My favourite quotes from the internal emails of big tech companies

Internal Tech Emails is perhaps one of my favourite Twitter accounts at the moment.

Here’s the lowdown if you haven’t heard of it: every once in a while, a government investigation, hacker or whistleblower comes along and blows the lid on the internal comms of tech companies. Most of the time, the content is too long, dense and dull for relaxed perusal. However, some clever person has begun haranguing the leaks into bitesize tweets for our puny minds to more easily parse.

What’s more, some of the screenshots contain some of the most extraordinary insights into how the famous tech peeps (Zuckerberg, Jobs and Elizabeth Holmes included) make their decisions.?

So, come with me as I peer inside this trove. It makes for fascinating reading.?

“I think we should talk to YouTube, if nothing else to make them more expensive for Yahoo” — Google, Nov 2006, Jeff Huber / Larry Page

Larry Page and Co were interested in YouTube way back in 2005 when they sent this memo. They even discussed the pros and cons of the site vs. Revver (another video-sharing platform that soon folded). It appears that the Google team wanted to ward off their Yahoo rivals, who were also interested in acquiring YouTube.?

“Guesstimated price tag for YouTube would be $10-15m”

Said another memo in the chain— quite a way off from the $1.65bn Google ended up paying just a few months later. Slight guesstimation misfire.

“We have 1.5 engineers working on UI things and that is slowing us down”

Last one from this particular conversation, sorry, 1.5 engineers? How does that work? Has one of them got their hands tied? Who knows.?

Anyway, fresh batch — here goes.

“Eric, I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this. Thanks, Steve” — Steve Jobs, March 2007 to Eric Schmidt (CEO, Google)

Jobs included an attached email that showed a Google recruiter trying to woo away an Apple employee. Eric’s subsequent reply confirmed they would be “terminated within the hour” — just shows how seriously these guys respected each other. Wowzas.

“:) Steve” — Steve Jobs’ reply to Eric’s email confirming the recruiter had left

2021 translation: ??

“Are there any resources from our foundation that will help the COVID-19 vaccine development stay on track?” — Mark Zuckerberg to Anthony Fauci in spring of 2020

Zuckerberg and Facebook often come in for a lot of criticism, but here he covers himself in glory. A straightforward attempt to help out the scientist in charge of the US’s COVID response.?

“I believe that we will be okay.” — Fauci’s reply

Clearly, the government official thought Facebook’s offer wasn’t going to be mission-critical. What matters was Zuckerberg’s offer, though, which is impressive.

“2011 Strategy: the Holy War with Google” — a main subheading from Jobs’ plan for the following year, October 2010

These two are huge competitors, so you can see why he put such emphasis on this. “All the ways we compete with them” is what he went on to speak about, according to the document. It also reveals how he discussed the strengths and weaknesses of Microsoft, Samsung, HTC and Motorola (the last one perhaps being a sign of the time).

“We are going to be so late with a music service we are going to be behind others forever” — Bill Gates, June 2003, to several juniors

At the time, Apple had just launched iPod and Gates was understandably concerned. “People I know are getting iPods with thousands of songs on them. Warren Buffet just loves the thing,” he continued.?

“What is our thinking for Windows? All of the hardware people will be tied to other [Apple] services. People won’t give up their hardware.” — Gates, in the same email

Microsoft did come out with some of their own devices (I actually still own a Zune!), but none have had the same impact as the iPod, iPhone or iPad.

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These are just some of my favourites, and I think they provide a fascinating insight into how some of our most famous CEOs are… just like us. Aside from the fact their decisions impact millions of people. For more of these, check out the original account here — just try to avoid hours of wasted time like yours truly!