History of Google company 7

April Fool's joke

In the spring of 2004, Google had already sunk in the rays of well-deserved fame, but Larry and Sergey, not having calmed down on their laurels, were preparing to surprise the world again - this time with a unique postal service. Taking the promoted brand Google as a basis, they called their new brainchild “Gmail” - a name that is easy to remember and surrounded by a halo of integrity. Google investor Michael Moritz has been saying for several years that people on the Internet spend most of their time talking and searching for information. For Google, which dominated the search industry, now the logical step would be to launch a postal service that would attract new users and contribute to the development of the brand.In order to preserve the element of surprise, Google leaders kept all information about the new project secret.

With the launch of Gmail, Larry and Sergey wanted to make a splash in the market of Internet technologies. Computer users had to offer such a service, which would be much superior to the mail services of Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and other companies. Gmail was better, easier to use and cheaper - otherwise it would not have caused any response from users, and its creators would not have demonstrated that high class to which everyone is used. In addition, tired of imperfect mailers, they could now enjoy themselves and develop a postal service they had dreamed of themselves. First, they identified the problematic issues that Google could easily resolve using a powerful technical arsenal. For example, users had great difficulty in finding and retrieving old emails. America Online automatically deleted emails 30 days after sending (receiving) so that system maintenance costs do not grow. Internet users could store a growing mountain of emails either on their computer's hard drive (which would significantly reduce the speed of operations) or in an additional mailbox, which Microsoft, Yahoo! or another company provided for a fee.

Driven by a desire to deal a crushing blow to competitors and hit users, Larry and Sergey, along with a team of programmers, came to grips with these and other issues. To make the new service a hit, they decided to provide (of course, free of charge) an e-mail box of one gigabyte (1000 megabytes) to everyone. For comparison: the free mailbox of Microsoft was then 2 megabytes, a Yahoo! - 4 megabytes. Google’s powerful computer network made it easy. "Gugling equipment" - a combination of powerful processors and software that brought the search to a qualitatively new level - has now become faithful to serve and e-mail users. One gigabyte is really a lot. Google announced that Gmail users don’t have to delete emails at all.

In addition, users can instantly find the right messages, they do not have to think about sorting and storing them. A search on Gmail will be fast, efficient and convenient, just like a search on Google. That is why the new service immediately came to taste the employees of the company, who tried it in the walls of Googleplex. Although they did not tell anyone about the new postal service, computer users were eagerly awaiting Gmail's debut on the “big web.”

In order to make the world talk about its new product - and in fact, Google became the leading search engine thanks to human rumor - the company offered to try out thousands of randomly selected users for a start, and later allowed each of them to create mailboxes on Gmail for relatives and friends. This step allowed to reveal and eliminate defects and defects. By providing users with a free one-gigabyte mailbox, Google has thereby demonstrated that it is able to satisfy all their needs.

Unlike most other Google products, Gmail began to make a profit already at the testing stage. As the demand for advertising grew steadily, the company needed to increase the number of advertising spaces. Larry and Sergey, without thinking twice, decided to place small advertisements in letters on the same principle as on the search pages - in the column to the right. Such advertisements will be “context relevant” —that is, thematically related to the words contained in the emails.This business model has already proven its effectiveness. By providing advertisers with additional space in the Google network, Gmail will be another source of profit and growth catalyst.

If you look at the world through blue-red-yellow-green glasses (colors of the Google logo), then this idea seems remarkable in all respects. And neither Larry, nor Sergey, nor leading experts of Google had the idea that respectable and respected people may very disapprove of the fact that Google computers read emails and place advertisements in them.Being in virtual reality, they did not discern on the horizon a political reality with which they soon had to face. Software developers, who were in a kind of vacuum, did not consult with knowledgeable people, did not ask for the opinion of the thousands of users who first opened their mailboxes on Gmail, and did not do anything to prevent a wave of indignation caused by claims that the postal service is encroaching on privacy. But Google’s reputation was at stake. For the two founders, who were proud of their intelligence and broad outlook, this was a good lesson: a mind that does not communicate with the external environment can play a cruel joke with a person.

In order to attract more attention to Gmail, Larry and Sergey decided to announce the launch of the new service on April 1, 2004. Before, April Fools' April Fools invariably turned out to be a rally, and therefore the message that Gmail can open a free one-gigabyte box, journalists and computer users will probably consider an April Fool's joke. There will be a lot of talk, questions, gossip, and as a result, interest in the new postal service will reach a boiling point - and that’s what they needed.

On April 1, 2004, Google published a press release entitled “Search - Internet operation number two, email - number one. "Iron!" - say the founders of Google. It said that the development of Gmail by Brin and Page was caused by a complaint from one of their friends about the poor quality of existing mail programs. “She complained that it takes half a day to transform emails into files and search for the messages she needs,” explained Larry Page. “And after that, she still has to delete unnecessary letters so that her four-megabyte box can receive mail.” And she asked us if we could solve this problem. ”

A couple of months later, Gmail was born. “If a Google user has problems with email, then we have problems with email,” Bryn said. “And although it was more difficult to develop Gmail than we thought, today we can already offer this service to a girl who then turned to us.” Page and Brin noted that, to begin with, Google will provide access to the new service to a thousand “test user” users, and expressed the hope that “Gmail will become popular”.

The press release did not report that Google is going to advertise in letters. This was reported to media representatives by Wayne Rosing, then vice president of product development. “In the process of working on Gmail, we conducted a series of experiments, including with targeted advertisements,” he said. “We analyzed various texts, and in the end we managed to realize our plans.” By opening up access to working with Gmail primarily to “tester” users, Google hoped to increase interest in its postal service among the masses. "We believe that in a relatively short period of time, millions or even tens of millions of people will become Gmail users."

When it became known that Google plans to place ads in its emails, policies and organizations to protect the right to privacy have brought a wave of criticism to the company. In Massachusetts, a law against Gmail was introduced to the state senate. The shocked human rights activists demanded that the company immediately close Gmail and began collecting signatures against advertising in emails. One California senator said that if Google doesn’t give up on its plans, it will insist on banning Gmail. The corresponding draft law developed by him passed the State Senate Law Committee with only one vote "against." Placing advertisements in letters he called a rude and unallowable invasion of privacy. For the first time Google has undergone such a serious reprimand. Users believed that their emails should not be read by anyone other than the addressee, and Google’s intention to put advertising offers thematically related to the context in messages was clearly not to their taste.

Larry and Sergey got a serious blow. They didn’t even imagine that the public’s reaction to their new product would be so negative. Google, in the eyes of many, has transformed itself into freedom from the power of freedom (an image carefully nurtured by its founders) over the shoulder of millions of computer users reading the contents of their emails. Such a metamorphosis was extremely unpleasant. According to observers, one of the fundamental human rights - the right to privacy - was threatened.

“Google is risking its reputation as an honest company, a company that puts users first and foremost. And all because of the mail service, called Gmail, - wrote Walt Mossberg, columnist for The Wall Street Journal. - The problem here is not that advertisements can be mixed with the content of the message. The problem is that Google is viewing the email you have written in order to identify keywords and insert contextual advertising into it. What is this if not interfering with private life? ”Mossberg noted that, according to company executives, viewing of messages will be carried out by computers, however, he concluded that“ this system is still troubling, because if the information obtained during viewing the content letters, Google at least once uses for their own purposes, there may be big problems. In addition, Google can force to view the electronic correspondence of people who received a subpoena or are under investigation. ”

Mossberg urged Google to extinguish the flames as soon as possible. “I urge Google executives to take action so as not to undermine the company's impeccable reputation, namely, to develop an alternative email program. Google should provide mailboxes to Gmail for a small annual fee and refuse to view emails and place ads in them. This will give the company the right to choose the users, as it has always done. ”

Mossberg was a big fan of Google and its products, and therefore his article puzzled Larry and Sergey. Other human rights defenders were much less diplomatic in their criticism. “In fact, Google creates the most detailed dossier for each of us - dossiers that government intelligence agencies would never be allowed to create. And all these files will sooner or later fall into the hands of the special services, ”said Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the American human rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Miguel Heft, a journalist for the San Jose Mercury News newspaper, wrote that the announcement of the launch of Gmail was "an unsuccessful April Fool's joke." The fact that the mailbox volume was quite large increased the likelihood that email messages from Gmail users would be studied by government intelligence agencies: emails stored in Google machines, unlike emails stored in a user's computer, were not protected by law. According to Heft, now Google should lobby in the Senate a new law on the protection of the right to privacy.

In the meantime, about thirty human rights organizations from the USA, Australia, Canada, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK published an open letter to Google asking them to postpone the launch of Gmail.

In this letter, they urged Google to familiarize the public with the principles of data exchange between the system that searches for information and the system that performs operations with e-mail. The fact is that Google saved the address of the computer from which the request was made, and the word (phrase) of the request. Now she will be able to link this data with specific names, because in order to open the mailbox on Gmail, the user will need to register. Therefore, the authorship of requests for Google will be easy to determine. The concentration of a large amount of personal information in one electronic repository was disturbing, because this repository could be accessed by dishonest officers, hackers, lawyers specializing in divorce proceedings, private detectives and overly eager investigators. It is no secret that most people begin to show interest in the problem of interference with privacy only when they interfere with their own. In order to prevent such interference, human rights organizations have turned to Google through the press even before it launched its postal service.

"Gmail creates potentially dangerous precedents and sets a reduced level of expectation regarding email privacy," said a letter dated April 6, 2004. “These precedents can be adopted by other companies, as well as government organizations, and can have far-reaching consequences.” It also argued that the company's policy, whatever it was, would not fully protect Gmail users from abuse, and called into question the words of the founders of Google that computer reading of emails carries much less threat to users. than their perusal by man. "The computer system is superior in human memory and associative abilities, so it can be as intrusive as a person listening to telephone conversations."

Fear caused by the fact that Google was going to provide boxes of 1 GB in size and store emails indefinitely - and in fact the maximum period during which the confidentiality of information is protected by federal law is 180 days. In this regard, the Electronic Privacy Information Center made a statement, which, inter alia, said that Gmail is a product that violates the “inviolability” of private emails. Google kept records of search operations and was about to save email messages from Gmail users. Thus, it will have a database containing personal information of millions of people from around the world. Many Google search server attracted, among other things, anonymity. Now, when it was discovered that it retains information about search operations, user confidence shaken.

Meanwhile, several free mailboxes on Gmail from the first “trial” of thousands were put up for $ 100 on eBay online auction. When Larry and Sergey found out about this, they became confident that the hype around the company would eventually subside. In the end, the main goal of Google was to expand the boundaries of the possible, and people sometimes just need time to adapt to the new product. Yes, and human rights organizations often made a fuss over things that most people did not care much about - they were interested, above all, in convenience, quality and price. In addition, Bryn and Page reminded themselves: people should also be aware that the computers of other major postal services are also studying whether there is pornography, viruses, spam, etc. in e-mails. Therefore, Gmail in this regard is no different from them. It is a fact.

Since all this hype, according to Larry and Sergey, was not worth a damn, they did not consider it necessary to justify or respond to the attacks of "rosy critics." In principle, the company even won from it, because the criticism has increased interest in both Google's search engine and its “son” - the Gmail postal service. Soon, benevolently-minded observers, who had tried Gmail and recognized its advantages, began to write about the fact that the problem was, in general, sucked from the finger. Ordinary companies in a similar situation, perhaps, would consider the possibility of closing their mail service - at least for a while. But Google, under the leadership of Bryn and Page self-righteous, was not going to deviate from the intended course.

“In fact, there is no reason for concern,” noted Sergey. - Advertisements are thematically related to the text of the message you are reading. We do not delay your letters and do not dig into them. And not a single word of them comes into the light of God. We are obliged to protect correspondence and confidentiality of the information contained in it. I would also like to note that all mail services view user messages. They browse them to show them to you, they browse them to identify spam. We just insert advertising offers into them. This is done exclusively by computers. Our employees do not look at the letters. Therefore, I do not think that there is an interference with privacy. I myself use Gmail, and as a user I have a positive attitude to the fact that the messages contain advertisements. They do not distract attention, but on the contrary, they help. ”

During the testing period, Gmail users, by clicking on promotional offers, purchased many products. For Larry, this was proof that Internet users, advertisers, and Google’s bank accounts are doing great with small advertisements in the column to the right. “Even if our system imposes fear on someone, in the end it brings benefits to everyone,” he said.

But not everyone at Google was sure that the noise around Gmail would soon subside. Some major investors were very unhappy with the organization of the process and the timing for it. How could CEO Eric Schmidt admit this, knowing that in two or three weeks the company would announce its progress on the stock exchange? It should not have allowed the founders of Google to take steps that they thought were correct, but that everyone else would have thought were stupid or at least inopportune. The hype around Gmail could have left a stain on Google’s reputation and tarnished the company's credibility. With inadequate control, Gmail could undermine Google’s most important asset — the trust of hundreds of millions of users and advertisers from all over the world. In addition, Microsoft, Yahoo! and other competitors will surely not miss the opportunity to put Google in a bad light - for example, point out that it keeps copies of all emails, including those that users have already deleted.

According to Page, the most serious miscalculation of Google was not the decision to place advertising in emails, the most serious mistake was made in the process of launching a new mail service. “We have learned a few lessons for ourselves,” says Larry. - We should not have to delay the provision of mailboxes to everyone. People began to discuss the merits of the new postal service, without being able to try it out. I did not think they would be interested in them. We promulgated our privacy policy, and she was very interested in them. But they did not have access to our new product - hence all this talk. ”

Anyway, Larry and Sergey needed to seriously address the issue of confidentiality of information, and the first thing they needed was to establish contact with an authoritative human rights organization whose members could advise them: calmly and emotionlessly present all the facts, no matter how scary. Larry, although he wanted to focus on users, nevertheless understood the need to look at Gmail through the eyes of a defender of the right to privacy. Among human rights defenders, he had a friend, Brad Templeton, and now was the time to turn to him. Templeton had been working with cyberspace for so long and had a hand in so many IT breakthroughs that many sincerely believed that it was he who entered the dot in the com extension. Templeton arranged for the founders for a number of reasons: he was the head of the human rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation, he was a friend of Larry and Sergey, and a frequenter of Burning Man, at one time he worked for Google as a consultant. Finally, he earned money through advertisements that Google placed on his personal website. In a word, he was definitely worth asking for advice.

Page came to the conclusion that only Brad Templeton and his Electronic Frontier Foundation could argue about the dispute over Gmail as an unbiased mediator between Google and defenders of privacy rights. The organization that he headed refused to join the coalition that called on Google to write off Gmail as scrap. At the same time, he took very seriously the issue of interference with the privacy of Gmail users and its consequences in the future. Paige, a liberal by nature, understood how important it is to find a reasonable compromise. Templeton, for its part, viewed Gmail as a sophisticated technology that cannot be called uniquely good or uniquely bad. He asked Kevin Bankston, his EFF colleague, what he thought about all this. Bankston noted that people who fear possible interference in their personal lives should take the initiative in their hands by switching to other search engines. A Google supporter who does not use Gmail has nothing to fear: information about him is not concentrated in one place. “It’s not safe to use the services of the same provider in terms of maintaining the confidentiality of information. I would not open the box on the mail site of the company whose search engine I use. ”

Templeton met with Page and told him what consequences the launch of Gmail could have, and then thoughtfully and impartially analyzed all the pros and cons of the new mail service. “ should encrypt emails in order to search its archive technically,” he said. - She should isolate all personal information and remove it from her registration files. The company could have made certain sacrifices, but it did not. From time to time, Google conducts research to identify patterns in the behavior of users and customers, but it does not delete personal information. "

The situation around Gmail Templeton approached carefully. “Although much of what was said about Gmail can be called a clear exaggeration,” he wrote, “there are a number of issues that are truly disturbing.” One of them is that the confidentiality of information contained in e-mails is protected by law only for 180 days.A serious threat is also represented by the interaction of the mail program with the search system, carried out by the company in order to individualize services. As the number of Gmail users and services they use grows, this threat will only grow. “Today, when computers really threaten privacy, we fear servers that know everything about our lives, as well as outsiders.” We are also afraid of them because there have already been cases when intruders accessed the information stored on servers. Receiving and sending emails using Gmail and simultaneously performing search operations on Google, users, without knowing it, create a database for, as Templeton put it, “communities of observers”.

“When all your documents are stored on a home computer, it’s impossible to get all the information contained in them - for this, the computer will have to be hacked a million times. When they are stored on the server, it is quite realistic - they will need to be accessed (by amending the law or hacking the system) only once. ”

He also touched Templeton on a global issue that Google didn’t pay due attention to: what position the government of a country, based on the characteristics of its culture and legislation, will take regarding the Google database. “When we develop a certain technology, do we think about what will happen when it becomes popular, say, in China or Saudi Arabia? Or when will it be acquired by companies whose policies are not so liberal? ”

But most importantly, Templeton noted, computer users need to know the risk they put on themselves. “The level of expectation regarding the confidentiality of information in an e-mail you should not exceed the level of expectation regarding the confidentiality of information on a postcard that you are going to send to the addressee through a third party. Many of the search operations that Templeton himself carried out using Google are related to his personal information — for example, the search for the names of drugs prescribed by his doctor. The most serious threat, he concluded, is the interaction of mail and search programs, creating the prerequisites for the violation of civil liberties. The illusion of non-interference in privacy is being replaced by the specter of observation. He encroaches on a person’s personal freedom and freedom of expression, and therefore even fear of Gmail and Google itself becomes a problem. “It’s not only that they do not interfere in your personal life, it’s also important to believe that they don’t interfere in it. When you suspect that you are being watched, your behavior changes and you become more vulnerable. ”

At the same time, Templeton noted that since the corporate computers store the data of the credit bureaus, information on the state of bank accounts, medical records, etc., personal information will still sooner or later be transferred to the Internet. Her privacy, of course, is unlikely to be well protected, but people will eventually adapt to this state of affairs.

Meanwhile, a number of other human rights defenders who criticized Google experienced its postal service and were pleased with it. Journalists also praised Gmail: now, if necessary, they could quickly find old letters. The box is provided by the postal service for free and contains a wealth of information. In addition, Gmail has an option that turns e-mails into dialogue.Larry and Sergey were convinced that as soon as a user tries Gmail and sees its strengths, all its concerns about privacy will fade into the background. “Gmail is a very good and promising service, in many ways ahead of its time,” Templeton said. “And he is really in demand.”

Cookie-for-porn

At the US National Security Agency, Matt Cutts worked on encryption and information security issues, and today at Google he is fighting unwanted pornography. Cutts has developed and maintains a SafeSearch filter (“Safe Search”) designed to block pornographic links. In Google, Matt was nicknamed Cookie-for-porn: his work colleagues helping him find annoying porn sites, he treats him with delicious homemade cookies that his wife makes.

Catts, a native of Kentucky and a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina, tracks unwanted pornography in both search results and advertisements, and eliminates it. Brand manager Marissa Mayer notes that the once serious and large-scale problem of combating Internet pornography is already losing its relevance. “Matt works a lot on search quality in order to protect Google users from all sorts of surprises,” Mayer says. - For those who do not wish to receive undesirable or even potentially undesirable results in response to his query, he developed a filter that eliminates such links. It removes pornographic links, even if you do not use SafeSearch. ”

Nevertheless, the insidious porn sites from time to time still make their way to Google. Their owners often buy the names of other websites, the term of which expires, to be embedded in search results without revealing their true face. “There are types that buy domain names in the hundreds,” says Cutts. This practice is called "pornopping".

Although Google is fighting unwanted pornography, it also earns millions of dollars annually by placing advertising links on pornographic sites. According to a study conducted in 2004 by the public organization Family Safe Media, every fourth request to Google and other search sites contains words related to pornography. This means that Google handles tens of millions of queries on this topic every day.

Service "Image Search" freely gives erotic images, and in the column on the right there is a string of relevant advertisements. "In general, Google allows for advertisements for adults only on its pages, such as advertisements with clearly erotic content," the company’s website says. Taking into account the policy of the company, as well as its status as the most extensive and popular search resource, we can confidently assert that Google has become the largest gateway for Internet pornography. The company does not disclose information about how much it earns on the placement of advertising firms specializing in pornography, as, indeed, any other. However, anonymity and freedom of access to pornography undoubtedly attract both adults and minors, since they allow people to search for information that is prohibited for distribution with impunity, the conclusions of the study indicate.

However, people who search for pornography through Google are mistaken if they think they are doing it anonymously.Google stores information about all searches, including the IP address of the computer from which the request was made. If such a user opened a mailbox on Gmail or subscribed to any of the Google services, then you can easily figure out what exactly he is looking for and how often he does it.

Not surprisingly, both Google and its main competitor, Yahoo! get big profits from advertising porn sites. In the USA, pornography is protected (within certain limits) by the first amendment to the Constitution. In countries where it is prohibited to post pornographic materials on websites (Germany, India and others), Google and Yahoo! act in accordance with local laws.

However, not all of Google’s advertising policies are strictly adhered to. For example, Google stated that it would not accept advertising of intimate services, but at the same time it placed advertisements of firms participating in the bidding on the phrase “escort service”. When one of the authors of this book printed this phrase in the search box, the following promotional offer appeared in the column on the right: “Hot sex. Boys and girls in your city. Choose your partner right now. ”And when I scored “XXX”, the following sentence came up: “For millions of seksomanov! Register right now and enjoy the next night. ” Google claims that SafeSearch does not include links to pages with clearly erotic content in the search results.When searching for the same “XXX”, the hard filter SafeSearch links for “adults only” did not really miss the results, but here are promotional offers with erotic content - including such as “The community of Internet cameras: hot girls live, free video chat "And" Sexy girls and boys ", - block and did not think.

If the word “pornography” (“pornography”) is entered into the Google query string, among the results we get only “anti-pornographic” sites, but if you just enter “porn” (“porn”) - the content is “for adults only”. In both cases, small advertisements for distributors of pornography appear in the column on the right, which pay Google a certain amount each time someone clicks on their “hot” offers. However, Google is trying to strictly comply with all federal and state laws prohibiting the distribution of child pornography. Advertising that promotes child pornography and sexual abuse is not posted on Google pages, the company said.

Google’s approach to “immodest” advertising offers is defined by peculiar standards. These standards reflect the Do No Harm! Philosophy and the values of the founders of Google — above all, Sergey Brin, who is authorized to make decisions about which ads appear on the results pages, and which do not. Google’s text advertising policy generally reflects the personal preferences of the company's founders. The document in which all this is available is set forth on the website.

The company accepts advertisements from wine producers, but rejects advertisements for beer and spirits. Also, this document claims that Google rejects announcements degrading a candidate for an elective office, but accepts ads of critical content that distort the candidate’s position on a particular issue (although in practice everything is a little different). She categorically rejects tobacco advertising, as well as firearms advertising. At the same time, Google accepts ads that promote cartridges, silencers, and other devices that make firearms even more dangerous, despite the fact that the document clearly states: advertising ammunition is not accepted.

Google also states that it does not accept ads that promote substances that promote the elimination of drug residues from the body, special additives that affect the composition of urine, and other means by which you can successfully pass a doping test. It does not post promotional offers inciting violence or calling for any actions against the so-called “protected group”, singled out by one of the following signs: age, race, religion, physical disabilities, sexual orientation. It is against advertising "black boxes" and other devices that allow free to receive cable television channels. Google's policy also does not allow for the placement of advertisements promoting illicit drugs and devices for the introduction of drugs, pyrotechnics, online casinos, magic bullets, anti-radars and various types of weapons, including brass knuckles.

In early 2004, Google filed a lawsuit against the resource Booble.com, designed to search for exclusively erotic content.Google said that the similarity of names, interface, logo and colors on Booble.com and Google.com can confuse users and represents an encroachment on the trademark of the latter. The British Community, which has positioned its website as a directory and search engine for adults only, responded that, in accordance with the first amendment to the Constitution, it has the right to create a parody of Google.

In the logo of Vooblé, women's breasts stand in the place of two “o”, and instead of the button “I'm feeling lucky” (“I'm lucky!”), An obligatory element of the Google homepage, there is a button on “I`m feeling playful” (“I want to have some fun!”).