Interview with Sean Lin
Hi, I’m Thiha from MyanmarTutorials.com. Thanks for allowing me to talk with you. As for Myanmar’s people, especially from IT related field, I’m really appreciate to have a great chance to know about Google. Google is the most popular search engine in Myanmar. That’s why everybody want to know about it and learn about Google Inc. OK, let’s start our interview.
Firstly, tell us a bit about yourself, and what you do for a living.
I am currently a Developer Advocate at Google Asia-Pacific which is based in Singapore, specializing in Google’s Enterprise solutions such as Google Apps and Google Search Appliance/Google Mini. Basically, I am a consultant to developers or development team of Enterprise customers who wish to integrate Google products and services into their solutions. For example, integrating LDAP with Google Apps, Google Search Appliance and so on.
I used to be a full-timer with Google for 2 years since I joined the company, and just 3 months ago, I converted from full-time to consulting position to focus on my start-up, Helia Lab. It’s basically a cloud solution provider which empower start-ups as well as enterprises with cloud platforms and environments such as Amazon AWS and Google App Engine.
What is Google cloud computing? Tell us which part of Google is cloud computing and which is not. Are there any other examples of popular Cloud Computing, please let us know about it. Tell us your opinion of Cloud Computing’s future.
Everything is Cloud in Google from search, email, video to productivity suite. Cloud Computing is simply meant putting your things or work on the internet. Users do not need to worry about incompatibility, installation and so on. All they have to do is sign-up and ready to go. Some of the clouds that Google is providing are – word processing and productivity suite (Google Docs), Email (Gmail), Enterprise Communication (Google Apps), Imaging Service (Picasa and Picnik) and Developer Software (Google Codes, Google App Engine), Collaboration (Google Groups), Location (Map, Latitude) and News and Info (Google News, Reader).
Cloud has many levels from infrastructure (servers and backbones), platforms (smart phones, facebook platform) to software (known as SaaS). Most well-known companies are Salesforce (for CRM), Zoho (for various business suite).
PCs are dying and Clouds will be the future with the emergence of smarphones like iPhone and Android which utilize lots of cloud services and syndication.
Is SaaS(Software as a Service) another example of cloud computing? Can SaaS also be localized, and how? If we want to set up our SaaS globally connected with popular cloud computing providers like Google, Amazon, etc., is it possible or not? What are the opportunities and difficulties in that kind of services?
As I mentioned above, SaaS or Software as a Service is one of the pillars of cloud computing. It is basically a web application or web-based services that act as replacement for desktop solution. It’s a software that only needs a web-browser and internet connection. SaaS can be done locally, e.g. collaboration platform for local schools or organization to discuss and share information, or an e-commerce SaaS that allows small business to sell online locally without incurring expensive fees of setting up.
The only problem is technical limitation which can be solved by reaching out to global cloud providers like Google or Amazon. In terms of pricing, it’s a lot cheaper to deploy SaaS with global cloud providers instead of hosting locally. And Cloud is all about being inexpensive and scalable (can be upsized to downsized easily).
As we know that Google provides two type of services in Google App: one is standard and the other is premium. Standard is a free service and premium is paid service. I want to know about Premium Service.
Google Apps Premier comes with bigger storage for emails, documents, stricter security, a few more features such as Google Video and tools (MS Outlook and Blackberry sync tool) and APIs to integrate with current IT infrastructure such as LDAP. Premier is great for those spending a lot on Exchange or Lotus Notes, and those companies who wish to have web-based sharing/collaboration platform.
What is the life of Developer Advocate of Google like?
Working at Google has been great, the best thing is you can talk freely and openly with the most famous people in IT industry like father of the internet (Vint Cerf), and Python’s creator and so on. In engineering level, all holds the same title no matter who and what you are. Very new recruit has to go through an orientation camp where people like Sergey Brin (one of Google Founders) actually come down and greet one-by-one. Beside, free flow of food, drinks and gourmet meal, everybody has 20% of their time to work on personal project using Google resources and some of the best Google projects come from 20%, such as Gmail and Adsense. Working hours are very flexible, I spent most of my office hour working from home instead of office unless there’s a meeting or something.
Of course, you always have latest gadgets, and with the launch of Android devices, Google employees are given free phones every 6 months or whenever new Google device come out.
At Google, they don’t care what qualification you hold (unless you apply for non-tech position) or your age as long as you are talented and has the expertise. Youngest at Google is 17 years old.
Google provides popular services like Mail, Talk and much more. Are there any other good services which are not known well by the public/users?
Google Search Appliance (GSA) is one of the services that only a few people know. It’s basically a 1U rack server loaded with Google OS and search software. Once you connected to your network, search spider will start crawling across the network as you setup and indexing all the documents, sites and files and users will be able to use Google search interface to do an internal search.
Google also provides advanced email services such as Postini for email security and Archiving service. Archiving service allow users to back-up all their emails and come with search function to search emails across the organization. So no matter how many emails you deleted from your account, they can still be searchable through Archiving service.
Google App Engine is cloud-platform for Java and Python developers to work on. It provides storage and platform to host web-services and application. It’s available for free but also has a paid service if you require more processing power or storage.
I want to know the income sources of Google. I’m also interested in strategic management of making money.
Advertisement is the main source (99%) of income for Google. Advertisement can be found on search listings as well as all the free services such as gmail, YouTube, third-party sites running AdSense and Mobile applications (through AdMob). Advertisers have to pay either pay-per-click or pay-per-impression to Google and the price is depending on popularity of the keywords. Beside in house sales teams in various countries, Google also has thousands of authorized reseller to sell advertisements. Last 1% of income is made up of Enterprise Products such as Google Search Appliance and Google Apps.
Google Chrome OS is also a newsmaker and one of the most popular ones, but we haven’t seen any release so far, why? What are the differences between Chrome OS and others?
ChromeOS will be coming out around November this year. It’s a cloud-based OS, which means you need to be connected to the internet most of the time to fully utilize all the applications in the OS. Most of the applications will be based on HTML5 with offline capabilities. It’ll be the most interesting OS, so give it a try in November though using ChromeOS is not recommended in Myanmar where internet connection is always a problem.
Tell us about Google Android Mobile Phone’s future. Can it beat the iPhone? Tell us the differences between these two application development processes, Adroid and iPhone. Which one is more approachable?
Android phone has already passed iPhone in terms of sales, it’s now just behind RIM (Blackberry). For me, iPhone and Android are for two different markets with different needs. iPhone OS, it can only be found in iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, but Android OS, you can find it not only in the smart-phones and tablets but also in consumer devices like GPS navigators, set-top boxes (on upcoming Google TV as well), microwaves, fridges, washing-machine and even cars. So developing on Android puts you in more market than doing for iPhone. Android is free and OpenSource, you can create your device anytime and put Android on it. Android is based on Java but there are methods and tools for other programming languages as well. iPhone development which is based on Objective-C has to be done on Mac (though you can do on Windows and Linux as well but the process is tedious) while Android development can be done on any platform. If you want open and standard based development, Android is for you.
Google Premium Services are not well-known in Myanmar especially for Myanmar Companies. why? When they use Google Premium Services, what are the value-added benefits?
Internet connection is the main barrier for Myanmar company to use any of Google Premium Services and Myanmar IT industry is sort of influenced by Microsoft. When the things are cheap (pirated software), they won’t value Cloud-based and OpenSource solution.
For now, Google follows US government policy on sanction so it’s quite impossible for Myanmar company to deal directly with Google.
Thank you very much for allowing me to interview with you. As for Myanmar Tutorials, your contribution is invaluable for us. Thanks again.
Facebook comments:
16 Responses
Leave a comment
About the Author
Thiha
စာမရေးရ မနေနိုင်သူ၊ ဒီဇိုင်းဆွဲခြင်း၊ ပရိုဂရမ်ရေးခြင်း၊ အင်တာနက်တွင် သင်ယူခြင်းတို့ အမြဲမပြတ် ပြုလုပ်နေသူ၊ နည်းပညာနှင့် ပတ်သက်လျှင် အကုန် စိတ်ဝင်စားသူ၊ ကလေး တစ်ယောက် အဖေ၊ နည်းပညာသမားအပေါ် နားလည်မှု အပြည့်ပေးနိုင်သော ဇနီးတစ်ယောက်၏ ခင်ပွန်း၊ Myanmar Links မှာ နည်းပညာ အကြောင်း သောင်းပြောင်းထွေလာ သင်တဲ့ဆရာ ... လောလောဆယ် လေ့လာနေတာက iOS
Ads
Well. first of all, it’s nice interview . and Ko Sean’s talkie is super’ super nice
AFAIK, Google discontinued using Windows and switching to Mac and U/Linux , is it true ?
how many employees from Google use iPhone ?
Yes, another Great Interview, bro. Glad to hear about him.
How about the ways ,Sean Lin, arrived to Google? Is it in next part?
Btw, among the words, I like this ….”everybody has 20% of their time to work on personal project using Google resources and some of the best Google projects come from 20%, such as Gmail and Adsense. Working hours are very flexible, I spent most of my office hour working from home instead of office unless there’s a meeting or something.” ……
and this “…At Google, they don’t care what qualification you hold (unless you apply for non-tech position) or your age as long as you are talented and has the expertise. Youngest at Google is 17 years old.”…
Go ahead with these kind of Great Interviews, bro.
Internally, Google has been using non-Windows solutions for quite long. Most of the engineers are on either Mac or Linux, but now it becomes an official policy – no Windows. Yet, Google will still keep dozens of PCs for developing/supporting Google applications on Windows.
We have lots of iPhone and iPads…we still need to support our native apps on iPhone (YouTube, Map and Search).
and You use Iphone , right ?
correct I remember him
using his iphone to share connection with us
lol
I use iPhone but now Nexus is my everyday companion…:)
Off Topics – There are no walls, there are no windows.
Let’s go to Open and Free Platforms.
of course, if you aren’t either a .NET Developer or big Gamer
It’s good to know that a Myanmar is working for Google. The information given in this interview is very good but it could be much better if you ask him how he got into Google. How did he find his particular talent? How did he prepare himself?
Most of us would want to know that. Just my 2 cents. Peace!
Dear Bro Sean Lin,
Everybody want to know about that “How do you get the Google job?”, “How do you manage to get there?”.
Let’s start next mini interview … 
Thiha
Cool…I am okie with it
ok, I’ll send you another two questions for that.
I’m still waiting to hear the questions.
Yes, I agree with Ko Wai Pyo
Reply to Off-Topics —> There are no walls, there are no windows?? So … where do you live?? Where is your home? Windows is a window which let you see how the outside world look likes and where we begin to see (OpenSource). We grew up with windows, unfortunately. (^_^)
Yes, Of course, Windows can be a stepping stone, then you are right, Cheers !!
Just for fun !!!
[...] Interview with Sean Lin [...]