Is this based on any real information, or is it just a rehash of the WSJ article?
The "money quote" says nothing about 20% time. It says that the company won't instantly allocate 20 engineers to somebody's 20% project. Which is really just sound business sense - what other startup gets 20 engineers to fool around with before they even have a product?
The impression I got when I visited the Google campus two weeks ago was nothing like this article suggests, and the Googlers in the comments seems to indicate it's basically made-up too.
The "money quote" says nothing about 20% time. It says that the company won't instantly allocate 20 engineers to somebody's 20% project. Which is really just sound business sense - what other startup gets 20 engineers to fool around with before they even have a product?
The impression I got when I visited the Google campus two weeks ago was nothing like this article suggests, and the Googlers in the comments seems to indicate it's basically made-up too.