[moved from <<"Google makes a rare fumble">>]

Some infrequent "kremlinological" insights into the Social Perksland that is [was?] Google, incl. hearsay, innuendo and gossip about Larry Brin's sister-in-law, and once-sort-of-Google-midwife as The Owner of the Original Garage in which the two founders self-pollinated?, then -incubated the idea until it outgrew that particular nest (coop?).

» [...] Google had 200 day care spots--and such wonderful day care at that!--and was promoting this new perk as a recruiting tool. The company was growing like crazy--its work force now numbers 19,000--its young employees were starting to have babies, and well, you can just picture what happened next. The wait list ballooned insanely, finally reaching over 700 people. New employees who arrived at Google thinking they were getting in-house day care were stunned to discover that it could take up to two years to land a coveted spot.

Meanwhile, someone at Google woke up one day and realized that the company was subsidizing each child to the tune of $37,000 a year--which nobody had noticed up until then--compared with the $12,000-a-year average subsidy of other big Silicon Valley companies like Cisco Systems and Oracle.

Wait list vs. subsidy

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? [...] «
http://news.cnet.com/On-day-care,-Google-makes-a-rare-fumble/2100-1030_3-6243197.html

If Google wants to higher only the very best out of thousands of qualified applicants, they may have to realize that in the case of some women, not having adequate day care facilities may mean the they will have to take time off to nurture their babies or leave the company all together once they decide that they have put off motherhood for their careers long enough.

Lack of day care facilities could potentially make Google an even more male dominant work place.

The only solution would be to offer young mothers a raise or subsidies to help them with their daycare if they want to resume working.

Techie Gurus may be hard to find, but it is possible that those in the business end may not be so irreplaceable.

Sergey may not be so empathetic until he himself has kids. But even then, his wife will not have to work if she does not want to – and can afford 24/7 domestic help.

Perhaps Google's employees are well paid and getting free meals and amenities – but can a young mother afford to take time off from work and / or hire help and still be able to live in Silicon Valley comfortably?

It is an interesting conflict – it will be intriguing to see how they solve it and how other firms have managed to cut cost

From what I have heard- this policy is designed to 'encourage' married people who cannot work till 12 @ night at the Plex to look for more 9 to 5 type of options- I am surprised no one has sued them for discrimination

I'm kinda tired of hearing of friendfeed all the time! Are you guys being paid?

Robert, it's just my source on this where I first heard about the article and saw the comments by ex-employees. You can also send your tips to infoblogoscoped.com, I certainly like diverse sources.

I'm kind of looking forward to hearing Google's side of the story....

Yeah it's just that FriendFeed is all over techcrunch, read write web, mashable, etc ... I mean the service is cool but come on, I'm getting the feeling these bloggers are becoming more and more like corporate media, that is completely corrupted and having lost their ethic as a journalist who should just be reporting news and not advertising. Please Philipp don't become like one of them. Thank you.

Robert, I always try to credit the source of something... be it Friendfeed, TechCrunch, Google Operating System, CNN, the Google blog, and so on... here is an automated list of the top "via" lines in the blog posts, by the way: http://blogoscoped.com/credits/

So, according to CNet's sources, what Google did was

1. Open a competent and affordable day care center in partnership with a proven provider.
2. Open a second, more expensive center based on a popular educational approach that an executive prefers.
3. Realize they are paying a lot of money for this.
4. Raise prices, close the affordable center, and cut services overall to "solve" the problem by forcing employees elsewhere.
5. Fiercely dismiss criticism with much hand-waving and promises.
6. Sergey Brin is RUMORED to be an unsympathetic and parent hating jerk

Hmm...Google would do very well in American politics.

Robert J
FriendFeed is the new Facebook. Facebook is the new Google. Google is a better Yahoo. It will eventually stabilize (as nothing can maintain that new startup freshness and energy forever) and people will talk about something else.

J. McNair: FriendFeed wants you to think it is the new facebook. You are falling for the hype. At the beginning FriendFeed was basically the recent friend activity widget of myspace where the activity is not just on myspace but over a lot of diff social sites (bookmarking on del.icio.us, comenting on digg etc ...). With the hype there are hoping they are gonna attract smart guys so they can work for them and make them rich.

Remember Ning and the HUGE hype on techcrunch. Did you see how many diff facets NING took until they finally settled for a myspace clone. Ning clearly sucked but still techcrunch would keep on blogging about it.

Anyway I'm sick and tired of hearing of friendfeed. Because they have no clear goal and are hoping the hype will bring them people to do what they can't do themselves.