What on earth are you talking about? Google's infrastructure is so large it can handle the same sort of influx that Gmail would have generated, whereas back then they couldn't.
Why on earth does that mean the company is run by marketing consultants?
the same reason 20% time is dead and requires management approval. do I really have to spell it out? (google maps started as an engineer fooling around with ajax).
Do you work at Google? I'm curious, because according to others, while 20% time does technically require management approval, it's usually not a problem.
Going from "it's your time, nobody can take it away from you, but it's up to you to take it", as it was in my day, to "it requires management approval" is a big difference to me. Would you agree?
no, I'm using loads of data-points, including reading about organization near the top as reported by business sources, as well as comments at various places that I can link to (including here), and finally by observing Google's actions as done and as reported. I can detail all of this for you if you like, but, really, it's not so hard to put together. Come to your own conclusion.
Really? It seems to me that the invitation scheme was meant to strum up artificial demand, with the side effect of not letting in a lot of smart people who could do cool things with the product.
The fact that the SDK is available on day one is also pretty great.
