Google Jackpots

[Joseph Morin]

Google Insiders Cash Out (http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/040818/google_jackpots_3.html)

Congratulations to the Google team!

[garyp]

Yes, congrats to everyone at Google especially the brilliant folks who have created the Google brand (a verb too!) with just about zero use of traditional consumer marketing (print, tv, radio).

That said, I hope everyone takes the time to read respected tech columnist Dan Gillmor's column today in the SJ Merc.

Google, Beyond the IPO
San Jose Mercury News
http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010708.shtml
Dan Gillmor offers some advice to the Google team.

Gillmor says that Google is now an media company.
Inktomi founder Eric Brewer said just about the same thing yesterday when he called Google an advertising company. (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/technology/18future.html?ex=1093579200&en=ed8f29115c0e1789&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1)

Google's ad products are fine, but they're hardly a monopoly.

Google has a developer ecosystem of sorts, but it's not nearly vibrant enough.
He's correct. In fact, Tara points out (http://www.researchbuzz.org/archives/001941.shtml) that it's been about two years since the last API update.

Google needs to chill out a bit...the company's leaders should recognize that hubris has brought down other smart people; a little humility would go a long way.


The company also needs to improve its relations with advertisers, who are held to sometimes outrageous terms of service, such as being told they can't even discuss in detail with other people the effectiveness of their Google ads. That's plain unfair.

Google should also be more consistent, and open-minded, on what advertising it will accept. By rejecting ads for sites that have ``language that advocates against an individual, group, or organization,'' Google is acting more like a nanny than a business that itself is based on the First Amendment.

Well said Dan!!!

[dannysullivan]

The Playboy interview, which made a mockery of the ``quiet period'' before and immediately after the IPO..
The SEC filing says the interview happened before they announced, before the quiet period started. Playboy just chose to run the interview during it. I don't understand why Dan and other people are beating up on them about this. It's like saying that if Dan wrote anything about Google during the quiet period, based on an interview he did before it started, Google is too blame. Am I missing something on this?

As for Google as a media company, yep (http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.phpr/2230391#overture).

Comments on Google chilling out a bit and fixing inconsistencies on what ads they'll take, absolutely there with him.

I'd like to think we'll all get back to focusing on Google as it applies to, I dunno, searching for things! But sadly, the IPO is just going to be the start of Google's constant review economically.

[garyp]

Danny,
I agree 100% with your comment/link (as well as what Gillmor and Brewer mention) that Google is an advertising company. I've been saying the same thing for a long time.

If you're wondering, I would place companies like FAST Search, Verity, Endeavour and online services like Factiva, ProQuest, and Dialog to be in the information or better, information retrieval business.

This does not make Google, Jeeves, or Yahoo are bad and not useful. HARDLY!!! They're wonderful services it's more about where the money comes from and it's about trying to make everyone happy. Trying to be all things to all people is often a challenge.

Yes, Google does have the search appliance but we've heard little about it lately.

Larry Page mentioned on Nightline the other night something we've heard before:
Google's goal is to really organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

While I agree that to this point Google (as well as Yahoo, Jeeves, and others) have done WONDERS to make info more accessible these companies need to do much more work to organize the world's info. Organization and access are two different things.

Information organization is more than crawling and placing material into a massive database. It's also about keeping the database itself well clean, dupes to a minimum, etc.

Organization might also be about making the info easier to retrieve through a controlled vocabulary, descriptors, etc. For example, you might call if a fizzy drink but others might call it pop or soda. While indexing each and every web page (of course not all of the worlds info is available on the web)
companies like Vivisimo (http://www.vivisimo.com) are doing good work to at the least have subject access served dynamically. You've also pointed out that very often good results exist off the first page. Chris recently pointed out (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3344081) that the amount of overlap (from engine to engine) in the first 100 results is not as great as some would think. These types of tools can help.

A recent survey (http://www.findsvp.com/about/2004/06-17OnlineSearch.cfm) pointed out that the business world sees a large loss in productivity because of people taking to long to search and find an answer. Granted you can get a survey/study to say what you want and this comes from a company offering a search tool, it has been my experience that people are wasting time and effort. I can just look at the user logs for my site and see many people coming to my site when it does not offer anything close to what they're looking for. As an aside, I think search result snippets need to improve.

What Ask.com is doing with their Smart Search program (http://eb.ask.com/web?q=academy+award+best+actor+1972&o=0&qsrc=0) is also a step in the right direction.

I also think the future for "open web" specialized databases (often referred to as verticals) is also bright. They're often better organized and offer excellent retrieval mechanisms. Sometimes bigger doesn't always mean better.

If you take a look at some of the products I mentioned earlier ProQuest, Infotrac, etc) or even just your local library's book catalog you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. Btw , I mentioned in an article for SearchDay (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2161631) that these types of databases containing full text articles are often accessible FROM HOME for FREE from your public or university library. Btw, these types of databases are much easier to search these days and some of the cred

Bottom Line: I wouldn't think of saying that Google will not do these things. They are always up to something exciting. That said, organizing info is much more than placing it in a database and making it searchable.

[Joseph Morin]

In this article (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GOOGLE_IPO?SITE=NVLAS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT) around 45% of Google employees are now paper millionaires.

An estimated 950 to 1,050 of Google's nearly 2,300 employees are paper millionaires, according to an analysis done by Salary.com, which tracks employee compensation.

"There are going to be some pretty good parties in the Bay area this evening - probably not a lot of work getting done at Google tomorrow," said Bill Coleman, the firm's senior vice president of compensation.