Lecture
At the end of August 1999, Larry and Sergey, together with friends and Google employees, plunged into cars and drove into the Black Rock Desert (Nevada). There they will have neither the Internet nor the connection with the outside world.There is no water, no food, so they bring with them a weekly supply of provisions.
But they will not be there alone. At the same time, engineers and programmers, artists and hippies, advanced youth and informals - about 18 thousand people go there. They are not frightened by the multi-kilometer traffic jams on the narrow motorways north of Reno, nor by the scorching desert sun, nor by the night chill. They keep their way to a city that is not marked on any map, since it becomes inhabited only for a few August days. In this city every year there is a festival of free art and free love.
Sergey and Larry, no matter how busy they are with their affairs, cannot miss this opportunity to hang out and get a charge of cheerfulness. In addition, there will certainly be Google users and potential partners. All of them are attracted, like a magnet, by a large wooden figure of a burning man, who conjures up images of raging flames and pagan rituals. The mere sight of a giant figure, towering 12 meters above the ground and illuminating the sky of the West Coast with neon light, causes awe. There is no consensus on what it symbolizes. As, however, the idea of the festival itself, which is now regarded as an opportunity to communicate with like-minded people and have a good time, is not completely clear.
The August pilgrimage to this realm of sand, heat and flesh has already become a ritual for the inhabitants of the neighborhood of San Francisco, especially for the residents of Silicon Valley. Everything, from serious IT specialists to avid party-goers, is fleeing from the annoying restrictions of everyday life on this “temporary island of freedom” in the desert.Friends and lovers come here, and here, in the endless sandy expanses of the ocean coast, where naked bodies and drugs are common, they find friends and love. The main streets of the Burning Man are named after the planets of the Solar System, and the perpendicular ones are the names of the epochs from the dial of the giant sundial built in the desert. The city of free morals is packed with trucks, tents, caravans, and quaint themed tent camps. In the center, on the background of the rocks, stands the surrealistic and otherworldly figure of the Burning Man.
Nobody controls the festival participants especially, but there are certain rules of behavior. In the city you can not sell or buy anything, except for iced coffee in the central cafe. Also, do not leave trash behind. “It’s our attitude to the environment that makes us different from Woodstock,” said festival organizer Harley K. Birman, an environmental activist. “The Burning Man” is an experimental event: a city is built in which people live for a while and then it disappears. And the most important art here is the art of living, leaving nothing behind. ”
Before leaving for the festival, Larry and Sergey also created a work of experimental art, but on the site accessible to them - the main page of their site. In the second "about" logo, they inserted a figure of a burning man. For novice users who logged on Google in those days, the logo probably seemed clumsy and ill-conceived. But the experienced “surfers” he informed about where the Google team will spend the next week.
The desire to improvise with the logo has organically flowed into a good tradition. For Bryn and Paige, the decoration of the Google logo with the Man figurine was then the only opportunity to inform users that if the search server goes down, there will be no one to repair it, since everything is at the festival. Programmer Marissa Mayer, who went to work just that summer, recalled that the human figure in the logo “did not carry much meaning, but rather served as a signal that the company's office was empty — everyone had gone to the desert.
The Burning Man festival was founded in June 1986 as a summer solstice festival on one of the beaches of San Francisco. Then a group of young people set fire to an eight-foot wooden human figure. By the time Larry and Sergey became doctoral students at Stanford University and moved to Northern California, he transformed into a real Mecca of free art, attracting thousands of people to an “oasis cleansed from almost all attributes of everyday life,” as the founder of the festival Larry Harvey expressed.
Strolling along the hot sand of the town, Brin and Page enthusiastically examined giant installations that perfectly combined creativity and engineering thinking, talent and technology. The theme of the 1999 festival is “The Wheel of Time”, therefore, the figure of Man was surrounded by works of art that symbolized the passage of time. A new millennium was approaching, and this event at the crossroads of times was a great opportunity to meet new ideas and new people. In contrast to the craftsmen who had been working on complex structures for weeks, or even months, Bryn and Page favored works created spontaneously. “The less you plan, the better,” Paige once said.
Larry prudently took the camera with him and now tirelessly captured the moments of the festival on film - after all, it took time to digest the new impressions. (Then most of the photos, including a panoramic picture of the city, will be posted on the walls of the Google office.) At the “Sands of Time” exhibit, Larry and Sergey viewed the giant sundial and listened to a lecture on the concepts of time, read on behalf of famous scientists of the past. On the circumference of the wheel of time, the eerie “Tree of bones”, circulating from a three-storey house, gathered from the most genuine human bones, circulated. And the sand around the figure of the Man was lined with two thousand light bulbs connected to eight golf-powered golf carts.
Flashing lights, like the Burning Man himself, looked most effective at night, when fire, glowing structures, dances and music transformed the city and filled its inhabitants with an intoxicating sense of freedom.
For many, alcohol and drugs are essential attributes of staying at the festival. But not for Larry and Sergey - they were intoxicated by the energy and ingenuity of the local inhabitants: clowns, dancers and old friends, in whom there was no shortage. “This is a great opportunity to experiment with your own mind and mindset, as well as communicate with interesting people,” states Brad Templeton, head of Electronic Frontier Founfation (“Electronic Frontier”) foundation. Like the creators of Google, he is a frequenter of the festival. - People go there to demonstrate their creative abilities and appreciate the creations of others. This is a rest not only from everyday life, but also from the rhythm of modern life. ”
Some colleagues in Silicon Valley, dressed in eccentric costumes or smeared from head to toe with paint, Larry and Sergey found out with difficulty. “Here you can do anything, any nonsense,” notes Tamara Manzner, classmate of Bryn and Page. These two did not miss anything: they crawled along a 30-foot labyrinth pipe called the “black hole”, cycled around an orange elephant to enjoy the effect of a man running in flames. “They were drawn there because there was freedom of creativity there,” says Sean Anderson.
Brin and Page have already worked on a system of staff motivation, promotion of cohesion and responsible attitude, but the non-commercial festival Burning Man (advertising is prohibited there) gave them new food for thought. “At this festival, creativity is appreciated, nobody cares about money here,” says futurist Stuart Brand. “You can't buy anything for the Burning Man and for a billion dollars, except a cup of coffee.”
The real challenge for Larry, Sergey and other participants was the harsh climatic conditions. To survive, they needed to act together. The atmosphere on the “Burning Man”, where the ability to work in a team was primarily valued, contained elements of the culture that they created in Google. The guys were also impressed by the philosophy of the festival - “only participants”, and the way it encouraged people to get rid of unnecessary complexes and restrictions. “For Sergey and Larry,“ The Burning Man “was an inexhaustible source of inspiration,” says Brand. “They wandered around the city a lot, and when they got tired, they went to take a nap right on the sand.”
On the last evening of the festival, when the sky was lit up with bright flashes of fireworks, the figure of Man was solemnly set on fire. Immediately before the start of the ritual, a small group of participants, which included the guys from Google, Templeton and others, initiated a protest: they walked around the city in an organized column and chanted: “Do not burn the Man! Do not burn the Man! ”When the wooden figure engulfed the flames, they threw their self-made banners into the fire and joined the gathering force of mass festivities.
"Burning the figure of a Man is a vivid sight," says Templeton. “When a Man in flames falls on the sand, everyone runs up to him and starts dancing, some even throw off their clothes. Impressions are simply unforgettable. ”
Two months later, on the eve of Halloween, Marissa Mayer stayed at Google’s office longer than usual: she needed to finish something before leaving for Europe. About two o'clock in the morning, when she wrote another letter, Sergei suddenly called her: “Marissa, look at this!” While still under the impression of “Burning Man”, Bryn created a new, “Halloween” version of the search engine logo on his computer: on the letters "o" he imposed two orange pumpkins.
But she was not impressed by Mayer. “Awful ... some kind of clipart,” she thought.
“Place it on our website,” Sergey asked.
- Do you want me to post it on our website? Exclaimed Mayer. - Do not you see that the fragment of the first "o" appears?
One of the pumpkins was really a bit shifted up, exposing a piece of red "o". But Bryn stood his ground:
- All in anticipation of Halloween. And we need to show users that we care about Halloween too.
Google Clipart gadgets like Google visitors. The new version of the logo was discussed by all and sundry; it was noted even on the Slashdot website, the e-mecca of programmers.
Sergey believed that it is worth changing the brand name from time to time - this keeps users in pleasant tension. He intended to redo the logo for other holidays or insert “progressive” pictures - like a tree, which would “grow” in a week on the main page. At first they tried to dissuade Bryn from this undertaking, but thematic versions of the logo went off with a bang from users who demanded continuation. Sergey created a special commission consisting of Meyer and two more employees, who were tasked to decide on which holidays and events the main page should be decorated with a new version of the logo.At first they relied on Independence Day, but every time they were dissatisfied. With religious holidays will be the same story, they thought, and therefore turned their attention to the "politically correct" holidays and events (Chinese New Year, Earth Day, Olympic Games, etc.), posting a new thematic version of the logo on Google once or twice per month.
In November 2001, Diwali, the Indian festival of light, came to Meyer’s vision. It was especially interesting to work on logo variants on world scale events. Marissa wondered if Diwali had a religious background, but she was assured that it was not. However, on November 13, the day before the display of the logo on the main page, Meier learned from a colleague that the Diwali festival is inextricably linked with Hindu culture, and the idea had to be abandoned. But Mayer was not discouraged: she found on the Internet (through Google, of course) a calendar of memorable dates and found that November 14 is the birthday of Claude Monet. Artists of this scale are known around the world, she reasoned, and therefore it is worth developing a version of the logo dedicated to Monet. And the topic is close to her: her mother taught art.
Mayer called Dennis Hwang, a professional programmer and designer, who attended painting courses at one time: he is considered to be the main logo design specialist at Google. Hvang began experimenting with the Google logo in the summer of 2000, when he was doing internship at the company, and after enrolling in the state, he began devoting several hours a week to perfecting his artistic skills. But that day Hwang was absent due to illness, and Meyer had no choice but to try to make a new version of the logo itself - using the GIMP graphic program, which had an “Impressionism” filter. “What I did, in principle, was similar to the work of Monet,” she recalls, “but Dennis was scared when I said that I was going to place a drawing made in GIMP on the main page.” And Hwang, lying at home with a temperature of 39, still drew a logo dedicated to Monet.
This version of the Google logo - Hwang, by the way, considers it one of his best works - marked the beginning of the tradition to celebrate the birthdays of famous artists in this way. Later, she embraced famous scientists, great discoveries, and even famous artists and showmen. Not everyone welcomed the innovation: for example, the Salvador Dali Foundation demanded to remove the logo dedicated to the famous artist within a few hours after its appearance on the site. But to the overwhelming majority of users, this tradition came to taste, some even began to go specifically to the Google homepage to see if something new had appeared. "Users love themed versions," says Meyer.
Not without fun curiosities. Emails from users regularly came to Google, who, seeing the thematic version of the logo on the main page, for some reason decided that the company had acquired a new brand name. And when, on the occasion of the anniversary of the birth of Michelangelo, Hwang replaced the letter “l” in the logo with the image of his famous sculpture “David” and stylized the rest of the letters under the signs carved in the rock, one user, clearly far from classical art, gave his work the following assessment: "Rockman is resting."
In the summer of 1999, when Marissa Mayer became an employee of Google, the company just needed a specialist who would analyze, test and improve the structure of the website. This work, which included such seemingly insignificant tasks as the selection of optimal combinations of size and type, was very important because it found out what users thought about the website and whether they would like to visit it again and again.
The head of the department, looking through the candidates' resumes, realized that Marissa was suitable for this role like no other. A native of Wisconsin, she graduated from Stanford University with a degree in computer technology, and also studied linguistics and psychology. Her boss gave clear instructions on how Google approached such tasks. “Do not express your thoughts on this matter,” he said. - You should not have any considerations. Your job is to collect information. ”
At the time, the design of the Google homepage was as simple as the structure of a search engine that was hidden from prying eyes. The users who visited the site for the first time were surprised by what they saw. In contrast to most websites, stuffed with a variety of information, the Google homepage was clean and unassuming. The “less and better” approach was absolutely justified: Larry and Sergey relied on speed, and the presence of a multitude of pictures and texts on the main page would significantly slow down the search engine.
Users appreciated Google’s speed, and it has become an indispensable tool for them. Some became so accustomed to the appearance of the main page that even the slightest changes did not elude them. Mayer quickly realized how observant, even vigilant are their users. One of them from time to time sent Google emails, the entire text of which consisted of a two-digit number. At first, Maier could not understand what these combinations of numbers meant, but then it turned out that the number in the message corresponds to the number of words on the Google homepage at the current moment. Thus, she was given to understand: all changes are fixed, so do not be too clever with the page design!
In December, Maier decided to make one major change (the new font’s design was new. Following the instructions to collect information, and not make any comments, she examined the readability of different types of fonts and chose the chopped Verdana font (without serifs). At that time Google’s website provided all the information in a serif typeface, but Meyer thought that using chopped type would allow users to see search results faster. By quickly changing the design of the home page, Meier turned off her computer ter and left - that day, Google employees decided to get together for a tea party at a San Francisco restaurant. What was her surprise when, returning a few hours later, she found that the Google email box was filled with letters from outraged users: “This font Verdana is too big! It is two pins more than before! "," What did not the serifs do not please you? Why did you switch to chopped font? "," Who mocked Google? "This was a good lesson for Meier for the future: yes, information is good, but before you change anything, it is necessary that the first design has been tested among users.
A few weeks later, Google invited a group of 16 people, randomly selected, to one of the Gates Building audiences, where four of the company's specialists were to observe their behavior while working with Google. “We arranged for the computer two by two, so that they communicate with each other, not with us,” explains Meyer. All participants in the experiment were offered, with the help of Google, to find the answer to a simple question: which country’s team won the most gold medals at the 1994 Olympics? They typed www.google.com, the main page appeared on the screen, and they waited.Fifteen seconds passed, twenty, forty-five ... Marissa did not understand what was happening, but she waited patiently for how it would all end. Finally, she could not stand it and asked the participants what they were waiting for. When the page is fully loaded, they answered. This was repeated again and again, recalls Mayer. "The world wide web was filled with live, blinking and flickering pictures, and they waited for all of this to appear on our main page." Experts concluded that a copyright notice and notes at the bottom of the page should be typed in a larger font - not for legal reasons, but only to make these loading indicators more visible.
On that day, Mayer collected a lot of useful information on how to improve the main page. One participant even doubted that Google is an officially registered company - the site seemed so inconspicuous to her. Mayer replied that the company’s staff includes several dozen employees, but “she asked if I was accidentally conducting a psychological experiment for which they specifically invented a company called Google.”
When the company needed a specialist responsible for the development of the computer network, Larry and Sergey resorted to the services of Dr. Jim Reese, a neurosurgeon who graduated from Harvard University and Yale School of Medicine. Before becoming the eighteenth employee of Google, he worked at the Stanford Science Lab. Reese, invited to the post of chief engineer, was in charge of all computer equipment.
In autumn 1999, Google began to purchase equipment. Now, having received the money and the "good" from the two venture capital firms, the creators had everything necessary to seriously take up the development of the company. Growth of the company without the expansion of the computer network was impossible, therefore, it was time to acquire computer components and memory.
Brin and Paget no longer needed to go to the Stanford loading and unloading area. They got into the car and went to FYy's, a giant electronics mall located nearby. There they are overstocked with personal computers, hard drives and memory.Returning to Googleplex, they dismantled the purchased cars and removed from them all the details that only devoured the computing power and resources. They then assembled their PCs and connected them to their system using software, wiring, and a “magic composition” that enabled Google in the blink of an eye to find the right information. “We want to get maximum performance per dollar of costs,” said software engineer Jeffrey Dean, a former AltaVista employee who Google lured.
Dean and other experts who came to Google in the late 1990s, enthusiastically talk about how they created a real supercomputer from inexpensive PCs. Instead of spreading 800 thousand dollars for the latest model from IBM, they visited RackSaver.com, where they sold a rack of 88 computers for only 250 thousand dollars, which had approximately the same performance and several times more disk space. . And they didn’t spend money on Microsoft software either, since they used the free Linux operating system. All this provided Google a significant advantage - even over those competitors whose costs did not exceed it. For every dollar spent, Google received performance three times higher than its main competitors.
At the same time, Google’s personal computers, in contrast to the newest UM machines, did not have built-in safety devices and a reserve, and therefore more often failed. PC service life, like ordinary home machines, was limited to two or three years. However, even fully serviceable computers that have served for two or three years often have to be written off, because they are inferior in their characteristics to new models. Since Google has a lot of computers, every day several of them fail. The machines that were unsuitable for further operation, Sergey and Larry, did not remove or replace with new ones, but simply disconnected from the computer network.
Then Dr. Reese appeared, who preferred to work on software in the operating system in order to ensure high speed and reliability of the search engine. His team, distributing information and operational tasks to hundreds of remote computers, created a system capable of eliminating the consequences of local failures. Thanks to this implementation, Dr. Reese was able to monitor the entire computer network of the company from one point. Now there is no need to constantly “patrol” all data centers located outside the Googleplex.
In these huge centers - unremarkable buildings, equipped with a temperature control system, which were leased to companies seeking to ensure the smooth operation of their systems - were the majority of Google computers. In the late 1990s, when the competition in the field of Internet technologies became much more severe, the rent was calculated based on the cost per square foot of the room, not the amount of energy consumed, and therefore it was economically beneficial for Google to pile on each other. But when the cost of electricity increased dramatically, some of its landlords became bankrupt, and Google had to transport their computers to other premises. Having performed this operation for the first time, Reese and his specialists decided to provide all computer racks with wheels.
When Reese first came to the company, Google had three hundred computers, a month later - two thousand, and in the summer of next year - four thousand PCs. Since the system has significantly expanded, it was necessary to provide a certain reserve so that copies of the same web pages were stored on the hard drives of computers of several clusters - then the failure of one cluster would not have serious consequences for the entire system. At that time, Google had two data centers: one in California and one in DC. Later their number increased significantly, and the geography expanded significantly.
The need to have multiple copies of the same web pages became particularly apparent after a fire broke out in one of the data centers. It was no longer the Burning Man, but the harsh everyday life. Fire trucks did not have time to drive up to the center building, and backup subsystems were already involved in the work, ensuring high speed information retrieval. Google did not disgrace its reputation as a reliable search engine, and tens of thousands of users who were on its pages at that moment did not even realize that something serious had happened.
Danny Sullivan, a 30-year-old correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register, was one of the first to fall ill with Google in the late 1990s. The fact that he left the press-smelling world of the press and joined a friend who was developing web sites hardly surprised anyone: in California, where Sullivan was born and spent his entire adult life, almost every second invested in Internet companies or worked in them. “It was a real boom in which I wanted to participate,” explains Sullivan. Ironically, the turning point for him was the day when a client called him — the owner of the site that hosted Orange County vacancies — and began to complain that his site’s address was too low in the list of search results. Sullivan did not know what to answer. He was from that breed of friendly and insightful people who rarely speak in such a tone. In addition, he could not understand what the fault of his company.
The angry monologue of the client served as a kind of impetus. Sullivan became interested in how search engines collect information and rank search results. For the next few months, Sullivan spent the whole day on the Internet trying to find answers to his questions. He was more and more fascinated by the invisible world of search engines. For example, he found that robots sent to the World Wide Web by AltaVista and other search engines are missing some web pages. The reasons for this, he did not know for sure, although he assumed that all these search engines simply could not keep up with the pace of web development. The conclusions reached by Sullivan could greatly help website owners seeking to attract the attention of users to their offspring. He published an article on the Internet titled “A Guide to Webmaster Search Engines,” in which he explained popularly that website promotion through search engines is associated with a number of problems. Yes, there are quite a lot of search engines, but most of them are primitive in many respects: they slowly copy web pages, often missing important information. Theoretically, it is possible to increase the rating of a single site on all search engines, but in practice this cannot be achieved. Therefore, Sullivan concluded, website owners should focus on AltaVista, Excite and other leading resources. This advice was worth listening to.
By that time, the company where Sullivan worked was bankrupt. But the article got what is called an apple and received a lot of positive reviews. Inspired by this, Sullivan decided to go into the business himself - he became an Internet consultant and opened his own website Califla.com.
Without doubting for a second that with the help of the Internet he would be able to advise clients from anywhere in the world, Sullivan moved with his wife, an Englishwoman, from California to London, where her relatives lived, in 1997. Soon he began posting on his website articles under the heading "Search Engine Watch". Positive feedback on the Webmaster Search Engine Handbook, responses to emails and dialogues with visitors to the site (renamed SearchEngineWatch.com) reinforced Sullivan’s view that a person with practical knowledge in a particular area could well earn a living. by publishing articles on the Internet. Unlike letters, they do not need to be sent to addressees and paid for delivery. In addition, on the site at any time he can post the latest news and comments regarding search resources. The popularity of the website has grown rapidly. In November of the same year, Sullivan sold SearchEngineWatch to the JupiterMedia internet portal, which specializes in IT market research, but retained the name of the resource and, of course, remained an expert in the field of Internet search.Soon he tried himself in a new role, having toured a number of major cities in America with a seminar on "Search Engine Strategies".
To keep abreast of all trends and events, Sullivan occasionally visited the Silicon Valley, where he met with new players in the “search” industry. About Google, he learned back in 1998, when the search server began to operate in beta testing. Will yesterday's Stanford doctoral students be able to transform their remarkable technology into a successful business project?“They do not seem to have much thought about how they will make money,” he recalls.
Outside of Stanford, Google was first talked about in June 1999, when the company received $ 25 million in investments from venture capital firms. But even a few months later, when the Google brand became known and the search engine handled millions of queries per day, the company still experienced financial difficulties. With the exception of Red Hat and Netscape, no one wanted to acquire a license to use its search technology. A year after Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital became investors of the company, it seemed that skeptics were right in saying that investors simply threw money down the drain. When Sergey Brin went to the scene on roller skates at the Search Engine Strategies seminar in San Francisco, led by Danny Sullivan, the audience laughed together, but Google investors had no time for laughter. “At first, we planned to sell licenses to other Internet companies,” says Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital. “However, after some time, we realized that it was much more difficult to establish oneself in this market than it seemed at first. Conversations and negotiations with potential customers were delayed for several weeks or even months. Competition in the market has tightened, and we did not even have a sales department. It was very difficult to convince potential customers to pay as much as we wanted. It became clear that if we continue to rely on the sale of licenses, we are unlikely to succeed. ”
Bryn and Paige did not lose heart, because the most advanced search engine was at their disposal. They were going to establish cooperation with Danny Sullivan, which would make it possible to popularize Google, without spending money on advertising. And the guys did not lose. Positive reviews on the Sullivan website and letters from interested users have become the main way to promote a search resource. Cooperation was beneficial to both young entrepreneurs and Sullivan himself.
Despite the fact that by the end of 1999, Google processed an average of seven million requests daily, the company's revenue from the sale of licenses was still small. Yes, Bryn and Paige were indifferent to money, but they didn’t want Google to have financial difficulties all the time. If the business does not pay for itself, they will not be able to realize their mission - to make information about anything available to anyone.
It remains only to decide how to overcome a series of obstacles. All options that could undermine the trust of users, were unacceptable, even if they promised the mountains of gold. In relation to advertising, Bryn and Page had mixed feelings.In 1998, they published a scientific article on Google search technology, which explicitly stated that search engines, for which advertising is the main source of income, “are invariably biased towards their advertisers,” noting that “the better the search engine the less it needs to advertise. ” At the same time, they understood that advertising is information that may be necessary for some users. So, not all promotional offers are contrary to the company's motto “Do no harm!”.
Yahoo! a major Internet portal, completely dependent on advertising. Company executives viewed information retrieval as a service of secondary importance, and therefore entrusted it to another firm.
Yahoo! emphasis did on expanding the number of registered e-mail users and providing high-quality services, interesting content and the corresponding community. As for the search, then manually edited, categorized directories Yahoo! relevant at the time of the creation of the resource, with the expansion of the World Wide Web gradually lost their value. Seeing this, Yahoo! resorted to the services of the company Inktomi, which had a more advanced search technology. Now her search engine sent her robot to the Web and provided search results to Yahoo! (and there was no logo on the results pages). Both for MSN, a subsidiary of Microsoft, and for America Online, e-mail was a priority, thanks to which the contingent of their users — potential customers for advertisers — grew, and the search for information in the list of services was last. These companies also entrusted the search for information to a third party.
All this time, Danny Sullivan carefully watched Google, the founders of which used every opportunity to fill the staff with talented programmers and engineers and put search at the center of the search. Yes, Google’s revenues did not grow too fast, but the company was steadily increasing its intellectual potential. Google did not offer its specialists a huge salary, but it provided for stock options, which in the future could bring good dividends to their owners. This approach was typical of Silicon Valley. Sergey and Larry, who personally interviewed each candidate, selected really talented specialists - after all, while they tirelessly expanded their staff, other companies only did what they did. The fact that Google remained a closed joint-stock company saved it during the collapse of the Internet technology market. The pressure exerted on the company's modest earnings was rubbish compared to the hype surrounding public companies that sold their shares to investors at exorbitant prices and now found that having a com extension in the name does not guarantee prosperity.
Bryn and Page had a unique technology and highly qualified specialists at their disposal, so they were intensely thinking about how to keep Google afloat without sacrificing their principles. In the end, it was decided to give advertisers access to a growing legion of Google users. As before, the search was planned to be left free - following the example of TV channels that show entertainment and news programs for free - and earn money by placing unobtrusive targeted ads on search results pages.
Danny Sullivan did not consider that any advertisement is necessarily evil, but at the same time was in solidarity with Brin and Page that the search results should not be mixed with advertising. Therefore, he was suspicious of the search resources that placed advertisements in the list with search results or for a fee promised that the website address would appear in the lists of results. Sullivan made it clear to readers of Ferris that he considers this approach wrong. Bryn and Page saw this as a “particularly insidious” bias and were not going to make money in this way. For advertising in the form of flashing banners, flooded the Internet, they also experienced persistent dislike. But there was another way: placement of targeted text adverts, thematically related to user requests.
“We need to earn money,” said Brin, thus making it clear that he is no longer a naive idealist student, but a pragmatic president of the company. - Banners do not give the desired effect, and the number of clicks on advertising links is steadily decreasing. Therefore, I consider targeted advertisements to be the most interesting option. ”
In this regard, Brin's attention was attracted by the company that advertised on search results pages, GoTo.com, later renamed Overture Inc. And although its name didn’t say anything to the majority of users, it was Overture that placed advertising offers on the pages of Yahoo! America Online, EarthLink and other major resources. It is also worth noting that the popularity of contextual advertisements, in contrast to annoying pop-up advertising windows or flashing banners, has grown among Internet companies. Brin and Page decided to get closer to Overture, and very soon some unseemly aspects of her work were revealed to them. For example, the company for a fee guaranteed webmasters that their sites will be included in the lists of search results. The creators of Google had to make a choice: to entrust the placement of an advertisement to the Overture company or try to do it themselves.
It was easy to make a decision. Google has developed software and built computers exclusively on its own. If the guys were sure of something, it is in their ability to carry out their plans. Since they were able to force the financial tycoons on the Sand Hill Road to dance to their tune, wouldn't they be able to place advertisements on their own, keeping 100 cents for each dollar they received and not sharing their income with Overture? In addition, if they do it themselves, they will retain full control over the pages of their website - there will be no conflicts and “excesses” that could harm Google’s image. Therefore, Bryn and Page decided not to resort to the services of Overture, but by adopting her techniques, to do advertising on their own.Their business strategy was simple: there is still a free search service, and advertisements will generate revenue. At the same time it was necessary to make clear to users that advertising in no way will affect the search results. “They always gave the impression of people who really want to meet the needs of ordinary users,” says Sullivan.
Before you begin advertising, Brin and Page talked with experts in order to protect themselves from possible errors.They confirmed that they are able to separate advertising offers from search results - because web pages are not much different from newspaper pages, where articles are clearly separated from advertisements. At the same time, they categorically did not want to overload with advertising the main page of the site, which from the very beginning was their business card. The creators of Google determined the sizes and fonts of advertisements, and also decided that they would be separated from the search results by a bright line under the heading “Sponsored Links” - so that they would not be told later that, say, the search results are mixed with advertising (the option “Sponsored Links” seemed to them more attractive than the banal “Ads” (“advertisements”)).
Pricing for advertisements Google has calculated the same way as the "traditional" media companies - based on the size of the audience. After testing various web page design options and discussing this issue with experts, Larry and Sergey decided to place advertisements in a box above the search results. They refused pop-up windows and banners - both would prevent users from viewing the results. Advertisements should be small and identical in structure: the title link and the text block of three lines. Initially, you could only order one ad. In the role of customers were mainly large companies that can afford integrated advertising campaigns. But after a while, Google switched to a more modern model, giving advertisers the ability to place orders online. All this allowed to reduce costs, attract small companies to cooperation, and also gave Google an advantage over other search engines, on sites where an advertisement appeared a few hours after the text was provided by the advertiser. A text ad appeared on Google pages within a few minutes of the moment the customer specified his credit card number. “Having carefully studied the Overture business model, Larry and Sergey realized how attractive this business is,” says Michael Moritz. - Very soon, we all realized that it makes sense to reorient to services that attract money. And they spent money on advertising much more readily than on licenses. ”
Danny Sullivan on his website approved the approach of Google, thereby expressing a kind of vote of confidence, which meant a lot to developers. “The only difference was that they understood that the search results should be separated from advertisements,” Sullivan stresses. “And they never mix on Google.”
A few months later, Brin and Page had another innovative idea - to rank advertisements based on their relevance - just like the search results. Google determined the degree of relevance of a single ad using a formula that takes into account both the amount offered by the advertiser for its placement and the number of clicks. More popular ads are located directly below the query line, less popular - below. Brin and Page judged this: the most relevant ads are those that are most often clicked. In other words, they trusted to rank the ads to their users. It is the preferences of Google users, not the customers' money, that now determined the order of the advertisements.
“The decision to place advertisements in descending order of their relevance was a very successful PR move,” says Sullivan. “Now advertisers could say with confidence:" Our advertising is more relevant because users click on it more often. "Google only benefited from the fact that the most popular advertisements were placed at the top of the page, in the most prominent place. This approach to advertising is the company's know-how. ”
Google was not a pioneer in the field of information search, but it developed a new technology that allowed it to provide the most relevant search results. I did not invent Internet advertising, but developed a new approach to placing advertisements in search resources. And Sullivan appreciated it, noting that the decision to rank the ads ultimately benefited all interested parties.
However, Brin and Page believed that the position of their resource is still vulnerable. Yes, the brand’s popularity grew steadily, and millions of users visited the Google site every day, but at the same time, Google.com didn’t have the means to bind users - like registering on the site or being able to open your mailbox. What if one day someone offers users more advanced technology? Consequently, the focus still needs to be on improving the search engine. The search results provided by Google are more relevant than other search engines, but they do not always contain answers to users' questions. “One thing is clear to us: we still have to work and work,” Paige said at the very beginning of 2000. - Something, and we have enough problem moments. If we don’t eliminate most of them in a year, they will quickly forget about us. ”
Google, which has a huge audience, has certainly been very attractive to advertiser companies, but how effective will its business model be? By the middle of 2000, Google had already processed 15 million requests per day, whereas a year and a half ago - just 100 thousand each. The number of visitors to the site has steadily increased, but will the number of ad clicks increase at the same time - a key indicator for both advertisers and Google? Bryn and Paige were still confident in the viability of their model, but the skeptics chorus sounded louder. They doubted that an Internet resource with a free search service that refused to place banners and place paid websites in the results lists would be financially successful.
An article in BusinessWeek’s December issue of the weekly published an article titled “Will Google's impartiality pay off?”. In it, the authors reflected on what the chances of a company surviving, putting search and users at the center of it, and not money. “To be honest, I don’t really believe that companies that rely solely on search will be able to stay afloat,” said Mark Krellenstein, head of technical department at Northern Light, a company specializing in information retrieval.
Nevertheless, Google was praised for the high relevance of the results, and the media paid more and more attention to it. Bryn and Page have found a way to advertise so that it does not interfere with users, but they are not going to include paid sites in the list of results. “When a user entered the word“ cancer ”in the query line, do you think which website address should appear at the top of the list - the one whose owner paid the money, or the one on which there is important information for him?” He asked rhetorically Bryn. Danny Sullivan as an expert on search engines was just like hot cakes - representatives of the media were eager to get comments from him about the success of search resources. On his website, Sullivan compiled and uploaded a dossier on Google, where all the main points were covered in detail: how did the company start, how did it grow, how did it fit advertising. He could observe the growth of Google not only as an expert, but also as a presenter: the company "won" more and more space at the Sullivan seminars. If at the very first event, Google huddled in a small booth in the corner of the exhibition hall, then after a year or so it was already occupied by a spacious pavilion in the center. Well, Danny Sullivan himself, an impresario with a pleasant voice, has gained unquestioned authority over this time.
The impartial observer Sullivan, however, maintains close ties with Google and its experts. “Google has a special place in my heart,” he says. - Most of today's search engines entered the arena long before I became a consultant. But Google at that time was only taking the first steps, and the whole process of its formation passed before my eyes. ”
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History of computer technology and IT technology
Terms: History of computer technology and IT technology