It's been around a lot longer than Google. PMs at Microsoft are technical positions -- they mostly require a technical degree (how technical is dependent on your team. SQL Server PMs need to talk-the-talk with their B2B customers without confusion).
Says the college student who, let me guess, never worked at microsoft.
As someone who has, PMs are not technical people, at least not in that company at the time I worked there.
I think ignorant college students who are not smart enough to know the limits of their own knowledge are the reason that hacker news has gone the way of slashdot.
Oh, since you're probably under 20, slashdot used to have good discussion from actual engineers who were knowledgable, then it got overrun by ignorant gnu weeneis around 2001 or so-- back when you are 8.
