G Fast? Google Gets Yahoo’s Souders For DoubleClick, Android Speed
“‘Y” is Steve Souders, Chief Performance Yahoo, ”jumping” to Google as of January 7? Henry Blodget wants to know! Despite dubbing himself a ”Silicon Alley Insider (SAI),” the Wall Street outsider marks the end of 2007 with a public plea for “insights” for 2008, from the public:
“From the outside, hard to see this as anything other than yet another long-term exec fleeing a sinking ship. Any insights appreciated.”
No problem, Henry (only hard for you, perhaps): Here goes. Unfortunately for your signature “Yahoo to Zero” style sensationalist headlines though, and contrary to the “outrageous conculsions” your SAI traffics in, the Souders move from Yahoo to competitor Google is undoubtedly outrageously non-dramatic.
Steve Souders, a seven year Yahoo veteran, conculdes a banner year: YSlow performance tool, “High Performance Web Sites” book, conference mainstay…most significantly, success in making performance a “prioity” at Yahoo.
What next? High performance engineers continually seek more challenging challenges. Rather than “fleeing a sinking ship,” as Blodget brandishes, Souder is seeking new waters for professional navigation.
Souder is far from abandonning Yahoo, he leaves the company with his performance mission accomplished and a Yahoo performance team ready and able to carry on the performance roadmap Souder set underway for Yahoo in 2008.
Why NOT move to Google now? Souder changed the Yahoo developer culture to one that is perfomance-centric. For his own personal development, however, Souder will grow more by being at Google now, a company which has long differentiated itself by performance.
Souders is curious, in particular, about how Google achieves proprietary competitive performance advantage, especially via its “hardware topology.”
Why does Google want Souders? It is unlikely that Souders will unveil anything not allready in the public domain that can speed up Google.com even more.
Google is keen on Souders accomplishing his next performance objectives under the Google banner, especially given that Souders’ next big performance challenges complement the Google development roadmap.
If Souders had remained a Yahoo!, he would be tackling two big speed challenges in 2008: ad serving and mobile. What good timing for Google, given its DoubleClick and Android investments!
Souders has already made a comittment to “improve the performance of ads” because he deems ad serving to be “the slowest part” of a users’ Web experience. Souders wants to make sure “people don’t hate ads.”
How about mobile? How about “YSlow for mobile”? Souders believes the performance field is but at “the tip of the iceberg” and is keen on evangelizing faster mobile performance.
In 2008, Souders will have ample opportunity to make the world better for ad serving and mobile surfing, thank’s to Google’s (soon to be?) DoubleClick and Android.
Google, itself, however, has some some big challenges of its own coming up. SEE: Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008
Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia and
2008 Social Media Warning: Beware Google AND Facebook and
Browser Flack: Will Google Ever Escape Microsoft Rule? and
There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and
Lost On Google Maps! What Merry Christmas? and
Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers and
Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam and
How Google AdSense FAILS Better Business Bureau and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed!