Google engineers held a two day conference on 3-4 September 2009 to give a technical overview of key Google technologies (like Google Maps and Earth, Open Social, Friend Connect, AdSense, AdWords, Analytics, the App Engine, the Web Toolkit etc.) for software development and for enhancing business processes.
During the news item, I explain how important it is for a major IT company like Google to come to Mauritius and how beneficial Google technologies can be for the local economy.
I am always in awe of how easy it seems for Google to create new technologies mostly out of thin air in a very short amount of time. For example, I use Gmail on a daily basis and, seriously, I don’t think that there is anything as good as it elsewhere. The beauty of Gmail is, of course, that it was created by someone out of passion during his 20% of free time that all Googlers get.
Naturally, the essential word in the above paragraph is seems. This is because nothing could be further from truth. Google succeeds in creating great products and technologies because it only recruits the best (and, ouch, I know that…) and encourage them to innovate.
During the conference, someone asked a really bizarre question: “Were we going to receive training certificates at the end?” This is bizarre for two reasons (i) the conference was not a training course and (ii) we already had received more than a mere piece of paper: the Googlers were sharing their knowledge with us! Once more, lorsque le sage montre la lune du doigt, l’imbécile regarde le doigt…
[This video is extracted from the MBC national TV news bulletin.]
