We all know that Google is huge, right? Like, really massive. A globe-spanning colossus, in fact. But every now and then we come across a tangible sign of just how broad the company is, and how many different pies it has its fingers in. For example, take a look at this list of the company’s “developer advocates.” They’re the ones that work with third-party developers on applications and services that integrate with some of Google’s various business units. And there are over 75 of them.
That’s a pretty huge list — in fact, it takes several pages just to get through the names that start with A, B and C (they are also sorted alphabetically by first name for some reason, which seems a little odd). They are broken down into categories as well, including Ads and Commerce, Cloud, Geo, Google Apps, Mobile, Social and TV/Video, and then there’s a whole category called “Other Google APIs.” And there are some bona fide stars on the list, including former Napster executive and former Microsoft evangelist Don Dodge, as well as Android advocate Tim Bray, former director of web technologies at Sun Microsystems and co-developer of XML.
Having so many evangelists is a good thing in many ways. Google, unlike a lot of other large technology companies, provides public and open APIs for dozens of different parts of its business, from maps and search to images, Android and YouTube. These open interfaces allow developers to plug into the giant company’s databases and create incredible features and services using that content, and even some things that may not be all that useful but are still pretty amazing — like MapCrunch, which takes you to a random location somewhere in the world via Google’s Street View.
That said, however, there is still a risk of spreading the company’s resources too thin. Although it is a huge entity, with a massive pool of more than $40 billion in cash and a market value of $200 billion, even Google is potentially at risk of losing focus by trying to do too many things at once. For every two or three developer advocates on that list, there is a different line of business that the company is either trying to expand or doing its best to support. Pretty soon, Google will need a VP of Evangelism (if it doesn’t already have one) to keep track of all its developer evangelists.