Lecture
Before Steve Berkowitz set out to breathe life into the drooping Ask Jeeves search engine in 2001, he knew little about the magical properties of Google. An insightful entrepreneur liked the temporary role of an outsider, since he did not think that turning an unprofitable enterprise into a profitable business was extremely difficult. Steve felt confident in his abilities because he already had to do it before. Starting from scratch, Berkovits transformed the series "... for dummies" from an ordinary library for computer users to a well-known brand in the book publishing market. Being a new person in the field of Internet technologies, Berkovits, nevertheless, quickly “grabbed” the basic idea, still hidden from many IT specialists: the Internet has a lot in common with traditional media, which means it can be considered as one means of providing content and advertising to users worldwide. His insight and understanding of the relationship between branding and consumer loyalty prepared the way for his company to integrate into Google.
From the previous CEO of Ask Jeeves, Berkowitz inherited a popular, but at the same time financially unhealthy brand that promised a lot, but showed not very impressive results and in the end even ruined the reputation of its famous character - an English butler, dressed with a needle, Jeeves. His presence very "humanized" the Ask Jeeves website, which was very touching for American users. When he appeared on the screen, the always eager Internet surfer relaxed and wished the fabulous English butler to help him, although the latter didn’t always succeed.
Despite Jeeves’s allure and Berkovits’s business acumen, Ask Jeeves and its CEO probably would have failed if not for Google. The success of a search engine respected all over the world has become a boon for its partners as well: they benefited materially from high-quality search, relevant advertising, and a resurgent faith in high technology.
Thousands of jobs created by Google, and the billions of dollars she invested in this system, have been transformed into innumerable opportunities for both small entrepreneurs and financial brokers. All this could be seen firsthand in Google’s office, where flashing lights and illuminated maps “led” millions of user requests flowing there day and night from all over the world, clearly demonstrating the power of the search engine and the breadth of its coverage, which the Internet and business world have never before did not see. Traditional methods of assessing popularity and profitability do not adequately measure such important aspects as the dynamism and self-development of the network of users and Google advertisers, partly because the company's non-template business model is not amenable to standard statistical analysis. Google was more like a snowball rolling down the mountainside, increasing in size and gaining speed.
Google, the most popular (along with e-mail) of application systems operating on the Internet, contributes to the generation of new ideas, introduces potential business partners and gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to explore markets, search for personnel, advertise and promote their products and services with minimal financial costs. Without setting such a goal from the very beginning, it has become a powerful tool for businessmen, influencing a significant part of the American (and not only) business world. Its impact is felt not only by companies, but also by universities, government agencies and academic institutions. Money and ideas are now changing owners faster than before, thanks to the information stored on servers and always available. And it would not be an exaggeration to call a young company - a search, advertising and developing system - a catalyst, contributing to the formation of a new economic system.
As the head of Ask Jeeves in May 2001, Steve Berkowitz could not call himself a great connoisseur of the high-tech world. But he was faced with the task of pulling the once thriving enterprise out of the quagmire, which it had a year earlier, like many other promising Internet companies. True, he learned something about Ask Jeeves when he made a deal with a company that later turned his series “... for dummies” into a “reference table” for a search engine. Then one fact hit him in the memory. IDG Publishing, where he served as CEO, in the late 1990s, had sales of $ 200 million and an exchange value of $ 250 million. Ask Jeeves entered the stock exchange with sales of $ 10 million and a net loss in the amount of $ 80 million, but by December 1999 its exchange value had risen to $ 5 billion. “After that,” recalls Berkowitz, “I had a desire to move into the Internet technology industry.”
Ask Jeeves, of course, had its own history, and Berkowitz - although he was more interested not in the past than in the future of the search engine - first decided to find out how the company, whose share capital once amounted to several billion dollars, came to life such as the qualifications of its employees and, most importantly, what users think about it. Very soon, he discovered that Ask Jeeves often disappointed its users, did not fulfill its obligations. Millions of people were tempted by the ad that by typing any question in the search box on Ask.com, they would get a comprehensive answer. Very tempting offer, taking into account the vast expanses of the Internet. But, having made an attempt to communicate with Jeeves, almost all of them were disappointed in the search engine: the butler stubbornly did not want to answer questions properly.
Ask Jeeves, like most Internet companies of the time, entered the stock exchange in 1999 with a very promising idea, but without a plan for how it was going to make money. The company spent millions of dollars from the sale of shares on advertising and promotion of its brand. She tried to ensure the growth of brand awareness and website traffic, but did not invest in technology, the presence of which would enable her to fulfill her obligations. Her remarkable ironic advertisement was remembered by questions like: “Why is the sky blue?” Or “Where do the young birds of the pigeons hide?”, To which she promised to give an answer.
In December 2000, Ask Jeeves - like many other Internet companies that came into being during the boom period - entered the black band. “It was the internet bubble at its heyday and still the same internet bubble in a period of decline,” says Berkowitz. But he firmly believed in the power of the brand and knew that Ask Jeeves, unlike other search engines and websites, has its own symbol — the butler Jeeves. That is why even after the collapse of the Internet technology market, the company had a good image and, surprisingly, its supporters were users of the service, the quality of which left much to be desired.
The recruitment firm that arranged for Berkovitsa at Ask Jeeves presented him as a candidate with a certain understanding of the Internet, working with information and managing an open joint-stock company. But at the same time, he knew almost nothing about data retrieval, so in the first months of work he often consulted with his employees. “The company's quarterly income was only $ 7 million. When I took office, I didn’t know how bad things were for her,” he recalls.Having received a complete understanding of the company's work, he made a strategic decision, which, as it turned out later, became a powerful impetus to the revival of Ask Jeeves: he replaced almost all top managers - but not immediately, but gradually. “Before breaking anything, I wanted to make sure that I know how to fix it. Changing car wheels on the go is very risky. ”
Berkovits came to the understanding that the search engine is a product whose brand may have an individuality. Jim Lanzone, one of the new top managers of the company, found out that Ask Jeeves was originally conceived as a system for answering users' questions, which suggested a large amount of manual labor. Google, by contrast, had an automated system based on PageRank. Lanzone set out to identify a distinctive feature, based on which, Ask Jeeves could introduce a model similar to the one that Google had. In August 2001, when he just joined the company, Ask Jeeves was still among the top 15 most visited websites, despite the fact that its reputation was pretty stale. How could this be? The answer to this question was simple: many of the frustrated users visited the site again and again, hoping that with time, Jeeves would improve. But neither Berkowitz nor Lanzone took the fact that the number of visitors to the website reached 15-20 million at that time is something that goes without saying. They marveled at the strength of this brand.
Top managers came to the conclusion that Ask Jeeves needs a technology that could efficiently process requests and help the company retain its users, and in the long run (if, of course, it survives) it would contribute to its growth. “We had an audience. Now we had to improve the product, ”explains Lanzone. By that time, Wall Street had cooled to Ask Jeeves so much so that the company's turnover exceeded its exchange value. Wall Street believed that sooner or later these funds would run out and Ask Jeeves would go bankrupt. Berkovitsa and Lanzone had a different opinion on this matter. They began to search for possible objects of acquisition. “We needed a search engine,” says Lanzone. “Only a search engine can handle billions of queries.”
In the fall of 2001, Ask Jeeves had its eye on a modest company called Theota (its staff numbered only seven), based away from Silicon Valley, in Piscataway (New Jersey). "Teota" in translation from the Gaelic language means "expert", but the name of the company was given not by the Irish, but by the Greek. This firm, founded by professors of the computer technology department of Rutzers University and initially funded by the Pentagon, had a “third generation search technology” - at least according to Berkowitz and Lansone. They considered the technology of the first generation to be AltaVista, the second - Google, and the third - Theot, which Ask Ask Jeeves dubbed ExpertRank. Theta's structure included a number of mathematical formulas and calculations, thanks to which it surpassed PageRank, which placed the popularity of the site at the center of it. It is worth noting that this system was considered in a scientific article by doctoral students at Stanford Brin and Page as one of the methods for ranking websites. “They gave their method the name“ global popularity ”, and this -“ local popularity ”, because it implied a more scrupulous study of the World Wide Web and the identification of authoritative sources,“ - recalls Lansone. Bryn and Page came to the conclusion that the search for the “local popularity” method is extremely complicated: it requires very large computing power - otherwise the search speed will be low.
A 50-year-old Greek Apostolos Gerasulis, a professor of computer technology at Rutgers University, known for his brilliant intellect and habit of wearing the same T-shirt for weeks, found a solution that allows you to perform operations using the “local popularity” method in a split second. However, it was very difficult to convince Ask Jeeves board of directors to lay out millions of dollars for technology from the east coast of Berkovitsa. Jeeves was still losing money, finances were running out, and how many promising technologies ended up being money-eaters ... At board meetings in the summer of 2001, Berkowitz tirelessly argued that Ask Jeeves had better buy information retrieval technology or develop its own, rather than control the receipt of advertisements. “Google technology is superior to its likes,” he said. “It is first-class technology that is the key to success.”
Own technology, claimed Berkowitz, will allow Ask Jeeves to keep the circle of its adherents. Some members of the board of directors had a different point of view: they believed that it was better to purchase a search engine license from another company. Ask Jeeves stock price at that time did not even reach $ 1 apiece, but Berkovits insisted on his own. When one of his opponents wondered who would take responsibility if Teota’s technology didn’t bring the desired result, Steve raised his hand.
Early in the morning of September 11, 2001, he nevertheless concluded this broken contract and purchased the search engine Theota for $ 4.5 million. Today, from the height of time, it can be stated that for Ask Jeeves it was a good deal, although its amount was about 10% of the then stock value of the company. The signing of the contract was announced a few minutes before the terrorists hit New York. The Greek genius, who developed the Theot technology, did not express satisfaction in concluding a deal or regret the tragedy. He began to write poetry. “The apostolos wrote a poem and sent it to all members of the board of directors of our company,” recalls Lanzone. - And then he asked us how we are going to satisfy the curiosity of users who will go to the Ask Jeeves website to find out the details of the September 11 attacks. He could just sit in his office and count the money, but he was not indifferent to the fate of his offspring. ”
By December 2001, Ask Jeeves was already operating in conjunction with the Theot technology, and Berkowitz was strengthened in the opinion that his company has a future. “The acquisition of the search engine Theota was the beginning of the revival of Ask Jeeves,” he states. “Thanks to this technology, we have reached a qualitatively new level.”
So, the company had a popular brand and advanced search technology, but still did not have a mechanism that would provide it with a stable profit. And then Google appeared on the horizon. In the spring of 2002, the contract of Ask Jeeves with another company supplying advertising to its pages expired, and Berkowitz decided to appeal to the management of Google with a proposal for cooperation: Google places advertisements on the pages of Ask Jeeves and at the same time receives part of the revenue from user clicks.
“After acquiring the search engine Theota, we became a free agent,” says Berkowitz, “and viewed Google as an advertising agency. Most companies were hostages of their system because they felt the need for a search engine. We were an exception to the rules. ” In addition to the opportunity to get a good advertising income, the cooperation with Google attracted Berkovitsa because it could provide Ask Jeeves users with advertisements thematically related to queries. He held a series of meetings with Google executives, probing the ground.
Google at these meetings was represented by CEO Eric Schmidt and sales director Omid Kordestani. This indicated that Google was very interested in the positive outcome of the negotiations. “I had a meeting with Eric tete-a-tete,” recalls Berkovits, “and he said that he would very much like to conclude a cooperation agreement with us, and also noticed that our audience differs from their audience in terms of income prospects . With the growth of the industry, he added, it is better to work together and expand the market rather than eliminate competitors and shrink the market. ” Google also allowed Ask Jeeves to pre-test its ad serving system. Berkovits was satisfied with the test results and finally began to consider Google as a partner, not an adversary. However, the negotiation process, in his opinion, was too long, he was used to sign treaties much faster. This was due in part to the fact that Schmidt and Kordestani personally agreed with the Page and Brin agreement on the main points of the agreement with Ask Jeeves.
Despite warnings from other market players that Google would “steal” users from Jeeves, Berkovits concluded a three-year cooperation agreement with an industry leader in July 2002. The third year was added literally at the last moment - so that the announcement of the conclusion of the transaction, which promised that the total annual income of the two companies would be about $ 100 million, caused a greater resonance. However, many observers believed that this transaction does not make sense, since each of the parties seeks to attract users to its search engine. Berkovitsa had a different opinion on this score: “The idea here is that you can compete and cooperate at the same time. That is the kind of relationship we will have with Google. I would call it “competitive cooperation.” In the end, if we don’t take bold steps, we won’t keep Ask Jeeves afloat. ”
The agreement benefited both companies. Ask Jeeves has finally received the necessary source of income. For Google, the fact of the deal became a confirmation that it could enter into partnerships with websites and other search servers - their owners should not be afraid that Google will entice users from them. “Thanks to this agreement, our advertisers will have access to millions of new users and will be able to get acquainted with the Ask Jeeves audience,” said Eric Schmidt. - Google and Ask Jeeves have a common goal - to simplify and make the search for information on the World Wide Web more efficient.Our collaboration will boost the search technology market. ”
Google supplied Ask Jeeves advertising, thanks to which the latter became profitable by the fourth quarter of 2002. Ask Jeeves, in turn, provided Google with customers that it would hardly have received under other circumstances. The circle of people using Google and Ask Jeeves at the same time was very small, and therefore the partnership made sense for both companies. Google also used the fact of making a deal with Ask Jeeves as a commercial argument, seeking to attract other Internet companies to cooperate (and therefore participate in Google).
Soon, Google partners were the online version of The New York Times and the Amazon com site, as well as a number of other popular Internet resources. The Google system has grown steadily: the list of sites where its advertisements appeared has increased, the number of companies wishing to advertise has increased, the amounts that companies were willing to pay increased. Google also had a self-development feature: the more Internet users clicked on advertisements provided by Google, the more money the site owners received; the more money they earned, the more the owners of other sites showed a desire to become part of the system; the larger this system became, the more difficult it was to compete with it. If large television networks are considered the best option for advertisers seeking to reach a wide audience, then Google has become the number one resource for companies wishing to advertise on the Internet.
Ask Jeeves financial results provide some insight into the capabilities of the Google system: after all, most of its revenue comes from advertisements. So, in 2002 Ask Jeeves ended with a loss, in 2003 its revenue was $ 107 million, and in 2004 - $ 261 million, of which net profit was $ 50 million. Cooperation was so successful. that the parties later announced that they would extend the agreement by another two and a half years - until the end of 2007. Ask Jeeves financially improved thanks to wise management and the Google system. “We intend to extend the partnership with Google and are ready to provide our users with high-quality service in the future, and we will increase our potential in attracting advertising,” said Berkowitz.
And it was the fifth day ...
From a hotel room in New Orleans, Krishna Bharat watched in horror at the events in New York and Washington. A thirty-one-year-old Google programmer rushed from TV to computer, while simultaneously switching channels and browsing news agency sites, trying to find out the details of the terrorist attacks committed in the morning. He was worried about his family and was worried about how long he would have to stay here, because the federal government had banned flights over the territory of the United States. Bharat had already forgotten about a forum dedicated to finding information on the Internet, in order to participate in which he, in fact, came to New Orleans. All his thoughts revolved around the most devastating since the Pearl Harbor attack on American soil.
Sometimes in moments of crisis and upheaval great ideas are born. Something similar happened with Krishna Bharat on September 11, 2001.
From a young age, Bharat, who was then living in India, was, in his words, a “news eater." He read Indian newspapers, watched Indian TV channels, read Time magazine and listened to BBC news with his grandfather. Given that the materials published in the media are pre-censored and are localized, Krishna came to the conclusion that if he wants to get a complete picture of an event, he should refer to several sources of information (especially if the event occurred in India). Some topics, due to their delicacy, were covered by the Indian mass media in part or not at all, and therefore every week Bharat was looking forward to the latest issue of Time. He admired his grandfather, who was always aware of what was happening in the country and in the world. The love of news ultimately predetermined the choice of profession.
After receiving his doctorate at the Technical University of Georgia, Bharat moved to California and went to work at Digital Equipment with an office in Palo Alto, where his main responsibility was to advise AltaVista specialists. He became interested in searching for information on the Internet, which is not surprising given his youthful predilection for news. There, in California, he met with the founders of Google. “I compared the Google system with the AltaVista system. I also liked the founders of Google and their approach to search, ”recalls Bharat. In 1999, he moved to Google, and soon, together with his former colleague on Digital, created a research group on Google and headed it himself.
Bharat worked on a number of projects, because many of the capabilities of the search engine were not previously explored. Unlike most other divisions of Google, the research team focused on long-term projects. “I studied various issues - in particular, how the search engine Google is usually used, how it functions in certain situations,” he says.
There is one peculiarity in the organization of the company's work, which Bharata enjoyed very much, the “20% rule”. It says that programmers are free to devote a fifth of their working time (or one day a week) to projects that are of interest to them personally. The “20% rule”, according to Brin and Page, should encourage company employees to develop new ideas.The founders of Google consider it to be a tool for shaping a corporate culture and a special atmosphere in which talented engineers not only would like to produce something new, but would also be rewarded for innovative ideas. In other companies, work on “left-wing” projects and ideas, as a rule, is not approved, which greatly hinders the initiative and enterprising: they often have to work on their projects secretly from the boss. In Google, the “20% rule” has a completely different message: devote one day a week to what is of interest to you, not to your boss, and don’t bother yourself with questions like “Will my idea be profitable?” Or "Is it possible to transform it into a product that will be sold?". In short, do what interests you.
In the modern business world, the “20% rule” is a new phenomenon, although there are certain prerequisites for this.Many years ago, 3M, which produced adhesive tape under the Scotch trademark, introduced the “15% rule”, which allowed engineers to devote part of their working time to work on projects of interest to them. It brought 3M, among other things, the idea of self-adhesive paper for notes (Post-it Notes). But the origin of the “optional day” at Google should be found in the university environment: teachers work four days a week in their office, and devote one day to scientific or other projects. Since Sergey and Larry spent many years on campus — until they took academic leave to fully concentrate on the search engine — their desire to recreate the university atmosphere of freedom and self-government in their company seems completely natural.
“The“ 20% rule ”was introduced so that employees had the opportunity to work on their own projects, says Bharat. - People work most effectively when they do things that they think are important and fascinating, or come up with something themselves. Thanks to this rule, innovations come from lower levels of government. Top managers don't control them anymore. ” Experts can either spend 20% of their working time every week on their project, or “save up” time, so that they can devote to it, say, a whole month. “Employees share their ideas with colleagues during the lunch break. These days they are their own bosses. When an idea becomes complete, they bring it up for discussion ”- a discussion that, however, does not extend beyond the company's office.
An employee of a company can inform colleagues about his own project using an electronic bulletin board accessible to users of the Google internal network. In addition, forums are held from time to time, during which programmers receive feedback. “Positive feedback means that colleagues are ready to cooperate with you, which means you can initiate the development of your own project,” says Bharat. - In Google, all ideas “germinate” within the 20% and “bloom” on the forum of ideas. Then, individual ideas receive financial support and are transformed into projects whose implementation process is monitored by top managers. ” Google employees do not need to be poured at home - in this case there is a risk that the idea will have to be put on hold due to lack of funds or that the idea will be so promising that the employee decides to quit in order to deal only with it. The company gives them free rein and the necessary resources. “This is a great model, it really stimulates programmers,” notes Bharat.
In the mid-1990s, Bharat, a doctoral candidate at the Technical University of Georgia, decided to create a newspaper of a new format. His idea was as follows: a robot “spider”, like a vacuum cleaner, collects news from news sites and delivers them to a single web site, where these messages can be classified by topic and placed on web pages. “This idea came to me soon after I started surfing the Internet for news,” he says. “There were very few news sites at that time.” Bharat, who has the ability to find and classify any information, wanted to develop an electronic newspaper whose materials would be structured taking into account the interests and habits of a particular reader. “Initially, I set out to improve the structure of the news feed. I know how to present materials in accordance with the needs of a particular user. News on the sites was placed in such a way that, in order to read the entire message, you had to click on the link, and then return to the main page. I said to myself: “I can create a better structure.” Then I realized: you should watch how people approach reading news. Hopefully, we will be able to create a newspaper of tomorrow, the information in which will be based on the preferences of a particular user. ”
On September 11, everything came together: the youths of the “news eater”, the study of the press in doctoral studies, the Gutlov rule of 20% for work on innovations ... On the day when it was so important to get reliable information, he seriously thought about how Internet users (and In particular, journalists could quickly find out what they write and say about a particular event in the world. His memory kept the image of his grandfather listening to the BBC's radio. “There was so much happening in the world, and there were so many points of view on what was happening: the point of view of America, the world community, Afghanistan, Europe ... It was all incredibly fascinating. I found that it was not very convenient to thoroughly study the topic you are interested in using the Internet, says Bharat. - Editors of online versions of newspapers promptly laid out messages, but they did not have the time (or desire) to supply their articles with links to other articles on the same topic. Say, the Washington Post correspondent, with all his desire, could not quickly find other articles on the Web on his subject. Search engines did not help either. To find out what others wrote about the event — especially such as 9/11, when so many different opinions are expressed — you had to spend a lot of time. I decided that I should deal with this problem - as a result, both readers and journalists will benefit. ”
For several months, Bharat worked on a solution to the problem that was so acute for him on September 11. He had to solve many questions. The main task was to create a system of mathematical equations that would work as an experienced newspaper editor, selecting articles and structuring the news page. Using the clustering method, Bharat sorted the news into categories: “In the world”, “Politics”, “Business”, “Sport”, etc., and then determined what steps the editor would take in relation to each specific message. Then he began to assign a message to the rank based on their sources: the news from the leading American newspapers and news agencies — The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Reuters — had more weight. However, it was important to cover as many sources as possible, so no matter how large and authoritative a particular source was, Bharat tried to include it in his list.
The Bharata program took into account the importance of updated news, as well as the fact that they come in real time - it increased the rank of more recent messages. “The rank of a particular message needs to be determined again and again.This is a real-time operation, ”he notes. By creating versions designed for users of other countries, Bharat also took into account the relevance factor of certain texts. For example, other things being equal, an article from an American newspaper is of greater interest to Internet users from the USA than an article from a Canadian newspaper, and vice versa. The significance of this factor became apparent when the first versions of the Bharat project, called Google News, were launched.
By early 2002, he created the first version of Story Rank, PageRank's “cousin”, which determined the relevance of Google search results. The message headers alone, he reasoned, would not be enough, so with the help of other programmers, Bharat developed a search function for news. There is always more news than it fits on the main page, but searching by word (phrase) will allow the user to receive only those messages that are of interest to him.
Together with Bharat, two more Google specialists worked on creating a demo version of the site. He first showed the demo version to his colleagues. When, in December 2001, CEO Eric Schmidt called on him to talk about Google News, Bharat realized that his project had a chance of success. “I knew that we have a lot of talk about Google News,” recalls Bharat, “there were a lot of feedback from colleagues. Suddenly one day Eric Schmidt comes into my office and says: “This is a great product.” I don’t even know how much he worked at Google at that time, but he was very interested in my project.Then I talked to Larry and Sergey, and they also became interested in Google News. ”
Having received the go-ahead from the employees and the green light from the management, the Bharata project, born under the “20% rule”, acquired priority status. Bharata’s dream has come true. In accordance with Google’s practice, it was provided with all the resources needed to convert a demo version into an attractive service for millions of users. The project received a team of designers who will work on the user interface, an experienced brand manager Marissa Mayer, who will properly design the product and will study the user rating, as well as a team of software engineers who will improve and test the software that collects news on the Internet. ranking informational messages and combining them into blocks by topic. “At Google, everything is simple: if a project is found worthwhile, it receives funding,” notes Bharat. “No one asked me how my product could be profitable.”
What gave Google the right to post messages of various news agencies and publications on its website? Actually, nothing. But the project very quickly gained popularity, and media companies themselves sought to participate in it. On Google News, before each message, its source was indicated and a link to the same message was given on the source site.In fact, Google acted as an intermediary. The company gave no reason to think that the news posted on Google News is its property, and therefore it did not have to pay for messages retrieved from hundreds (and later thousands) of sources. “I think this is the best option,” says Bharat. - We only provide access to news, we do not need to acquire rights to the content. We do what we do better than others - we promptly find interesting content for users. ”
Unlike the informationally unsaturated Google homepage, the Google News homepage is simply stuffed with headlines and text. “We wanted to fill this page with information as much as possible,” says Meier. - We thought that it should contain as many interesting messages as possible. When choosing the structure of the page, the main criterion for us was the amount of information located, as newspapermen say, “above the fold line” - in the upper part of the front page. In our case, “above the fold line” is in that part of the web page that is visible without scrolling. ”
Google News fell in love with both ordinary users and journalists. The logical continuation of this project was the Google Alerts service - an updated automatic mailing of messages on a specific topic. (This service was no longer developed by Bharat - by that time he had become the director of the Google research center in India.) Millions of users subscribed to the Alerts newsletter. Journalists who had previously been afraid of losing sight of a message, Google Alerts, Google News and the news search function provided the fullest coverage of information on the chosen topic. This service also contributed to cultural exchange, as now articles from various sources - from the authoritative daily newspaper of a large metropolis to the little-known tabloid of a small town - were read by more people. “The fact that various news are placed on one page contributes to raising awareness,” Bharat said. - I would like to get feedback on Google News - does it help to find the necessary information? I really would like the news to be discussed more actively. I love all sorts of disputes. "
Craig Neville-Manning came to Google in 2001 from Rutgers University (New Jersey), where he, a professor in the computer technology department, developed advanced methods for collecting information from websites. Neville-Manning, a native of New Zealand, at Google attracted not only the opportunity to engage in interesting scientific work (which he already did), but also the chance to transform his ideas into real products that will benefit people. Craig was born in May 1969, two months before Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the surface of the moon, and was older than most Google employees. Paying tribute to his age and experience (after defending his doctoral dissertation, Craig completed an internship at Stanford), he was appointed head of the research department. Neville-Manning relies on Google's innovation-oriented culture, including the “20% rule”. Shortly after joining Google, he began to devote a fifth of his working time to online commerce. “I once told a brand manager that when users go to Google, hoping to buy something, we help them a little. We do not cover everything that is on the Internet, and yet a person wants to study the prices of goods from different operators. We began to think about what can be done to eliminate this shortcoming, ”he recalls. Neville-Manning studied online shopping, including the largest of them, Amazon.com, watching how information is given for given categories, price ranges, and product descriptions. About six months later, he transformed his idea into a demo model. The file in which the program was stored, he called “Froogle” - firstly, this word rhymed with “Google”, and secondly, it was associated with the desire to find a product at a reasonable price, since it is consonant with the word “frugal” - “frugal ". Officially, his initiative was called "Product Search" - "product search." In early 2002, he demonstrated the results of the work of Larry, Sergey and Eric. Google executives liked the idea, but they expressed doubts about the advisability of its further development. It also raised the question of what role Froogle will play - as part of the main Google product or as a standalone project. Neville-Manning realized that he was better off concentrating on working on the software that manages the placement of advertisements, and postponed his idea until better times. “We have millions of ideas on Google, but we can only allocate resources to a few of them. Other programmers are involved in developing the idea, and this process takes several months. I left Froogle for a while and resumed work on AdWords, ”he says.
After a while, Craig took up Froogle again. He made adjustments to his concept and convinced himself, and then others, that it should be taken into development. However, Google bosses still had doubts about this. “While they reflected on Froogle and on how it fits into Google, the project seems to be floating in the air,” he recalls, “until we have clarified a number of points. Over these 20% of the time, we generate a lot of ideas, but then they should be filtered out, because we cannot transform all ideas into a result. Froogle also had to go through this filter. ” From time to time, Neville-Manning called on Sergey to show Froogle new features. First of all, he wanted to prove that Froogle can have the same reach and growth prospects as Google’s search engine. “In principle, it is easy to prove it. Suppose Larry says that he wants to buy a new digital camera, and is typing this phrase in the search bar. Or Sergey says: “As far as I know, recently green laser pointers are on sale. Come see if you can find them on Froogle. ” In fact, it all came down to the following: is it possible to find new items or rare products with it? This is where Google is strong - in search of the right information, it “combed” all the cracks and crannies of the Web. It all came down to how useful Froogle would be for Larry and Sergey. ” In the end, Bryn gave up and gave Neville-Manning a go-ahead to form a team of programmers. The main problem with the work on Froogle was that it was impossible to use for its work with PageRank: there were no links to products sold in online stores, according to the number of which one could judge their popularity, and therefore it was necessary to work out a different way determine the usefulness and relevance of search results. Neville-Manning and his team expected to present Froogle to users for a month before Christmas 2002, but due to technical problems, the product launch had to be postponed until mid-December, and therefore the debut came out somewhat blurred. By the next pre-Christmas period, Froogle already had its own audience, consisting mainly of Google users. Following the Google tradition, Froogle, unlike many other online stores, did not sell positions in the search results list - paid ads were placed in the column to the right, separated from the results by a vertical line. “Users choose those sites where they can get information about all the products they need,” notes Neville-Manning.
In the meantime, a heated argument about the “20% rule” broke out between Google employees and their colleagues from Microsoft: is it really of practical importance or is it just a bait for specialists? Programmer Joe Beda explained why the “20% rule” within the office of Google really has an effect: “Allowing employees to engage in their own projects and to encourage them to do so is still different things. In Google, specialists are encouraged to develop ideas, allocating for this part of the working time. These 20% are considered not as free time, but as time when you can deal with ideas that seemed interesting. Oh, and I don’t have a standing project right now ... I’ll have to decide something with it.
The atmosphere in Google is conducive to productive work. When someone talks about a new idea, everyone tries to help him by resorting to brainstorming. Intrigues and disputes about who owns what belongs to, are practically absent.For all the time that I work in Google, I have not had to see someone raise their voice or make a noisy bickering.
Can the “20% rule” give effect in other companies? I am sure that some companies will adopt this rule. At the same time, it is necessary to realize that it is inseparable from the atmosphere in the office of the company and the philosophy professed by it. I do not think that it is possible to simply take it and impose it. I would like to emphasize that I express only my opinion, which may not coincide with the official opinion of Google. Therefore, based on what I have said, it is not worthwhile to draw far-reaching conclusions regarding corporate strategy and the like. ”
However, a Microsoft engineer has a different opinion on this. Google, he argues, is not so different from other IT companies as its leaders and employees like to tell. “Why doesn't the“ 20% rule ”work in Microsoft? Well, if Bill Gates told me that I could devote 20% of my time to working on my projects, I would say: “This is, of course, great, Bill, but I’m already working on what interests me.” Maybe in Microsoft I am in a clear minority, but I believe that we don’t need this rule. If something does not suit a person, no one holds him here by force. I need one day in a week, except to do all the work that I hate: to compile all kinds of reports, documents and other papers. Now, if someone would save me from such work, THIS would have made me very happy. ”
Global googling
Meng-Ing Lee, a 26-year-old from Taiwan, is a global googler. He is a representative of a new generation of computer users. Using the search and translation functions, he gets to any corner of the globe and any time zone, learns the latest news and stock reports, communicates with relatives and friends scattered across different continents. Polite, energetic, and purposeful, Lee sat at the computer rather late, but quickly figured out what was happening - largely due to the simplicity and accessibility of Google. Like millions of other users who have met the Internet in the new millennium, he cannot imagine the World Wide Web without Google. When in 2001, Lee came to the United States of America after serving in the Taiwanese army, he knew little English, but he could not use a computer at all. As a member of the exchange program, Lee became a student at the International University. Webber (Fla.), Where he studied the management of the hotel business and, importantly, mastered the skills of working on a personal computer.
Today, Lee, a student at the University of Northern Virginia's MBA program, during the day collects information in English, which he needs to work in university projects, and at night “google” in his native Chinese. The high-speed channel allows you to study stock quotes without leaving your home, read news from the USA, China and Taiwan, as well as view the results of the National Basketball League matches for which he occasionally bets. But since most of the information on the web is available only in English, Lee also comes to English-language pages using the Google translation function of web pages. Sometimes he introduces a sentence with unfamiliar words into the translation window on Google, in order to understand at least approximately their meaning, and at the same time he tries to learn new expressions. He made the homepage of Google. (In the sushi restaurant where Lee works, messengers also often use Google to verify the address or to clarify the route.) A young man with average incomes who only recently joined the high-tech world now has access to a wide variety of information - thanks google. He has the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of the revolution in the field of Internet technologies and e-commerce, which occurred in the second half of the 1990s, as today the second-generation Internet projects are taking the lead. He enthusiastically talks about his university friends, students from Sweden and Bulgaria, who already have their business online. Lee is also going to start his own business. Although Lee's parents settled in California, he himself links his future with Taiwan and China, a huge market to which the Internet has already arrived. By e-mailing with friends and finding the necessary information with Google, he probes the ground, studies the prospects for entering this market and continues to work in the service sector. Lee doesn’t save for tomorrow what can be done today, because he sees well the opportunities opening up to him, and knows that he will happen to face competition - and the competitors will also have Google.
By the beginning of 2003, tens of millions of people worked daily with Google in their native language, choosing an interface from a list of about a hundred positions. Typing words and phrases in Greek, Latin, Gaelic, Hindi, Ukrainian, Urdu, Croatian, Czech, Esperanto, Persian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, Spanish, Swahili, Thai, Malay, Afrikaans, Maltese, Chinese, Japanese in the search box Tagalog, Basque, Icelandic, Italian, Indonesian, Dutch, Danish, Zulu, Korean, Welsh, German, French, Arabic, Hebrew, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Slovenian, Russian, Finnish and English, and also, for fun, for piggy Latin [8], Klingon [9], on The speeches of Elmer Fudd [10] and the Swedish chef Bork-Bork-Bork [11], they searched Google for information about literally everything: essentials, online stores, education, outdoor activities, and, of course, about have sex
Businessmen, investors and lawyers around the world have made it a rule to google their future partners before they make a deal. Writers, working on a book (including this one), collect facts and dossiers using Google. Senior officials themselves are looking for important documents on Google, not trusting this business to their assistants. Scientists working on complex scientific problems download the genetic code of a person from Google and often find dependencies that they have never known before. Teenagers who want to get the lyrics of a popular song simply type the corresponding words in the search bar. Skilled chefs and starving taxi drivers, having leftover products in the fridge, enter the names of the ingredients into Google to find a fast food dish. CIA agents using Google monitor the activities of terrorist organizations. Programmers, to get answers to their questions, prefer to turn not to books or colleagues, but to Google. Patients googling their diseases.Employees google their bosses. Athletes googling their rivals. And travel lovers (including those who only travel in a wheelchair) use Google to gather information about faraway countries and cities.
“More recently, Google helped me arrange my own wedding in Chile,” said avid traveler Eric Smith from Bethlehem, Pa., One of the hundreds of Google users interviewed by the authors of this book. - Having a good guidebook and Google on hand, I made a plan for the upcoming trip without getting up from the couch. I have never been to Chile, but I was able to do without the services of a travel agency — I got all the necessary information myself. ”
Matt Steedina, a Vermont builder who works as a guide for anglers, turns to Google to learn more about his rivals in upcoming fishing tournaments. “I’m wondering where these guys come from, what organizations they work for and how often they take tourists on hikes,” he says. - Google even helps me, a builder who doesn't know much about computers. Thanks to her, the world has become more compact. ”
Mark Cordover, manager of a private insurance fund, was very helpful with advertising links to Google when he was repairing his house. “I needed stainless steel bolts. I went to the Depot building materials supermarket, but returned home two hours later empty-handed, ”says Cordover. Typing the word "bolts" in the search box on Google.com, he found twelve companies from which it was possible to purchase the necessary bolts. “Even if the commercials of one of these firms were spinning during the broadcast of the super cup in football, I would not pay any attention to them, however, when I had a need for stainless steel bolts, their advertisements would be very useful. These firms pay Google for the opportunity to appear on the results pages when they are really needed. ”
Michael Sladek, manager of Skee-Ball, a manufacturer of slot machines, on Google drew "cool and, moreover, free pop-up ad blocker" on the browser toolbar. And Sladek liked the fact that the search results are located closer to the center of the page, and the targeted advertisements are in the column to the right. “The first thing Google does is respond to a request, and then, if you want, you can click on the advertising links,” notes Sladek. “Their ads are not so intrusive.”
According to Wired magazine, among the rich and famous, there is a special category called “Google superuser”. They are not only googling information about themselves or about what is happening in the country and in the world, but also are looking for interesting information that helps them in their work. Gary Trudo, a cartoonist who created the famous satirical comic book series Dunsbury, is googling without stopping from his main occupation. “Google is my quick response assistant.When the deadline comes, I use his services to check the spelling of foreign words, to find an image of the technology I am interested in, to find an exact quotation of a politician, to check the status of an account, to translate a phrase or to investigate the background of a certain company. This is a universal fishing rod for extracting information. ”
Trudo is not the only representative of art that regularly uses Google. John Gaeta, a visual effects specialist who participated in the creation of the Matrix trilogy, admitted to Wired that he also considers himself a fan of this search engine.“Over the past week, Google has changed and enriched my knowledge about tulips, psychology, Japanese platform shoes, violent African dictators, three-dimensional wallpaper, spicy chicken dishes, Jacuzzi facing, methods of processing live tissue images, hygiene of Chihuahua dogs and much more. Thanks to Google, today I’m not the same as I was a week ago. ”
Google services, including Google News, are also very popular - especially in the capital, which is inhabited mainly by “news eaters”. “I can't imagine life without Google News,” said Michael Powell, head of the Federal Communications Commission. - Thousands of sources of information from around the world give the opportunity to all who have access to the Internet, to constantly keep abreast of events. The variety of points of view is simply amazing. ” Wes Boyd, president of MoueOn.org, which promotes progressive political views, says: “Google is something amazing. Thanks to her, I greatly improved my IQ. I can find a link or quote in seconds, and also find out who my interlocutor is and how he is known. It helps me a lot, because every day I have to deal with dozens of people. ”
Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of the Cavalier and Clay, remarks: “The writers of the past had absinthe, whiskey, and heroin. I have a google. I enter the site, hoping to google five minutes, and then suddenly I find out that seven hours have passed, I wrote as many as 43 words, but I know the names of all the series “Nannies and professors”. ” For Matt Groening, creator and executive producer of the Simpsons animated series, Google also became an integral part of being: “I didn’t set Google as my homepage, but that’s not important to me. I use it when I want to find out what is being written about me on the Web, when I want to see the news and in general whenever I need to find out something. ”
No brand has been able to win worldwide recognition just as quickly. The name of the company has become synonymous with the word “search” not only in English, but also in a number of other languages: in German - googelie, in Finnish - googlata and in Japanese - gigiri.
However, not everyone has high-speed access to Google. For example, in some countries in West Africa, the Internet is still very expensive, and the speed leaves much to be desired, as obsolete computers and telephone connections prevail.Many, especially the younger generation, have heard about Google and would like to use it for information retrieval and self-improvement, but the infrastructure does not yet meet the demand. In the war-torn Liberia, Prince Charles Johnson III, who graduated from college and worked as a driver at the UN office, often used Google to work on economics and management homework. Today, he regularly reads news about American politics and about President Bush. “I love this guy,” Johnson writes. “It’s thanks to Google that I know the entire first family of America - Laura, Barbara, Jenna, dog Barney, Beasley puppy and cat Willie.” True, Johnson is in a somewhat privileged position: he has the Internet at work, and the vast majority of Liberians cannot afford to pay $ 2 per hour (standard fare in local Internet cafes).
In neighboring Guinea, the Internet is cheaper, but there are frequent power outages. In the Cyber Ratoma Internet café of the capital, French-speaking Guineans go to Google.fr to search for websites about studying abroad, to gather information about potential business partners, to find the necessary medicines. Like Meng-Ing Lee, users quickly come to the conclusion that English-speaking resources prevail on the Web, but the first thing they do is turn not to electronic dictionaries, but to those who know English, such as the owner of the Internet cafe Diallo Mamadou Sarif, for help. According to Sari-fu, the speed of Google and the simplicity of its interface greatly facilitate Internet surfing, which is so tedious in developing countries.
Globalization, which began in the 1960s with the advent of jet airliners and accelerated in the 1990s with the reduction of tariffs for international telephone calls and the introduction of e-mail, received a new impetus thanks to Google search engine and its derivatives. Geographical barriers to the exchange of information and goods have been removed. Wherever you are, you can chat with a stranger from another continent and google it, if you want to study his biography, find out what he looks like (with the help of “Picture Search”), find his phone number and his website address or look at the picture of his house, obtained by satellite.
At the same time, the practice of googling has given rise to a number of complex issues related to ethics and the right to privacy, issues that require careful study. Just as the emergence of mobile phones and email led to new principles of communication, Google forced people to adopt new principles of interaction. Where lies the boundary between the harmless search for information about a person and cyber stalking? Does one person have to tell another that he has googled him, or is it better for him to pretend that he does not know the details with which he got acquainted during the search? As long as personal information is posted on the Internet, even with a superficial search, you can stumble upon delicate or delicate details, it is difficult to answer unequivocally these questions.
The realities today are such that the Internet is replete with outdated, controversial and inaccurate information. Quite a lot of sites that gladly replicate rumors and gossip, and even trustworthy websites, happen to be late in updating the figures and facts, which causes irritation to both the “googly” and the “goaty”. Many people do not like the fact that when searching for pictures, old photos or photos appear that put a person in a bad light. Such “pictures” are extremely difficult to remove from the Internet, not to mention going out to those who throw them into the Net. If you do not believe, ask Sergey Brin, a few photos of which, taken during his studies at Stanford (on one of them he is depicted in women's clothes), are still surfing the Internet.
To the joy of cybercrimes and the displeasure of cyberseaders, old web pages are given life after death, as Google saves (caches) a copy of each page it loads. Thus, even if the webmaster has deleted some information from his website, the Google search engine still finds and “resurrects” it. The developers of the Wayback Machine portal (“Time Machine”), serviced by the non-profit organization Internet Archive, have gone even further: they have compiled an impressive archive
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History of computer technology and IT technology
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