Google has about 60,000 employees, well 59,976 according to Google search. And of those people, very few have access to see and touch the Google search algorithm.
I always wondered who had access. Meaning, does John Mueller have access. We know Gary Illyes has access but doesn't work with Penguin but can he see and make changes to the Penguin code based on his level of access? Meaning, yes, I assumed most of Google doesn't have access to the Google search algorithms, but even those who do, is their access limited by different levels?
Douglas Mayle, who worked at Google as a Senior Software Engineer for almost five years before moving to Facebook, wrote on Quora that he did not have access to the search algorithms. He said he did have more access to code at Google than most, but he was "not in the very small group who had access to Google search algorithms."
So only a small group did have access. I assume folks like Matt Cutts had full access, but how many people at Google have access to all of it? I wonder.
We know AdWords folks have zero access but there are HR people all the way to executives who deal with investors. These folks likely have no access at all. It is the engineers who work with search that have access, the question is, how many of those have access and is there different levels of access?
Forum discussion at Quora.
