[LINK] 'Love and trust' Google

Jan Whitaker jwhit at melbpc.org.au
Fri Apr 6 15:19:06 AEST 2012


At 03:04 PM 6/04/2012, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:

>2012 Update from the Google CEO

The real message. Adapted:



Velocity, execution and focus

Sergey and I founded Google because we believed that building a great
search experience would improve peoples lives and, hopefully, the
world.  And in the decade-plus thats followed, weve been constantly
delighted by the ways in which people have used our technologysuch as
making an artificial limb using old designs discovered online.

But were always impatient to do better for our "Useds".  Excellence
matters, and technology advances so fast that the potential for
improvement is tremendous. So, since becoming CEO again, Ive pushed hard
to increase our velocity, improve our execution, and focus on the big
bets that will make a difference in the world.  Google is a large company
now, but we will achieve more, and do it faster, if we approach life with
the passion and soul of a start-up.

Last April, I began by reorganizing the management team around our core
products to improve responsibility and accountability across Google.  I
also kicked off a big clean-up.  Google has so many opportunities that,
unless we make some hard choices, we end up spreading ourselves too thin
and dont have the impact we want. So we have closed or combined over 30
products, including projects like Knol and Sidewiki. In addition, we gave
many of our products, such as Google Search, a visual refresh, and they
now have a cleaner, more consistent, and beautiful look.

A beautifully simple experience across Google

Creating a simpler, more intuitive experience across Google has been
another important focus. I have always believed that technology should do
the hard workdiscovery, organization, communicationso "Useds" can do what
makes them happiest: living and loving, not messing with annoying
computers! That means making our products work together seamlessly.
People shouldnt have to navigate Google to get stuff done. It should
just happen. As Sergey said in the memorable way only he can, We've let
a thousand flowers bloom; now we want to put together a coherent
bouquet.

Think about basic actions like sharing or recommendations. When you find
a great article, you want to share that knowledge with people who will
find it interesting, too. If you see a great movie, you want to recommend
it to friends. Google+ makes sharing super easy by creating a social
layer across all our products so "Useds" connect with the people who matter
to them.

When you sign up for Google+, you can use Circles to group people into
different categories, such as Friends, Family, or Rocket
Scientists, and then engage with them just like in real life. You can
recommend great news articles, websites, and videos to specific Circles,
or share photos with Family straight from your Android device. And the
photos are even uploaded for you automatically! To follow people with
shared interests, such as photography, just add them to your Circles. And
you can share your own ideas with the world, or a smaller group, via the
Google+ Stream and have others respond.

Its still early days, and we have a long way to go. But these are
tremendously important changes, and with over 120 Google+ integrations to
date (including Google Search, YouTube and Android), we are on the right
track. Well over 100 million "Useds" are active on Google+, and were
seeing a positive impact across the Web, with Google "Useds" being able to
recommend search results and videos they likea goal weve had ever since
we started the company.

Activity on the Google+ Stream itself is increasing too. Were excited
about the tremendous speed with which some people have amassed over one
million followers, as well as the depth of the discussions taking place
among happy, passionate "Useds"all evidence that were generating genuine
engagement. When I post publicly I get a ton of high quality comments,
which makes me happy and encourages me to keep posting. I strongly
encourage all of you to follow me on Google+I love having this new way
to communicate and share with all of you!

Next-generation search

Understanding identity and relationships can also help us improve search.
Today, most search results are generic, so two strangers sitting next to
each other in a caf ill get very similar answers. Yet everyones life
experiences are unique. We are all knowledgeable about different things;
we have different interests and our preferencesfor music, food,
vacations, sports, movies, TV shows, and especially peoplevary
enormously.

Imagine how much better search would be if we added you. Say youve been
studying computer science for awhile like me, then the information you
need wont be that helpful to a relative novice and vice versa. If youre
searching for a particular person, you want the results for that person
not everyone else with the same name. These are hard problems to solve
without knowing your identity, your interests, or the people you care
about.

We have an old-time Googler called Ben Smith, who is a good friend of
mine. It turns out that he isnt the only Ben Smith in the world! Today,
its tough for Google to find the right Ben for me. Many people share
only their public profiles, not their posts, photos, or connections. And
privacy considerations certainly limit the information that can be shared
between platformseven if the third parties hosting it were willing to
work with Google, which hasnt always been the case.

Google+ helps solve this problem for us because it enables Google to
understand people and their connections. So when I search for Ben Smith,
I get the real Ben Smith (for me), right there in my search box, complete
with his picture. Previously, the search box would just have had the
series of letters I had typed, with no real understanding that I was
looking for a unique person. This is a huge and important change, and
theres a ton more work to do.  But this kind of next-generation search
in which Google understands real-world entitiesthings, not stringswill
help improve our results in exciting new ways. Its about building
genuine knowledge into our search engine.

Taking actions

In the early days of Google you would type in a query, wed return ten
blue links, and you would move on fairly happily. Today you want more. If
you search for weather san francisco, chances are you want the weather
in San Francisco right there on the results page, not another click or
two away. So thats what we now provide. In fact, before youve even
finished typing weather into the search box we give you the weather
because weve learned thats most likely what youre looking for.

Truly great search is all about turning your needs into actions in the
blink of an eye. There is a huge amount of data in the world that isnt
publicly available today.  Showing it in our results involves deep
partnerships across different industries in many countries. Its very
similar to the work we did to get Google Maps off the ground.

Last year, for example, we welcomed ITA Software to the Google family.
They have strong relationships with the airline industry, and using that
data we can now provide more relevant results for travel queries. This
means that if you search for flights from chicago to los angeles, you
get a list of the most relevant flights with prices, and you can book
directly with the airlineor click on an ad for an online travel agency.
Were also experimenting with a feature called Hotel Finder, which
enables you to compare prices and book a hotel room right from the
results page. Its all about speeding things up so "Useds" can get on with
the things that matter in their lives.

 >From desktop to mobiles and tablets, oh my

Getting from needs to actions lightning fast is especially important on
smaller devices like mobile phones, where screen size is limited and
context really matters.  Thats why Im so excited about Android. Take
Google Maps, one of our best-loved services.  With it, you can search for
something, perhaps the nearest bookstore, find it, and be shown the way
straight there.  And you can now turn your phone into a wallet using...
Google Wallet.  So you can tap, pay, and save while you shop.  No more
claiming you left your credit card at home when your friend asks you to
pay for lunch!

It wasnt always that easy. I remember first meeting Andy Rubin, the
creator of Android, back in 2004. At the time, developing apps for mobile
devices was incredibly painful. We had a closet full of over 100 phones,
and we were building our software pretty much one device at a time. Andy
believed that aligning standards around an open source operating system
would drive innovation across the mobile industry. At the time, most
people thought he was nuts.

Fast forward to today. Android is on fire, and the pace of mobile
innovation has never been greater. Over 850,000 devices are activated
daily through a network of 55 manufacturers and more than 300 carriers.
Android is a tremendous example of the power of partnership, and it just
gets better with each version. The latest update, Ice Cream Sandwich, has
a beautiful interface that adapts to the form of the device.  Whether
its on a phone or tablet, the software works seamlessly.

As devices multiply and usage changes (many "Useds" coming online today may
never use a desktop machine), it becomes more and more important to
ensure that people can access all of their stuff anywhere.  Constant
downloading is a terrible experience, so I am excited about products like
Gmail and Google Docs that work well across Android and desktop. With
Chrome now recently available on Android, switching devices becomes
painless, too, because all of your tabs are just there across your
desktop and Android.  You can even click the back button on a different
device, and it just works! And with Google Play, movies, books, apps, and
games are all accessible from the Web or an Android deviceno cables,
downloading, or syncing required. I think there is a theme here!

In August, we announced plans to acquire Motorola Mobility, a company
that bet big on Android very early on. We are excited about the
opportunities to build great devices capitalizing on the tremendous
success and growth of Android and Motorolas long history of
technological innovation. But its important to reiterate that openness
and investment by many hardware partners have contributed to Androids
success. So we look forward to working with all of them in the future to
deliver outstanding used experiences. Android was built as an open
ecosystem, and we have no plans to change that.

Long-term focus

We have always tried to concentrate on the long term, and to place bets
on technology we believe will have a significant impact over time. Its
hard to imagine now, but when we started Google most people thought
search was a solved problem and that there was no money to be made apart
from some banner advertising.  We felt the exact opposite: that search
quality was very poor, and that awesome used experiences would clearly
make money.

Today it feels like were watching the same movie in slow motion over
again. We have tremendous new products that were seen as crazy at launch
yet now have phenomenal usage. They easily pass the toothbrush test: they
are important enough that millions of people use them at least once or
twice a day. Take Chrome, for example. In 2008, people asked whether the
world really needed another browser. Today Chrome has over 200 million
"Useds" and is growing fast, thanks to its speed, simplicity, and security.
If you dont use Chrome, just try it out, youll never go back! I promise
it wont take too long to install, and if it does you probably need a new
computer.

We are seeing phenomenal usage of our Web-based applications, too. When
we launched Gmail in 2004, most people thought webmail was a toy, but its
accessibilityall your email from anywhere, on any deviceand insane
storage have made it a winner with more than 350 million people. And our
enterprise customers love it too. Over 5,000 new businesses and
educational establishments now sign up every day.

In 2006, when Google acquired YouTube, we faced a lot of skepticism.
Today, YouTube has over 800 million monthly "Useds" uploading over an hour
of video per second. It enables an activist in Syria to broadcast
globally or a young star to build an entertainment network from scratch.
YouTube channels have real potential to entertain and educate, as well as
to help organize all the amazing videos that are available. So Im
excited we have a new effort working with media powerhouses such as Jay-
Z, the Wall Street Journal, and Disney to create channels that appeal to
every interest.

People rightly ask how well make money from these big bets. We
understand the need to balance our short- and longer-term needs because
our revenue is the engine that funds all our innovation. But over time,
our emerging high-usage products will likely generate significant new
revenue streams for Google as well as for our partners, just as search
does today. For example, were seeing a hugely positive revenue impact
from mobile advertising, which grew to a run rate of over $2.5 billion by
the third quarter of 2011two and a half times more than at the same
point in 2010. Our goal is long-term growth in revenue and absolute
profitso we invest aggressively in future innovation while tightly
managing our short-term costs.

Love and trust

We have always wanted Google to be a company that is deserving of great
love. But we recognize this is an ambitious goal because most large
companies are not well-loved, or even seemingly set up with that in mind.
Were lucky to have a very direct relationship with our "Useds", which
creates a strong incentive for us to do the right thing. For every magic
moment we createlike the ability to drop a photo into Google and search
by imagewe have a very happy used.  And when our products dont work or
we make mistakes, its easy for "Useds" to go elsewhere because our
competition is only a click away.

"Useds" place a lot of trust in Google when they store data, like emails
and documents, on our systems. And we need to be responsible stewards of
that information. Its why we invest a lot of effort in security and
related tools for "Useds", like 2-step verification and encryption, which
help prevent unauthorized access to information. The recent changes we
made to our privacy policies generated a lot of interest. But they will
enable us to create a much better, more intuitive experience across
Googleour key focus for the year.

We have always believed that its possible to make money without being
evil. In fact, healthy revenue is essential if we are to change the world
through innovation, and hire (and retain) great people. As a child I
remember reading about Nikola Tesla, a genius whose impact was severely
limited by his failure to make money from his inventions. It was a good
lesson. Today, most of our revenue comes from advertising. We take pains
to make sure that "Useds" know when something is paid for, and we work hard
to make these advertisements relevant for "Useds".  Better ads are better
for everyonebetter information or offers for "Useds", growth for
businesses, and increased revenue for publishers to fund better content.

Over one million businesses now use Googles advertising products and
were delighted with the ways in which we have helped other companies
(both large and small) succeed. I recently heard about a Thai dressmaker
whose store was destroyed by floods. To start rebuilding her business,
she invested $5 a day in Google AdWords and doubled her revenue. Today
over 80 percent of her orders come from the Web. Taylors Bike Shop in
Utah, a family-run store, saw increase in sales of over 50 percent when
they started using AdWords. Today they maintain a staff of eight people
on a steady basis.

At the heart of our business model has always been the belief that were
better off if we can create a larger pie for our partners. We started
with AdSense, and Google has paid out over $30 billion to support content
on the Web since its launch over a decade ago. That is a mighty big check
(actually lots of smaller checks!) and Im delighted weve been able to
support our partners with that much resource. The same is true for our
newer technologies like DoubleClick for online publishers and AdMob for
mobile developers. YouTube also generates healthy revenue for Google and
our content partnersin fact, partner ad revenue has more than doubled
for the fourth year in a row. One thing I've learned is that if you keep
doubling things, it really adds up fast!

All that said, we recognize that we dont get everything rightand that
the changes we make, like our recent visual refresh, can initially upset
some "Useds" (even if they later come to love them). But we dont operate
in a static industry, and technology changes so fast that we need to
innovate and iterate. Of course, when we do make mistakes we try to fix
them as quickly as possible and, if necessary, change the way we do
things to prevent problems from arising again. And we work hard to
explain what we are doingand whybecause with size comes responsibility.

Googlers

People are a crucial part of Googles long-term success, since companies
are no greater than the efforts and ingenuity of their employees. Our
goal is to hire the best at every level and keep them.  In our experience
your working environment is enormously important because people want to
feel part of a family in the office, just as they do at home. So we
invest in great food, high quality medical care, gyms, and other fitness
facilities, as well as cool workspaces that bring people together.

Most important of all, however, we believe that work should be
challenging. People are more motivated and have more fun when they work
on important projects. Take Google Translate, which we started eight
years ago and now enables anyone to translate text in an instant between
any two of 64 languagesincluding Hindi, Arabic and Chinese. That's
actually 4032 different pairs of languages you can translate! In fact, by
combining it with our voice recognition technology, weve turned mobile
phones into pocket translators for millions of "Useds" globally. When you
work on projects of this magnitude, its impossible not to wake up
excited about work; the chance to make a difference is the greatest
motivation anyone can have.

Happiness is a healthy disregard for the impossible

When I was a student at the University of Michigan, I went on a summer
leadership course. The slogan was a healthy disregard for the
impossible, and its an idea that has stayed with me ever since. It may
sound nuts, but Ive found that its easier to make progress on mega-
ambitious goals than on less risky projects. Few people are crazy enough
to try, and the best people always want to work on the biggest
challenges. We've also found that failed ambitious projects often yield
other dividends. Believe it or not, the technological innovation behind
AdSense, which, as I mentioned earlier, has paid out over $30 billion to
partners, was the result of a failed more ambitious project to
understand the Web. The team failed at understanding the Web, mostly, I
think, because they were distracted by their work making advertisements
amazingly relevant.

Last year, the Google+ team decided to integrate multi-person video into
their efforts. They had a small committed team that was crazy enough to
believe this was possible, and Google+ Hangouts was born. You can now
video chat with anyone, anywhere, even from the Great Barrier Reef. It
was the same with driverless cars, which we started on in 2008. Today we
have driven over 200,000 miles, and Steve Mahan, who is legally blind,
recently took a drive in one of them. So the one-sentence summary of how
to change the world work on something that is uncomfortably exciting!

Today the opportunities are greater than ever. Things we used to think
were magic, we now take for granted: the ability to get a map instantly,
to find information quickly and easily, to choose any video from millions
on YouTube rather than just a few TV channels. People are buying more
devices and using them more because technology is playing an increasingly
important role in our lives. I believe that by producing innovative
technology products that touch people deeply, we will enable you to do
truly amazing things that change the world. Its a very exciting time to
be at Google, and I take the responsibility I have to all of you very
seriously.



Larry Page, Google CEO


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Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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