My old team at Google has a new paper and Google Research Blog post up.

(This was not what I worked on, though.)

On the seasteading blog.

querldox just told me about this Valleywag piece:

A worker at Google tells us the company is taking evening meals off the menu: "Google has drastically cut back their budget on the culinary program. How is it affecting campus? No more dinner. No more tea trolley. No more snack attack in the afternoon." The changes will be announced to Googlers on Monday. Workers at the Googleplex will still be amply fed, with free breakfast and lunch, but it's a shocking cutback. Google has long milked its cafeterias for their publicity value; company executives have crowed about the company's resistance to recessions and its commitment to coddling its employees.

Wow. This may not seem like such a big deal from the outside, but the food was a huge part of Google culture. I have mixed feelings about whether Google's extreme coddling of employees is a good or a bad thing for the shareholders, but this is definitely a major signal that corporate culture has changed.

And this particular change seems dumb to me. Geeks work on a late schedule, so dinner is much more useful than breakfast. And the cost of cafe meals is quite low. At a time when the company is having retention problems due to being a big company and no longer as fun and sexy as startups, this seems like a dopey move.

As choiceful put it about how big a deal this is: "People take jobs at Google for the food!"

they took my badge, and I'm wearing a guest sticker for the first time in 4 years. Feels like I'm locked out of my home to not be able to open any of the doors, go where I want, etc.

Oh well, it's all for the best. I have a list a mile long of seasteading work to do, and an equally long one for personal stuff. Not going to have any trouble keeping busy!

Incorporating your comments & feedback.  This feels much stronger to me, although I'm sure there are some tweaks still to be made (like, I'm not happy with the flow of the first paragraph):

Subject: Farewell to Google, hello to seasteading

Hey Larry & Sergey,

I have a grand vision: to build new city-states in international waters so that people can experiment with a variety of political systems.  I've been fortunate enough to get some funding from Peter Thiel to go work on this seasteading idea full-time.

While it is sad that I will be leaving Google for this endeavour, I see it as a "Googley" goal: a way to make government be less monopolistic and more of a competitive, long tail industry, with far more choice for citizens. More like the web, less like the OS industry.

I want to change the world, and would love any help or guidance you can provide.  You can learn more at our website, www.seasteading.org, and I can be reached at patri@seasteading.org after I leave on July 29th.

Either way, thanks for creating a company which so deeply inspired me over the last 3.5 years!

I figure I'll send it Monday.  Feedback welcome, particularly suggestions on trimming words, I think it's a little too long:

Subject: Leaving to work on grand visions of better government

Greetings.  I'm leaving Google next week, and before I go I wanted to thank you for building such an incredible company.  The amazing people, user focus, long-term vision, and "win-win" viewpoint have been truly inspiring.

I'm leaving because I've been given an opportunity to work on my own grand vision: building new city-states in international waters so that people can experiment with a variety of social, political, and legal systems.  While it is a very different field, I see this as a "Googley" goal: I want to make government more of a competitive, long tail industry, with a variety of providers of different sizes serving different niches.  More like the web, less like the OS industry.

If you're interested, I would love to talk about this idea with you, and perhaps get some feedback based on your experience in bringing visions of a better world to fruition.  I'll be here until July 29th, and after that can be reached at patri@seasteading.org.  For background, check out our Intro, FAQ, or press coverage by Wired, Ars Technica, and Gizmodo.

Either way, thanks for the inspiration, and for a great 3.5 years!

As I clean up my directories and space at Google, I stumbled across a list of ideas I had fairly early on in the company. Most of them are now in existence.

One of them is Google BlogSearch.

Another was already in existence (which I hadn't known), but is secret it can't even be talked about internally (NB).

Another got integrated into Froogle.

Another is a big new project in search quality (RB)

Another, I actually got so far as to propose on the ideas board, where they told me it was ridiculous and impossible. A year ago, it became a major initiative in indexing. (Because it's obviously the right thing to do - I am baffled that anyone would have trouble seeing that).

A few didn't get done. Note that these ideas didn't happen because of me - I had no influence outside my small group, and so these happened because they occurred to other people as being ideas worth giving resources to.

I find it striking how many of my "Why aren't we do this?" or "Why don't we do things the obviously better way, instead of the current stupid way?" got put into practice. I feel validated as an idea generator.

I gave notice today at Google. My last day will be July 29th, for various reasons. Conveniently, that is also my birthday :). What a nice birthday present!

( Lots of rambling about the decision, plans, etc. )

My (former) 20% project got slashdotted again: Google's Prediction Market, due to the release of an interesting new paper about it (PDF). I had the time, the scope, and the data to write papers like this myself using our data, and I tried some, but...just couldn't get into it. I guess writing academic papers is not my thing.

Here's a brief summary of the paper from the WSJ