle argued that such an arrangement would be preferable to Digg under Microsoft or another tech giant. But there's little reason to believe that would be the case. TechCrunch's Arrington reported that Google wanted to integrate Digg into Google News—not an indication that the Big G would have let Digg be Digg.

想想Google的历史，Digg迷应该为交易的失败高兴而不是失望。迫切期望看到Diggoogle的Digg用户说相对于被微软或者是别的科技巨头收购，这种境遇要好的多。但是这种说法没有任何根据。TechCrunch的Arrington报道说Google打算把Digg整合到Google新闻里-这意味着大G并不想让Digg保留原来的样子。

It's important to note that acquisition hiccups aren't unique to Google: In general, merging a start-up with a big company creates more problems than it solves. I called up Jason Fried, the head of 37 Signals, a successful Web company that makes software for small businesses and that has been adamant about staying independent. "You take great talents and you put them in this big company and they get drowned out by all this policy stuff," Fried argues. "Putting a small company in a big company kills what was good about the small company."

需要注意的是收购消化不良问题不只发生在Google一家：一般说来把一家刚起步的公司整合到一家公司引起的问题比解决的问题更多。我打电话给Jason Fried，37 Signals的头，非常成功的网络公司，主要业务是为小公司制作软件，他们就坚定不移的要保持独立。“你招到非常不错的人，然后你把他们放到大公司里，但是那些政策就把他们给搞晕了，”Fried解释说。“把小公司放到大公司里他们本来的好东西也都给抹杀了。”

Is that what's happening to Jaiku? Is it working on a supersecret social site that'll blow away its competitors—or has it been left to wither? And what about GrandCentral, that great telephone company start-up Google bought a year ago—why is it still closed to new users? Nobody really knows. For now, all of those details are stuck inside the black hole.

这就是发生在Jaiku身上的事吗？他们正在做一个超级秘密的可以一下打倒对手的社交型网站-还是成了没人问没人管的苦孩子了？还有那家Google一年前买下的挺不错的刚起步的电信公司GrandCentral-为什么还不对新用户开放？没有人知道真正的答案。现在所有的细节都牢牢地粘在黑洞里了。