A look at Google’s “20 percent time”

googlenews.jpgThe New York Times gives us a closer look and some philosophizing about Google’s famed “20 percent time” during an interview with Google software engineer Bharat Mediratta.

In a nutshell, 20 percent time is the amount of time given to Google employees to work on self-directed projects. GMail and Google News both stemmed from 20 percent time, says Mediratta.

During the ONA conference on Wednesday, I blogged about Lisa Williams’ talk and how important it is to take some cues from technology companies on how to be competitive online. Check out the Times article for starters and keep looking into how tech companies do their thing; I know I will.

PLUS: Google News “goes social” with a new Facebook app.

DOUBLE-PLUS: Toronto has a really cool project called Murmur, which provides interesting local audio stories to visitors via cell phone call or download. I’m sticking around Toronto for the weekend and took the audio tour of Spadina, which really brought the neighborhood to life for me. This’d be a neat type of project for local news sites…

Author: Danny Sanchez

Danny Sanchez is the Audience Development Manager at Tribune's Sun-Sentinel.com and OrlandoSentinel.com. Danny has been with Tribune since 2005 in a variety of editorial, digital and product development roles in Hartford, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale. He has also previously worked in the newsrooms of the Tampa Bay Times and The Miami Herald.

2 thoughts on “A look at Google’s “20 percent time””

  1. They should pull resources together, a lot can be done with 20% of each person’s time. Google employees, hear this? Get a board up and have people post their projects for people to help out!

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