Google Secrecy and control freakery

James O'Neil shared a Microsofties experience of trying to attend one of their Google @ Work events.  Find out what happened when Ryan Pollock in the marketing team of Google Enterprise found out!

Now I welcome competitors to our events, so what's up with all this "secrecy and control freakery"? 

I'm going to see if I can sign myself up for a Google event, in fact I think there is a Google software developer conference soon in London.  I'll let you know how I get on! :-)

Technorati tags: Google, Event, Secret

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Hi Pete, "If this event was for 'customers' then surely most of you guys (I don't work for Microsoft)are already aware of their products and services, so what's the big deal ?" So why do our competitors come to our events? I'm technical, so unless you go to these events you don't get much info other than what's available on the blogoshere and news sites.  Better to hear it from the horse's mouth. James

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Thanks Pete :-) Perhaps what they are going to talk about isn't beta, it could be a session to gather feedback from customers.  Who knows. As for your job - I thought I had a cool job! Nice work landing that one :-)  Keep promoting your brand and standing by your products.  Does your firm have a blog?  Do you have a community of enthusiasts?

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 15, 2007
  I can understand why google would do something like that.  They don't want other companies stealing ideas and then repackaging them with their own name and selling it.  There are companies out there that do this to get their "innovation".  I won't mention any in this comment....

• Anonymous
  May 15, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 16, 2007
  I agree, from the horse's mouth is the way to go. Indeed, that's why I made the recent trek up to see you guys at TVP, for your Vista After Hours event :) (which was very good I might add). Google clearly feel threatened by a competitors presence at this kind of event which is understandable, if the content could aid a rival to gain a competitive advantage. Although as I previously mentioned, I would be surprised that a customer focused event would contain any technical information, that could be used to gain an advantage in this way. I would imagine that the  majority of a product's features are established by the time it reaches it's beta stage, by which time these features will be/or are known to communities and competitors alike, so why the big deal. I work in a technical role within the IT department at a Brewery (yes I do get free beer, no there aren't any jobs). We often have public tours around our brewing facility which are open 'to all'. We have products that we are proud and a brand that we want to promote. Maybe the chaps at Google need a beer or two and relax at little.

• Anonymous
  May 17, 2007
  The comment has been removed