Levo Lit: The Search, How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.
Here’s a blast from the past: Frances Advincula writes with a programmer’s perspective on John Battelle’s 2005 The Search, which has gained both acclaim and confusion by readers without the same technical background John Battelle writes from. Frances retells the story of Google and points to some helpful resources to remind us what life was like without it.
Author John Battelle starts off his 2005 work The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of the Internet and Transformed Our Culture by detailing the manner in which he stumbled upon the 2001 summary of Google’s Zeitgeist, a PR tool that summarizes what the world searched for. He coins the term “The Database of Intentions,” explains the value of search to our modern world, and provides us a history of search. He also tells the story of how Google was born and their journey to success, all while exposing the inner workings of search and how it makes money. Finally, he tells about the impact and implications of search in our lives, as well as its future. However, a few details maybe outdated, as the book was published in 2005.
All points of view are the original author’s; I merely summarize what he says in a somewhat more tangible and digestible format.
WHAT IS SO FASCINATING ABOUT SEARCH?
Google’s approach to search may be the closest thing we have to this “Database of Intentions”—it represents the aggregate result of all our searches, the history of every query we typed in the search box. Google search shows what we’ve searched for and where that search led, affording us insight into what we ourselves want, what we spend time and energy thinking about, and what drives us. [Author’s note: Somewhat similar to a global Facebook timeline.]
At the same time, search is not only one of the pioneers of useful web services, it is also the reason for the second wave of Internet giants (think eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, and yes, Google). Researchers also say search is the forefront of further progress in artificial intelligence. [Author’s note: we now have Siri, who definitely imitates human behavior.]
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW, REGARDLESS OF THE SEARCH ENGINE
Who: The younger you are and the higher your level of education, the more you use search.
What: The beauty of search is that we can query for anything under the sun; the possibilities are infinite. How we choose the words we type in the search box, however, is a mystery in itself.
Where: The most used search engines are Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Google.
[Author’s note: Nowadays, “to Google” has been welcomed into the global lexicon as a regular verb, and Bing recently overtook Yahoo in terms of traffic]
When: We search the most in the morning and the evening.
Why: First, we search to find what we know already exists. We want to locate something, to find information on a topic. Second, we use search to discover what we think exists, but we have yet to find.
How Search Works: Every search engine has three main parts, the crawler, the index, and the runtime system. The crawler traverses the entire Web and sends every page it finds to a massive database called the index. The information is then analyzed using factors such as the number and popularity of links, language, content, etc. Afterwards, the data is sent to the runtime system, a database that is ready to serve the person who queries. The runtime system performs the ranking logic, connects the user’s query to the index, and displays the results to the user.
With this in mind, returning relevant results is no easy feat. For example, if we want to know more about Abraham Lincoln, we search for “Abraham Lincoln Biography.” However, we are not merely looking for pages with those exact keywords; a good search engine will pay attention to coherence as well. As it analyses pages, it will take into consideration if the page shows the attributes of a biography.
Similarly, search must deliver results even when we misspell a word, or be flexible enough to show relevant results for subjects that are represented by different words (“soda” versus “pop”, “tennis shoes” versus “sneakers”). Search engines also worry about striking the toss-keep balance with words such as “to,” “be,” etc. Usually, tossing them out will make the engine work faster, but what if one queries “to be or not to be”? All of a sudden, those words are crucial to the query. [Author’s note: Here’s an infographic on how Google works.]
How Search Makes Money: Most of Google’s revenue comes from paid search. Advertisers pay the search company a certain amount per click in exchange for their ads showing up when a user queries for something relevant to their offerings. There are also more innovative ways companies are cashing in on search; examples include targeting ads using a person’s online habits and demographic.
THE GOOGLE GIANT IS BORN (AND GROWS UP)
Google started as a thesis topic called BackRub by Stanford PhD student Larry Page. He set out to create a system that would take the links of entire Web, analyze, and publish them in a way where one can find out who was linking to whom (unprecedented at the time), attracting the attention of Sergey Brin, another computer science PhD student at Stanford. The two came up with PageRank, an algorithm that rewarded links from important pages and penalized those that came from obscure sites (similar to the academe’s way of judging the quality of your paper through your citations and their quality).
After its debut on the Stanford site in 1996, the founders tried to license to the major players in the industry, but were turned down by companies like Yahoo for the next eighteen months. Finally deciding to start their own company, they received their first $100,000 in funding from Andy Bechtolsheim, a founder of Sun. Thus, Google was formally incorporated as Google Inc. on September 7, 1998.
The next step was to find a business model that generated money. Google turned to advertising, pioneering their text-based ads with AdWords. Led by their founders and new CEO Eric Schmidt (formerly of Sun and Novell), Google summed up its core values in their mantra – “Don’t Be Evil.”
Google continued to grow significantly from 2001 to 2004, buying DejaNews, Blogger, Picasa, and Keyhole. Then the company released AdSense, a service that displays ads based on the contents of a page. They also started to index images and public phone-book information, partnering with companies such AT&T, Cingular, HandSpring, and AOL. After 9/11 happened, websites like cnn.com weren’t able to handle the traffic, and people turned to Google to inform them. Google was finally more than a search engine, something they took advantage of by launching Google News. Later, Google launched a new version of AdWords that copied GoTo.com’s auction and pay-per-click approach (previously, AdWords used the cost per thousand model). However, Google still included popularity on how they rank an ad, not merely how much the company paid. Although this decision actually makes Google more money, the public saw it as a “Don’t Be Evil” move, one that put the user’s interests before Google’s.
But as Google gained more admiration from the public and the press, not everyone was happy with it either. Whether it was their founder’s approach, their aloofness, their unconventional hiring process, or even their cute vibe, some were not impressed by Google.
By 2004, Google realized that to be able to compete with Yahoo and Microsoft, they had to go public. That April, Google filed their formal public offering (S1) that stated how not only would they be maintaining a high level of control, the founders would also have ten times more voting power than the rest of the shareholders, despite the fact that they would own just 30% of the shares. After an age discrimination lawsuit, an investigation due to an untimely magazine interview, a reprimand that led Google to conduct a recision offer to their employees, glitches on their auction technology, and a myriad of other PR disasters, Google finally went public on August 19, 2004. Starting at the price of $85 per share, the price quickly rose to around $100 on the first day, topping at $300 by the next summer.
Post-IPO, Google underwent a soul searching of sorts, resulting in the founders’ Tablet, a statement of what makes Google what it is. This became a guide for a reorganization that took months long. Their previous approach of giving the most resources to the top 100 projects was done away with; instead, the company segregated functionality into core groups — search, advertising, “20 percent,” and “10 percent,” with the latter two for products that are were acquisitions or unconventional.
IMPACT AND IMPLICATIONS
First, search overhauled the way businesses operated, from investors looking into new prospects to real estate firms staking out new territory. Until now, Google’s routine algorithmic updates impacts the crop of small, online stores who rely on showing up in organic search results. Google continues to do these in order to control spammers, click fraud, and other unethical operations that plague the Web to this day.
Next, search made information available and permanent. We now search for everything, including potential dates, potential hires, people we just met. Unfortunately, we might not always like what we see. For example, pre-search, unfortunate things that we may have been involved in, although public information, are somehow inconvenient to research. Now, one can merely query for your name, and voila! – the history of you, as it is published online, is available for the world to see. Of course, we cannot forget the PATRIOT Act, which allows for our private information to be intercepted and demanded by government authorities from our ISPs, Google, etc. The million dollar question then is how do be balance between our right to know and the right of a person to his privacy?
Google also had to be very careful on the precedent they set when they were entering China. They didn’t have the luxury of being a manufacturing company; brands do not suffer by being made in China. Things are different when your business is in information. Once they budge to China, what stops another country or even a corporation from making similar demands?
[Author’s note: A closer look on Google and China]
THE FUTURE OF SEARCH
Perhaps in the future, we can search for anyone in real-time, or perhaps we won’t be limited to typing in a search box. Maybe the public will even have access to a search that understands very complex, human-like demands like IBM’s WebFountain. For sure, the evolution of search will be influenced by its two major players and their difference. Yahoo will continue to focus on being a media business, whereas Google will keep its stance on being a technology business. Many say Google will eventually permeate into everything we do online, including music, documents, mail, photographs, and video. To quote directly from the book, “When it comes to search, as with the Internet itself, the most interesting stuff is yet to come.”
[Author’s note: To date, Google has launched Google Music, Google Docs, and Gmail, as well as acquired YouTube, and Picasa. As for the interesting stuff, it is my opinion that Google has indeed lived up to that sentiment with Google+, Search plus Your World, and Android.]
A COUPLE OF MEMORABLE QUOTES
“Because of their early success, they were closed-minded and a bit arrogant. Nothing deceives like success.”- Vinod Koshla, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, on advising Excite founders to buy out Lycos, and not being heeded.
“I’d rather do something interesting than something boring and get rich.” – Louis Moiner, creator of AltaVista, on leaving Compaq in 1999, having felt that AltaVista was becoming a Yahoo clone.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEARCH, PRE-GOOGLE
Archie by Alan Emtage, McGill University, 1990. The first internet-based, pre-Web search engine.
Veronica by University of Nevada students, 1993. Connected users to the document itself, versus just the machine where it is located.
WWW Wanderer by Mathey Gray of MIT, 1993. Pioneered a breadth algorithm still used today.
Web Crawler by Brian Pinkertron, University of Washington, 1994. First to index the entire contents of a webpage.
Alta Vista by Louis Monier , DEC, mid 1990s. Pioneered the use of thousands of crawlers at once.
Lycos by Dr. Michael Mauldin, Carnegie Mellon, 1994. First to use links as a way of ranking and to include a summary of the results.
Excite by six Stanford alumni, 1994. Started personalization and free email.
Yahoo by Jerry Yang and David Filo, PhD students at Stanford, 1994. Started out using a directory-type structure that organized the Web into categories. Shares stark similarities with Google (both founded by Stanford PhD students, both have the quirky culture, both have fun office complexes).
GoTo.com by Bill Gross, founder of IdeaLab, 1997. Came up with the pay-per-click model; results were fully commercial.
Frances Advincula is about to graduate with a degree in Computer Science with specialization in Software Engineering. She has spent time as a Platform Development Intern for Accenture Software. Being in an industry that is predominantly male, she is passionate about empowering women in every aspect of their lives. Someday, she looks forward to being a leading lady, just like the women The Levo League stands up for.
![Part Three of Three : L(L) Speaks with Alliance for Women President Erin M Fuller on Leadership and Work-Life Integration.
Erin M Fuller is the President of the Alliance for Women in Media, the longest established professional association dedicated to advancing women in media and entertainment. With nearly 10,000 community members, the Alliance for Women in Media represents men and women engaged in creating high-quality media and harnessing the power of women in all forms of media to empower career development, engage in thought leadership, and drive positive change.
Ms. Fuller is on the advisory board for the Women in Politics Institute at American University and is the President of the American University Alumni Association Executive Board. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Association Executives and teaches as a guest lecturer on non-profit management at American University.
Prior to joining the Alliance for Women in Media, Ms. Fuller previously served as the executive director for Tysons Tomorrow and as the chief staff executive for the National Association of Women Business Owners.
L(L): What information do you think is most valuable for women to know about leadership, and about how to be an effective leader?
EMF: I’ve taken a lot of leadership classes and training, but really – I chafe a little at the idea that leadership is different for women than it is for men.
I think leaders are different by definition and there aren’t universal similarities that are true for all women leaders. Everyone’s heard that generalization that women are great at relationship building, nurturing, and collaborating but we all know women who are very successful but not collaborative. On the other hand, we see images of really cold and dreadful female leaders – think of the Miranda Priestly character in The Devil Wears Prada. I don’t like that there’s a dichotomy that the only people who are successful have to be that character.
Generation Y is lucky in so many ways. For the most part, you women have grown up with so much more diversity than previous generations and have seen women in far more advanced roles. You see leaders as leaders and not through a gender-based lens.
Leadership is about respect. I always think that you know it’s time to leave a job when you look at your boss and think, “I could do that job better than that person.” Ideally you want to look at someone and think “How on earth does she do what she does? I have no idea how she’s able to manage it so gracefully.” There’s a huge amount of leadership that is learned over time and you have to be patient and respect that.
The last thing I’ll say about leadership is it doesn’t hurt to have a sense of humor. To acknowledge the absurd or ridiculous that happens in one’s career. To be in charge doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to be able to laugh at what happens.
L(L): You’ve worked a lot with women leaders in the fields of politics, media and business. Within these distinct fields, what do you view as the biggest challenges women face?
EMF: The women’s movement isn’t over. It’s frustrating sometimes to hear how people approach this issue. For the first time in 2010, we lost ground in the Congressional elections. Today there’s a sense that because decades ago we burnt bras and now we have a few leaders like Carly Fiorina and Hillary Clinton, we’re done.
But we can’t be satisfied with having just a handful. In politics, we have a practice that women don’t run for office until their families are grown up. They don’t want to expose their kids and their personal lives to all the mudslinging that happens in political campaigns – especially to female candidates. As such we miss out on a whole bunch of seniority and leadership opportunities in our lifetimes. This is where gender equity is struggling.
As for media and business – we know media lags behind other industries. Only 3% of media companies have female CEOs. Generally speaking, women tend to shy away from opportunities where they are profit and loss concerns on the table, where there’s money to be made. We see a lot of women go into HR and Marketing, but you don’t make money in those functions. It’s often in sales and revenue generating parts of business where you’re more likely to make money and where there are more opportunities to be leveraged.
L(L): You’ve said before that one of your goals is to make gender-based organizations and the issues they face relevant to younger women. What is difficult about getting today’s young women energized around gender-based issues?
EMF: It is harder today to engage younger women in traditional gender based organizations – a lot of times people think, “Aren’t we done with that?” Sure, women make up 51% of the workforce – but you have a glass ceiling and a sticky floor. And the idea of work-life balance doesn’t help – I see it as a total myth.
L(L): Why is work-life balance a myth?
EMF: You stick around a job that’s become comfortable because you see it as the way you can balance everything.
We have the opportunity to bring enthusiasm around a whole new set of issues involving work-life integration. Young women don’t want to have to feel they are torn between work and home. I am a mom and I understand the conflict and stress involved. I think there’s a real opportunity for Generation Y to redefine work-life balance.
Work is more flexible now. Everyone has a smartphone. You have email access 24/7. If you really need someone, you text them. Whether you have to work at your desk or be in a cube – the bottom line is that work has crept into crevices beyond 9 to 5. For me –if I have to make a phone call at 2pm to get my kid on a summer camp list, I’ll do that and that’s okay. I know I’ll still be checking my e-mail at 9pm.
For aspiring young women today, I think work-life balance is an illusion and work-life integration is a reality. The good thing for young women to know is that greater autonomy comes the longer you work somewhere. If you’re the boss, you can set your own schedule.
Honestly, what you’re doing at 24 is not what you’ll be doing at 30, when you’re going to be grappling with more family issues. Some things have gotten better in the last decade – for instance, Dads are so much more hands-on. But it’s still really hard. I get paid to be an advocate for women – but I’ll tell you, I kill myself to drop my kids off to school, make nutritious meals for them, and do my own work. It’s really challenging. I would never give up my kids and I would never give up my job.
It’s such an exciting time to be working and to be part of so much newness going on – I’d hate for young women who also want families to give that up. We’re going in a new direction for what it means to be working.
L(L): Okay, last question. Ones to Watch. Most Powerful Women. Most inspiring. So many lists are out there… Who is on your list?
EMF: I’ll give you just a handful of my personal favorites: women across all types of media. Here goes!
Beyonce, Adele, Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Amy Poehler, Samantha Bee, Rachel Maddow, Hannah Storm, Katie Couric, Gayle King, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michelle Obama, Suzanne Collins (author of the Hunger Games trilogy), and (as for literary characters) Katniss Everdeen.
[Author’s Note: For any Levo Ladies working in media or affiliated industries, check out the Alliance for Women in Media, which has free community membership and weekly news briefs on career progress for women in media.]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz6mrw45mL1rnojvoo1_250.jpg)
3) Fight jetlag
![Part Two of Three: L(L) Speaks with Alliance for Women President Erin M Fuller on the Role of Women in Media.
Erin M Fuller is the President of the Alliance for Women in Media, the longest established professional association dedicated to advancing women in media and entertainment. With nearly 10,000 community members, the Alliance for Women in Media represents men and women engaged in creating high-quality media and harnessing the power of women in all forms of media to empower career development, engage in thought leadership, and drive positive change.
Ms. Fuller is on the advisory board for the Women in Politics Institute at American University and is the President of the American University Alumni Association Executive Board. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Association Executives and teaches as a guest lecturer on non-profit management at American University.
Prior to joining the Alliance for Women in Media, Ms. Fuller previously served as the executive director for Tysons Tomorrow and as the chief staff executive for the National Association of Women Business Owners.
L(L): In what areas of media have women made the most progress in the last ten years?
EMF: This is a hard question because we know media is pervasive and encompasses so much. Women have made great progress in certain pockets of the industry. A+E, BET, NBC Universal – I could rattle off 50 networks that have women in senior level positions. Especially within cable divisions and entertainment studios, the executive movement we see there is encouraging.
Another area where women have made a lot of progress is news reporting. In only a generation so much has changed. The number of women doing financial reporting right now is amazing. We all remember when Maria Bartiromo came on the air – that was a big deal, but now people don’t even comment on the women in these roles. Women are taking leading positions in sports reporting. There’s so much movement in areas we originally thought were nontraditional areas for women.
L(L): In what areas of media do women still face the most significant challenges?
EMF: There is a flip side to the positives I just mentioned that we get concerned about, and that’s when women only seek “front of the camera” opportunities. I get concerned about all the women I meet who want to go into broadcast journalism. I worry about the limited shelf life you have there. I worry about the pressure for women to conform. It’s disconcerting when you turn on the news channels and many women look the same. I think it’s not necessarily her choice; it’s the way she’s mandated to look and act in order to further her career.
There is a terrific movie out right now called MissRepresentation which highlights so many aspects that are concerning about how we see women in media. I worry about what women see on television today and what they may think they need in order to be successful, like “I need to weigh 95 pounds, or have a perfect set of teeth.” When you think about the real heroes in our media today, you realize that’s not what you need at all.
Where the real opportunities are for women who want to enter media is on the technical side. Broadcast engineering pays high salaries – the engineers can be more highly compensated than the people in front of the camera! You have a lot more creative control in this field, and an ability to own a piece of what you’re creating. Technical jobs provide a lot of stability, long shelf life, and opportunities for good salaries.
Another area ripe for opportunity is new media development – for example, managing new media, mobile, product integrations across platforms. Right now very little of that is run by women. Actually, our organization was previously called American Women in Radio and Television – we rebranded as an effort to include digital media as an extension of our 60 years of work in radio and television.
L(L): Time to brag. Tell us about something that the Alliance for Women in Media is doing that you’re really proud of or excited about.
EMF: I’ll name two. This past year we launched our Symposium events, which is a series of educational events in different parts of the country. We just finished up our Chicago event, which focused on Digital Literacy for Women and Girls, which culminated in a special year end report. Being able to do that kind of deep dive into content is why I love my job.
Also, each year the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation hosts the Gracie Awards, which celebrates the best in media by, for, and about women. It’s a spectacular event we look forward to every year. We judge from thousands of entries and do a big red carpet celebration. This past year we welcomed Meredith Viera, Chelsea Handler, and many other amazing women. We are able to leverage the relationships we form through The Gracies in other ways – for instance, our radio PSA campaign on girls’ self-esteem was voiced last year by fabulous members and supporters such as Gayle King, Tina Fey, Lisa, Ling, and Amy Poehler.
The important thing about both of these programs is the message we’re giving about the role of women in media. Our goal is to shine a light on positive and realistic portrayals of women in media, and to support women to continue to seek out rewarding careers in media.
L(L): Both professionally with the Alliance for Women in Media and personally, what do you want to accomplish by January 2013?
EMF: Within AWM, we’d like to launch a campaign that has real societal impact on issues related to digital literacy. Next year, we’ll do a lot of the work to complete that and are meeting with everyone from celebrities to network heads to FCC commissioners to launch that.
I also sit on the Healthy Media: Commission for Positive Images of Women and Girls, launched by Geena Davis and former FCC Commission Deborah Taylor Tate, and we’ll have a series of recommendations out in October on key issues for the portrayal of women and girls in media. I’m honored to be able to serve on that commission.
Personally, I yearn to figure out how to fit in more exercise. It doesn’t matter what job you have. Those things that are hard at 20 are hard at 30, 40, and 50. Spending more time having fun with my kids and maintaining my personal health – those are two things I want more of in 2012.
[Author’s Note: For any Levo Ladies working in media or affiliated industries, check out the Alliance for Women in Media, which has free community membership and weekly news briefs on career progress for women in media.]
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Wendi is a 2008 alumna of Stanford University and Fulbright Scholar who is passionate about global business and economic development, social responsibility, and design thinking. With a background in international political and corporate consulting, she looks towards finding that “sweet spot” of work which combines innovative collaboration, business acumen, and social impact. An avid traveler who loves to experience new cultures (and great food!), she has lived abroad in Peru, Chile, and Spain and would love to put a few more countries on that list.](http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz33srEwKv1rnojvoo1_250.jpg)
![Levo Lit: The Search, How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.
Here’s a blast from the past: Frances Advincula writes with a programmer’s perspective on John Battelle’s 2005 The Search, which has gained both acclaim and confusion by readers without the same technical background John Battelle writes from. Frances retells the story of Google and points to some helpful resources to remind us what life was like without it.
Author John Battelle starts off his 2005 work The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of the Internet and Transformed Our Culture by detailing the manner in which he stumbled upon the 2001 summary of Google’s Zeitgeist, a PR tool that summarizes what the world searched for. He coins the term “The Database of Intentions,” explains the value of search to our modern world, and provides us a history of search. He also tells the story of how Google was born and their journey to success, all while exposing the inner workings of search and how it makes money. Finally, he tells about the impact and implications of search in our lives, as well as its future. However, a few details maybe outdated, as the book was published in 2005.
All points of view are the original author’s; I merely summarize what he says in a somewhat more tangible and digestible format.
WHAT IS SO FASCINATING ABOUT SEARCH?
Google’s approach to search may be the closest thing we have to this “Database of Intentions”—it represents the aggregate result of all our searches, the history of every query we typed in the search box. Google search shows what we’ve searched for and where that search led, affording us insight into what we ourselves want, what we spend time and energy thinking about, and what drives us. [Author’s note: Somewhat similar to a global Facebook timeline.]
At the same time, search is not only one of the pioneers of useful web services, it is also the reason for the second wave of Internet giants (think eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, and yes, Google). Researchers also say search is the forefront of further progress in artificial intelligence. [Author’s note: we now have Siri, who definitely imitates human behavior.]
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW, REGARDLESS OF THE SEARCH ENGINE
Who: The younger you are and the higher your level of education, the more you use search.
What: The beauty of search is that we can query for anything under the sun; the possibilities are infinite. How we choose the words we type in the search box, however, is a mystery in itself.
Where: The most used search engines are Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Google. [Author’s note: Nowadays, “to Google” has been welcomed into the global lexicon as a regular verb, and Bing recently overtook Yahoo in terms of traffic]
When: We search the most in the morning and the evening.
Why: First, we search to find what we know already exists. We want to locate something, to find information on a topic. Second, we use search to discover what we think exists, but we have yet to find.
How Search Works: Every search engine has three main parts, the crawler, the index, and the runtime system. The crawler traverses the entire Web and sends every page it finds to a massive database called the index. The information is then analyzed using factors such as the number and popularity of links, language, content, etc. Afterwards, the data is sent to the runtime system, a database that is ready to serve the person who queries. The runtime system performs the ranking logic, connects the user’s query to the index, and displays the results to the user.
With this in mind, returning relevant results is no easy feat. For example, if we want to know more about Abraham Lincoln, we search for “Abraham Lincoln Biography.” However, we are not merely looking for pages with those exact keywords; a good search engine will pay attention to coherence as well. As it analyses pages, it will take into consideration if the page shows the attributes of a biography.
Similarly, search must deliver results even when we misspell a word, or be flexible enough to show relevant results for subjects that are represented by different words (“soda” versus “pop”, “tennis shoes” versus “sneakers”). Search engines also worry about striking the toss-keep balance with words such as “to,” “be,” etc. Usually, tossing them out will make the engine work faster, but what if one queries “to be or not to be”? All of a sudden, those words are crucial to the query. [Author’s note: Here’s an infographic on how Google works.]
How Search Makes Money: Most of Google’s revenue comes from paid search. Advertisers pay the search company a certain amount per click in exchange for their ads showing up when a user queries for something relevant to their offerings. There are also more innovative ways companies are cashing in on search; examples include targeting ads using a person’s online habits and demographic.
THE GOOGLE GIANT IS BORN (AND GROWS UP) Google started as a thesis topic called BackRub by Stanford PhD student Larry Page. He set out to create a system that would take the links of entire Web, analyze, and publish them in a way where one can find out who was linking to whom (unprecedented at the time), attracting the attention of Sergey Brin, another computer science PhD student at Stanford. The two came up with PageRank, an algorithm that rewarded links from important pages and penalized those that came from obscure sites (similar to the academe’s way of judging the quality of your paper through your citations and their quality). After its debut on the Stanford site in 1996, the founders tried to license to the major players in the industry, but were turned down by companies like Yahoo for the next eighteen months. Finally deciding to start their own company, they received their first $100,000 in funding from Andy Bechtolsheim, a founder of Sun. Thus, Google was formally incorporated as Google Inc. on September 7, 1998.
The next step was to find a business model that generated money. Google turned to advertising, pioneering their text-based ads with AdWords. Led by their founders and new CEO Eric Schmidt (formerly of Sun and Novell), Google summed up its core values in their mantra – “Don’t Be Evil.”
Google continued to grow significantly from 2001 to 2004, buying DejaNews, Blogger, Picasa, and Keyhole. Then the company released AdSense, a service that displays ads based on the contents of a page. They also started to index images and public phone-book information, partnering with companies such AT&T, Cingular, HandSpring, and AOL. After 9/11 happened, websites like cnn.com weren’t able to handle the traffic, and people turned to Google to inform them. Google was finally more than a search engine, something they took advantage of by launching Google News. Later, Google launched a new version of AdWords that copied GoTo.com’s auction and pay-per-click approach (previously, AdWords used the cost per thousand model). However, Google still included popularity on how they rank an ad, not merely how much the company paid. Although this decision actually makes Google more money, the public saw it as a “Don’t Be Evil” move, one that put the user’s interests before Google’s.
But as Google gained more admiration from the public and the press, not everyone was happy with it either. Whether it was their founder’s approach, their aloofness, their unconventional hiring process, or even their cute vibe, some were not impressed by Google.
By 2004, Google realized that to be able to compete with Yahoo and Microsoft, they had to go public. That April, Google filed their formal public offering (S1) that stated how not only would they be maintaining a high level of control, the founders would also have ten times more voting power than the rest of the shareholders, despite the fact that they would own just 30% of the shares. After an age discrimination lawsuit, an investigation due to an untimely magazine interview, a reprimand that led Google to conduct a recision offer to their employees, glitches on their auction technology, and a myriad of other PR disasters, Google finally went public on August 19, 2004. Starting at the price of $85 per share, the price quickly rose to around $100 on the first day, topping at $300 by the next summer.
Post-IPO, Google underwent a soul searching of sorts, resulting in the founders’ Tablet, a statement of what makes Google what it is. This became a guide for a reorganization that took months long. Their previous approach of giving the most resources to the top 100 projects was done away with; instead, the company segregated functionality into core groups — search, advertising, “20 percent,” and “10 percent,” with the latter two for products that are were acquisitions or unconventional.
IMPACT AND IMPLICATIONS
First, search overhauled the way businesses operated, from investors looking into new prospects to real estate firms staking out new territory. Until now, Google’s routine algorithmic updates impacts the crop of small, online stores who rely on showing up in organic search results. Google continues to do these in order to control spammers, click fraud, and other unethical operations that plague the Web to this day.
Next, search made information available and permanent. We now search for everything, including potential dates, potential hires, people we just met. Unfortunately, we might not always like what we see. For example, pre-search, unfortunate things that we may have been involved in, although public information, are somehow inconvenient to research. Now, one can merely query for your name, and voila! – the history of you, as it is published online, is available for the world to see. Of course, we cannot forget the PATRIOT Act, which allows for our private information to be intercepted and demanded by government authorities from our ISPs, Google, etc. The million dollar question then is how do be balance between our right to know and the right of a person to his privacy?
Google also had to be very careful on the precedent they set when they were entering China. They didn’t have the luxury of being a manufacturing company; brands do not suffer by being made in China. Things are different when your business is in information. Once they budge to China, what stops another country or even a corporation from making similar demands? [Author’s note: A closer look on Google and China]
THE FUTURE OF SEARCH Perhaps in the future, we can search for anyone in real-time, or perhaps we won’t be limited to typing in a search box. Maybe the public will even have access to a search that understands very complex, human-like demands like IBM’s WebFountain. For sure, the evolution of search will be influenced by its two major players and their difference. Yahoo will continue to focus on being a media business, whereas Google will keep its stance on being a technology business. Many say Google will eventually permeate into everything we do online, including music, documents, mail, photographs, and video. To quote directly from the book, “When it comes to search, as with the Internet itself, the most interesting stuff is yet to come.” [Author’s note: To date, Google has launched Google Music, Google Docs, and Gmail, as well as acquired YouTube, and Picasa. As for the interesting stuff, it is my opinion that Google has indeed lived up to that sentiment with Google+, Search plus Your World, and Android.]
A COUPLE OF MEMORABLE QUOTES
“Because of their early success, they were closed-minded and a bit arrogant. Nothing deceives like success.”- Vinod Koshla, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, on advising Excite founders to buy out Lycos, and not being heeded.
“I’d rather do something interesting than something boring and get rich.” – Louis Moiner, creator of AltaVista, on leaving Compaq in 1999, having felt that AltaVista was becoming a Yahoo clone.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEARCH, PRE-GOOGLE
Archie by Alan Emtage, McGill University, 1990. The first internet-based, pre-Web search engine.
Veronica by University of Nevada students, 1993. Connected users to the document itself, versus just the machine where it is located.
WWW Wanderer by Mathey Gray of MIT, 1993. Pioneered a breadth algorithm still used today.
Web Crawler by Brian Pinkertron, University of Washington, 1994. First to index the entire contents of a webpage.
Alta Vista by Louis Monier , DEC, mid 1990s. Pioneered the use of thousands of crawlers at once.
Lycos by Dr. Michael Mauldin, Carnegie Mellon, 1994. First to use links as a way of ranking and to include a summary of the results. Excite by six Stanford alumni, 1994. Started personalization and free email.
Yahoo by Jerry Yang and David Filo, PhD students at Stanford, 1994. Started out using a directory-type structure that organized the Web into categories. Shares stark similarities with Google (both founded by Stanford PhD students, both have the quirky culture, both have fun office complexes).
GoTo.com by Bill Gross, founder of IdeaLab, 1997. Came up with the pay-per-click model; results were fully commercial.
Frances Advincula is about to graduate with a degree in Computer Science with specialization in Software Engineering. She has spent time as a Platform Development Intern for Accenture Software. Being in an industry that is predominantly male, she is passionate about empowering women in every aspect of their lives. Someday, she looks forward to being a leading lady, just like the women The Levo League stands up for.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz34ufysPW1rnojvoo1_250.jpg)
![Part Three of Three : L(L) Speaks with Alliance for Women President Erin M Fuller on Leadership and Work-Life Integration.
Erin M Fuller is the President of the Alliance for Women in Media, the longest established professional association dedicated to advancing women in media and entertainment. With nearly 10,000 community members, the Alliance for Women in Media represents men and women engaged in creating high-quality media and harnessing the power of women in all forms of media to empower career development, engage in thought leadership, and drive positive change.
Ms. Fuller is on the advisory board for the Women in Politics Institute at American University and is the President of the American University Alumni Association Executive Board. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Association Executives and teaches as a guest lecturer on non-profit management at American University.
Prior to joining the Alliance for Women in Media, Ms. Fuller previously served as the executive director for Tysons Tomorrow and as the chief staff executive for the National Association of Women Business Owners.
L(L): What information do you think is most valuable for women to know about leadership, and about how to be an effective leader?
EMF: I’ve taken a lot of leadership classes and training, but really – I chafe a little at the idea that leadership is different for women than it is for men.
I think leaders are different by definition and there aren’t universal similarities that are true for all women leaders. Everyone’s heard that generalization that women are great at relationship building, nurturing, and collaborating but we all know women who are very successful but not collaborative. On the other hand, we see images of really cold and dreadful female leaders – think of the Miranda Priestly character in The Devil Wears Prada. I don’t like that there’s a dichotomy that the only people who are successful have to be that character.
Generation Y is lucky in so many ways. For the most part, you women have grown up with so much more diversity than previous generations and have seen women in far more advanced roles. You see leaders as leaders and not through a gender-based lens.
Leadership is about respect. I always think that you know it’s time to leave a job when you look at your boss and think, “I could do that job better than that person.” Ideally you want to look at someone and think “How on earth does she do what she does? I have no idea how she’s able to manage it so gracefully.” There’s a huge amount of leadership that is learned over time and you have to be patient and respect that.
The last thing I’ll say about leadership is it doesn’t hurt to have a sense of humor. To acknowledge the absurd or ridiculous that happens in one’s career. To be in charge doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to be able to laugh at what happens.
L(L): You’ve worked a lot with women leaders in the fields of politics, media and business. Within these distinct fields, what do you view as the biggest challenges women face?
EMF: The women’s movement isn’t over. It’s frustrating sometimes to hear how people approach this issue. For the first time in 2010, we lost ground in the Congressional elections. Today there’s a sense that because decades ago we burnt bras and now we have a few leaders like Carly Fiorina and Hillary Clinton, we’re done.
But we can’t be satisfied with having just a handful. In politics, we have a practice that women don’t run for office until their families are grown up. They don’t want to expose their kids and their personal lives to all the mudslinging that happens in political campaigns – especially to female candidates. As such we miss out on a whole bunch of seniority and leadership opportunities in our lifetimes. This is where gender equity is struggling.
As for media and business – we know media lags behind other industries. Only 3% of media companies have female CEOs. Generally speaking, women tend to shy away from opportunities where they are profit and loss concerns on the table, where there’s money to be made. We see a lot of women go into HR and Marketing, but you don’t make money in those functions. It’s often in sales and revenue generating parts of business where you’re more likely to make money and where there are more opportunities to be leveraged.
L(L): You’ve said before that one of your goals is to make gender-based organizations and the issues they face relevant to younger women. What is difficult about getting today’s young women energized around gender-based issues?
EMF: It is harder today to engage younger women in traditional gender based organizations – a lot of times people think, “Aren’t we done with that?” Sure, women make up 51% of the workforce – but you have a glass ceiling and a sticky floor. And the idea of work-life balance doesn’t help – I see it as a total myth.
L(L): Why is work-life balance a myth?
EMF: You stick around a job that’s become comfortable because you see it as the way you can balance everything.
We have the opportunity to bring enthusiasm around a whole new set of issues involving work-life integration. Young women don’t want to have to feel they are torn between work and home. I am a mom and I understand the conflict and stress involved. I think there’s a real opportunity for Generation Y to redefine work-life balance.
Work is more flexible now. Everyone has a smartphone. You have email access 24/7. If you really need someone, you text them. Whether you have to work at your desk or be in a cube – the bottom line is that work has crept into crevices beyond 9 to 5. For me –if I have to make a phone call at 2pm to get my kid on a summer camp list, I’ll do that and that’s okay. I know I’ll still be checking my e-mail at 9pm.
For aspiring young women today, I think work-life balance is an illusion and work-life integration is a reality. The good thing for young women to know is that greater autonomy comes the longer you work somewhere. If you’re the boss, you can set your own schedule.
Honestly, what you’re doing at 24 is not what you’ll be doing at 30, when you’re going to be grappling with more family issues. Some things have gotten better in the last decade – for instance, Dads are so much more hands-on. But it’s still really hard. I get paid to be an advocate for women – but I’ll tell you, I kill myself to drop my kids off to school, make nutritious meals for them, and do my own work. It’s really challenging. I would never give up my kids and I would never give up my job.
It’s such an exciting time to be working and to be part of so much newness going on – I’d hate for young women who also want families to give that up. We’re going in a new direction for what it means to be working.
L(L): Okay, last question. Ones to Watch. Most Powerful Women. Most inspiring. So many lists are out there… Who is on your list?
EMF: I’ll give you just a handful of my personal favorites: women across all types of media. Here goes!
Beyonce, Adele, Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Amy Poehler, Samantha Bee, Rachel Maddow, Hannah Storm, Katie Couric, Gayle King, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michelle Obama, Suzanne Collins (author of the Hunger Games trilogy), and (as for literary characters) Katniss Everdeen.
[Author’s Note: For any Levo Ladies working in media or affiliated industries, check out the Alliance for Women in Media, which has free community membership and weekly news briefs on career progress for women in media.]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz6mrw45mL1rnojvoo1_500.jpg)
![Part Three of Three : L(L) Speaks with Alliance for Women President Erin M Fuller on Leadership and Work-Life Integration.
Erin M Fuller is the President of the Alliance for Women in Media, the longest established professional association dedicated to advancing women in media and entertainment. With nearly 10,000 community members, the Alliance for Women in Media represents men and women engaged in creating high-quality media and harnessing the power of women in all forms of media to empower career development, engage in thought leadership, and drive positive change.
Ms. Fuller is on the advisory board for the Women in Politics Institute at American University and is the President of the American University Alumni Association Executive Board. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Association Executives and teaches as a guest lecturer on non-profit management at American University.
Prior to joining the Alliance for Women in Media, Ms. Fuller previously served as the executive director for Tysons Tomorrow and as the chief staff executive for the National Association of Women Business Owners.
L(L): What information do you think is most valuable for women to know about leadership, and about how to be an effective leader?
EMF: I’ve taken a lot of leadership classes and training, but really – I chafe a little at the idea that leadership is different for women than it is for men.
I think leaders are different by definition and there aren’t universal similarities that are true for all women leaders. Everyone’s heard that generalization that women are great at relationship building, nurturing, and collaborating but we all know women who are very successful but not collaborative. On the other hand, we see images of really cold and dreadful female leaders – think of the Miranda Priestly character in The Devil Wears Prada. I don’t like that there’s a dichotomy that the only people who are successful have to be that character.
Generation Y is lucky in so many ways. For the most part, you women have grown up with so much more diversity than previous generations and have seen women in far more advanced roles. You see leaders as leaders and not through a gender-based lens.
Leadership is about respect. I always think that you know it’s time to leave a job when you look at your boss and think, “I could do that job better than that person.” Ideally you want to look at someone and think “How on earth does she do what she does? I have no idea how she’s able to manage it so gracefully.” There’s a huge amount of leadership that is learned over time and you have to be patient and respect that.
The last thing I’ll say about leadership is it doesn’t hurt to have a sense of humor. To acknowledge the absurd or ridiculous that happens in one’s career. To be in charge doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to be able to laugh at what happens.
L(L): You’ve worked a lot with women leaders in the fields of politics, media and business. Within these distinct fields, what do you view as the biggest challenges women face?
EMF: The women’s movement isn’t over. It’s frustrating sometimes to hear how people approach this issue. For the first time in 2010, we lost ground in the Congressional elections. Today there’s a sense that because decades ago we burnt bras and now we have a few leaders like Carly Fiorina and Hillary Clinton, we’re done.
But we can’t be satisfied with having just a handful. In politics, we have a practice that women don’t run for office until their families are grown up. They don’t want to expose their kids and their personal lives to all the mudslinging that happens in political campaigns – especially to female candidates. As such we miss out on a whole bunch of seniority and leadership opportunities in our lifetimes. This is where gender equity is struggling.
As for media and business – we know media lags behind other industries. Only 3% of media companies have female CEOs. Generally speaking, women tend to shy away from opportunities where they are profit and loss concerns on the table, where there’s money to be made. We see a lot of women go into HR and Marketing, but you don’t make money in those functions. It’s often in sales and revenue generating parts of business where you’re more likely to make money and where there are more opportunities to be leveraged.
L(L): You’ve said before that one of your goals is to make gender-based organizations and the issues they face relevant to younger women. What is difficult about getting today’s young women energized around gender-based issues?
EMF: It is harder today to engage younger women in traditional gender based organizations – a lot of times people think, “Aren’t we done with that?” Sure, women make up 51% of the workforce – but you have a glass ceiling and a sticky floor. And the idea of work-life balance doesn’t help – I see it as a total myth.
L(L): Why is work-life balance a myth?
EMF: You stick around a job that’s become comfortable because you see it as the way you can balance everything.
We have the opportunity to bring enthusiasm around a whole new set of issues involving work-life integration. Young women don’t want to have to feel they are torn between work and home. I am a mom and I understand the conflict and stress involved. I think there’s a real opportunity for Generation Y to redefine work-life balance.
Work is more flexible now. Everyone has a smartphone. You have email access 24/7. If you really need someone, you text them. Whether you have to work at your desk or be in a cube – the bottom line is that work has crept into crevices beyond 9 to 5. For me –if I have to make a phone call at 2pm to get my kid on a summer camp list, I’ll do that and that’s okay. I know I’ll still be checking my e-mail at 9pm.
For aspiring young women today, I think work-life balance is an illusion and work-life integration is a reality. The good thing for young women to know is that greater autonomy comes the longer you work somewhere. If you’re the boss, you can set your own schedule.
Honestly, what you’re doing at 24 is not what you’ll be doing at 30, when you’re going to be grappling with more family issues. Some things have gotten better in the last decade – for instance, Dads are so much more hands-on. But it’s still really hard. I get paid to be an advocate for women – but I’ll tell you, I kill myself to drop my kids off to school, make nutritious meals for them, and do my own work. It’s really challenging. I would never give up my kids and I would never give up my job.
It’s such an exciting time to be working and to be part of so much newness going on – I’d hate for young women who also want families to give that up. We’re going in a new direction for what it means to be working.
L(L): Okay, last question. Ones to Watch. Most Powerful Women. Most inspiring. So many lists are out there… Who is on your list?
EMF: I’ll give you just a handful of my personal favorites: women across all types of media. Here goes!
Beyonce, Adele, Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Amy Poehler, Samantha Bee, Rachel Maddow, Hannah Storm, Katie Couric, Gayle King, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michelle Obama, Suzanne Collins (author of the Hunger Games trilogy), and (as for literary characters) Katniss Everdeen.
[Author’s Note: For any Levo Ladies working in media or affiliated industries, check out the Alliance for Women in Media, which has free community membership and weekly news briefs on career progress for women in media.]](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/levolove/17372226556/1/tumblr_lz6mrw45mL1rnojvo)
![Levo Lit: The Search, How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.
Here’s a blast from the past: Frances Advincula writes with a programmer’s perspective on John Battelle’s 2005 The Search, which has gained both acclaim and confusion by readers without the same technical background John Battelle writes from. Frances retells the story of Google and points to some helpful resources to remind us what life was like without it.
Author John Battelle starts off his 2005 work The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of the Internet and Transformed Our Culture by detailing the manner in which he stumbled upon the 2001 summary of Google’s Zeitgeist, a PR tool that summarizes what the world searched for. He coins the term “The Database of Intentions,” explains the value of search to our modern world, and provides us a history of search. He also tells the story of how Google was born and their journey to success, all while exposing the inner workings of search and how it makes money. Finally, he tells about the impact and implications of search in our lives, as well as its future. However, a few details maybe outdated, as the book was published in 2005.
All points of view are the original author’s; I merely summarize what he says in a somewhat more tangible and digestible format.
WHAT IS SO FASCINATING ABOUT SEARCH?
Google’s approach to search may be the closest thing we have to this “Database of Intentions”—it represents the aggregate result of all our searches, the history of every query we typed in the search box. Google search shows what we’ve searched for and where that search led, affording us insight into what we ourselves want, what we spend time and energy thinking about, and what drives us. [Author’s note: Somewhat similar to a global Facebook timeline.]
At the same time, search is not only one of the pioneers of useful web services, it is also the reason for the second wave of Internet giants (think eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, and yes, Google). Researchers also say search is the forefront of further progress in artificial intelligence. [Author’s note: we now have Siri, who definitely imitates human behavior.]
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW, REGARDLESS OF THE SEARCH ENGINE
Who: The younger you are and the higher your level of education, the more you use search.
What: The beauty of search is that we can query for anything under the sun; the possibilities are infinite. How we choose the words we type in the search box, however, is a mystery in itself.
Where: The most used search engines are Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Google. [Author’s note: Nowadays, “to Google” has been welcomed into the global lexicon as a regular verb, and Bing recently overtook Yahoo in terms of traffic]
When: We search the most in the morning and the evening.
Why: First, we search to find what we know already exists. We want to locate something, to find information on a topic. Second, we use search to discover what we think exists, but we have yet to find.
How Search Works: Every search engine has three main parts, the crawler, the index, and the runtime system. The crawler traverses the entire Web and sends every page it finds to a massive database called the index. The information is then analyzed using factors such as the number and popularity of links, language, content, etc. Afterwards, the data is sent to the runtime system, a database that is ready to serve the person who queries. The runtime system performs the ranking logic, connects the user’s query to the index, and displays the results to the user.
With this in mind, returning relevant results is no easy feat. For example, if we want to know more about Abraham Lincoln, we search for “Abraham Lincoln Biography.” However, we are not merely looking for pages with those exact keywords; a good search engine will pay attention to coherence as well. As it analyses pages, it will take into consideration if the page shows the attributes of a biography.
Similarly, search must deliver results even when we misspell a word, or be flexible enough to show relevant results for subjects that are represented by different words (“soda” versus “pop”, “tennis shoes” versus “sneakers”). Search engines also worry about striking the toss-keep balance with words such as “to,” “be,” etc. Usually, tossing them out will make the engine work faster, but what if one queries “to be or not to be”? All of a sudden, those words are crucial to the query. [Author’s note: Here’s an infographic on how Google works.]
How Search Makes Money: Most of Google’s revenue comes from paid search. Advertisers pay the search company a certain amount per click in exchange for their ads showing up when a user queries for something relevant to their offerings. There are also more innovative ways companies are cashing in on search; examples include targeting ads using a person’s online habits and demographic.
THE GOOGLE GIANT IS BORN (AND GROWS UP) Google started as a thesis topic called BackRub by Stanford PhD student Larry Page. He set out to create a system that would take the links of entire Web, analyze, and publish them in a way where one can find out who was linking to whom (unprecedented at the time), attracting the attention of Sergey Brin, another computer science PhD student at Stanford. The two came up with PageRank, an algorithm that rewarded links from important pages and penalized those that came from obscure sites (similar to the academe’s way of judging the quality of your paper through your citations and their quality). After its debut on the Stanford site in 1996, the founders tried to license to the major players in the industry, but were turned down by companies like Yahoo for the next eighteen months. Finally deciding to start their own company, they received their first $100,000 in funding from Andy Bechtolsheim, a founder of Sun. Thus, Google was formally incorporated as Google Inc. on September 7, 1998.
The next step was to find a business model that generated money. Google turned to advertising, pioneering their text-based ads with AdWords. Led by their founders and new CEO Eric Schmidt (formerly of Sun and Novell), Google summed up its core values in their mantra – “Don’t Be Evil.”
Google continued to grow significantly from 2001 to 2004, buying DejaNews, Blogger, Picasa, and Keyhole. Then the company released AdSense, a service that displays ads based on the contents of a page. They also started to index images and public phone-book information, partnering with companies such AT&T, Cingular, HandSpring, and AOL. After 9/11 happened, websites like cnn.com weren’t able to handle the traffic, and people turned to Google to inform them. Google was finally more than a search engine, something they took advantage of by launching Google News. Later, Google launched a new version of AdWords that copied GoTo.com’s auction and pay-per-click approach (previously, AdWords used the cost per thousand model). However, Google still included popularity on how they rank an ad, not merely how much the company paid. Although this decision actually makes Google more money, the public saw it as a “Don’t Be Evil” move, one that put the user’s interests before Google’s.
But as Google gained more admiration from the public and the press, not everyone was happy with it either. Whether it was their founder’s approach, their aloofness, their unconventional hiring process, or even their cute vibe, some were not impressed by Google.
By 2004, Google realized that to be able to compete with Yahoo and Microsoft, they had to go public. That April, Google filed their formal public offering (S1) that stated how not only would they be maintaining a high level of control, the founders would also have ten times more voting power than the rest of the shareholders, despite the fact that they would own just 30% of the shares. After an age discrimination lawsuit, an investigation due to an untimely magazine interview, a reprimand that led Google to conduct a recision offer to their employees, glitches on their auction technology, and a myriad of other PR disasters, Google finally went public on August 19, 2004. Starting at the price of $85 per share, the price quickly rose to around $100 on the first day, topping at $300 by the next summer.
Post-IPO, Google underwent a soul searching of sorts, resulting in the founders’ Tablet, a statement of what makes Google what it is. This became a guide for a reorganization that took months long. Their previous approach of giving the most resources to the top 100 projects was done away with; instead, the company segregated functionality into core groups — search, advertising, “20 percent,” and “10 percent,” with the latter two for products that are were acquisitions or unconventional.
IMPACT AND IMPLICATIONS
First, search overhauled the way businesses operated, from investors looking into new prospects to real estate firms staking out new territory. Until now, Google’s routine algorithmic updates impacts the crop of small, online stores who rely on showing up in organic search results. Google continues to do these in order to control spammers, click fraud, and other unethical operations that plague the Web to this day.
Next, search made information available and permanent. We now search for everything, including potential dates, potential hires, people we just met. Unfortunately, we might not always like what we see. For example, pre-search, unfortunate things that we may have been involved in, although public information, are somehow inconvenient to research. Now, one can merely query for your name, and voila! – the history of you, as it is published online, is available for the world to see. Of course, we cannot forget the PATRIOT Act, which allows for our private information to be intercepted and demanded by government authorities from our ISPs, Google, etc. The million dollar question then is how do be balance between our right to know and the right of a person to his privacy?
Google also had to be very careful on the precedent they set when they were entering China. They didn’t have the luxury of being a manufacturing company; brands do not suffer by being made in China. Things are different when your business is in information. Once they budge to China, what stops another country or even a corporation from making similar demands? [Author’s note: A closer look on Google and China]
THE FUTURE OF SEARCH Perhaps in the future, we can search for anyone in real-time, or perhaps we won’t be limited to typing in a search box. Maybe the public will even have access to a search that understands very complex, human-like demands like IBM’s WebFountain. For sure, the evolution of search will be influenced by its two major players and their difference. Yahoo will continue to focus on being a media business, whereas Google will keep its stance on being a technology business. Many say Google will eventually permeate into everything we do online, including music, documents, mail, photographs, and video. To quote directly from the book, “When it comes to search, as with the Internet itself, the most interesting stuff is yet to come.” [Author’s note: To date, Google has launched Google Music, Google Docs, and Gmail, as well as acquired YouTube, and Picasa. As for the interesting stuff, it is my opinion that Google has indeed lived up to that sentiment with Google+, Search plus Your World, and Android.]
A COUPLE OF MEMORABLE QUOTES
“Because of their early success, they were closed-minded and a bit arrogant. Nothing deceives like success.”- Vinod Koshla, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, on advising Excite founders to buy out Lycos, and not being heeded.
“I’d rather do something interesting than something boring and get rich.” – Louis Moiner, creator of AltaVista, on leaving Compaq in 1999, having felt that AltaVista was becoming a Yahoo clone.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEARCH, PRE-GOOGLE
Archie by Alan Emtage, McGill University, 1990. The first internet-based, pre-Web search engine.
Veronica by University of Nevada students, 1993. Connected users to the document itself, versus just the machine where it is located.
WWW Wanderer by Mathey Gray of MIT, 1993. Pioneered a breadth algorithm still used today.
Web Crawler by Brian Pinkertron, University of Washington, 1994. First to index the entire contents of a webpage.
Alta Vista by Louis Monier , DEC, mid 1990s. Pioneered the use of thousands of crawlers at once.
Lycos by Dr. Michael Mauldin, Carnegie Mellon, 1994. First to use links as a way of ranking and to include a summary of the results. Excite by six Stanford alumni, 1994. Started personalization and free email.
Yahoo by Jerry Yang and David Filo, PhD students at Stanford, 1994. Started out using a directory-type structure that organized the Web into categories. Shares stark similarities with Google (both founded by Stanford PhD students, both have the quirky culture, both have fun office complexes).
GoTo.com by Bill Gross, founder of IdeaLab, 1997. Came up with the pay-per-click model; results were fully commercial.
Frances Advincula is about to graduate with a degree in Computer Science with specialization in Software Engineering. She has spent time as a Platform Development Intern for Accenture Software. Being in an industry that is predominantly male, she is passionate about empowering women in every aspect of their lives. Someday, she looks forward to being a leading lady, just like the women The Levo League stands up for.](http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz34ufysPW1rnojvoo1_500.jpg)
![Levo Lit: The Search, How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.
Here’s a blast from the past: Frances Advincula writes with a programmer’s perspective on John Battelle’s 2005 The Search, which has gained both acclaim and confusion by readers without the same technical background John Battelle writes from. Frances retells the story of Google and points to some helpful resources to remind us what life was like without it.
Author John Battelle starts off his 2005 work The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of the Internet and Transformed Our Culture by detailing the manner in which he stumbled upon the 2001 summary of Google’s Zeitgeist, a PR tool that summarizes what the world searched for. He coins the term “The Database of Intentions,” explains the value of search to our modern world, and provides us a history of search. He also tells the story of how Google was born and their journey to success, all while exposing the inner workings of search and how it makes money. Finally, he tells about the impact and implications of search in our lives, as well as its future. However, a few details maybe outdated, as the book was published in 2005.
All points of view are the original author’s; I merely summarize what he says in a somewhat more tangible and digestible format.
WHAT IS SO FASCINATING ABOUT SEARCH?
Google’s approach to search may be the closest thing we have to this “Database of Intentions”—it represents the aggregate result of all our searches, the history of every query we typed in the search box. Google search shows what we’ve searched for and where that search led, affording us insight into what we ourselves want, what we spend time and energy thinking about, and what drives us. [Author’s note: Somewhat similar to a global Facebook timeline.]
At the same time, search is not only one of the pioneers of useful web services, it is also the reason for the second wave of Internet giants (think eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, and yes, Google). Researchers also say search is the forefront of further progress in artificial intelligence. [Author’s note: we now have Siri, who definitely imitates human behavior.]
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW, REGARDLESS OF THE SEARCH ENGINE
Who: The younger you are and the higher your level of education, the more you use search.
What: The beauty of search is that we can query for anything under the sun; the possibilities are infinite. How we choose the words we type in the search box, however, is a mystery in itself.
Where: The most used search engines are Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Google. [Author’s note: Nowadays, “to Google” has been welcomed into the global lexicon as a regular verb, and Bing recently overtook Yahoo in terms of traffic]
When: We search the most in the morning and the evening.
Why: First, we search to find what we know already exists. We want to locate something, to find information on a topic. Second, we use search to discover what we think exists, but we have yet to find.
How Search Works: Every search engine has three main parts, the crawler, the index, and the runtime system. The crawler traverses the entire Web and sends every page it finds to a massive database called the index. The information is then analyzed using factors such as the number and popularity of links, language, content, etc. Afterwards, the data is sent to the runtime system, a database that is ready to serve the person who queries. The runtime system performs the ranking logic, connects the user’s query to the index, and displays the results to the user.
With this in mind, returning relevant results is no easy feat. For example, if we want to know more about Abraham Lincoln, we search for “Abraham Lincoln Biography.” However, we are not merely looking for pages with those exact keywords; a good search engine will pay attention to coherence as well. As it analyses pages, it will take into consideration if the page shows the attributes of a biography.
Similarly, search must deliver results even when we misspell a word, or be flexible enough to show relevant results for subjects that are represented by different words (“soda” versus “pop”, “tennis shoes” versus “sneakers”). Search engines also worry about striking the toss-keep balance with words such as “to,” “be,” etc. Usually, tossing them out will make the engine work faster, but what if one queries “to be or not to be”? All of a sudden, those words are crucial to the query. [Author’s note: Here’s an infographic on how Google works.]
How Search Makes Money: Most of Google’s revenue comes from paid search. Advertisers pay the search company a certain amount per click in exchange for their ads showing up when a user queries for something relevant to their offerings. There are also more innovative ways companies are cashing in on search; examples include targeting ads using a person’s online habits and demographic.
THE GOOGLE GIANT IS BORN (AND GROWS UP) Google started as a thesis topic called BackRub by Stanford PhD student Larry Page. He set out to create a system that would take the links of entire Web, analyze, and publish them in a way where one can find out who was linking to whom (unprecedented at the time), attracting the attention of Sergey Brin, another computer science PhD student at Stanford. The two came up with PageRank, an algorithm that rewarded links from important pages and penalized those that came from obscure sites (similar to the academe’s way of judging the quality of your paper through your citations and their quality). After its debut on the Stanford site in 1996, the founders tried to license to the major players in the industry, but were turned down by companies like Yahoo for the next eighteen months. Finally deciding to start their own company, they received their first $100,000 in funding from Andy Bechtolsheim, a founder of Sun. Thus, Google was formally incorporated as Google Inc. on September 7, 1998.
The next step was to find a business model that generated money. Google turned to advertising, pioneering their text-based ads with AdWords. Led by their founders and new CEO Eric Schmidt (formerly of Sun and Novell), Google summed up its core values in their mantra – “Don’t Be Evil.”
Google continued to grow significantly from 2001 to 2004, buying DejaNews, Blogger, Picasa, and Keyhole. Then the company released AdSense, a service that displays ads based on the contents of a page. They also started to index images and public phone-book information, partnering with companies such AT&T, Cingular, HandSpring, and AOL. After 9/11 happened, websites like cnn.com weren’t able to handle the traffic, and people turned to Google to inform them. Google was finally more than a search engine, something they took advantage of by launching Google News. Later, Google launched a new version of AdWords that copied GoTo.com’s auction and pay-per-click approach (previously, AdWords used the cost per thousand model). However, Google still included popularity on how they rank an ad, not merely how much the company paid. Although this decision actually makes Google more money, the public saw it as a “Don’t Be Evil” move, one that put the user’s interests before Google’s.
But as Google gained more admiration from the public and the press, not everyone was happy with it either. Whether it was their founder’s approach, their aloofness, their unconventional hiring process, or even their cute vibe, some were not impressed by Google.
By 2004, Google realized that to be able to compete with Yahoo and Microsoft, they had to go public. That April, Google filed their formal public offering (S1) that stated how not only would they be maintaining a high level of control, the founders would also have ten times more voting power than the rest of the shareholders, despite the fact that they would own just 30% of the shares. After an age discrimination lawsuit, an investigation due to an untimely magazine interview, a reprimand that led Google to conduct a recision offer to their employees, glitches on their auction technology, and a myriad of other PR disasters, Google finally went public on August 19, 2004. Starting at the price of $85 per share, the price quickly rose to around $100 on the first day, topping at $300 by the next summer.
Post-IPO, Google underwent a soul searching of sorts, resulting in the founders’ Tablet, a statement of what makes Google what it is. This became a guide for a reorganization that took months long. Their previous approach of giving the most resources to the top 100 projects was done away with; instead, the company segregated functionality into core groups — search, advertising, “20 percent,” and “10 percent,” with the latter two for products that are were acquisitions or unconventional.
IMPACT AND IMPLICATIONS
First, search overhauled the way businesses operated, from investors looking into new prospects to real estate firms staking out new territory. Until now, Google’s routine algorithmic updates impacts the crop of small, online stores who rely on showing up in organic search results. Google continues to do these in order to control spammers, click fraud, and other unethical operations that plague the Web to this day.
Next, search made information available and permanent. We now search for everything, including potential dates, potential hires, people we just met. Unfortunately, we might not always like what we see. For example, pre-search, unfortunate things that we may have been involved in, although public information, are somehow inconvenient to research. Now, one can merely query for your name, and voila! – the history of you, as it is published online, is available for the world to see. Of course, we cannot forget the PATRIOT Act, which allows for our private information to be intercepted and demanded by government authorities from our ISPs, Google, etc. The million dollar question then is how do be balance between our right to know and the right of a person to his privacy?
Google also had to be very careful on the precedent they set when they were entering China. They didn’t have the luxury of being a manufacturing company; brands do not suffer by being made in China. Things are different when your business is in information. Once they budge to China, what stops another country or even a corporation from making similar demands? [Author’s note: A closer look on Google and China]
THE FUTURE OF SEARCH Perhaps in the future, we can search for anyone in real-time, or perhaps we won’t be limited to typing in a search box. Maybe the public will even have access to a search that understands very complex, human-like demands like IBM’s WebFountain. For sure, the evolution of search will be influenced by its two major players and their difference. Yahoo will continue to focus on being a media business, whereas Google will keep its stance on being a technology business. Many say Google will eventually permeate into everything we do online, including music, documents, mail, photographs, and video. To quote directly from the book, “When it comes to search, as with the Internet itself, the most interesting stuff is yet to come.” [Author’s note: To date, Google has launched Google Music, Google Docs, and Gmail, as well as acquired YouTube, and Picasa. As for the interesting stuff, it is my opinion that Google has indeed lived up to that sentiment with Google+, Search plus Your World, and Android.]
A COUPLE OF MEMORABLE QUOTES
“Because of their early success, they were closed-minded and a bit arrogant. Nothing deceives like success.”- Vinod Koshla, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, on advising Excite founders to buy out Lycos, and not being heeded.
“I’d rather do something interesting than something boring and get rich.” – Louis Moiner, creator of AltaVista, on leaving Compaq in 1999, having felt that AltaVista was becoming a Yahoo clone.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEARCH, PRE-GOOGLE
Archie by Alan Emtage, McGill University, 1990. The first internet-based, pre-Web search engine.
Veronica by University of Nevada students, 1993. Connected users to the document itself, versus just the machine where it is located.
WWW Wanderer by Mathey Gray of MIT, 1993. Pioneered a breadth algorithm still used today.
Web Crawler by Brian Pinkertron, University of Washington, 1994. First to index the entire contents of a webpage.
Alta Vista by Louis Monier , DEC, mid 1990s. Pioneered the use of thousands of crawlers at once.
Lycos by Dr. Michael Mauldin, Carnegie Mellon, 1994. First to use links as a way of ranking and to include a summary of the results. Excite by six Stanford alumni, 1994. Started personalization and free email.
Yahoo by Jerry Yang and David Filo, PhD students at Stanford, 1994. Started out using a directory-type structure that organized the Web into categories. Shares stark similarities with Google (both founded by Stanford PhD students, both have the quirky culture, both have fun office complexes).
GoTo.com by Bill Gross, founder of IdeaLab, 1997. Came up with the pay-per-click model; results were fully commercial.
Frances Advincula is about to graduate with a degree in Computer Science with specialization in Software Engineering. She has spent time as a Platform Development Intern for Accenture Software. Being in an industry that is predominantly male, she is passionate about empowering women in every aspect of their lives. Someday, she looks forward to being a leading lady, just like the women The Levo League stands up for.](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/levolove/17269558847/1/tumblr_lz34ufysPW1rnojvo)
