Google Innovation … Employ the Best Engineers, Understanding Context, Invest in R&D and Focus
You might not like some of the things Google do or that they have a virtual monopoly in some markets, but their story of engineering excellence put them on the right track … employing the best engineers, understanding context, investing in R&D and focusing on the user.
While most people would point to Xerox PARC as the research lab where their parent company had no idea about the amazing technology they were sitting on. The potential of the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) research facility at the Systems Research Center (SRC) in Palo Alto, California, was perhaps even greater. In fact, they worked on a mobile music player that could fit in your pocket many years before Apple worked on it.
The inventions in the lab included the first multi-threaded Unix system (Taos), the first user interface editor, and the networked window system (Trestle). When Compaq took over DEC in 1998, it was renamed the “Compaq Systems Research Center”, and, when, in 2002, when Hewlett-Packard took over Compaq, they relocated their research labs there.
They also created AltaVista, and which had the potential to become Google, but DEC just didn’t advance it. While Google went for minimal, AltaVista just became more blotted. In the late 1990s, the research lab…
