Feeling Lucky

Google's (GOOG) leaders have always had something of a tin ear when it comes to apprehending how afraid people are of its power and ubiquity. Ken Auletta's new book, Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, has a case in point. When the company's engineers rolled out Gmail, they were delighted to announce that each user had virtually unlimited memory storage, so no one had to delete e-mail to free up space. Why, they asked themselves, do we need a delete function? After all, it just clutters up the page and distracts people.

In a classic case of thinking like an engineer, the Googlers had no idea that the public would be appalled at this. People were already spooked at the idea that a Google bot would be scanning their e-mails, looking for keywords to pin ads next to. They had to have control over their private communication, advisers warned Google's leaders. Astonishingly, Larry Page responded by saying, "We want them to start thinking differently."

That didn't last long. The Electronic Privacy Information Center called for Gmail to be shut down as a threat to basic Internet privacy, and the befuddled engineers had to restore the delete function. Unless people can control how much personal information Google collects, it seemed, they would regard the company as Big Brother.

Today, Google debuts its latest effort to mollify such privacy concerns. The company has launched Google Dashboard, a navigable list of all the information (search terms, YouTube videos you watched, etc.) that it has collected about you. From now on, users can look over all the personal data they've inadvertently shared with Google, delete anything that makes them uncomfortable, and change privacy settings to limit Google's, shall we say, curiosity. Here's a little film that shows how Dashboard works.

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The San Francisco Chronicle's tech blog has been stirring up life in the Valley lately, with a series of posts about Google's (GOOG) increasingly dull and conventional workplace culture. The vaunted sandbox and 20 percent time climate, Googlers complain, is giving into the inexorable pull of big organizations toward boring management arrogance and bureaucracy. In particular, tech blogger James Temple writes, Google's hiring practices allegedly favor fancy Ivy League degrees and 4.0 GPAs, leaving potentially more interesting candidates shit outta luck.

We can't say one way or another, and a Google representative has complained about the posts: "Our hiring process is designed to give both the company and the candidate a complete picture of how they will fit and we think it works exceptionally well." But the stories have prompted a few people to share the kinds of interview questions potential Googlers face. Lewis Lin, a Seattle-based interview coach, has decided to share 140 questions he's come across over the years, and there are some real doozies in the pack. Here are a few of the choicer ones:

Why are manhole covers round?

You're the captain of a pirate ship, and your crew gets to vote on how the gold is divided up. If fewer than half of the pirates agree with you, you die. How do you recommend apportioning the gold in such a way that you get a good share of the booty, but still survive?

What is the probability of breaking a stick into 3 pieces and forming a triangle?

Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco.

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