Software runs my life

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My Google Story

Dropping off my Google badge
Dropping off my Google badge

Dear team and friends,

When I was about 11, I created a Lego greenhouse that grew a real plant. That’s when I first believed that I could create technology that makes a difference in the real world. I came to Google as a level 3 just over 9 years ago to work with the best people in the world to achieve that mission. Being part of programs like YouTube Symphony only confirmed this truth. Four promotions later I hit an EQ brick wall, leading to 2 years of hard self reflection both inside (thanks Take the Lead) and outside Google (thanks INSEAD).

At the end of this period I wrote a thesis with a paediatric surgeon in Singapore. She turned up late to our first group meeting… typical university group work right? Except she was late due to performing a liver transplant on a newborn. I reflected that the ads I delivered today didn’t give me that same feeling, she reflected that she only had one pair of hands and YouTube educates the world on health every second.

In the couple of years since this experience I’ve felt a need to more deliberately structure teams to solve real world problems. Full time this was helping my awesome Publisher team find a way to fund journalism again, but at night I was kept awake by failed health startups and raising our 3rd child. My list of requirements for a healthtech role that would be good enough to leave Google for was extensive, but after a lot of sleepless nights and consultation with family and mentors, I think I’ve found one.

There are a huge number of people to thank for this journey – Neeraj, Estee, Alan, Abhay and Scott for being amazing mentors and advocates. My teams and peers across Brand, CSE and Publishers who have pushed me to be a better person and manager, but more importantly shared so many personally meaningful TGIFs, off-sites, coffees and lunches. I’m sorry for pushing so hard on PDPs and career development, but if it helped spark even one new insight into what motivates you then I leave content.

Please stay in touch, it’s a small world even outside the Google bubble.

Scott

Remove Adware infected YouTube App

I recently bought  Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 and Note 3 phones off Lazada in Singapore. Both times the standard ROM was installed, but some modifications had been made. The phones were rooted and some apps had been installed (Kingroot, Google Play Services etc.). The most annoying part however was that if Chrome hadn’t been used for ~10mins and you opened it, then it would open a popup with a full screen advertisement. I started researching how to remove this annoying Adware.

I found one really good article which detailed the debugging process. There are a few pre-steps however:

  1. Root the phone
  2. Install ADB tools on your computer
  3. Plug in the phone via a USB cable

As per the article above, you can then use the ADB logcat to debug what’s going on. Do the following steps from a terminal prompt on your computer:

  1. adb logcat > log.txt
  2. Open Chrome on your Android phone, wait for the ads to load. Take note of the Ad URL that loads (there might be a couple, so try and get the first one)
  3. Ctrl+C to kill logcat
  4. Open the log.txt file in a text editor and search of the URL you noted in step #2

My Ad spam URL was “ymtracking.com” and so I searched for that in log.txt. It came up with this line:

I/ActivityManager(  808): START u0 {act=android.intent.action.VIEW dat=http://global.ymtracking.com/trace?offer_id=111090&aff_id=27742 flg=0x10000000 cmp=com.android.chrome/com.google.android.apps.chrome.Main} from uid 10035 on display 0

This line tells me that a process running under UID 10035 is calling the ad URL. Time to hunt and kill that UID!

  1. adb -d shell
  2. su

Then you need to view the file /data/system/packages.xml. The Xiaomi phones don’t seem to have vi as a text editor installed, so move it to /sdcard/ to download it to your computer, or open it on the phone itself in the browser. Look for the package line that matches the UID you find earlier (10035):

<package name=”<<PACKAGE NAME>>” codePath=”<<DIR>>”  sharedUserId=”10035″>

Now you know the package name and the location. Normally you could enter the following command from the ADB shell as su “pm disable <<PACKAGE NAME>>”, but when I tried that it was not allowed (read only). Trying to reinstall the package didn’t work either. I found I had to actually use the code path and delete the .apk file itself:

  1. cd /system/priv-app/Youtube (what you had as <<DIR>> above)
  2. mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
  3. rm -rf Youtube.apk

That was it! Reboot the phone and the ads are gone. You can then use the Play Store to install YouTube as normal, from the official source.

Final Olympics 2012 YouTube Live gadget

YouTube Olympic streaming in 64 countries

Final Olympics 2012 YouTube Live gadget

YouTube.com/Olympics gadget currently Live

The London 2012 Olympics was the highest profile program I have worked on for YouTube. I was responsible for the IOC YouTube Channel – youtube.com/olympic. This channel only displayed the full content experience for 64 countries during the games across APAC; the largest being India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. These 64 countries received 11 live channels running 1200 live events in 1080p HD for 18hrs a day, plus nearly all archived content available. It was a huge process to get this content uploaded, named, categorised into playlists and keywords, and finally navigable in a custom gadget.

The result was well worth the effort, we received 72 million streams just during the 2 week period. Subsequently the content geo-restrictions were removed, and the channel view count has since broken the 100 million views mark. All the global statistics are wrapped up in this official blog post.

This first Olympics has built a solid subscriber base for future events, lifting the number of subscribers by 360k to almost 500k. This is a huge and engaged audience that will be waiting for the next big Olympics event to start. It was great to be a part of this program, and I hope it is seen as a template for how large events can play out online in the future.

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