Google: About Company, Products, Key Learnings Etc.

About the Company

Google is an American multinational company that works in internet related services and products. Google’s mission has been “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Google offers services designed for office and productivity, mailing, schedulers and time management tools, cloud storage, social networking, instant messaging and video chat, language translation, mapping and navigation, video sharing, note keeping, photo organising and editing, operating system, web browser, hardware products. The culture at Google has been that of flexibility, creativity, fun environment, valuing people and diversity, navigating ambiguity, innovation, thinking 10x and employee first mentality.

About Trust & Safety

The Trust & Safety department at Google is responsible for online safety across Google products. The main functions of the department include fighting web abuse and fraud by designing algorithms and policies that can best combat them. The department works cross functionally across various other departments like the legal department, the developers at Google, the policy team etc.

About Google Products Worked With

Few of the Google products that I worked with include Google Search, Google Shopping, Google Adsense, Google Adwords, G Suite, Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Tez and Google Play.

Tools/Methodologies used GAP Analysis: Process was studied in depth and GAP analysis was done on the same to provide recommendations that address the gaps. In depth interviews: In-depth interviews with Google program managers, vendor program managers and leads were conducted to understand the current processes that are in place.

Mapping Process Flow Diagrams: Process Flow diagrams were mapped out of the current process and suggested process to aid in better understanding of gaps and suggestions. Requirement gathering: For dashboard design, requirements from all Google program managers were assimilated through in-depth interviews to address all the requirements.

Identifying the right metrics: All HR metrics pertaining to vendor data were analysed and right metrics were selected for the dashboard based on insights accumulated and IDIs.

Key Learnings

Glance into the culture at Google - Google encourages its employees to question the status quo and provide 10X solutions after thinking out of the box. Googlers navigate ambiguity very well and new employees are encouraged to do the same. Mistakes are encouraged as long as we learn from it and improvise our solutions based on it. Documentation is key as most pet projects at Google end up being Google products and there should be source documentation available for ready reference.

SQL Reporting - An internal google tool was used in the project to create an automated monthly mailer that has reports data visualisation for all metrics required by program managers. SQL, Html, Jinja template was used for the same.

Data Visualisation -The monthly email report and few dashboard templates created required the best possible data visualisation for the metrics involved.

Understanding of Google Products - A basic understanding of how trust and safety works across all google product areas.

Views on Cybersecurity

With the current boom in online media platforms, there has been an explosive growth in content available online. This huge amount of data needs to be regulated and controlled to prevent spam, fraud and abuse. Cybersecurity team in an internet related organisation thus plays the crucial part in monitoring content. Since most of the content is abusive, letting a human reviewer moderate such content can be hazardous to the mental and emotional wellbeing of an employee. Artificial intelligence and machine learning plays a vital role in such a setting. ML and AI bots weed out abusive content through algorithms that are designed to recognise and delete harmful content. But the question of how far these self-learning bots can be trusted with content remains questionable and must be evaluated.