In his AMA thread here recently I asked him what he does at google and he was aggravatingly vague, replying: Press buttons, mostly.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357182

To be fair, I've been using that joke for years.

Good One. So ... what did you do at Google?

I find it interesting that this question goes unanswered but I am more interested about what motivated you to work at Google.

Clearly gmail tech support.

Joshua's story in "Founders at Work" is one of my top three most inspirational tales from the book. The combination of creating something while working a day job (breaking the work down into 15-minute problems he could solve at night) along with the idea of narrow, vertical services that do one thing well--great lessons.

While I don't buy into the whole maxklein nerdfight aspect of all this, I do look forward to seeing whether Joshua establishes a new pattern (parlaying the one-hit wonder into a series of relationships and investments that take him to a higher level) or whether he repeats the success (more like Andreesen).

Good luck with whatever comes next...

delicious was the most successful thing in a long series of projects. there were other successes (but none as big) and many, many failures.

there will be more failures. hopefully a few successes, too.

Would you tell about some other projects that you did before delicious? Not necessarily their names, just roughly what they were about. Basically I'm curious whether there was a logical succession or were you just trying out random ideas.

This is taken from Founders At Work, which you should buy (it's great!):

Bookbook - Schacter never came up with a name for this, but it's basically an XML file on your website where you would provide a feed and other people would do this and create a central crossing engine that would say, "You have this book and he wants that book, and you are not that far from each other."

Loaf - a fully distributed social network (no central server whatsoever ... yes, that does sounds like Diaspora). Uses email as a carrier, a bloom filter, and it basically tells people you talked to about other people you corresponded with 'in an encrypted and compressed way'.

Memepool - which was a blog of links (before people knew what blogs were, this was in 1998). So basically an editor with reader submissions - a link at the bottom saying "Send us an email. Give us good links."

Muxway - 2001, 'which was a lot like del.icio.us'. Only it was single player - Schacter could save links, and those links were public, and that was that.

GeoURL - http://geourl.org/

Reversible - a failed version of del.icio.us. It was 'different in a few key ways that made it fail.'

good list.

bring back memepool plz

That story is also one of my faves. del.icio.us was a "lean startup" before that phrase became a social media mantra: http://www.petefreitag.com/images/blog/delicious_office.jpg

Fuck yeah, joshu! Make something awesome -- you know you want to :)

And don't forget to update your HN profile. ;)

Fixed, thanks.

Amen to that. Good luck.

Take back delicious if you can and make it better. pls.

I'm curious: what's wrong with delicious?

Nothing and thats the problem. Its the same it was since it started (as far as how it functions is concerned). And if I were to guess[1] it is rapidly loosing whatever standing it had good old days. Its horrible, because it had a lot of potential for growth in to something really amazing. In the fast moving internet landscape, you have to evolve with everyone else in order to survive. Other than a facelift, nothing much changed with delicious.

Sure there are sites and services that survived without evolving, but they are exceptions not the norm.

Once awesome but dying sites/softwares: Myspace, Digg, IE

[1] http://siteanalytics.compete.com/delicious.com/

Just use Pinboard. http://pinboard.in/

Some companies acquire people for their talent. Few know what to do with that talent once they have it. Google is no exception. I wish Josh the best of luck. Wonder if he'll revive memepool?

Oh god. I totally should.

I can't think of anything to do with it that doesn't turn into Delicious or Reddit or something. Any ideas?

I have a great idea for a app, but it is not related to memepool. If you are looking for ideas for interesting apps that could change the way people distribute information on the web let me know. It is basically a better mouse trap blog and threaded conversation app and I would love to see someone run with it. I won't bore you with the details, but if you have an open ear to ideas, I could sum it up for you pretty quickly.

Just do it here already. Anyone could run with it. :)

you could make it more like techmeme or kottke.

Just plain ol' Memepool would be plenty.

Damn, that takes me back.

+1 for memepool.

i've been doing this for a long time :)

Congratulations! Best of luck on whatever comes next.

This seems like a positive move. I imagine he learned the hard way that Google may be better than Yahoo, but it's still a Big Dumb Company.

Google is a great place. I am glad I worked there. I probably should have stayed longer than I did. I just had that itch to do something different.

Some people are not meant to work for others. That doesn't say much about the company. I bet most HN-er would love to have the experience to work at Google or Apple.

Only read this post because I remember Josh's participation in the CMU bboards. Batmail, good times...

ezmail forever.

Any chance u'd make a better delicious joshu?

Pinboard.in already exists ;)

I don't think he was happy at google, just like I don't think he was happy at yahoo.

I think he should write a book now. It's the natural progression for people who make a single hit startup - they sell it, join some big company, decide that it does not make them happy, give a lot of talks, then fall into some type of mentoring role, then write a book.

You're big on jumping to conclusions on pretty limited data, aren't you?

Not this again... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357708

Don't worry, I'm about to go to sleep so I won't go on.

Seriously, whats your deal man?

My deal is that I will not let myself be bullied by a person who people support just because he is an angel investor (and they want his money). He's relentlessly attacking me every opportunity he gets for absolutely no reason, and because he knows that people will support him (being a big tech brand name and all) over me (being unimportant).

In what way am I bullying you? Relentlessly or otherwise?

Man, what a douchebag you are. I've known Josh for many years and am very happy he's become successful. He is not attacking you. It's all in your head. Please go see a therapist.

Yes, but this site would be incredibly dull if people didn't. It would just be employees making factual statements about their own companies.

maxklein may regularly be a speculative asshat that writes questions as statements, but a broken clock is still right twice a day.

I love guessing at stuff, because problems are much more fun when you are only given little bits to work with.

I would just prefer that wait till I'm dead till you write my epitaph.

Can I buy both of you guys a beer, talk things over, and make up?