The Google Story
Google and its founders have travelled far. At the same time, they and the company are both young. This book by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed gives us a good understanding as to why Google is where it is today. The book talks about the creators, Larry Page and Sergey Brin and what makes them different from other youngsters and how they pursued a dream and made it an amazing reality, which is vital not just to them today but also to the entire world.
There are many things which set Google apart from the rest of the competitors. Let us start with the very basics , the Logo. It is a childlike logo which is set in a white uncluttered background of pure white. The logo is about setting itself apart using simplicity as a tool. Thinking about it, the very concept of search is very basic. Every human beings searches for data or information all the time. And in the internet world this was done in a very cluttered and unprofessional manner. All the previous search engines, Altavista, Netscape, etc made search such a complicated process. Brin and Page made it simple. They just took all the data and ranked all of it in a very clever manner and did a study as to which sites are hit the most and for what reason. This brought about the counter system which kept track of which sites are visited the most and hence every time you search for something, the most relevant data comes and hits you in your face first.
Google today is not just a name of a search engine. It is a word which people all over the world have introduced in dictionaries and “To Google” now officially means “To Search”. This is testament to the pervasive influence on global culture. The technology on which it works also has its own term which is “Googleware” as there is no other word in English language which exists to describe this seamless melding of hardware and software at such a massive scale.
Google’s transcendent and seemingly human qualities give it special appeal to an amazingly wide range of computer users, from experts to novices., who trust the brand so much so that today it is regarded as an extension of their brains. Talk about some massive
Google ad system are a reflection of their genius and foresight. The Google home page is today considered the most valuable piece of real estate on the Internet. In spite of this, Google never displays a single advertisement on its home page. By doing this they are actually foregoing tens of millions of dollars in revenue and profit just to give their users a high quality search experience.
Another thing Google has brought into the market is offering a service for free. Never before has a service been offered for free to the entire world and of such superior quality. This could very well be the way of the world tomorrow where there would be a truly “Free Market”(not the economic definition of the Free Market).
The initial chapters in the book talk about how Larry Page and Sergey Brin came up with this idea in a research project in their university and how it became a multimillion dollar business eventually. The chapters talk about the background from which the two have come and how highly educated their parents were and the importance of education in their lives.
Google is run very much like a university where there are lots of projects to research on and there are small groups of people working in groups of three or so working on a particular project. They seem to be researching everything from astrophysics to microbiology and Brin says that its only when you have failures can you succeed.
"Google” the name came into existence because of a spelling error. Originally the site was called “Backrub” and there was a definite need to rename it. And so came about the word “Google” in a brainstorming session. The original word is “Googol” which means the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes, thus implying that it is a very huge number.
Now the question, How does Google make money?
Google gets paid for every search that happens more or less mostly through advertising. People pay for advertising. Google chooses to make ads relevant rather than having flash banner ads. It helps them have the best search engine. They also get paid by other companies like AOL which use Google as the search engine.
In the mid - 1990s, the web was a virtual Wild west, unregulated, uninhibited and unruly. Millions of people logged on and began communicating via e – mail. But serious researchers grew frustrated amid the clutter of websites. Early efforts to help computer users to find information on the internet including Web crawler, Lycos, Magellan, Infoseek, Excite and Hotbot fellshort. Search was not pretty in those days. There was a search engine called Inktomi at that time which was developed in Berkely. When you typed “Inktomi” in the search engine, it could not even find itself. This was how bad the scene was. Google stepped in as saviours at this point of time and but obviously with their brilliant technique and offering they were the leaders as soon as they stepped in. Google brought in the “Page Rank” system named after Larry Page.
From the start, Google’s clean pristine look attracted computer users hunting for information. In a cluttered world, its primary colours and white background conveyed purity with universal appeal. It stood in marked contrast to the growing number of busy looking internet pages with flashy ads and crowded graphics. Because it did not feel that Google was trying to sell anything, people took ownership of the search engine and more readily adopted it as their own. It is described in the book as a way to find your way through the noise.
Google’s popularity was mostly by word of mouth. In the spring of 1998, Larry and Sergey sent out a mail to a group they called “The Google Friends” and urged people to spread the word. They wanted feedback on what they had been doing for so long and were looking for ways they could better it. Soon after this they added the summary snippet to each search result which gave the user a clear idea as to what was written on the page if he opened the link. They concentrated on building something of value and delivering a service so compelling enough that people would just use it. Larry and Sergey had a deep seated aversion to advertising and they believed that it would corrupt the whole search process. Being headstrong and not caring about which direction the world was moving in, they managed to get funding in their initial years. They used all their money on buying more equipment and developing a better system than what was available rather than advertising the existing product. Sergey and Larry preferred to keep the company private as long as they possibly could because they wanted to build the best search engine; the money they could gain by making the company public was not so important. Still, the company needed cash to expand, especially after moving to the new company headquarters in
The Google workplace is even today the envy of every office goer. Initially, when Larry and Sergey started advertising to hire people, their ads were with offers such as cool technology, stock options, free snacks and drinks and the proposition that millions of people will use and appreciate the work they do. These standards are maintained even today where the Google workplace is still supposed to be the coolest place to work in where you get everything from a lounge area to even a nap room.
Google has benefited a lot from free media exposure. Their popularity was initially by word of mouth. The mention in PC magazine put Google on the radar screen of thousands of people for the first time. While their competitors blew millions and millions of dollars on advertising and extravagant marketing techniques in the Super Bowl ads and the like, Google gained popularity and recognition without spending a dime.
The Google Doodle is another very popular feature of Google. This all started when Larry and Sergey left for a festival called the Burning Man and used a stick man to denote that they were away. This was the birth of the doodle and every single day there is a new doodle now indicating an event somewhere in the world. The Burning Man logo was followed by The Halloween logo. Then came the Chinese New Year, Diwali, The Olympics and every other event in the world. Marissa Mayer is credited with a lot of the doodle work. She designed the new Google front which is in Verdana font. This gave rise to a lot of emotion as people did not seem to like that and it was then that everybody realized how important the Google logo was.
Danny Sullivan was another important name in the Google world. He was a news paper reporter who had quit and was working on websites then. He had an online newsletter which had become increasingly popular because it was free and of good quality. Brin and Page knew that they could popularise Google a great deal by developing a good relationship with Sullivan as his newsletter reached a wide audience. When the Google boys set up the ads on their pages and gave it the name of “sponsored links”, Danny Sullivan gave this decision of theirs a salutation on his website. This was taken very seriously by Larry and Sergey. Instead of merely advertising an ad from a vendor who willing to pay the most, Google ranked its ads based on a formula that took into account both the how much someone offered to pay and how often computer users clicked on the ad. This way more popular ads rose to the top and the less popular ones drifted away. In other words, Google trusted the users to rank the ads. It was consumer pull rather than business push that would determine which ads would appear on the page. Danny Sullivan watched the growth of Google very closely and kept marketing them whenever he could. This gave a huge popularity boost to Google.
Google’s motto was “Don’t be Evil”. Who knew that such a whacky motto would actually profit them when Microsoft who could have been the biggest competitor, was having its own problems and was portrayed as the Darth Vader of the internet world. This made people want to work for Google more than for Microsoft at mediocre pay packages but with stock options with the hope that someday the stocks would be of some value. Google believed that they were providing a service like a TV channel where they would eventually earn profit by providing free search. The started off with the search which later branched into the image search then the mail network and a whole Google range of products and what better could you ask for, all for free.
There is a chapter in the book about Eric Schmidt who was responsible a great deal in making Google a success. Schmidt had already been the CEO of Sun and came with a lot of experience which benefited Sergey and Larry greatly especially during their initial years. Eric brought about a business structure to the way Google functioned. He had a love hate relationship with Larry and Sergey but both parties knew that together they could make Google huger than what it was.
Slowly and steadily, Google started taking over the entire search world. Yahoo, AOL, EarthLinks and Ask Jeeves, all the big giants started having a box beside their search engine which said that it was powered by Google. Google’s alliance with AOL pitted Microsoft against it because MS had been forever wanting to wipe out AOL. Meanwhile, advertising on Google proved to be an extremely efficient way for firms to reach potential customers. Google offered narrowcasting not broadcasting. It tried to reach the consumer at the point of decision about buying a product rather than plastering ads with the right demographics. In many ways, Google’s financial success was the result of being able to figure out how to make Internet advertising work , both for the business as well as the customers.
Google News, Froogle and many other ventures were pioneered by employees of Google like Krishna Bharath and Nevill – Manning. These ideas all came during the 20% time they had as free time when they could easily do some kind of activity they liked. The book has a few pages with pictures in it of some of the people spoken about till now. Putting a face on the characters is really helpful and nice to see.
The “Ego Search” is a term which is often associated with Google. The book has a cartoon on it too. The term means searching for yourself on Google and boosting your own ego. Another term which is very popular is the “Google Whack”. This term refers to finding a search which is a combination of just two words and gives you just one search result. It sounds easy, but it is very very difficult to find a Google Whack and there is a documentary on how the different Google Whacks have met up in the world everywhere. Very interesting.
The book has chapters which talk about Gmail, their cook Charlie and how much he means to them, the emotional turmoil that Larry and Sergey went through while making Google public, the race with Microsoft which is still on, the Geico Vs Google case which was a legal showdown over the ad bidding issue and the establishment of the virtual library through Google books. Google started growing as a business and harnessing the best talent in the
Reading this book gives me a clear idea as to how Google functions and how the two mavericks became billionaires within a short span of time. The idea of making something which is a non profit venture and making it a need which other people will pay for is a brilliant idea which these two have harnessed and used to the maximum. Google continues to grow at a very fast pace. Soon they are to come out with their own Operating system giving Microsoft a definite run for their money. The book also mentions various other areas into which Google plans to venture, be it the Life Sciences or the Financial World. Google is more like a force which is moving ahead with its incredible quality and technique and overall the book makes a good read giving you quite a bit of knowledge.
No comments:
Post a Comment