Ex-Googlers Start WhereBerry to Get out of Google Rut

Getty Images

Two Googlers decided to start their own company outside of Google rather than help develop the service for the search titan.

Nick Baum, 28, and Bill Ferrell, 27, left the Google nest after a few years to begin their social start-up WhereBerry because it would be easier to use other services and partners, according to AllThingsD. “The biggest thing we got by not doing this with Google is access to Facebook Connect–which is pretty hard to do within Google," Baum said.

WhereBerry is a "social planning service" where users can post their social plans for the day or evening, such as posting ideas of places to go or eat but seems to rely on the Facebook interface.

My thoughts on the service aren't high. Why wouldn't someone just group-text or use Facebook to plan outings? But I was curious as to why Google now seems to be an incubator for talent, but then quickly loses it when employees want to do something they consider innovative?

Pablo Villalba wrote a little about Google's bad hiring on his blog, mainly that it selects over-educated mathematicians and back-end programmers (I'd even say Stanford and Ivy League-educated ones) and doesn't hire people with a background in product development. They seem to want a very cookie-cutter type of employee drone that probably worked when there were only hundreds of employees and strong visionary leadership -- but that's no longer the case. Now Google needs hundreds of those strong visionaries or needs to start finding different types of employees.

Perhaps that's why Baum and Ferrell left, because they felt they were more avant-garde than Google  -- and their opportunities were greater without the giant search monkey weighing on their backs.

Contact Us