Blog 1st year ICM

YouTube is a success story that pops up every now and then and makes you wonder why you did not come up with a brilliant plan yourself. The basic principle is simple as that YouTube gives people from all over the world a chance to publish their own motion pictures and share them with the rest of the globe. This got some bands contract deals with major record companies, which otherwise would not have been possible.

 Not everybody is happy with this type of media organs. Inhabitants of Thailand, who tried to visit the website found out it has been blocked by the Government. The gave no specific reason for this action, but speculators say it has to do with the Thai Government do not want their inhabitants to look at video posts that are negative for the country itself. After Thailand came Vietnam, who also blocked the website. This is, of course, a negative revelation for the freedom of speech in the world. Some blogs, like http://mashable.com/2007/03/11/youtube-blocked-inthailand/ came up with a award for the one who was able to guess which country will be the next to block YouTube. On this blog http://www.angkor.com/2bangkok/2bangkok/forum/showthread.php?p=14206#post14206 you can read some responses from YouTube visitors who found out that the notorious website was blocked.

Googleplex is a heaven on earth for Google’s employers is often said. Swimming pools, tennis courts, nice and free of charge restaurants. It’s all there. But recently some of the ex employers, called Xooglers told a different story. It is not all peaches and cream.

Creativity is an important aspect in the Google Ideology. A good way to express this is the “20% time”. Every Googler can spend one fifth of his time on exploring new ideas. Good things have come out of this, for example Gmail, but Xooglers say that this 20 percent in practice works out to be 120%. This means a lot of wasted time. The best products, like YouTube and Google earth have come through acquisitions. This causes that many Googlers, whose ideas are rejected, tend to leave and work at other successful start-ups, such as Facebook.

Some Xooglers have blogs on the Internet, on which they share their experiences with google, like this blog http://forevergeek.com/news/xooglers_having_trouble_with_google.php. Google seemed not amused and contacted the former employers about what they did not want to published. Like the bloggers say, apparently Google is not so nice and open as they seem. and may have something to hide.