Codeshal

I’m really rooting for Google.

I believe in Android as a bulwark against iPhone’s greedy closed system of iTunes and its hypocritically Orwellian “freedom from porn” (and its “we’ve already solved podcasts” (and its love of Hitler (and its intolerance for satire))). (Plus Android’s Gmail, Maps, Calendar, OTA syncing, nimble navigation, and fast app release cycles are all superior.)

I believe in App Engine as a way of letting developers easily build apps that make people’s lives better.

I believe in Google Docs and Gmail for making enterprises and individuals more efficient.

I believe in Google Maps as a platform for visualizing geographic data and making the world more accessible.

But then the past couple of years happened.

Android continues to look like ass. It has long-standing issues of runaway battery use that haven’t been rectified. (In addition to these mysteries, why would it autoupdate apps (yay!) during the day, when the phone is unlikely to be plugged in, instead of at night? The mind boggles.) Fragmentation has eaten it alive. It’s uninterested in improving its geolocation APIs. It hangs when I try to answer calls.

App Engine came up with pricing that had no basis in reality, and then lost revenue and increased costs for Google by failing to respond.

Docs and Gmail got slower and slower, and, for a year, were nearly impossible to log in to.

Reader was eviscerated for the unproved Plus.

Maps came up with pricing that drove people away again and again, obviously exceeding the cost for even small organizations to just run their own maps. These prices also have no basis in reality. (For context, AdSense pays ~ $1 per thousand page views. Maps tries to charge ~ $4 per thousand page views.)

I don’t get it. Is there a department of self-sabotage at Google that, seeing success, gets to work right away trying to erode it? That, having earned good will, attempts to destroy it? That, having read the new Steve Jobs biography, ignores the great advice about avoiding division P&Ls? That, faced with two sides of a balance sheet, haplessly ramps up costs and then scavenges for revenue? That, having built a brand and a user base, tries to alienate it? Google should probably shut that department down.

There have been a lot of crazy prices coming out of Google lately.

• App Engine Pricing (since revised to be less insane)
• Maps pricing
• Analytics (not exactly a developer-focused product, and the prices aren’t that crazy for the target tier)

Here are some things I don’t understand about this

1. Given the number of overpaid MBAs at Google, how did nobody evaluate this pricing against competition (e.g. EC2 vs. App Engine) or sanity (e.g. maps cost per page view vs typical CPM)? Maybe these prices are an attempt at price discrimination and behind the scenes they’re negotiating aggressively?
2. Does Google really see these as being relevant revenue streams given their revenues?
3. App Engine drives adoption of Google Accounts, Maps furthers the Google brand, and Analytics furthers Google ads. Does undercutting these by charging really outweigh the harm to the overall business?
4. If Google is fighting for the hearts and minds of developers with Android and other platforms, why show itself to be tone-deaf and heartless toward platform consumers?
5. Google used to talk a lot about trying to make the web better with various free services and making money through search. Did they get bored with this?
6. Google is sitting on a gigantic cash cow with Apps. Companies pay less for Apps than they do for fogbugz or Campfire or various other services that are less indispensable. Why undercharge for the one service for which enterprises are willing to pay and which has no real competition? Especially if this money could also go to making these applications better and faster (multiple pricing tiers?) instead of the gradual decline we witnessed once Google cleared the market of realistic alternatives. Google could even make money offering one-click billing for App Engine apps used by Google Apps domains. Why is Google trying to make money in the hardest way available? I assume this is some sort of terrible cost center accounting, and the end of an era.

These were making the rounds at work

http://www.parleys.com/#st=5&id=2662&sl=0

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Scale-at-Facebook

The sample code makes this totally non-obvious, but the sender is actually a noisy string like “Joe Blow <joeblow@example.com>”. You need to parse it using email.utils.parseaddr(message.sender)[1]

rsync -avz —rsync-path=’sudo rsync’ FILE SERVER:REMOTE_FILE

For whatever reason, Git’s post-receive email hook is a hassle to configure, and ugly. How we do it.

1. cd ~git/repositories/XXXX/hooks
2. locate post-receive-email
3. cp YYY/post-receive-email .
4. emacs post-receieve-email
5. change recipients=YOUR MAILING LIST
6. change
   describe=$(git describe $rev 2>/dev/null)
   to
   describe=$(git log -1 —pretty=%s $rev)
7. change 
   Subject: ${emailprefix}$projectdesc $refname_type $short_refname ${change_type}d. $describe
   to
   Subject: [${emailprefix}$projectdesc $short_refname] $describe
8. change emailprefix=”
9. below “via $rev”, add             echo “https://YOUR_CGIT_SERVER/cgit/REPO/commit/?id=$rev”
10. emacs post-receive
11. uncomment sourcing of post-receive-email and include fully path to your new post-receive-email file
12. if committing is really slow / hangs, uninstall sendmail, install postfix