Google’s Story

John Battelle’s The Search discusses the creation and growth of a search engine started by two Stanford graduate students—Google.  The first six chapters of the book are well researched—Battelle outlines the major events that Larry Page and Sergey Brin underwent in their creation of a new search engine.  Battelle provides an in-depth history of search engines prior to the creation of those we use today.  Among them are Archie and AltaVista.  Not only does the author offer insight into the creation of Google, he also adds a certain human aspect to the story, revealing the hardships and hurdles Page and Brin had to overcome to end up where they are now.  Battelle describes the features of Google that set it apart from other existing search engines, like Yahoo! and MSN.  The innovativeness of Google comes from the unique link tracking that it employs.  Instead of a search engine merely retrieving information from a large database, Page and Brin had the bright idea to display results in order based on the popularity of each site or document.  To determine the popularity, the founders developed an algorithm that tracks how often each of these sites are linked to.  The more links in cyberspace that a website has, the higher on the search results list it climbs.  From this idea, PageRank was born. 

While successful in the search business, Google struggled for some time to come up with a viable business model.  Page and Brin had little trouble convincing people to give them money to launch Google on the Internet, but once they had the money, they could not figure out how to sustain the search engine through a new way of advertising, which other search engines were using to make a profit.

Eventually the growing company came up with an innovative, customer-friendly business model: they would charge advertisers only if their ads were clicked, attracting more and more companies wanting to advertise on Google.  To keep to their policy that their customers are their top priority, Page and Brin chose to keep Google’s homepage completely free of ads.  It is essentially a white screen with a colorful logo and a search box.  Google figured that by making their search function so powerful, they could afford to avoid busy-looking homepage ads—they were, after all, attracting thousands of visitors a day.

Currently Google is the most used search engine worldwide (and by far).  Fifty-one percent of Internet users go to Google to perform their online searches.  The next popular search engine is Yahoo!, which follows at twenty-four percent.  That’s a significant disparity.  It certainly causes one to wonder why there’s such a large gap.  Google’s features are user-friendly, its search style is unique, and its mission is to serve its visitors and organize information in the best way possible.  Could it also be the simple layout of the homepage? Or the fact that one can customize the homepage? How about the fact that there are no advertisements on the homepage? All of these features contribute to the reason that Google stands as the number one search engine in the world. Not bad for a couple of twenty-somethings (now 34) from Stanford to have come up with.

What’s interesting about this book is that Battelle provides in-depth information on the company’s timeline form its birth to the present.  He also discusses the personalities of Brin and Page, describing them as having caught “entrepreneur’s syndrome” (p. 141).  Until the time of Battelle’s writing, in 2005, Page and Brin were known as the founders who needed to be a part of every decision of their company.  You cannot blame them for this – why wouldn’t someone want to keep a close watch on something they created that has made them so successful?

Google is largely talked about in the blogosphere.  Search Engine Watch and Jeremy Zawodny’s blog are just a couple of blogs out there that have posted about Google this week.  Good or bad, if people are talking about the search engine, it’s giving them great publicity.  Every time Google comes out with a new feature (or changes something about one) there are people discussing it.  They want to know how it affects Google’s public and what others think. These types of blogs are great reading for someone wanting to stay afloat of what’s going on with the big Web companies.

Does Google blog? Yes. Scoble and Israel would be proud, as they advocate a company’s blogging to stay in touch with their customers.  Google’s blog consists of many individual posters who generally discuss what the company is up to and how they are aiming to better serve their visitors.  It’s certainly more formal than other types of blogs you may see out there, but it does serve the purpose of staying connected with their users.  It doesn’t seem like Larry Page or Sergey Brin have blogs (at least I couldn’t find them through a Google search).  They probably don’t have the time.  I think if they did start to blog, they would likely dispel the idea floating around that they are arrogant entrepreneurs who are overprotective of their company.  The founders could discuss their plans, provide tips, and respond to readers (I’m sure of which they would have many).