Sergey Brin and Larry Page: The genesis of Google

TED
15 May 200722:30

Summary

TLDRSergey Brin and Larry Page discuss Google's global search activity, their efforts to innovate through projects like Google Grants, and social network Orkut. They highlight Google's 20 percent time policy, which encourages employee-driven innovation. Brin shares insights on how Google maintains low latency and global accessibility. Page talks about the importance of smart search engines and artificial intelligence, sharing anecdotes about user interactions. They emphasize Google's commitment to objective information and its unique advertising model that allows global access to their services.

Takeaways

  • ๐Ÿ—บ๏ธ Sergey Brin starts the discussion by revealing Google's real-time search data visualization, highlighting global search activity and the challenges of data distribution.
  • ๐ŸŒ The script mentions the importance of internet access and power, with a note that even Antarctica and the International Space Station occasionally contribute to search queries.
  • ๐ŸŒ Brin emphasizes the disparity in search activity, particularly pointing out the need for improvement in Africa and Australia, where search activity is minimal.
  • ๐Ÿ” The script discusses the technical challenge of maintaining low latency in search results and the complexity of global data routing.
  • ๐ŸŽต An example of how search trends spread geographically is given, using the popularity of a band as an illustration.
  • ๐ŸŒณ Google's commitment to making the world a better place is highlighted through the Google Foundation and Google Grants, which support charities and non-profits.
  • ๐Ÿ‘ฅ The script introduces Orkut, a social networking project initiated by a Google engineer, showcasing Google's '20 percent time' policy that encourages innovation.
  • ๐Ÿ’ก Larry Page explains the '20 percent time' policy, which allows Google employees to spend time on personal projects, leading to innovations like Google News and Orkut.
  • ๐Ÿ› ๏ธ Google's culture of innovation extends to its physical workspace, with examples given of improvements made to meeting rooms and employee facilities.
  • ๐ŸŽจ The company's playful culture is exemplified by its tradition of changing logos for fun and to celebrate various events and individuals.
  • ๐Ÿ“ˆ Google's AdSense program is introduced, which aims to make online advertising useful and relevant, benefiting both advertisers and content creators.
  • ๐Ÿง  The script concludes with a vision for the future of search, suggesting that the ultimate search engine would be powered by artificial intelligence.

Q & A

  • What personal preference did Sergey Brin reveal at the beginning of his speech?

    -Sergey Brin revealed that he prefers wearing boxers.

  • What feature of Google does Sergey Brin discuss that shows real-time search activity around the world?

    -Sergey Brin discusses a feature that displays real-time search activity globally, with rising dots representing approximately 20 to 30 searches, color-coded by language.

  • Which regions does Sergey Brin mention as having significant online activity during his talk?

    -Sergey Brin mentions the U.S., Japan, China, India, the Middle East, and Europe as regions with significant online activity.

  • What does Sergey Brin suggest is an area Google should work on improving?

    -Sergey Brin suggests that Google should work on improving internet access and search activity in Africa, where there are currently only a few trickles of online activity.

  • How does Sergey Brin describe the infrastructure challenges Google faces in delivering search results?

    -Sergey Brin describes the infrastructure challenges as moving bits around the world through fibers, satellites, and various connections to maintain low latencies and deliver answers to users' questions.

  • What is the significance of the 'Google Foundation' mentioned by Sergey Brin?

    -The Google Foundation is an initiative that Sergey Brin mentions Google is embarking upon, aiming to make the world a better place, although he does not provide specific details in the script.

  • What is the purpose of the Google Grants program mentioned in the script?

    -The Google Grants program serves over 150 different charities around the world by providing them with Google ad credits to help raise awareness for their causes.

  • What is Orkut and what is its significance in the script?

    -Orkut is a social networking project created by a Google engineer. It was released in a test phase and quickly grew to over 100,000 members, demonstrating Google's support for employee innovation.

  • What does Larry Page refer to as 'the 20 percent time' at Google?

    -'The 20 percent time' at Google refers to the policy where employees can spend 20 percent of their work time on projects they are passionate about, leading to innovations like Orkut and Google News.

  • What is the concept behind Google's AdSense as described by Larry Page?

    -AdSense is a program where Google displays relevant ads on websites, automatically generated from the site's content, with the goal of making advertising useful rather than annoying and helping website owners monetize their content.

  • What is Larry Page's vision for the future of search engines at Google?

    -Larry Page's vision for the future of search engines at Google is to develop artificial intelligence that can perfectly perform searches, understanding and providing answers to a wide range of queries.

  • Why did Google decide to change their logo regularly?

    -Google decided to change their logo regularly to make their brand fun and engaging, rather than maintaining a static logo for the sake of consistency.

  • What is the importance of providing objective information in Google's search results according to Larry Page?

    -According to Larry Page, providing objective information in search results is important because it allows Google to serve as a reliable source of information, similar to a newspaper or magazine, without bias or payment influence.

Outlines

00:00

๐ŸŒ Global Search Activity on Google

Sergey Brin opens the discussion with a light-hearted revelation of his preference for boxers, before delving into the real topic: the global scale of Google's search activity. He describes a real-time visualization tool used at Google that maps search queries worldwide, with dots representing clusters of searches, color-coded by language. The audience is shown how this tool illustrates the high search volumes in the U.S., Japan, China, India, the Middle East, and Europe, while highlighting the sparse activity in Australia and Africa as areas for improvement. Brin also touches on the infrastructure challenges of routing data around the world, emphasizing the importance of internet access and the company's efforts to maintain low latency for users. The segment concludes with a slowed-down visual representation of one second's worth of search queries, illustrating the immense scale of Google's traffic load.

05:03

๐ŸŽถ Cultural Impact and Google's Initiatives

This paragraph explores the cultural impact of music and how it spreads, using a popular band as an example of how trends can vary across different countries. Sergey Brin then transitions to Google's corporate growth and its mission to make the world a better place through increased searches, education, and health. He introduces the Google Foundation and Google Grants, programs that support charities globally. The discussion continues with the introduction of Orkut, a social networking project initiated by a Google engineer, which has quickly grown to over 100,000 members. Larry Page adds to the conversation by explaining Google's '20 percent time' policy, which encourages employees to spend a portion of their work time on personal projects, citing Orkut and Google News as successful outcomes of this initiative.

10:06

๐Ÿ› ๏ธ Google's Innovation Culture and Projects

Larry Page discusses Google's approach to maintaining innovation within the company, despite its growth. He describes the process of managing over 100 small projects, or 'Googlettes,' and how they are prioritized and developed. Page highlights several new and innovative Google projects, including the Deskbar, Google Answers, Froogle, and Blogger, emphasizing the company's commitment to trying new things and fostering a fun and enjoyable work culture. He also mentions improvements made to Google's physical workspace, such as silent projector enclosures and meeting management software, to enhance productivity and global collaboration.

15:08

๐ŸŽจ Google's Dynamic Logo and AdSense

The conversation shifts to Google's playful approach to its logo, defying traditional branding advice by changing it frequently to reflect the company's culture and sense of fun. Larry Page then introduces AdSense, a program that places relevant ads on websites, automatically generated from the site's content. He explains how AdSense benefits both Google and website owners by providing a new revenue stream and making advertising more useful. Page shares a personal anecdote about a conservation site owner who was able to significantly increase his income through AdSense, highlighting the program's impact on the internet ecosystem.

20:11

๐Ÿง  The Future of Search and Google's Commitment to Objectivity

Larry Page concludes the presentation by reflecting on the future of search and Google's role in providing objective information. He likens Google to a newspaper or magazine that offers unbiased search results, emphasizing that Google does not accept payment to influence search rankings, unlike some competitors. Page expresses pride in Google's commitment to delivering the right information to users and its ability to serve everyone globally without financial barriers. He also hints at the company's ongoing work towards developing a more intelligent search engine, potentially leveraging artificial intelligence.

Mindmap

Keywords

๐Ÿ’กGoogle Searches

Google searches refer to the queries made by users globally on Google's search engine. In the video, Sergey Brin discusses the real-time visualization of these searches, highlighting the massive volume and diversity of queries received every second. This concept illustrates the global reach and importance of Google in accessing information.

๐Ÿ’กReal-time Data Visualization

Real-time data visualization involves displaying data as it is collected, providing immediate insights. Sergey Brin showcases a global map where searches appear as rising dots, categorized by language and location. This visualization helps understand the distribution and frequency of Google searches across different regions.

๐Ÿ’กGoogle Foundation

The Google Foundation is an initiative aimed at philanthropic efforts and supporting global charities. Brin mentions its establishment to make the world a better place, along with existing programs like Google Grants, which assist over 150 charities by providing advertising credits. This reflects Google's commitment to social responsibility.

๐Ÿ’กGoogle Grants

Google Grants is a program that offers free advertising credits to charities, enabling them to raise awareness and funds. Brin highlights its success with over 150 charities benefiting from it. This initiative exemplifies Google's effort to leverage its platform for social good.

๐Ÿ’กOrkut

Orkut was a social networking service created by a Google engineer named Orkut Bรผyรผkkรถkten. Brin discusses its launch and rapid growth, emphasizing Google's encouragement of employee-driven projects through '20 percent time.' This showcases Google's innovative culture and support for personal initiatives.

๐Ÿ’ก20 Percent Time

The '20 percent time' policy at Google allows employees to spend 20% of their work time on projects they are passionate about, even if unrelated to their main job. Larry Page credits this policy for innovations like Google News and Orkut. It reflects Google's commitment to fostering creativity and innovation within its workforce.

๐Ÿ’กGoogle News

Google News is a news aggregation service that organizes and presents news stories based on categories and user interests. It originated from an employee's interest post-9/11 and was developed during their '20 percent time.' This service exemplifies how personal interests and innovative thinking can lead to significant products at Google.

๐Ÿ’กAdSense

AdSense is a program by Google that allows website owners to display targeted advertisements and earn revenue. Larry Page explains its functionality in displaying relevant ads based on site content, benefiting both advertisers and content creators. This service underlines Google's role in enhancing the digital advertising ecosystem.

๐Ÿ’กArtificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the context of the video refers to Google's pursuit of creating intelligent systems to improve search accuracy and efficiency. Larry Page mentions the ultimate goal of making Google 'smart' through AI, reflecting the company's forward-thinking approach to technology and search optimization.

๐Ÿ’กGoogle's Business Model

Google's business model primarily relies on advertising revenue, allowing it to provide free services globally. Larry Page highlights the advantages of this model, such as universal access and avoiding economic disparities. This business strategy enables Google to maintain free, high-quality search services worldwide.

Highlights

Sergey Brin humorously addresses a common question about his personal life, revealing he prefers boxers.

Introduction of a real-time visualization tool showing global Google search activity, highlighting the scale and diversity of usage.

The visualization tool differentiates search activity by color and language, providing insights into regional usage patterns.

Identification of regions with lower search activity, such as Australia and Africa, indicating areas for potential growth and improvement.

Discussion on the omnipresence of Google searches, being available wherever there is power and internet connectivity, including Antarctica.

Explanation of the technical challenges in managing global data flow and maintaining low latencies for search queries.

Illustration of the volume of search queries processed by Google, with thousands per second and the effort to keep up with the load.

The personal significance of search queries, ranging from health and career to trivial matters like tomato sauce or ketchup.

A case study of a music band's popularity tracked through search queries, showing how trends spread geographically.

Launch of the Google Foundation and Google Grants, emphasizing Google's commitment to social responsibility and charity support.

Introduction of Orkut, a social networking project initiated by a Google engineer, demonstrating the company's culture of innovation.

Google's '20 percent time' policy, allowing employees to work on personal projects, which has led to innovations like Google News and Orkut.

The concept of 'Googlettes', small teams working on uncertain projects with the hope that some will become successful, like Google News.

Larry Page's emphasis on the importance of working on high-priority, meaningful projects and the company's innovative culture.

Introduction of new Google products like Deskbar, Google Answers, Froogle, and Blogger, showcasing the company's continuous innovation.

Innovations in Google's physical workspace, such as silent projector enclosures and software for efficient meeting management.

Cultural aspects of Google, including employee benefits like laundry machines and pet-friendly policies, fostering a fun and engaging work environment.

The significance of Google's dynamic logo changes, reflecting the company's playful and innovative culture.

Introduction of AdSense, a program that places relevant ads on websites, generating income for content creators and enhancing the internet ecosystem.

Larry Page's vision for the future of search, aiming towards an intelligent, AI-driven search engine that understands user queries.

A humorous anecdote about a failed feature where Google's algorithms misinterpreted a blog's content, leading to an unintended series of 'related searches'.

Google's business model, which allows free access to search for everyone globally, regardless of economic status.

Google's commitment to providing objective information, refusing to accept payment for search results, and marking advertisements clearly.

Transcripts

play00:26

Sergey Brin: I want to discuss a question

play00:28

I know that's been pressing on many of your minds.

play00:30

We spoke to you last several years ago.

play00:33

And before I get started today,

play00:35

since many of you are wondering,

play00:38

I just wanted to get it out of the way.

play00:40

The answer is boxers.

play00:52

Now I hope all of you feel better.

play00:54

Do you know what this might be? Does anyone know what that is?

play00:57

Audience: Yes.

play00:58

SB: What is it?

play01:00

Audience: It's people logging on to Google around the world.

play01:02

SB: Wow, OK. I didn't really realize what it was when I first saw it.

play01:05

But this is what helped me see it.

play01:08

This is what we run at the office, that actually runs real time.

play01:11

Here it's slightly logged.

play01:13

But here you can see around the world

play01:15

how people are using Google.

play01:18

And every one of those rising dots

play01:20

represents probably about 20, 30 searches,

play01:23

or something like that.

play01:25

And they're labeled by color right now, by language.

play01:29

So you can see: here we are in the U.S.,

play01:31

and they're all coming up red.

play01:33

There we are in Monterey -- hopefully I can get it right.

play01:35

You can see that Japan is busy at night,

play01:38

right there.

play01:40

We have Tokyo coming in in Japanese.

play01:43

There's a lot of activity in China.

play01:45

There's a lot of activity in India.

play01:48

There's some in the Middle East, the little pockets.

play01:52

And Europe, which is right now in the middle of the day,

play01:55

is going really strong with a whole wide variety of languages.

play02:06

Now you can also see, if I turn this around here --

play02:14

hopefully I won't shake the world too much.

play02:17

But you can also see, there are places where there's not so much.

play02:20

Australia, because there just aren't very many people there.

play02:23

And this is something that we should really work on,

play02:26

which is Africa, which is just a few trickles,

play02:30

basically in South Africa and a few other urban cities.

play02:33

But basically, what we've noticed is these queries,

play02:37

which come in at thousands per second,

play02:39

are available everywhere there is power.

play02:42

And pretty much everywhere there is power, there is the Internet.

play02:46

And even in Antarctica -- well, at least this time of year --

play02:51

we from time to time will see a query rising up.

play02:53

And if we had it plotted correctly,

play02:55

I think the International Space Station would have it, too.

play03:06

So this is

play03:09

some of the challenge that we have here,

play03:13

is you can see that it's actually kind of hard to get the --

play03:22

there we go.

play03:24

This is how we have to move the bits around

play03:25

to actually get the people the answers to their questions.

play03:27

You can see that there's a lot of data running around.

play03:31

It has to go all over the world: through fibers,

play03:34

through satellites, through all kinds of connections.

play03:36

And it's pretty tricky for us to maintain the latencies

play03:41

as low as we try to. Hopefully your experience is good.

play03:45

But you can see also, once again -- so some places are much more wired

play03:47

than others, and you can see all the bandwidth across the U.S.,

play03:51

going up over to Asia, Europe in the other direction, and so forth.

play03:56

Now what I would like to do is just to show you

play03:59

what one second of this activity would look like.

play04:03

And if we can switch to slides --

play04:09

all right, here we go.

play04:11

So this is slowed down.

play04:17

This is what one second looks like.

play04:20

And this is what we spend a lot of our time doing,

play04:22

is just making sure that we can keep up

play04:24

with this kind of traffic load.

play04:30

Now, each one of those queries

play04:32

has an interesting life and tale of its own.

play04:34

I mean, it could be somebody's health,

play04:36

it could be somebody's career, something important to them.

play04:39

And it could potentially be something

play04:43

as important as tomato sauce,

play04:48

or in this case, ketchup.

play04:51

So this is a query that we had --

play04:54

I guess it's a popular band that was more popular in some parts of the world than others.

play04:57

You can see that it got started right here.

play05:00

In the U.S. and Spain, it was popular at the same time.

play05:03

But it didn't have quite the same pickup in the U.S.

play05:05

as it did in Spain.

play05:07

And then from Spain, it went to Italy,

play05:09

and then Germany got excited, and maybe right now the U.K. is enjoying it.

play05:13

And so I guess the U.S. finally,

play05:15

finally started to like it, too.

play05:18

And I just wanted to play it for you.

play05:26

Anyway, you can all enjoy it for yourselves --

play05:28

hopefully that search will work.

play05:31

As a part of --

play05:35

you know, part of what we want to do to grow our company

play05:37

is to have more searches.

play05:39

And what that means is we want to have

play05:41

more people who are healthy and educated.

play05:46

More animals, if they start doing searches as well.

play05:50

But partly, we want to make the world a better place,

play05:55

and so one thing that we're embarking upon is the Google Foundation,

play06:00

and we're in the process of setting that up.

play06:02

We also have a program already called Google Grants

play06:05

that now serves over 150 different charities around the world,

play06:08

and these are some of the charities that are on there.

play06:10

And it's something I'm very excited to be a part of.

play06:15

In fact, many of the organizations that are here --

play06:17

the Acumen Fund, I think ApproTEC we have running, I'm not sure if that one's up yet --

play06:23

and many of the people who have presented here are running through Google Grants.

play06:26

They run Google ads, and we just give them the ad credit

play06:29

so they can let organizations know.

play06:33

One of the earlier results that we got --

play06:35

we have a Singaporean businessman who is now sponsoring a village

play06:38

of 25 Vietnamese girls for their education,

play06:42

and that was one of the earliest results. And as I said, now there have been

play06:45

many, many stories that have come in,

play06:47

because we do have hundreds of charities in there,

play06:49

and the Google Foundation will be an even broader endeavor.

play06:54

Now does anybody know who this is?

play07:00

A-ha!

play07:01

Audience: Orkut.

play07:02

SB: Yes! Somebody got it.

play07:04

This is Orkut. Is anybody here on Orkut?

play07:07

Do we have any?

play07:09

Okay, not very many people know about it.

play07:10

I'll explain it in a second.

play07:12

This is one of our engineers.

play07:14

We find that they work better when they're submerged and covered with leaves.

play07:19

That's how we churn those products out.

play07:22

Orkut had a vision to create a social network.

play07:27

I know all of you are thinking, "Yet another social network."

play07:29

But it was a dream of his, and we, basically,

play07:32

when people really want to do something, well, we generally let them.

play07:35

So this is what he built.

play07:38

We just released it in a test phase last month,

play07:42

and it's been taking off.

play07:44

This is our VP of Engineering.

play07:46

You can see the red hair, and I don't know if you can see the nose ring there.

play07:51

And these are all of his friends.

play07:54

So this is how -- we just deployed it --

play08:01

we just decided that people would send each other invitations to get into the service,

play08:04

and so we just had the people in our company initially send them out.

play08:09

And now we've grown to over 100,000 members.

play08:13

And they spread, actually, very quickly, even outside the U.S.

play08:16

You can see, even though the U.S. is still the majority here --

play08:19

though, by the way, search-wise, it's only about 30 percent of our traffic --

play08:23

but it's already going to Japan, and the U.K., and Europe,

play08:26

and all the rest of the countries.

play08:28

So it's a fun little project.

play08:30

There are a variety of demographics. I won't bore you with these.

play08:33

But it's just the kind of thing that we just try out for fun

play08:36

and see where it goes.

play08:38

And --

play08:40

well, I'll leave you in suspense.

play08:42

Larry, you can explain this one.

play08:44

Larry Page: Thank you, Sergey.

play08:47

So one of the things -- both Sergey and I

play08:49

went to a Montessori school,

play08:51

and I think, for some reason,

play08:54

this has been incorporated in Google.

play08:57

And Sergey mentioned Orkut, which is something that,

play09:00

you know, Orkut wanted to do in his time,

play09:04

and we call this -- at Google, we've embodied this as "the 20 percent time,"

play09:07

and the idea is, for 20 percent of your time,

play09:10

if you're working at Google, you can do what you think is the best thing to do.

play09:13

And many, many things at Google have come out of that,

play09:17

such as Orkut and also Google News.

play09:20

And I think many other things in the world also have come out of this.

play09:24

Mendel, who was supposed to be teaching high-school students,

play09:27

actually, you know, discovered the laws of genetics --

play09:30

as a hobby, basically.

play09:32

So many, many useful things come out of this.

play09:36

And News, which I just mentioned,

play09:39

was started by a researcher.

play09:42

And he just -- he -- after 9/11, he got really interested in the news.

play09:45

And he said, "Why don't I look at the news better?"

play09:50

And so he started clustering it by category,

play09:53

and then he started using it, and then his friends started using it.

play09:56

And then, besides just looking cute on a baby's bottom,

play10:01

we made it a Googlette,

play10:03

which is basically a small project at Google.

play10:06

So it'd be like three people, or something like that,

play10:09

and they would try to make a product.

play10:11

And we wouldn't really be sure if it's going to work or not.

play10:13

And in News' case, you know, they had a couple of people

play10:17

working on it for a while, and then more and more people

play10:19

started using it, and then we put it out on the Internet,

play10:21

and more and more people started using it.

play10:23

And now it's a real, full-blown project with more people on it.

play10:26

And this is how we keep our innovation running.

play10:29

I think usually, as companies get bigger,

play10:32

they find it really hard to have small, innovative projects.

play10:35

And we had this problem, too, for a while, and we said,

play10:38

"Oh, we really need a new concept."

play10:40

You know, the Googlettes -- that's a small project that we're not quite sure if it's going to work or not,

play10:44

but we hope it will, and if we do enough of them,

play10:47

some of them will really work and turn out, such as News.

play10:51

But then we had a problem because then we had over 100 projects.

play10:55

And I don't know about all of you,

play10:57

but I have trouble keeping 100 things in my head at once.

play11:00

And we found that if we just wrote all of them down

play11:04

and ordered them -- and these are kind of made up.

play11:07

Don't really pay attention to them.

play11:09

For example, the "Buy Iceland" was from a media article.

play11:12

We would never do such a crazy thing, but --

play11:17

in any case, we found if we just basically wrote them all down and ordered them,

play11:21

that most people would actually agree what the ordering should be.

play11:25

And this was kind of a surprise to me, but

play11:27

we found that as long as you keep the 100 things in your head,

play11:30

which you did by writing them down,

play11:32

that you could do a pretty good job deciding what to do

play11:34

and where to put your resources.

play11:37

And so that's basically what we've done

play11:39

since we instituted that a few years ago, and I think it has really allowed us to be innovative

play11:43

and still stay reasonably well-organized.

play11:46

The other thing we discovered is that people like to work on things that are important,

play11:49

and so naturally,

play11:51

people sort of migrate to the things that are high priorities.

play11:57

I just wanted to highlight a couple of things

play11:59

that are new, or you might not know about.

play12:02

And the top thing, actually, is the Deskbar.

play12:05

So this is a new -- how many of you use the Google Toolbar?

play12:08

Raise your hands.

play12:10

How many of you use the Deskbar?

play12:13

All right, see? You guys should try it out.

play12:15

But if you go to our site and search

play12:17

for "Deskbar," you'll get this.

play12:19

And the idea is, instead of a toolbar, it's just present all the time

play12:21

on your screen on the bottom,

play12:23

and you can do searches really easily.

play12:26

And it's sort of like a better version of the toolbar.

play12:28

Thank you, Sergey.

play12:34

This is another example of a project that somebody at Google

play12:36

was really passionate about, and they just, they got going,

play12:39

and it's really, really a great product, and really taking off.

play12:42

Google Answers is something we started, which is really cool,

play12:46

which lets you -- for five to 100 dollars,

play12:49

you can type a question in,

play12:51

and then there's a pool of researchers

play12:53

that go out and research it for you, and it's guaranteed and all that,

play12:57

and you can get actually very good answers to things

play12:59

without spending all that time yourself.

play13:01

Froogle lets you search shopping information,

play13:04

and Blogger lets you publish things.

play13:06

But all of these -- well, these were all sort of innovative things that we did that --

play13:10

you know, we try many, many different things

play13:13

in our company.

play13:14

We also like to innovate in our physical space,

play13:16

and we noticed in meetings, you know, you have to wait a long time

play13:19

for projectors to turn on and off,

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and they're noisy, so people shut them off.

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And we didn't like that, so we actually,

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in maybe a couple of weeks, we built these little enclosures

play13:31

that enclosed the projectors, and so we can leave them on all the time

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and they're completely silent.

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And as a result, we were able to build some software

play13:38

that also lets us manage a meeting,

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so when you walk into a meeting room now,

play13:42

it lists all the meetings that are happening,

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you can very easily take notes, and they just get emailed automatically

play13:46

to all the people that were present in the meeting.

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And as we become more of a global company,

play13:52

we find these things really affect us --

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you know, can we work effectively with people who aren't in the room?

play13:57

And things like that. And simple things like this can really make a big difference.

play14:01

We also have a lot of engineers in those meetings,

play14:06

and they don't always do their laundry as much as they should.

play14:13

And so we found it was pretty helpful

play14:15

to have laundry machines, for our younger employees especially, and ...

play14:22

we also allow dogs and things like that,

play14:25

and we've had, I think, a really fun culture at our company,

play14:28

which helps people work and enjoy what they're doing.

play14:31

This is actually our "cult picture."

play14:33

I just wanted to show quickly.

play14:38

We had this on our website for a while,

play14:40

but we found that after we put it on our website,

play14:43

we didn't get any job applications anymore.

play14:48

But anyway, every year we've taken

play14:50

the whole company on a ski trip.

play14:52

A lot of work happens in companies from people knowing each other, and informally.

play14:56

And I think we've done a good job encouraging that.

play15:00

It makes it a really fun place to work.

play15:02

Along with our logos, too, which I think really embody

play15:05

our culture when we change things.

play15:08

In the early days, we were actually advised

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we should never change our logo because

play15:13

we should establish our brand, you know,

play15:15

because, you know, you'd never want to change your logo.

play15:17

You want it to be consistent.

play15:19

And we said, "Well, that doesn't sound so much fun.

play15:21

Why don't we try changing it every day?"

play15:26

One of the things that really excites me about what we're doing now

play15:29

is we have this thing called AdSense,

play15:31

and this is a little bit foreshadowing --

play15:35

this is from before Dean dropped out.

play15:38

But the idea is, like, on a newspaper, for example,

play15:40

we show you relevant ads.

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And this is hard to read, but this says "Battle for New Hampshire:

play15:44

Howard Dean for President" -- articles on Howard Dean.

play15:48

And these ads are generated automatically --

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like in this case, on the Washington Post --

play15:52

from the content on the site.

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And so we use our over 150,000 advertisers

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and millions of advertisements, so we pick the one

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that's most relevant to what you're actually looking at,

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much as we do on search.

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So the idea is we can make advertising useful,

play16:07

not just annoying, right?

play16:09

And the nice thing about this,

play16:11

we have a self-serve program,

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and many thousands of websites have signed up,

play16:16

and this let's them really make money. And I --

play16:18

you know, there's a number of people I met --

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I met this guy who runs a conservation site at a party,

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and he said, "You know, I wasn't making any money.

play16:25

I just put this thing on my site and I'm making 10,000 dollars a month.

play16:29

And, you know, thank you.

play16:31

I don't have to do my other job now."

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And I think this is really important for us, because it makes the Internet work better.

play16:36

It makes content get better, it makes searching work better,

play16:39

when people can really make their livelihood

play16:41

from producing great content.

play16:46

So this session is supposed to be about the future,

play16:49

so I'd thought I'd talk at least briefly about it.

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And the idea behind this is to do the perfect job doing search,

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you really have to be smart.

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Because you can type, you know, any kind of thing into Google,

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and you expect an answer back, right?

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But finding things is tricky, and so you really want intelligence.

play17:07

And in fact, the ultimate search engine would be smart.

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It would be artificial intelligence.

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And so that's something we work on,

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and we even have some people who are excited enough

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and crazy enough to work on it now,

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and that's really their goal.

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So we always hope that Google will be smart,

play17:22

but we're always surprised when other people think that it is.

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And so I just wanted to give a funny example of this.

play17:28

This is a blog from Iraq,

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and it's not really what

play17:32

I'm going to talk about, but I just wanted to show you an example.

play17:34

Maybe, Sergey, you can highlight this.

play17:36

So we decided --

play17:42

actually, the highlight's right there. Oh, thank you.

play17:47

So, "related searches," right there. You can't see it that well,

play17:52

but we decided we should put in this feature

play17:54

into our AdSense ads, called "related searches."

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And so we'd say, you know, "Did you mean 'search for'" -- what is this,

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in this case, "Saddam Hussein," because this blog is about Iraq --

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and you know, in addition to the ads,

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and we thought this would be a great idea.

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And so there is this blog

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of a young person who was kind of depressed, and he said,

play18:15

"You know, I'm sleeping a lot."

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He was just kind of writing about his life.

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And our algorithms -- not a person, of course,

play18:22

but our algorithms, our computers --

play18:24

read his blog and decided that

play18:26

the related search was, "I am bored."

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And he read this, and he thought a person had decided

play18:31

that he was boring,

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and it was very unfortunate,

play18:36

and he said, "You know, what are these, you know, bastards at Google doing?

play18:40

Why don't they like my blog?"

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And so then we read his blog, which was getting -- you know,

play18:45

sort of going from bad to worse,

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and we said the related search was, "Retards."

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And then, you know, he got even more mad,

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and he wrote -- like, started swearing and so on.

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And then we produced "You suck."

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And finally, it ended with "Kiss my ass."

play19:05

And so basically, he thought he was dealing with something smart,

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and of course, you know,

play19:09

we just sort of wrote this program and we tried it out,

play19:11

and it didn't quite work,

play19:14

and we don't have this feature anymore.

play19:18

So with that, maybe I can switch back to the world.

play19:21

I wanted to end just by saying that

play19:23

there's a couple things that really make me excited

play19:25

to be involved with Google,

play19:28

and one of those is that we're able to make money

play19:32

largely through advertising, and one of the benefits that I didn't expect from that

play19:35

was that we're able to serve everyone in the world

play19:38

without worrying about, you know, places that don't have as much money.

play19:43

So we don't have to worry about our products being sold,

play19:46

for example, for less money in places that are poor,

play19:49

and then they get re-imported into the U.S. --

play19:51

for example, with the drug industry.

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And I think we're really lucky to have that kind of business model

play19:56

because everyone in the world has access to our search,

play19:59

and I think that's a tremendous, tremendous benefit.

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The other thing I wanted to mention just briefly

play20:05

is that we have a tremendous ability and responsibility

play20:11

to provide people the right information,

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and we view ourselves like a newspaper or a magazine --

play20:16

that we should provide very objective information.

play20:19

And so in our search results, we never accept payment for our search results.

play20:22

We accept payment for advertising,

play20:25

and we mark it as such.

play20:27

And that's unlike many of our competitors.

play20:29

And I think decisions we're able to make like that

play20:32

have a tremendous impact on the world,

play20:34

and it makes me really proud to be involved with Google.

play20:36

So thank you.

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