A Google Goodbye: Why a Top Designer Walked

Yesterday was Doug Bowman's last at Google. His departure leaves the company without its talented lead visual designer, a guy millions of bloggers (including me) owe big-time for his remarkable set of playful design templates at Blogger, among his many other design contributions.

Bowman explained his decision to leave what just three years had seemed to be a dream job on his blog, and by doing so he provided a much more incisive commentary about what is wrong at the top of Google than my own recent, somewhat feeble attempt, "Why Google Exec's Fear Losing Marissa Mayer."

Listen to what Bowman said in his post, "Goodbye Google." His words actually gave me chills:

"Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions. With every new design decision, critics cry foul. Without conviction, doubt creeps in. Instincts fail. "Is this the right move?" When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions."

Google's top leadership suffers from the delusion it only is a technology company. In fact, as every reader of this blog knows, Google is also a media company -- a major media company. What Bowman said about the need for a senior visual design lead should be said as well for its (desperate) need a senior content lead.

However, not only is there no senior-level content executive at Google, as near as I can tell, there is no content creator, editor, journalist, producer employed by the company at all! (Somebody, please correct me if I am wrong.)

This is actually getting to be painful, watching a group of very smart people, who've established what is one of the most impressive companies in the world, choking on their own Kool-Aid. The reason so many web-based media companies fail is they eschew the very people they need most -- editorial and design leaders.

These are the experts who know what the engineers will never know, the secret sauce of connecting with other humans. Lacking this knowledge, each of these promising companies ultimately are doomed to failure.