Google eats own Pyra dog food

SANTA CLARA, CALIF. — Two months after Google acquired blog technology developer Pyra Labs the company is already eating its own dog food.

Craig Silverstein, Google’s director of technology, told an audience here at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference that the company has started using Pyra’sblog tool for internal communications and product development.

Silverstein, Google’s third member of staff, said the media has speculated on how the company will make use of Pyra’sBloggerWeblog tool, but “no one speculated that we use it internally to foster communication.”

Sticking to company policy, he refused to offer plans for the external use of Pyra’s technology, pointing instead to the Weblog run by former Pyra CEO and Co-founder Evan Williams as the public face of this development.

Internal consumption of Blogger is part of what Silverstein said is Google’s continuing efforts to foster innovation and communication by the company’s collection of small working teams.

To that end, he referred to the ongoing work of Google Labs and an internal list of more than 100 working projects the company evaluates on a weekly basis.

Ultimately, Silverstein said a challenge Google faces as it evolves is remaining true to its mission. “Google’s mission statement is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” he said.

As such, the company is very careful to make sure it hires the right people, and letting the company grow without its core mission becoming distorted. For example, he said, Google resisted adopting pop-up advertisements and waited until it could make text-based advertisements work. “We are trying to be successful without being evil,” he said.

One area the company is looking to expand its reach is through wireless technology. Silverstein said one of his personal goals is that in the future people will use Web phones to exploit location and content available on the Web. For example, a person could use their Web phone to locate certain food items inside a supermarket.

Silverstein also said Google recently opened a New York office.