How much are you worth after all...?

Well It has been a really long time since I blogged about anything. Lots of things happened in the last couple of days...? or should I say Months...? So let me start by telling you about a sweet little discussion that I had with my girlfriend the other day. Well she is quite a proponent of the company that we all know so well... the company that does searches really well, gives away all its services for free, encourages all its users to waste a whole lot of time on the Internet and the company that uses the oldest Internet business model in the books... Ad Business...

Ok don't get me wrong. I really have nothing against Google. Its a nice company. All its products are quite thought over, dandy, simple and very very effective. I have been using Google for all my search requirements for quite some time, until last weekend. I was having a discussion regarding the latest releases of Live search and a friend, whom we closely call "Jeels" or "Jeelani" told me that Google is more like a habit. If you really want to appreciate Live Search, you have to kick the habit. So he asked me to go to \\Jeels\NoGoog\install.cmd or some such location and asked me to install a small utility that he had written, that would redirect all IE searches from http://www.google.com to http://www.live.com. Even the Google toolbar ones, if you have one installed. The first few days were pain. Google is quite a habit I realized.

But then I started noticing that about 80% of the times, I found what I wanted on Live Search. You see I also have Firefox installed and this dandy utility isn't written for Firefox. So I go to Google as the last resort, using Firefox. about 75% of the times, if I didn't find it on Live Search I didn't find it on Google either. I did the math and on a rough order of magnitude Google was only 5% more effective for me than live is. Of course this data is based on my search topic preferences and on a very un-systematic algorithm. But my conclusion, Live may very soon be as good a search engine as Google if it isn't already, and Google may only be the best search engine in the minds of its users.

So why is it that Google gives away all its services for free? In my humble opinion, Google products do not have much business value. The calculation of business value can be based on the amount of money that a user is willing to pay for a service. So let me ask you. How much are you willing to pay for Google Search, Google mail, Google Talk, Orkut or Picasaweb for that matter? Fine Google does huge business but if you look at it from an Engineering perspective, is it such a big deal to manage a few simple, low featured, no frills, web sites? Writing a small low featured chat application and integrating them together?

Google products do not have a return of investment on them and hence free. Besides I prefer a company that makes products that solve some business problem or assist in some chore. Do not mean to make a direct comparison, but there are companies that make pornographic material and spam and make money out of that. Products that waste time and that wouldn't be considered respectable by any user, even if he uses it himself, privately.

Writing applications with the excellence and usability that it sells is quite a job. As an engineer, I also take it to the personal level. No matter how good a job an engineer does, if he doesn't get a good hike, a level rise and a bonus in his annual appraisal, he really hasn't done a good job. How much money do you require, you would ask? well its not the money, I must remind you. I am quite happy financially you know. It is the appreciation. Giving appreciation in emails is quite easy. It is only when you are appreciated monetarily, that you really know your work's worth.

The meaning is two phase. Good appraisal tells you 2 things.

1. You have performed well
2. Your performance was truly appreciated by your managers

Which also means that a bad appraisal tells you 2 things.

1. You could have performed better.
2. No matter what your managers tell you to pacify you, no matter how many sweet emails they send you, they are not happy with your performance. You may give a 100 excuses to yourself or to your managers, doesn't mean a thing. It didn't work out this year, work for it next year. Period.

Yeah, sounds harsh, But if you fall in that category, if you are not happy with your hike, this really is bad news.