So.. Google has started renting goats.

“At our Mountain View headquarters, we have some fields that we need to mow occasionally to clear weeds and brush to reduce fire hazard. This spring we decided to take a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we’ve rented some goats from California Grazing to do the job for us (we’re not “kidding”). A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.”

It sounds like a smelly solution. Maybe they can try painting cows purple and heat stamping them with the word Google Cow next?

Somebody keeps googling for: Associate Product Marketing Manager Google Interview. And there are so little of these posts around, most seems to be Software Engineer Google Interview related. So here goes.

The Google story continues. I was contacted by the University Coordinator and he fixed me up with a recruiter as well as for two phone interviews.

—

The Phone Interviews:

So I had two phone interviews with two PPM, one after another, in my tiny room in Linkoping. All the questions were technical and puzzle-like. But it just took precision as well as some imagination. Both went very well. In fact, the latter was so nice I was chatting with the guy and he ended up passing me his email to email if I did not get a reply from the recruiter.

So I waited.

And I got an email from the recruiter over the next week saying the usual congratulations we want to invite you on-site to Mountain View for the Google College Day. Naturally I agreed! And then the recruiter did not reply! And this went on for a couple of weeks I and I sent a few emails without responses.

And I waited and waited and waited.

Finally I sent an email to my last phone interviewer, and I got a reply the next day. Not very good. (No wonder during the economic crisis Google is firing a ton of out-sourced recruiters) So apparently I was FORGOTTEN and it was nearing Christmas, so we had to reschedule a really expensive flight to after Christmas where I was going to meet up with the rest of the team.

And yes, I did miss the Google College Day. Bummer.

But still, I was all set to meet the team at Mountain View. And that in itself was great and very well-planned. I received instructions, reimbursement forms, NDAs and the works. Other than the flight from Sweden to the US, the rest of the trip was paid upfront first. Google paid for all transportation costs, plus there was a nice allowance for meals everyday which was about 50USD which meant that you could eat quite alot because meals in the US ain’t that expensive! Plus they also paid two nights at the hotel for international candidates.

But since the flight itself was like too long (more than 10 hours with two transits) I asked and was allowed to extend my hotel stay to three more days in which I paid of course but it also meant that I could explore San Francisco. I thought it was really sweet of the coordinator.

—

The trip and the hotel:

I really liked flying from Linkoping, its a small airport so its really expensive to fly from there and you only do it for business or if you have rich parents. I actually flew in a Turboporp which had propellers and everything so it was a nice experience. There was specific instructions NOT to mention that you were for Google on the forms due to security clearances in some areas. And I started to imagine a world where you would seriously say, oh I’m with Google.

I stayed in the Hilton Garden Inn in Mountain View, which apparently is near to the Googleplex. It wasn’t the first time I’ve been there, previously I was there for a bridge game (where the Googlers use cards from National Competitions to see if they could score better) and a puzzle hunt but that’s seriously a story by itself! I arrived late in the night so I figured I would just sleep in one full day and have the next day really fresh for the interview which would be lasting the entire day. I heard there are variants to the duration of the interview but mine was approximately six hours, lunch at the Googleplex inclusive.

Of course to rest easy, I decided to just walk around Mountain View and eat at In-and-Out burgers.

—

Day of the Interview:

I arrived at the Googleplex feeling really excited. When you sign yourself in with the receptionist, there’s a really nice guy there which offers you a Google notebook and tells you to take drinks from the fridge. There are a ton of smoothies in the fridge which I thought was really awesome, and so I waited at the Google reception where you could see what the world was actually googling about. And of course there were the ever so famous lava lamps on the counter. The recruiter greeted me, and showed me to the room and allowed me to grab some snacks at the pantry which was insanely packed with all sorts of goodies like M&Ms and stuff. Yum!

My interview room was just outside of where a couple of Google tech talks were being held in the open. There wasn’t alot of people there, like maybe ten. But the guy was talking about some seriously complicated mathematical proof of some algorithm. It was fun to look during breaks though, to see the number of people which actually stayed to watch.

The toilets has funny signs on them as well. (If I’m not allowed to post this please say)

I had interviews with five different people ranging from Product Marketing Managers, Product Managers, Software Engineers and Sales. Because as a PPM you seriously need to work with everybody so everybody must like you. Since this was two years ago and I’m also bounded by an NDA, I cannot really talk about the questions being asked except to say that they weren’t that difficult at all. A rough idea of the kind of questions you could probably read are those pure marketing questions, how to segment demographics, how to target market groups, how to promote adsense, the kind of possible word-of-mouth marketing instrument for say (insert your favorite or unknown google product).

I also had lunch at the infamous Google cafe, the one with the healthy food. It was nice because you could grab all the food you want, for free. Well, technically no, you are paying for the food out of a reduced pay check, but still I still have a college mentality, and college students are attracted by free food. The Googler which brought me to lunch was very nice, when she knew that I was from Singapore but lived in London, New Jersey and currently Linkoping, she talked about how PMM get to go once a year to a developing country, and the year before last they went to Russia. I thought that it was really nice.

My general impression though, was that the interviews were mixed. As my memory recalls, the first few and last few interviews were the best. In fact, in the last interview the very nice lady literally said that I was a perfect fit for Google because I had both technical and marketing skills at the same time.

I left the Googleplex feeling mixed that day. One because I think some interviews were kind of amused at my answers. Two because there were people in the group which I really felt wanted me at Google. And Three because I knew that you needed everyone to like you, and these people ain’t the ones making the final decision.

—

Conclusion:

I didn’t get in. And I knew it after four months.

—

What I think went wrong:

1. I have no idea. My transcripts were lost and I had to resend them. This is after they bring a candidate in from Europe and mind you the entire thing wasn’t cheap. The week later was the Ski Trip so I didn’t get a review. And then I waited, and waited, and finally got a standard rejection letter after four months!

2. My grades weren’t great – aka a 5.0/5.0. My grades eventually upon graduation was 4.0/5.0, but at that time it wasn’t great at all. And Google wants its employees to have a stellar GPA with straight As.

3. This interview was done in the middle of my studies, not at the end. So I still needed to do my thesis and let them wait, or to join Google and screw my Masters.

4. I answered some bad questions. Oh yes, there was one… I remember it vividly because six months later Apple announced the release of Safari for Windows. Bleah.

5. I have very little knowledge about Adsense and Adwords. And Google is an advertising company. I figured I should have been churning out the dough in some way or another already through market affiliates, internet marketing and whatsoever.

6. They wanted super entrepreneurs. Who had already made a bundle in the dot-com bomb.

SERIOUSLY I had no idea.

—

But that’s alright. You see, in waiting for Google to get back to me. It took four months. This was after they had spent a huge amount of money bringing me to Mountain View and paying for my expenses there. Plus the waiting and everything in between, it took six months. And of course my life couldn’t wait in situ whilst my application seemed somewhat lost in there, and in the meantime, NXP got back to me, and offered me a traineeship in the Netherlands.

Of course I would have definitely have taken the job in Google if I had been offered.

And it was an experience getting through almost the entire procedure, since Google has its infamous we only hire the best of the best policy. Plus I also got to explore San Jose and San Francisco and that’s another story by itself.

But of course it would have meant (looking in retrospect) that I would never have gone to NXP, finished my MSc, and graduated out of Linkoping University as well as have a paper publication (possible) in IEEE. I would also not have interned in the High Tech Campus and got a job there as well. (Yes I know, I was interviewing in a marketing position in Google, but I am the programming-marketing sort of person)

Plus I also got to explore the streets of Amsterdam to know if prostitutes dancing in the windows and weed sold in the coffeeshops were really true. And so you know how that story ended up….

So I woke up and today there have been talks about Google acquiring Twitter. I hope that it is not true.

Scobleizer says don’t do it, and I say please don’t do it.

Because it won’t be the first time Google acquired something “Social Networking” and screwed it up. A few examples:

(1) Google’s shot at the social network thing “Orkut“, didn’t take off. Of course Orkut was done in Orkut’s 20% time, and Orkut is an engineer from Google, so if you are devoting 20% of your time in Orkut, and 80% of your time making money for Google, its another thing. Orkut is of course popular with Brazilian teenagers, but who else remembers Orkut?

(2) Then Google tried its hand at acquiring Dodgeball, which actually feels a little like Twitter, then shut it down but that was before the founders left because Google “didn’t fit into what they wanted Dodgeball to go”

(3) Google acquired Blogspot, the wonderful invention of Evan Williams who incidentally is also heading the Twitter team. After he left Google. Then Google didn’t do anything about it. And then all over the world, came wordpress, typepad, livejournal, and the works.

Do you even know what is Google Friend Connect????

… I could name a couple more but thats not the point.

The point is. Twitter is now a hot topic because it has become a thing for business. Imagine I’m at the Pizzeria across the street, and it has this great new wonderful “Bacon topped pizza with special duck sauce”. It is fantastic. I twitter my friends, who are on on my Twitter follow list, along with some internet marketing spammers, some tech guy who blogs and you kind of get the idea. Some tens of thousands of people on my (imaginary) list reads it, and the next hour ten people who live near me, go visit the Pizzeria with the wonderful pizza. Of course similarly, the Pizzeria, is on Twitter. And “Jack Batwing #pizza” searches for “Jack Batwing pizza” to know that this pizza is so well-received that it should be a permanent fixture on their menu.

And because Twitter is accessible from EVERYWHERE – mobile phone, iPhone, Internet, IM, whatever. It makes it all the more easier for someone to microblog.

So scale the pizza example hundreds of thousands of times over. And there you have it. An easy way to know about reviews. Straightaway.

—

Of course you need to get the user addicted first.

—

So thats the point. And that’s not just the point. Twitter recently added search. And a gazillion people searching within Twitter has naturally made Google… afraid. So Twitter has the ability to be huge. Big. Insanely Great for businesses as a sideline to just being just a spammer sort of thingy.

And thats why I’m afraid. Because lets just look at the Business Model of Google. And social networks. Sure, social networks attract a ton of users. And social network is also a “fabulous” buzz word which marketers use. But users do not necessary translate to money. For now, if I want to buy an eBook, the first thing I’ll go-to is Google Search. There are a gazillion of Ads next to where I’m searching, sure. And I might click on one of those ads, and it might cost the advertiser one buck and Google of course gets a fraction of that. Do you go “into” your social network like FaceBook to check out the eBook? Most likely the majority of the people ain’t going to do that. Our social network is for friends. And friends are great because we are more likely to trust a friend before I buy something. But the point is: Where does it all tie in?

And thats also probably the reason why Google has so often neglected the social networks it has acquired. So we have Blogger. Where do you want to put the ads? Okay, so now we have a ton of people using Blogger, and there is this tiny search bar on the top to “search”. Where does the ads come in? And back to the same point: Where does it all tie in?

So yes. So there comes my point. Google is a great engineering company, they have brought the desktop to the web, and should continue to do so. I love their search, email, chrome and documents. But they ain’t doing so well in Social Networks, and it would sux if they entired the Twitter space, then realised that due to people not going in there “TO BUY”. In fact, most Twitter update systems ain’t for buying – do you see ads appearing in Twitter widgets on people’s blog? Twitter ads in Twitterific or Tweetdeck? Twitter ads to your mobile phone? I mean that would well, sux. And if you sux, you will lose the users which was the first point in the first place.

So, I think that Google should not acquire Twitter. Twitter should look for a different business model, because chances are, Google will screw this up if they realize that the money isn’t coming in from Twitter and then they direct their engineers to something else. And you’re realize that Twitter, the hottest thing in 2007/8/9, has become the has-been in 2010.

I have some idea of a business model, but hey, we can’t let the post run too long can we? (Of course it would be kind of funny to know what would happen to this design guy if he did end up working back at Google-Twitter)

So what do you study as a PPM anyway?

1. Google products, of course. Study every single Google product and feature, was it an acquisition and how did it tie into its Business Model (If there is any). If you are technical read the PageRank algorithm even. For every single Google product, know its acquisitions, its competitors, and how Google tried to create (successfully or unsuccessfully) viral marketing with it.

2. The ENTIRE world of Web 2.0. Literally. Well, at least a rough idea. Know what is the latest greatest thing out there and how you can earn money from it and what is the best way to market it. And also know what is the possible new great thing out there (Cue Y-Combinator). Keep at least about twenty up and coming Web companies in mind.

3. Purple cow marketing. Assuming that your life is offline, what is the greatest non-viral-social marketing thing you’ve seen? Read as many biographies or books of great marketers. And a couple of reports of the social media. Don’t mention Apple, because we all know the Apple success story.

4. How Google earns money via AdWords and AdSense and its business model. And of how other websites earns money, or generally how any single thing on the Web earns money over all different kinds of business models.

5. It also would probably help if you were kind of geeky and knew Ruby on Rails on the sideline as well. (I’m not sure if this one helps)

6. Like I said, I didn’t get in eventually… even after one interviewer said that I would be a perfect fit for Google, so maybe you needed to drink smart juices everyday or something.

—

I’m going to write the story soon, it just didn’t feel right to have such a nice story without photos and all that kind of stuff. But I promise I will!

It all started when I wanted to sync the Outlook Exchange server at work, with my iPod Touch. And then I realized that it did not allow cross syncing on my iCal! So it was either iPod Exchange or iPod iCal.

How annoying!

And I also learnt that the way to do that was with MobileMe. So, I pay 79EUR/year for MobileMe, and I get like cross-syncing due to the over-the-air syncing or something which syncs everything from email, calendar, photos and more online disk space.

Anyway, I gave it a shot, and went in for the FREE 60-day trial. Because well, I like free stuff. I took out my Credit Card, and started MobileMe.

—
It didn’t change my life. I didn’t want to spend 79EUR/year to sync my contacts.

Plus the disk space was too little as well.

And I’m just a cheapskate.
—

So I ventured into finding alternatives and I decided to use all the free alternatives.

1. Mail: Gmail is the best web-based (and now Offline with Gears) email ever. And this coming 1st April 2009, it is Gmail’s 5th anniversary. I heard we’re going to have some surprises, like European localization and who knows, more space? Or maybe it will have excellent vertalen facilities so that nobody has to listen to my bad Nederlands in my emails ever again. For the record, I’ve used Gmail for a VERY long time, had those invites.

2. Calendar: Google Calendar will sync this up for you, and save the 79EUR/year. Google Calendar would just have to be the center, so download the Google Calendar Sync on your PC (Which uses Outlook I assume). Ignore the one-way setup and click on the two-way syncing option because you want whatever you updated on your outlook to be present on your Google Calendar and vice versa. Next install Calaboration on your Mac. Similarly click on the two-way syncing as well. With this, Google Calendar will be the centralized area to sync things together – just needs a little setup. Such that your Exchange will sync with the Google Calendar which will sync with your iCal! It works, at least for me!

3. Photos: I use Picasa and Flickr. Picasa gives you 1GB of online space, so upload your photos in the small way just for sharing the friends. Flickr gives you 100MB of online space a month, so upload once a month. Unless you are a photographer or something you shouldn’t be looking for free photo stuff anyway. For the record, I used to use Smugmug for the past four years. I canceled it, but its another story.

4. Storage: iDrive is FREE for the online storage for 2GB. However, they do give ten more if you add everyone in your contact list and give it to them. So yes I think I annoyed a whole lot of people this way, but I have 12GB of free space.

So yes, this is the way I did it. Its annoying to set up? Well, yeah. But hey, everything is free! (And my calendars are syncing)

Yes I’m going to talk about it now.

It’s going to be something I’ll probably tell my grandkids.

So yes, I’ve disappeared for a year – never bothered to update properly, just randomly talked about makeup, and stopped blogging. I don’t know why. Or maybe I do know why. But I think it was a nice break, away from that ever changing Web world, away from all that rss feeds and things popping up at you and the social media and stuff.

Too much information.

I think sometimes with ten million things popping in your face you want to sit and go somewhere to read a nice book, or to feel special when you get a nice birthday card from a friend, or to walk barefoot on the seaside, or to spend a week without the Internet. 

Although I’m not sure why in my absense I still could get 250 friends at Facebook and 150 friends at Twitter.

I think it has got to do with pretty pictures. Because I definitely wrote bimbotic things in there, because that is what I wanted people to believe. From all the makeup photos you’ve seen of me!

Well, so I’ll speak of it now. I figured since two years have passed I can talk about the interview I had with Google. Now that I got myself a real job in a real company and people can’t google me and say: Why the hell does she keep talking about Google? And since the craze is over with the Google thing I guess I can blog about it now.

Plus failure isn’t nice.

And since all of you know know that I am a software engineer and I don’t think Google actually has many software engineers in the Netherlands you know that I did not get into Google.

—

For the longest time, I wanted to work for Google. I can’t remember how long, but pre-IPO, when there was a couple of hundred people in the company. Maybe in 2003. I used Blogger since goodness knows when Google acquired Pyra Labs which owned Google. I had one of the first Gmail invites which I happily sold off for 50 bucks a pop. I thought the company was cool. It still is. I kick myself now and then because that was long time ago and I knew that Google was going to be the greatest thing in the next five years and still I bought zero Google stocks. If I could look back then, I would have bought a whole TON of Google stocks. But I like something like 19 and I had no idea how to buy stocks. I still don’t. I suck at that.

My dad oftens asks me why didn’t I tell him that Google would be great. It’s weird, but I was so insanely crazy about joining Google back then he should have just bought those stocks. Then now he’ll be retired and living with my mom in the Carribean or something.

—

So I did something with Google in 2005 which is another story but in 2007 I was in the middle of my MSc in Computer Science and I had to find an exjobb. Exjobb in Swedish terms means Master Thesis. And although I really enjoyed what I was doing aka HCI (Human Computer Interaction), I seriously wanted to leave Linkoping because it was too small and quiet and I lived in Singapore almost all my life and having to face less than 10 people on the streets sometimes was just too much to bear.

So I had done one year of Graduate School, and had one year more to go. And I didn’t want to do it in the university. So I started applying to companies around Sweden, since I had 12 hours of Svenska, and I looked into the Google Jobs website and I decided to apply for the position of Associate Product Marketing Manager internship and a couple of full time jobs. I figured a nice Summer internship would be good, then I would return to the rest of my course in a very Googly way.

So why Marketing? You say. Your education is in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and you are a software engineer now??? Oh yes, for some weird strange fluke of nature, I’m kind of addictive compulsive. Which means that when I like something I like it very much, and for some reason I liked Marketing, and Technical stuff, and they had to go hand-in-hand some way or other. So you can say that I’m a software engineer pretending to be a marketer, or a marketer pretending to be a software engineer. I don’t think the skill is very valued so for the past few years I’ve been trying to suppress that. Or maybe it is also because people tend to put other people in boxes. But it doesn’t matter anymore what other people think.

So it was great that few weeks after applying, I got a call from the University Coordinator! He was Swedish by the way, so we spoke a few Swedish words and it was funny, he talked to me for a bit, and then said that he would arrange for two interviewers to call me. He was really nice and I was super excited that day.

—

And so my next post would be what happened. And yes of course I did go on-site to San Jose. And yes, I did talk too much about Twitter two years ago when Google was all about Dodgeball. Which they acquired. And shut down. I think I probably reached almost the very end of the interview, but you would have to wait for that story!