"Under the new plan, parents with two kids in Google day care would most likely see their annual day care bill grow to more than $57,000 from around $33,000.
At the first of the three focus groups, parents wept openly. As word leaked out about the company’s plan, the Google parents began to fight back. They came up with ideas to save money, used the company’s T.G.I.F. sessions — a weekly meeting for anyone who wanted to ask questions of Google’s top executives — to plead their case, and conducted surveys showing that most parents with children in Google day care would have to leave Google’s facilities and find less expensive child care." - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet
Strangely written -- hard to believe this is in the NYT: "Faced with this dilemma, Google decided that the way to solve the dual problems of a too-long wait list and a too-large subsidy was — are you sitting down for this? — to get rid of C.C.L.C. and make the Kinderplex more like the Woods!" - Paul Buchheit
Sergey Brin comes off as a real gem. Looks like 'don't be evil' is morphing to 'let them eat cake'. Amazing what a 40%+ drop in share price can do. - Peter Simard
I found it odd that NYT quoted Sergey multiple times but each quote was disputed by Google PR after the fact. Seems like their PR folks are trying to do some "damage control"? - Alex Barbara
$57,000 just for someone to watch your kid? Remind me to not have kids for a while.. - Alex Barbara
Slowly but surely the shine will finally come off of Google and reality will set in. - AJ Kohn
The sense of "entitlement" is pretty stunning to an outsider who is an occasional visitor. It's pretty obvious (to me) that the "gimme" attitude is going to be an albatross around Google's neck when the time comes that their stock price returns from the stratosphere and settles around something reasonable and in line with the true value of the company. - Jason Wehmhoener
Geez. I don't know one solution that didn't generate new problems as a result of its having solved an old problem. Can't win no matter what in the eyes of the media. Also, this is news-worthy enough to be in the Times? - Ginger Makela
I have no thoughts on the day care issue in and of itself but people changing "don't be evil" into "do no evil" makes me grind my teeth. http://www.google.com/search?q... - Erica Baker
@Paul, agreed -- it's a strangely written story. The writer's bias is clear. Using heresay from employees then vaguely referring to the official statements. - Sprague D
$57,000 was for two kids... and after the price reductions, it won't be that expensive. - Michael Leggett
The author feels that employee-provided day care should be a requirement just like health insurance (not sure I agree), but fails to applaud Google's effort to make it available to those that want it. A 700-child waiting list (over 2 years) is unreasonable as is Google paying a $37,000 subsidy per child. I love working at Google... and I want them to stay around. Paying that large a subsidy is irresponsible to its employees and its shareholders. - Michael Leggett
You could argue that they should just lower costs then... but the main cost is the teachers (as it should be). Google believes teachers should be paid more and I'm proud that they are putting their money where their heart is by doing just that. If you don't want to pay so much, you can always find day care else where, right? Am I missing something? - Michael Leggett
When I visited HP I noted that they don't have the coffee carts anymore that they used to have. The employees noted that other benefits had gone away too. When the high profitability phase of a company ends, the benefits usually go away. At Microsoft they tried taking away things too, like towels in locker rooms, and the employees rebelled. - Robert Scoble
wonder what is average daycare costs there, in area? - silpol
It's absolutely incredible that day care would cost more than the mean national income ($48,201 according to Wikipedia). I understand that this is Silicon Valley, and therefore not applicable to the rules of the rest of the country, but still...it's astounding. - Spinn
We were paying $21,000 a year for two kids and that was top of the line in Charlotte. In theory I like the idea of company sponsored childcare but in reality I don't want my employer to have any influence over my kids. - Lori Reed
I posted this to reddit and got on the front page :P - Bjorn Tipling
probably I have to stop bitching about local tax - I pay monthly for not-full-day at kindergarten in about 100 meter from my house about 130 EUR, for full day it might reach 200 EUR/month max, i.e. annually 2400 EUR (~3600 USD)... hmmmmmmm - silpol
"Google can’t just have low teacher-child ratios — it has to have the lowest of anybody." - Shouldn't it be high teacher-child ratios? Unless they want more children to less teachers. - nadim
I had a hard time believing this was a NY Times article when I first saw it. Talks about child care at the beginning, then references a blog post talking about how Google is not a good place to work and then goes on to detail the child care issue. - Turker Keskinpala
@Michael -- $57G's .. not expensive? ... I don't even make that much in 2 years anymore .. - Steven Hodson
"If Google had really wanted to do something path-breaking about its day care crisis, it would have spent less time creating elitist day care centers and more time figuring out how to “scale” day care for everybody no matter what their salaries." - Gabe Schaffer
Even $33k for 2 kids seems like a lot -- at $16/hr it seems like you could just hire a babysitter for 8 hours a day to watch your two children. For $57k you could just hire a child psychologist full time. - Gabe Schaffer
@Steven I didn't mean it wasn't expensive. It is expensive. I meant it won't be as much as $57k. Maybe I'm not being fair... but I thought the article was bias (not invalid). It does raise some interesting issues... are companies responsible for providing child care? Something seems backwards with how we live when we work so much that we expect our employer to take care of our children. I don't know the answer... but good things to think about. - Michael Leggett
So basically by having my wife stay home and do a superb job of taking care of the kids and the house during the day she is worth about $90,000 a year. Thank you babe! You are awesome! - Christian Burns
But what about people who don't have kids, should Google pay them because they are saving the company money? And what about those people who want to have kids, but can't meet the right person, should Google pay for dating services? Google is an awesome place to work, and sometimes they go overboard. Witness the swimming in place pools with lifeguards that almost nobody used. Let's agree to compare them with other companies. It's only fair. - Chris White
hmmm... let's see, four years ago, i was making $45 000 a year before i quit to take care of my daughter full time while my wife continued her job; because it made more sense than spending my entire salary on a nanny just so i could go to work. plus i get to hang out with my kid(soon to be kids) all day and do cool stuff like help them learn the alphabet, count, play their first casual computer games, go to the park, swim, museums, etc. there's always that option. - Nathan Eckenrode
It seems like everyone has ideas on how to do this at a lower cost than Google. Maybe someone should open a competing "google" daycare near the Google campus -- from the sounds of it there would be hundreds of eager customers. - Paul Buchheit
I'm interested to see if these kids actually turn out to be uber-smart. How many of the Googlers went to intense, research-driven, daycares like these?We'll see in ten to twenty years, but at times, one has to wonder how people ever became intelligent without having the latest and greatest learning craze forced down their throat. A better indicator of their intelligence will most likely be how much learning is re-inforced (deep breath here) at home by their parents, instead of video games and TV. - David Adewumi
haven't owned a car in over a decade- don't want that to change now that we live in a new city with a much lower population density. - Nathan Eckenrode
I've driven mine somewhere significant twice since April and have only made about 4 or 5 trips less than a half mile only because it was raining or I had to carry something back too big for the bicycle. It changes your view of getting around. I stopped driving my car to the office (8 miles) 2 years ago and started taking the bus. - Adam Turetzky
This isn't really an ideal place to go carless -- lots of sprawl; not many bike lanes; and drivers who really don't know what to make of bikes. But you learn to adjust. Funny: now when I look at a building, the first thing I notice is whether there's secure bike parking. - Chris Baskind
Less common here. I live in a small town and any time I try to walk anywhere, no less than 5 people stop to offer me a ride and check to see if I am having car trouble. - Trish Robinson
That's because you're incredibly popular and stuff. - Chris Baskind
Nah, it's because I've lived here way too long. - Trish Robinson
Just carry a axe with you trish, they will let you walk ;) - Earl E Morningwood
side effect of asking lots of tough questions, you start to get some answers that make sense. - Nathan Eckenrode
As a fellow geek we better be sure we're right, because if we are wrong it's gonna be bad. - Blackopsmanners
Blackopsmanners: my idea of hell is being forced to sit next to Jesse Helms for eternity. Of course HIS idea of hell is probably sitting next to me. So, who is in hell? - Robert Scoble
Geeks are generally tech freaks and when you see item after item made by man changing the way your life is lived then it becomes pretty easy to accept that man invented god not the other way around. - Jeff Jones
Geeks are more educated and the more education a person has, the more likely they are to look at our world logically, and choose atheism. - Granteezy via fftogo
I think it has a lot to do with rarely humbling oneself enough to admit that they don't, "know it all" or "have all the answers". It's generally about humility, which geeks tend to have very little of. - Trevor Carpenter
I cannot disagree more Trevor. Atheists are the ones saying "we don't have all the answers". Deity based religions certainly claim to do so. - Jeff Jones
Trevor: Jeff is right. I used to be very religious. I found that most of the people who were religious were not humble at all and weren't able to look at the world without having any answers. Our minds are very strong pattern recognizers. It takes a lot of humility to turn off the pattern recognizer and just accept you don't have the answers. But, this is why I call myself an agnostic. I'm not certain there is not a God. Just like I'm not certain there is one, either. - Robert Scoble
To Jeff and Robert. I certainly can understand what you are saying. However, I separate out the religious from the genuine Christian. The majority of the "religious", including many who clam Christianity, are far from humble. They are generally far from God too. I would not say that those who are legitamately close to God claim to to know it all. In fact, they would say that God knows it all, and we can't know it all. My statement about geeks not being humble is more poking fun than anything else. - Trevor Carpenter
I'm a card-carrying member of a deity based religion as Jeff calls it. Christian is what I am and I certainly don't claim to have all the answers. In fact, I have very few. That's why I need/desire the deity. Right? Sadly, there is an unfortunate number of folks on both (many?) sides of this argument who give their own group a bad rap. I'm just trying to not be one of them. The way I see it, God is the one who created the patterns we're recognizing so I'll accept that He has the answers I need. - Lisa L. Seifert
Trevor: I was in a church of people all of whom considered themselves as "genuine Christian." Part of the problem is that religious people assume they really know what makes someone a "real believer." - Robert Scoble
Lisa: the thing is, anyone who professes to "believe" has already put something in their pattern recognizer that simply isn't there. Or, have you really seen God? But I'm going to beg out of this. I learned in the 1990s that these conversations never convince anyone and just piss people off. So, "Hide" is earned, have fun. - Robert Scoble
Robert. Sure, I know what you're saying. No belief system is worth anything if it in fact doesn't claim to be the "right" way. Without taking this too far...I'm coming from a traditionally reformed, Bible believing worldview. All that to say, Lisa is right. Even those on my team have harmed your view of true Christianity. - Trevor Carpenter
just think of a computer software program that has a certain set of rules....if then statements, etc....then think of DNA and explain...then who set the rules? randomly appeared? - Pokai
You're welcome, Trevor. (For what?) Robert: I'm sad that you're hiding the conversation. Nobody's pissed off. (Yet??) And I'm certainly not reading that anyone is trying to convince anyone of anything. I'm simply seeing different opinions here. And I like that. As far as seeing God: not in the way I'm assuming you mean. But I see the God-Effect everywhere, not to be confused with the Scoble Effect. ;-) Ocean, Wind, my own body-muscles, bones, blood, organs, blah, blah, blah. Standard argument. :-) - Lisa L. Seifert
I'm with Scoble on this one, hide earned! - Granteezy
thanks lisa, I think we should whip Scoble into the posted 60 foot monster wave (by Mitchell Tsai) and see what happens to his belief system....then he can tell us what happened to George Carlin :) - Pokai
Because few deities are open source. - Craig Thomler
I am of the view that historically and currently that Established Religions are a cause of a lot of Evil in the world and that has always been a major switch off for me about any Church. - David W
pokai, i know you ended with a set of rhetorical questions but what i'm inferring from your tone is that you're drawing a tangent that can't be supported. no one necessarily had to set rules for DNA for them to assemble randomly based upon thermodynamic stability. and then for them to interact with other molecules... - Kambiz Kamrani
because they don't like the fact that there is something they cannot explain? or maybe because they don't like the fact that there is something that is (could be) controlling them? - Timo Zimmermann via twhirl
@ Robert, I think it's unfair to paint whole groups of people as one things or another: muslims, Christians, Jews, Atheists, Agnostics, et. al which is probably what bothers me most about these discussions. Not the facts of what's right or wrong, but rather the debate normally centers around painting a wide brush across an over-generalized groups of people. see "why are geeks often atheist?" I know a lot of smart people who believe a lot of different things ... - David Adewumi
I think the questions of humility/uncertainty vs. "we know whats best" views of religion can correspond well to the tech world...there are entrepreneurs looking for what has been the missing, the algebraic X, the unknown that hasnt been built yet or thought of (think of major advances like RSS or SNs a la twitter or friend feed...and then there was the aol way of thinking where they thought they could comprehend entirely the social aspects of the web in a closed platform...geek doesnt always = athiest - joshuabacker
One reason the I am turned off by religion is that each one tends to believe that their version is the only version. Some even to the point of professing to kill others that do not believe the way they do. There is very little tolerance of other points of view. Most Christian religions profess tolerance of others and I'm sure their are some groups that do practice this, but I find significant hypocrisy with most religious institutions between what they preach and how the really act. - Jeff P. Henderson
ok kambiz, interesting, but what makes the same genetic material become a frog, dog or human? - Pokai
Lisa, I was simply thankful for your comments. They were spot on. - Trevor Carpenter
I really loved this part of the article:The absence of proof does not mean there is no proof at all; but it does give a strong reason to doubt if there is any. Geeks have conditioned themselves to think logically, just as the religious have been conditioned to replace logic with trust in what they are told. What can be extracted from this is that geeks are not atheists simply because they may know "more" but also because they choose to think differently (whether or not they think superiorly is a question for another debate). - Lisa L. Seifert
I agree david. I wonder why intelligence is their defense. - Pokai
pokai, Jeff nails it. but let me clarify one thing -- the same genetic material doesn't necessarily exist in a frog, dog, or human. a frog has a different genome (set of genes) from a dog and a human. these different genes arose through mutations during various biological processes like DNA replication, and gamete production. they are continually evolving by way of natural selection. the frog, dog, human, share a common vertebrate ancestor but they all have diverged from that point into separate species. - Kambiz Kamrani
Continued from previous post: I liked that part for the reminder to keep thinking. I don't ever want to be conditioned to think one thing only whether I'm wearing my Christian hat, my geek hat, my caretaker hat, etc. I don't think we can generalize either way. I agree with David - and with Jeff regarding hypocrisy. It's one reason I hesitate to enter into discussion of beliefs. I know I'm being lumped right now by some of you; but I'd rather try to state my own point of view than sit back and be lumped. - Lisa L. Seifert
I unhid this for a second just to see what direction it went in. I'm hiding again. Some things haven't changed in 10 years, I see. Sigh. See, I used to participate in every religious thread in Visual Basic Programmer's Journal's CompuServe forum (after moving them to that magazine's "OffRamp" which is where we moved stuff that went off topic). The conversations always degenerated just like this one has into calling the other side names. No one ever learns anything. So, Lisa, sorry. I'm getting older I guess - Robert Scoble
than you kamrani and jeff for your clarification, - Pokai
Bye, Robert... Does this mean you won't come to the parties I host at the Ritz once I move to HMB?? ;-) I'm sure I'll get the chance to discuss greater issues such as religion with you at some time when there will be no name-calling. :-) - Lisa L. Seifert
i think scoble just faked hiding, but he is still reading...funny how scoble made the first comment on this post... - Pokai
Oh, no. Do not doubt. Scoble is THE hider. :-) Eventually, he may look back, but he is the best of the hiders. I hide because he has inspired me to do so... Seriously. I always forget about it until he evangelizes it. Then I hide again. - Lisa L. Seifert
@Jeff "One reason the I am turned off by religion is that each one tends to believe that their version is the only version. Some even to the point of professing to kill others that do not believe the way they do." Now replace 'religion' with (culture, style of government, monetary system, nation, state, language, et. al) and you will see this is not an effective argument. See current war in Iraq/Afghanistan for an example. Is that really about religion? - David Adewumi
Up to this point, I can't find one person, on either side of the discussion calling anyone a name. Where are the name-callers? (excluding Lisa's, "Scoble is THE hider.") - Trevor Carpenter
This will be a photograph in the top 10 of many future lists. - Andrew Baron
Explanation: "In January 2007, people from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far. Nearby, fireworks exploded as part of Australia Day celebrations. On the far right, lightning from a thunderstorm flashed in the distance. Near the image center, though, seen through clouds, was the most unusual sight of all: Comet McNaught. The photogenic comet was so bright that it even remained visible though the din of Earthly flashes. Comet McNaught has now returned to the outer Solar System and is now only visible with a large telescope. The above image is actually a three photograph panorama digitally processed to reduce red reflections from the exploding firework." - Andrew Baron
Wow, 153 people 'liked this" so far and almost 30 comments. - Andrew Baron
Absolutely incredible shot! Then again some of the best shots on the web come from NASA, National Geographic, Discovery and, of course, Hawk :) - Charlie Anzman
Not to be too cynical but that shot seems to good to be true -- I wonder if there is more processing going on than the text seems to admit. - Brian Sullivan
I'm going to side with Brian here. What is right: Comet McNaught was that bright in WA (I use to live there), but I checked my attempted pics, they predate this by over a week. I'm sure the comet was only that bright for less than a week. Second, the main Australia Day fireworks occur in Perth City...which isn't near a beach . Maybe it's Leighton Beach with Fremantle to the left...but it doesn't seem right. I did check the weather records though, there was a storm that night, and it's in the right direction - Duncan Riley
I do hope it is real though...and I forgot how wonderful the environment there is - Duncan Riley
Duncan, last year both Fremantle and I believe Hillarys held their own fireworks for Australia Day. I myself was trying to guess the location this morning. Being a regular on Leighton beach though it doesn't look familiar so I was thinking it may have been taken to the north of Hillarys. It also made me very nostalgic for Perth :) - Penny
One important aspect I forgot to include in that post: offline access. GDocs has offline doc sync through Gears. You would think Buzzword would be a shoe-in for offline access through Adobe's AIR platform, but so far, that's not the case. Maybe they're working on it, and I would assume they are. But at this moment, GDocs has offline, Buzzword doesn't, and that matters. - Nathaniel Payne
Another important fact is .... GDocs *isn't* going away. - Matt Kaufman
Thanks for the post Nathaniel, I commented. We are working on an AIR version. We've been testing it internally but I'm not sure what the ETA is. I'd add that to the post so the Buzzword guys can see that you think it's a priority. - Ryan Stewart
whose this idiot whose posting stuff in TC that is like 4d old ? get a grip, do your research. yo'll get a tip of the hat fr me now and then, else I'll be me.. and point out da foo .. http://blogoscoped.com/forum/1... - Peter Dawson
It's a pixel camera. Google can record a low-res image of you as you type, regardless of whether your computer is equipped with a conventional camera or not. Some security thing. - Chris Baskind
"i think that this is indeeed searchable and catalogable by Goolge or other search engines. There is a technology called OCR- optical Character Recognition that is pretty advanced and is used to convert items such as this into text files." - Nathan Eckenrode
I'm at 870 rankings. I don't think I was REALLY concentrating on the TV shows I watched last night. - Chris Nixon
I think I'm missing the reason for this service. What will it be doing for you? Ranking your favorite movies and programs? Then what do you do with that information? Go to another site to rent those programs? That's why I didn't sign up for beta. I wasn't really sure what it would do for me. - Dawn M. Armfield
Dawn, the main idea is for you to determine your favorite movies, and then see what movies you haven't seen that are highly recommended, and later you'll be able to have group recommendations between you and your friends.You can also take part in debates about why Star Wars is a better movie than Pulp Fiction, or rank your top 80's movies. We think there's a lot to our service and we're still adding more features. If you'd like to check it out we'd be happy to send you an invite so you can see for yourself. - Flickchart
film & television took too much of my life already no need to continue dumping into that timesink, thanks. - Nathan Eckenrode
Pulp Fiction better than Star Wars, That's sacrilege! :) - Russ G
"To run properly, Vista requires at least a one-gigahertz processor and a gigabyte or more of memory. On lesser machines it runs like molasses, and is no match for its elderly predecessor.
And it crashes more often, too. That's not because Vista is inherently less stable than XP; both are decidedly wobbly compared with more modular operating systems like Linux, Solaris or Apple's OS X flavour of Unix. " - Nathan Eckenrode via Bookmarklet
Why? Twitter updates reach two audiences: here and Twitter, and still can spark discussions in the same way any other service can. - Mark Trapp
I did it because Ive started to use my Twitter account for a single purpose and felt as though it was just adding noise to my Friendfeed acct. - Andrew Baron
The great thing about diversifying your services, I've found, is that it gives people who are following you finer grain control on what noise they want to hear. I may want to see everything you're doing and sharing except for your status updates: but if you combine everything into just using the Friendfeed share something link, I can't filter out the different types of items in your feed anymore. - Mark Trapp
I'm thinking about doing the same as I only use Twitter as a broadcast service now. - Colin Walker via fftogo
@Colin Same here. If I want a conversation, I post the message to FriendFeed - Shey
@Colin I think you nailed it. Twitter is more for broadcasting. FF is a lot more like a blog with comments. Most people dont include their tweets as blog posts. Anyway, once I turned off the Twitter noise, I started to think of FF much more like a link blog, which Im liking (but also not wanting to muddy up with my Tweets). - Andrew Baron
I want to do the same, but I'm wondering if ppl try and MSG me thru twitter after discovering in FF. Also, I'm now twitterfeeding my FF internal RSS. - Hao Chen
yes i have made that shift- using twitter to answer the question "What are you doing?" and discussing it over here on FF. - Nathan Eckenrode
I did the same a few months back and I don't regret it. The audience that I cater to on Twitter is different and I'm not about to go back and forth checking FF for Twitter replies. - Corvida via feedalizr
Twitter inside of friendfeed is pretty irritating. Not everything decontextualizes well. - Dave Coustan
boy I've been thinking about it for long long time, never had the guts @colin I'm twitterfeeding lots of my friendfeed on twitter just to keep my network over there in the loop, some people are just not happy with leaving twitter behind an dmoving on - Dobromir Hadzhiev
![mystery water creature [Luckyred, Pixdaus]](http://pixdaus.com/pics/1215098051d3dzUXC.jpg "mystery water creature [Luckyred, Pixdaus]")
!["Boeing B-47B rocket assisted takeoff, April 1954" [hungryghost, Pixdaus]](http://pixdaus.com/pics/1215154144pBQyMmW.jpg "\"Boeing B-47B rocket assisted takeoff, April 1954\" [hungryghost, Pixdaus]")
