On the heels of its recent release of the new programming language “Google Go” (See Gartner Analyst Ray Valdes’ take), the Mountainview behemoth has trumped itself with today’s release of “Google Stop”.
Unlike “Go” which is a high productivity and fast system programming language, “Stop” is actually a low productivity and slow campaign to get people to stop asking for so much freakin innovation. In fact, Google executives have decided that the only way to stop the rampage of innovation and complaints from competitors is to cultivate a culture of sloth.
Said an unnamed Google executive, “I mean, with all these young people running around inventing new stuff all the time, we hardly have any time to figure out what to do with all of it, let alone figure out how to make money from it. So far, we just throw stuff out there and people lap it up like thirsty puppies. We don’t even test the stuff! I mean, that was fun at first but now it’s just a tedious job at an accelerated pace. With “Google Stop”, we hope to slow things down a bit and get back to more traditional growth of software companies…”
In trying to put “Google Stop” in perspective, we decided to talk to the development team that created “Go”. Unfortunately, by the time we got there everyone was so active that all we could see were the blurs of people going about their business at near-light-speed from such great productivity. It was like trying to dodge a colony of bats, and we considered bringing in San Antonio Spurs basketball guard Manu Genobili to swat one out of the air but he declined saying “…as fast as those guys are moving, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were all rabid!”
But we did get a sense of why Google executives are so keen on slowing things down. It turns out that such near-light-speed productivity is subject to Einstein’s equations like everything else and all of the developers innovating on “Go” and many other Google projects were actually aging slower than the rest of us. Then the vicious cycle of innovation gets worse and those accustomed to simpler times were just getting tired while the young “turks” doing all the innovation just keep stirring the pot.
So, in comes Google Stop. The initiative centers on five key principles:
1 – The Principle of “Whiny Competition”: Developers will only be allowed to create something new after it is approved by a competitor. This way, innovation proceeds in a collaborative style, giving others time to catch up and making Google seem much more in step with old times. It also lets competitors begin to figure out how to address new business models that Google innovations invariably expose before those models begin to erode price margins in the competitor’s traditional models.
2 – The Principle of “Closed Source”: It works for Apple and it worked for Microsoft. We could learn something from those guys, don’t you think? Droid does.
3 – The Principle of “Actually Leaving Beta”: All Google products will need to go through a full beta cycle with an actual end date before hitting the street. This is compared to the practice of products never leaving beta even after customers have paid for them for years. Certainly will slow things down a bit.
4 – The Principle of “Hiring Legacy People”: No problem with age discrimination here since elderly in Google means 25 years old. But even hiring those in their seventies now, with the aforementioned near-light-speed deal going on, they will stay sharp and fresh for years to come – or at least until they slow those danged young-uns down. Besides, they remember history and can help us repeat it! – over, and over again.
5 – The Principle of “CEO Product Naming”: This is the kicker. Like with some other large vendors, the CEO will begin to name products. Not only will this slow down those productive people by making them hold releases until the CEO makes up his mind, but it will also make marketing a nightmare and get customers all tangled up in non-sense naming schemes.
So, Google Stop is set to sweep across the company in a far reaching attempt to turn the clock back to a time when slow and steady actually won the race. We asked a few more executives to comment and one said,
“With this new initiative, we will innovate on how to stop innovation. In fact, the only way we can survive is to stop trying to survive. When we figure that out we will have a real competitive edge because we can finally start figuring out all this cool stuff we have. Google Stop will…”
He actually never got to finish that sentence as a group of blurs moving at near-light-speed scooped him up and disappeared down a hallway. About 10 minutes later, Google announced the release of a new Hadoop based analytics system that will change the world. Man, that was fast!
>>> For those of you who have not figured it out yet, this article is totally fiction – Child, please! Just Stop.
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