Zingku Backstory: Founder Sami Shalabi Newest Google Engineer?
Will a Google Phone change the game? How about: Will Google’s acquisition of Zingku mobile startup player change the Google Phone game?
Also, how does Google CEO Eric Schmidt like to staff up the Googleplex?
“We would buy (small) businesses in lieu of (recruiting) engineers.”
Sami Shalabi could very well be the latest rocket scientist to be “recruited” to Mountain View, thanks to the Google purchase of “certain asets and technology” of the startup he co-founded: Zingku.
Shalabi left his job as software architect for IBM in May of 2006. By July, he was on his way to ”innovating in mobile for consumers, musicians and developers” via his “small funded company”: Zingku.
Shalabi set out to find a “junior engineer” interested in helping his “small growing team” build “an exciting consumer site that brings together web, mobile, and IM.”
The prospective engineer Q & A used by Shalabi is worthy of the Google rocket scientest screening process:
Do you love to code? Does the line between hobby and work feel blurry?
Have you been inspired by your own ideas and then get them done?
Do you like working in small teams?
Do you love working on every layer of the software stack?
Are you excited by stuff you can do with mobile phones and IM?
Do you like to invent and learn new technologies?
Do you like to work with little supervision?
Do you love your Unix and Java?
Do you debate about programming?
Do you obsess over creating beautifully simple code?
Do you love to get things done?
Do you want to work on a cool consumer Web 2.0 product that will change the world?
Has Shalabi himself been “acquired” by Google, along with his Zingku ‘technology”?
Shalabi is an MIT alumn and a self-described geek. He has an impressive portfolio of patent pending “inventions” that are undoubedtly of keen interest to the social networking enamored Googleplex:
Social Networking
Multi-Channel Conversation Engine
Secure Content Syndication
Third-Party Applications In Collaborative Spaces
Community Role Mapping
Dynamic Event Notification
Online Meeting Materials
Sami Shalabi may very well now be applying his patent pending knowledge on behalf of Google, as the newest Googler on the block!
BUT, Did Shalabi make the RIGHT move? READ: Zingku Flips to Google: NO Dodgeball Hacker Lessons Learned!
ALSO: David Kirkpatrick to Mark Zuckerberg: How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways and Why Does Facebook Make Young Men Swoon?
AND: With Facebook Platform as a Developer Friend, Who Needs Enemies?