8/10    http://www.businessinsider.com/google-puts-wave-out-of-its-misery-2010-8
        Google Wave No More. The people who worked on it were pretty smart.
        They wrote up a super awesome OKR with extremely low bar as a measure
        of success, exceeded everyone's expectations by going above those
        bars, and got big fat bonuses and promotions as a result of their
        planning. Brilliant.
        \_ How big a bonus are we talking about here? Did they get a founder's
           award?
        \_ GOOG has a lot of smart people. Wake me when they do anything of
           note outside of their search engine service/Ad Sense.
           \_ I assume you are not including buying up notable services like
              grand central -> google voice.
              \_ Buying a product shows some business acumen, but not much
                 engineering acumen.
                 \_ Buying a product, improving it and integrating it into
                    your suite requires possibly more engineering acumen than
                    building it yourself.  Google does this all the time,
                    with Google Docs being the best example.  -tom
                    \_ No, because if it was harder to integrate than
                       build they wouldn't have spent money buying it. The
                       idea is that it saved money to buy it rather than
                       build it (if they even had the idea to begin with).
                       This is a good business strategy that companies like
                       Cisco use, but it's kind of sad that Google can't
                       originate and develop ideas on their own given the
                       engineering talent they seem to have. There is something
                       dysfunctional there. Maybe it's management. Maybe it's
                       culture. Maybe they are already too big, fat, and lazy.
                       I leave speculation as an exercise to the reader.
                       \_ Companies routinely underestimate the difficulty in
                          integrating software components from different
                          development trees; anyone who's used an "integrated
                          suite" like LANDesk or Oracle Communications Suite
                          can attest.  Cisco has a lot of engineering talent,
                          too.  Maybe the dysfunctional thing is you.  -tom
                       \_ It is harder by far to maintain someone elses code
                          base than to write it yourself.*  And harder to
                          frankenstien together systems that are working,
                          reliable and secure from seperate components,  To
                          put it like this, companies pay top dollars to
                          coders and sysadmins for integration, not for
                          DIY cowboy setups.
                          * imagine also if all you have is an existing
                          binary and some sparse docs on how it works, or
                          an existing company system setup where all the
                          admins who have set it up have long gone
                          \_ Does this mean I should cover my short now?
                             - short GOOG at $100 guy