James Whittaker, Ex-Employee: 'Google + Ruined The Company'

James Whittaker, Ex-Employee: 'Google + Ruined The Company'
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First it was Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith firing a bitter broadside at his company for being "callous" and "toxic", now James Whittaker, an ex Google employee has set off a depth-charge under Google's brand, claiming Google + ruined the company.

In a blog posted on MSDN on Tuesday, Whittaker writes: "The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus."

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Whittaker pinpoints the company's decline as the moment Google+ was launched by Larry Page's - a point when, he says, Google realised they'd lost out to Facebook in the social media arena. He writes: "Ideas that failed to put Google+ at the center of the universe were a distraction."

But before Google+, Whittaker has nothing but high praise, saying: "it was hard to imagine a better place to work".

Whittaker also has great things to say about Eric Schmidt: "Under Eric Schmidt ads were always in the background. Google was run like an innovation factory, empowering employees to be entrepreneurial..."

Schmidt is the executive chairman of Google, he was the chief executive until last year. Larry Page is now CEO.

While Whittaker's broadside isn't as bitter as Smith's, he includes a hefty dose of advice for the Google team gleened from his teenage daughter.

He writes: "I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and the people are on Facebook.”