July 7, 2009

FeedBurner CEO Leaving Google

Dick Costolo, the cofounder and CEO of FeedBurner, may be adding the day he left Google to his stand up comedy routine soon, as he is supposed to depart the corporation sometime this week.

Costolo who joined Google when they bought his company seems to have timed his exit strategy with the usual 2 year overseeing that goes with such buy outs. Maybe he can join a reality show - Google Helped Make Me A Millionaire But I Want Another Job.

Dick how about doing some stand up at SES San Jose. I know people throwing parties that could be interested. Or maybe just late night at the Marriott bar - you would have an enthusiastic audience.

Posted by Frank Watson at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 5, 2009

Former Google Recruiter Confesses Hiring Restrictions, While Yahoo! Aggressively Recruits

Yesterday, we reported on a new antitrust investigation targeting Silicon Valley tech companies regarding possible agreements to not hire away each other's talent. Now, the San Jose Mercury News is reporting that a former Google recruiter is fessing up to having a 'Do Not Touch' list of companies they were not to go after for talent. Two companies on the list? Genentech and Yahoo!

Yahoo!, on the other hand, has no such list according to a former recruiter for the company. Instead, recruiters were rewarded for wooing talent from competitors.

Simply having a list would not be automatically indicative of anticompetitive hiring practices. It could simply be an initiative by a company to prevent upsetting business partners. A 'Do Not Touch' list would be in violation of antitrust law if it were agreed to by companies. It's the collaboration where the offense occurs.

Officially, the companies being investigated and the Department of Justice remain largely mum on the issue, at most confirming that an investigation is, in fact, happening.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

March 31, 2009

Twitter Taps Ex-Google Lead Designer Doug Bowman as Creative Director

Recently, Visual Design Lead Doug Bowman left Google because he felt it was too constricting of an environment for a designer. I wasn't surprised. Marissa Mayer holds a tight leash on all things Google design-wise. Managing a design effort that's based on an old style serif font with primary colors and micromanaged by an executive with a programming background is probably not the dream of most cutting edge designers.

But don't feel bad for Bowman. The hottest tech company out there right now has picked him up. Twitter has tapped Bowman to be their Creative Director.

When you think of Twitter and design, a few things come to mind:

A very bubbly logo
A bird
Small birds attempting to lift a very infamous whale

It will be interesting to see where Bowman takes Twitter. There's no doubt the company is evolving. With the inevitable monetization methods on the horizon, design will likely play a key role.

But design also has its role in simply updating Twitter as is. Twitter has tweaked the front page a lot since its inception, from testing a search box to a sidebar overhaul. The design efforts have been squarely under co-founder Biz Stone's responsibilities.

Of course, Biz is a very busy dude right now, so hiring a Creative Director appears to be a wise delegation.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 27, 2009

Google Cuts 200 Employees in Sales and Marketing

Google has announced that it's cutting its sales and marketing staff by 200 worldwide. While it's never a happy experience, the bright side is that this is only about 1% of Google's total staff. Also, let's face it, if you need to find another job, having Google on your resume is helpful. Plus, I'm sure they'll have a better than average severance package.

Still, it sucks. Unfortunately, they're not alone. In search and social media, we've seen layoffs at Yahoo, Zillow and Fox Interactive, which owns MySpace.

But there are always those who will make lemonade out of lemons. A laid off Yahoo! started the Purple People Collective, to help other laid off Yahoo!'s find work.

Despite the economy, there are jobs out there. Check out these 5 Web Resources You Need to Find a Job in Search.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

March 18, 2009

Dennis Woodside Tapped to Replace Tim Armstrong at Google

Dennis Woodside has been tapped to replace Tim Armstrong at Google. Woodside was formerly Google's VP of U.K., Benelux, and Ireland. Armstrong was Sr. VP and based in New York.

Last week, AOL announced that Armstrong had been selected as their new CEO. Armstrong will take over for Randy Falco. AOL is owned by parent company Time Warner.

It's no secret that AOL needs new direction. The company spent last year of attempting to strike some kind of merger or acquisition with Microsoft and/or Yahoo!

Time Warner also decided to split AOL into two: one part media and one part internet access. Their original internet access business has been flailing lately due to the popularity of cable and DSL subscriptions.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 13, 2009

Google's Tim Armstrong Named Chairman and CEO of AOL

Google Senior Vice President Tim Armstrong has been tapped to replace Randy Falco as Chairman and CEO of AOL.

"Tim is the right executive to move AOL into the next phase of its evolution. At Google, Armstrong helped build one of the most successful media teams in the history of the Internet -- helping to make Google the most popular online search advertising platform in the world for direct and brand marketers," said Jeff Bewkes, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner, parent company of AOL. "He's an advertising pioneer with a stellar reputation and proven track record. We are privileged to have him preside over AOL as its audience and programming businesses continue to grow and its advertising platform expands globally. He'll also be helpful in helping Time Warner determine the optimal structure for AOL."

Armstrong has been with Google since 2000. He led sales efforts in the U.S. and Latin America. Google owns a 5% stake in AOL.

"I'm very excited about the opportunities presented in leading AOL. AOL has a wide-ranging set of assets and audience," said Armstrong. "The company is well positioned to enhance those assets into a larger share of the Internet audience and advertiser communities. AOL and Google have been partners for years and I look forward to collaborating with Jeff Bewkes and his team as we explore the right structure and future for AOL."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 8, 2009

Twits Know: Google Quietly Laying Off Engineers

If you can believe conversations on Twitter, it seems Google has been quietly laying off engineers and changing the scope of their jobs. Apparently some of the work done by the "contractors" laid off over the past couple of months is now being added to their work load.

I follow a lot of people on Twitter - friends, industry acquaintances and many others (including major names in the industry). It was a public conversation started between a couple of the latter that got my attention.

Mary Hodder - or at least someone using her name at Twitter - founder of Dabble, a video search and metadata company, and a well known voice in the web space, mentioned that a couple of her engineering friends at Google had been let go, as well as others.

Her comments quickly started a Twitter conversation between her and John Battelle - well known tech guru, writer and founder of Wired and Federated Media Publishing. In short order, Motley Fool journalist and noted geek Tim Beyers joined in, as did a couple of other tech people.

Disgruntled engineers working 18 hour days, poor severance packages, and general malaise seem to be growing at Google - the place everyone wanted to work at one time. Even last year Google was able to get senior VPs to take lesser jobs to join the company that 'does no evil'.

I have pieced together a bunch of the twits and have laid them out below.

Mary Hodder Talkng to friend laid off from Google Friday. Others in their eng. gp as well. They don't want to discuss publicly, but R ok w. my telling.

John Battelle RT @MaryHodder: Talkng to friend laid off from Google Friday. Others in their eng. gp as well. They don't want to discuss publicly, but...

Mary Hodder We think Goog is quietly laying ppl off so as not to alert press. Mgrs have mandate to reduce headcnt, no matter how critical the project.

Tim Beyers @MaryHodder Wow. That's *very* big news. Can I refer to your tweets about the layoffs if I choose to write about it for The Motley Fool?

Tim Beyers @MaryHodder Perhaps a severance issue but I'm more curious that these cuts come after the hullabaloo over options repricing.

Mary Hodder @milehighfool don't know but the severance pkgs for engs don't sound too good. don't know if due to longevity=they got stock before, or what @johnbattelle full time eng on a critical path project. so were others.. 4-5 yr employees. @johnbattelle no.. i think they are all in shock. they are all excellent engs.. so i think they will zip right into other jobs. but strange. @johnbattelle i agree.. as more are laid off from Goog, i believe some will talk and it will be out. @johnbattelle oddly, before this wk 2 othr Goog frnds told me uncomfortably they want to leave..was shocked, they hav grt jobs, but pressure @johnbattelle thot Goog just wasn't fun place anymore, but now think it could be really unpleasantly bad for ppl. don't know, just anecdotal

Cindy Stanford @MaryHodder How bad can the pressure be at Google that someone would want to leave a great job when the economy is what it is?

Mary Hodder @hci don't know, but these ppl sounded pretty uncomfortable. working 18 hr days .. if you have the big stock, might make you want to go.

Cindy Stanford @MaryHodder I see, yes... 18 hrs/day, week after week. It's a good reason to walk away if you have the assets to be financially independent.

Mary Hodder @hci y, hard to say in 140 char, but for those w gd stock, they may leave, others.. no grt stock, may be in rough situation. hard to tell. @moon no.. projects still there. my impression is Mgr told to reduce.. so they got rid of a couple of ppl. @milehighfool my ?, is goog doing this quietly, trying to keep severances under control, these are the least likely to talk ppl.. so..

John Battelle @MaryHodder I doubt it. Goog knows that people talk. Right?!

Interestingly two weeks ago, Valleywag had written that as many as 5% of Google's engineers could be laid off in the coming months. "[I]f the rumor's true. Google has approximately 6,000 engineers; a 5 percent cut, 300 people, would barely be felt by the organization... But the fear in the Googleplex is well-founded... And we hear that Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who set out to recreate at the Googleplex the academic environment they knew at Stanford University, are growing increasingly disenchanted with how soft and spoiled Google's engineers have become," Valley Wag reported.

Guess 18 hour days will see how soft the engineers have become - sort of like a football camp that pushes players until they quit. Should be some interesting conversations on Twiiter and other places this week.

Posted by Frank Watson at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

January 15, 2009

Google Lets Go 100 Recruiters, Reorganizes Engineering Team

Google has reduced their recruiting efforts and, as such, layoffs have come to their recruiting team. About 100 contract recruiters will be getting the pink slips.

Meanwhile, the engineering team is also being affected, albeit in a different way. Engineers in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden are required to relocate or say goodbye to the search engine. About 70 employees will be affected. A similar requirement was made recently of engineers in Phoenix, Arizona.

Over the summer, Google closed its Dallas, TX office.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 13, 2009

Delicious Founder Joshua Schachter Now Employed by Google

Delicious founder Joshua Schachter was among several Yahoo! executives who fled the Sunnyvale search engine last summer. Yahoo! acquired Delicious, a social bookmarking site, in 2005.

Now, Schachter is calling Google home when it comes to his career. Details on the new gig are thus far being kept private.

Will he aid Google in social efforts? Or will he pursue new interests? We'll have to wait and see.

Let us know your hopes for Schachter at Google in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 31, 2008

Marissa Mayer To Leave Google?

Rumor has it Google VP Marissa Mayer will be leaving the company in 2009, Gawker reported.

Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, joined Google from Stanford's graduate computer science department in 1999 as the company's first female engineer. She also is a part-time introductory computer programming teacher at Stanford and has been given the Centennial Teaching Award and the Forsythe Award.

In a recent interview Mayer seems to contradict these rumors when she talked about the future of search and Google. "We think that when you look at the winning search engine in 2020 and what traits it's likely to have, we think the one thing that will be true is that it will understand more about you the user."

Mayer was the keynote speaker at SES San Jose 2007 and is one of the more public faces of the company. She has worked with many of the company's newer products and has been known as a long time advocate of the minimalist homepage.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 11, 2008

Google's Nishar Heads to LinkedIn

Dipchand "Deep" Nishar is leaving Google to join social network LinkedIn. He will become Vice President of Products for the career and professional oriented social network.

While at Google, Nishar contributed to mobile efforts and most recently oversaw product development for Asia-Pacific.

Nishar is the latest of a string of Googlers leaving to join startups or build their own companies. While the current economy makes this a risky move, LinkedIn is one of the few startups bucking the trend. In fact, if you're one of the many finding yourself "in between jobs" right now, LinkedIn is a great place to network.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 25, 2008

Google 'Layoffs' Are Actually Cuts to Contractor Workforce

On Sunday, Web Guild spread fear around the internet by 'exposing' Google's quiet layoffs, which were said to be upwards of 10,000 employees. And Google was supposedly getting away with it through secretive loopholes that only corporate lawyers know about. They were hiring workers and not paying them benefits.

Actually, those people are called independent contractors and they knowingly enter into those agreements.

Google is reducing its contractor workforce, but it's something they've had planned for a long time. Of course, the timing of implementation couldn't be worse. Especially since contractors generally don't get unemployment benefits once terminated. Independent contractors are essentially self-employed. Related Reading: Google Q3 Revenue Increases 31% Year-Over-Year, Up 3% Over Q2 2008 Google Pulls the Plug on Lively

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

October 9, 2008

Google CEO Calls Internet "Cesspool"

Google CEO Eric Schmidt must love controversy. In a speech to magazine executives Wednesday he called the internet "a cesspool", AdAge reported.

I don't know if that makes Google a sewerage company, but I think Schmidt should realize that many look at Google as their filter to the web. Employees like Matt Cutts spend all their time working on 'purifying' the results, to expect publishers to be the answer may not be the right approach.

Criticizing opponents to the Yahoo-Google ad deal may not be a smart move given the recent drop in value of the once "golden child" of the web. Schmidt challenged "if you are going to criticize us, criticize us properly." Claiming ad prices would not increase under the Google Yahoo ad deal.

Schmidt displayed a certain amount of callous aloofness when he avoided questions about how publishers could improve their ranking with Google.

""We don't actually want you to be successful," he said. The company's algorithms are trying to find the most relevant search results, after all, not the sites that best game the system. "The fundamental way to increase your rank is to increase your relevance," he added" AdAge reported.

If you call the web a cesspool but do not offer insights to quality content providers who pay money to provide professional journalism I don't think you are serious about cleaning it up, so much as taunting an economically challenged industry.

Posted by Frank Watson at 6:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

August 15, 2008

Ben Ling Becomes Ex-Ex-Googler

Two days ago, we brought you news that Ex-Googler Ben Ling was leaving Facebook. Now, we know where he's headed - back to Google.

Ling will be taking on the difficult task of monetizing YouTube, Google's popular online video sharing site (acquired in 2006 for $1.65 billion).

via BoomTown

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 7, 2008

Is 'Good Ship Lollipop' Sinking At Google?

The 'state-of-the art' day care facilities at Google have increased their pricing to around what it costs to go to some community colleges, according to the New York Times. While the free food, refreshments and candy, once looked upon as a great perk by many outsiders considering a Google job, now seem to be considered pampering by co-founder Sergey Brin, NYT reports.

Though a Google spokesperson denied it, several people who attended a T.G.I.F. meeting in June claim Brin said "he was tired of “Googlers” who felt entitled to perks like “bottled water and M&Ms,” NYT stated.

Hey Sergey, you keep these people at their desks longer - or is it productivity or new thoughts outside the box are not coming as rapidly as in the past? Maybe the $72 million a year spent on food is cutting into Sergey's private income, and he does not want child care to take even more.

Given stock prices are a long way from the $700 highs of last year, it should now not fall on the non-millionaire employees to make up the short fall.

Seems to me this approach is a lot like the minimum bid increases that saw the regular advertiser pay for Google's efforts to stop arbitragers - they were so profitable Google continued this with implementation of Quality Scores to keep minimum bids and have all new advertisers pay premiums starting out their accounts.

Working at Google was once almost an extension of living with your parents, but now it seems dad is starting to charge rent.

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 30, 2008

Cutts Talks Spam While Obama Supporters Flag Blogspot Blogs

Matt Cutts is addressing the ever-present topic of spam again, only this time it's on the Official Google Blog. Cutts wrote about coming across spam links in the search results. He says this doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to, thanks to Google's anti-spam metrics.

One of those metrics is data from search logs. Many have worried what Google does with the data collects, and Cutts assures that data such as IP and cookie information is used to help improve the search results.

"The IP and cookie information is important for helping us apply this method only to searches that are from legitimate users as opposed to those that were generated by bots and other false searches. For example, if a bot sends the same queries to Google over and over again, those queries should really be discarded before we measure how much spam our users see. All of this--log data, IP addresses, and cookie information--makes your search results cleaner and more relevant."

But Cutts is also aware that the war against spam continues on:

"If you think webspam is a solved problem, think again. Last year Google faced a rash of webspam on Chinese domains in our index. Some spammers were purchasing large amounts of cheap .cn domains and stuffing them with misspellings and porn phrases. Savvy users may remember reading a few blogs about it, but most regular users never even noticed. The reason that a typical searcher didn't notice the odd results is that Google identified the .cn spam and responded with a fast-tracked engineering project to counteract that type of spam attack. Without our logs data to help identify the speed and scope of the problem, many more Google users might have been affected by this attack."

Another unsolved webspam problem - that was not addressed by Cutts - is letting humans in on the reporting of spam. Over at Blogspot, supporters of Presidential candidate Barack Obama have reportedly been flagging anti-obama blogs as "spam." As a result, several of the blogs, including ones created by Hilary Clinton supporters, have been frozen.

Of course, this problem is experienced in the 'paid links debate' as well. Google accepts anonymous reports about paid links, which is an easy way for competitors to attempt to flag each other out of the results.

What do you think of Cutts comments? Do they reduce your fears about Google's data collection? Should Google let third parties flag sites? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 26, 2008

Google Names Patrick Pichette New CFO

Google has announced their replacement of outgoing CFO George Reyes. Former Bell Canada CFO Patrick Pichette has been offered the position along with an employment package as good as many first round draft picks in sports.

As the San Jose Mercury News details, Pichette will get a $500,000 signing bonus and the rest of the package makes his first year's pay in the millions.

Welcome to the team Patrick.

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 23, 2008

Matt Cutts Shares 5 SEO Tips with USA Today

USA Today recently asked Google's Matt Cutts for tips to help sites rank in their search engine. Cutts offered up 5 tips plus a word of advice in implementing the tips. Here they are:

Spotlight your search term on the page. If you want to be found for your keyword, make sure that term is on the page you want to rank. The term should be at the top as well as peppered throughout your copy.
Fill in your "tags." The two most important tags are Title and Description b/c that's what is displayed on the search results.
Get other sites to "link" back to you. This is one of the most important of the 100 factors Google considers when ranking sites
Create a blog and post often. This can help you get links.
Register for free tools. Cutts recommends using the tools at google.com/webmaster, as well as creating a text-based sitemap www.xml-sitemaps.com, and adding your business to Google's Local Business center (google.com/local/add)

And that word of advice? Don't overdo it. In other words, don't stuff your pages full of keywords.

What do you think of Cutts' advice? Leave a comment!

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (48)

June 12, 2008

Google's Schmidt Talks Yahoo, Newspapers, 'Don't Be Evil', and iPhone

Yesterday, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt was interviewed by Ken Auletta on stage at a San Francisco event hosed by Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications. Schmidt offered up insight on a variety of issues. Let's dig in.

Yahoo

An independent Yahoo would be better for innovation and competition, in Schmidt's opinion. He feels that Microsoft has delivered products such as Windows that limits the choice of consumers.

Newspapers

Schmidt said that Google has a 'moral imperative' to help newspapers, who've lost money in recent years to online publishers, who often provide their content for free. DoubleClick will be a part of the effort, though specific details were not revealed.

Of course, newspapers haven't traditionally been Google's biggest fan. A Belgian newspaper group has been going after Google for years for indexing their site.

'Don't be Evil' The famous mantra is misunderstood, says Schmidt. Instead, the phrase was designed to facilitate internal conversations about corporate ethics, but most people interpret it as an absolute moral stance.

iPhone

Schmidt said that a "vast majority of searches" performed on Google via mobile phones are generated on iPhones. But since Google is preparing its own mobile platform, Schmidt has been excused from Apple board meetings a couple of times. He said that Android will "likely be quite different" from the iPhone.

via InfoWorld, USA Today, Reuters, and MarketWatch

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 28, 2008

Matt Cutts: Can You Help A Brother Get A Lap Dance?

Figured the title would get Matt's attention. Okay Matt I need some help. I have been hired by an adult entertainment site to build their presence online - get better rankings etc.

I need to build their inbound links and want to make sure I am not wasting my time and their money. So before I started I did a search for your comments on directory submissions, paid links (well everyone knows that opinion), reciprocal links, bad neighborhoods (of the IP kind - not the seedy parts of towns where my client's businesses are located) and your example site review post.

So I began to think that I may not be able to do much for them. In general adult content has a bad rap in our industry - the job no one wants to take on for fear of the association - but it is also the industry that has been 'gaming' the system for the longest and thus most neighborhoods have been marked bad.

What's a guy to do Matt?

Directory listings seem to be one way. But how do we really know which ones are still considered any good and are the adult areas of some of the bigger directories taken with a TON of salt?

Could Google set up a Monitored By Google program? Why not give a Good Search Keeping Seal of Approval? Since directories should be an important part of deeper search results, if there was a system or established list maybe the work on one end could help in other areas of the fight against spam.

I know I am going to hear: "Google does not want to classify good and bad" or some variation of that, but we are being told to use no follow - so maybe other rules and system checks could help this.

Given the basis of the Google algorithm is link based and your job is to fight back the constant spamming, some sort of system could help people.

Interestingly, as I did my searches I did find a lot of people using your name to promote themselves, the one by submit edge is particularly good. They are 2 and 3 for Matt Cutts Directory Submissions and offer to get you in to hundreds of directories for a fee. Despite their SEO efforts I am thinking they may not be a good investment.

There are millions of directories, hell I started dozens back in the day. But if you are going to push your way up the rankings you need links.

I want to do it the right way, so am reaching out to you Matt for some advice. I could do a hoax press release about some gossipy fake story - hey include a porn star and a search industry leader (Danny smart move introducing me to your wife now I can't use you) and I will get a lot of links.

I have read your advice to use common sense when looking at directories but unless I am building the ultimate "good directory list" it is an endless job and one that is still subjective.

Hell, I am sure the people below still do not share the views they once stated:

Rand may not still think: What does suck, imo, is that Google doesn't want to recognize more legitimate sources of paid links - I'm not talking about link brokers, but about sponsored links on particular sites or in directories, etc.

The belief that a link should not be counted as a vote if someone paid for it is a very dangerous idea. Imagine the link structure of the web without the influence of paid or monetarily influenced links. It would be a very, very different environment and I wonder if Google really believes it would be a better one. It's particularly egregious since their business model is serving links to paid sponsors, but they don't want folks doing it on their blogs or sites unless they add "nofollow" and remove some of the value of that link... Seems highly hypocritical to me.

Jill Whallen: Come to think of it, it's just not fair that Google doesn't want to count my link farm links as links. Google sucks and so does Matt Cutts. Okay that one was a joke - don't shoot me Jill.

Time has changed what w do. Would love some insight into where directories stand now as a link building tool.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

May 8, 2008

Google: Our Brain is Just Fine, Thank You

Recently, Google has been losing executives and staff to social sites and startups. This has led many to speculate that Google is losing the brainpower that built the mega company.

But the so-called brain drain is not occurring. At least, that's what Google spokesman Matt Furman told BBC news. Furman said that Google's management pool is deep. Plus, they're not want for talent with 1,300 resumes arriving at their doorstep every day.

Many Googlers have hopped over to Facebook, where they're more likely to find the startup culture that was so endearing about the Google of years past. Now Google, despite its free lunches, is a bonafide corporation, with structure and chains of command to boot. Still, those Googlers may have had a harder time landing their Facebook gigs had it not been for the presence of Google on their resumes.

Of course, Googlers-turned-Facebookers may question that move if Microsoft should really, truly buy Facebook.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

April 17, 2008

Google Engine Discussed At Popular Mechanics

Google Search Guru Udi Manber answered 20 questions over at Popular Mechanics, and they were not discussing gas mileage or horse power. The questions covered the future of search and Google's role in the industry.

Manber, "a computer science professor at the University of Arizona, then a senior vice president at Amazon and Yahoo's chief scientist, Manber is now vice president in charge of search quality for Google, where he makes sure results are engineered to the utmost (near) perfection."

Go Wildcats - I thought all the Jedi Search Knights came from Stanford!

One question's response was very interesting.

Do you find that the content on the Web is evolving to be more search-engine friendly? It's hard to say. It's definitely still lacking. I wish people would put more effort into thinking about how other people will find them and putting the right keywords onto their pages.

Now is that a recommendation of keyword stuffing or just an instruction that specific keywords on a page influence placement?

The article is well worth the read to get an understanding of how a senior Googler sees the search space.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:31 PM | Permalink

February 11, 2008

What's it Really Like to Work at Google?

Many of us have have heard tales about Google’s storied culture, lifestyle, and talented employees. Yes, we’ve also heard about the food! Take a moment and dig into the details with Avinash Kaushik. He shares what it’s truly like to work at Google, hang out with the beautiful people, dream in color, create, and manufacture atomic powered ideas from intellectual metal.

He's just published an emotionally introspective post, 10 Insights From 11 Months Of Working At Google, in which he freely shares specifics as concern day to day life among Googlers.

Who Is Avinash Anyway? In the world of search marketing there are precious few true analytics luminaries. Avinash Kaushik is a consensus master in taking analytics to the “actionable” level. He also happens to work at the Googleplex making his creative wit extremely influential. His personal blog, Occam’s razor, is nearly universally respected by SEM professionals, revered by some. Google’s Analytics Evangelist Many readers know that Google Analytics is an powerful (and free) analytics package offered by Google to it's users. Used effectively in tandem with AdWords PPC, rudimentary (albeit powerful) conversion tracking can be set up. Avinash is currently contracted as Google's in-house Analytics Evangelist, rolling up his pragmatic/esoteric sleeves. Here are the categories by which the analytics master segments the blessed Google life. Avinash says "ten insights from / cool things about / reasons for / delightful surprises from almost a year of working at Google." #10 The amazingly fantastic food and impressive digs. # 9: “Micro Efficiencies” # 8: A company that truly cares. # 7: Brain expansion opportunities. # 6: The sheer amount of brilliant Google employees. # 5: Empowerment (The big small company). # 4: The scale of your impact. # 3: Doing Good: Green & .org # 2: It’s a happening place. The energy, the vibe, the passion. # 1: The brand."

No doubt the matrix outlined above has been given due thought by Avinash. The post is worth a read for the pictures alone. Thanks for the terrific insight Avinash.

Posted by Marty Weintraub at 2:06 PM | Permalink

January 29, 2008

Google So Big They Don't Know Their Own Products

The presentation of various Google products detailed by Kevin Heisler may have given a bunch of people a little insight into the various advertising products Google now offers, but the lack of connection between them and the lack of knowledge a few showed of their own products questioned how long this expansion can last.

The Ad Creation Marketplace to develop rich media ads for Google advertisers was a side project the speakers were not aware of. How designers can be outsourced through Google - a major coup for people recognized by Google as worthy of recommending - was unknown when the Q&A period asked for more details.

The cross over of measurement and how detailed analytics could get was another thing no one seemed to have handy.

Don't tell me "you just hype it... but really never use it so how could I have such knowledge".

I never did get the chance to ask how the bar code technology being used by print would allow tracking.... and I was intrigued by the thought it could.

Events like these are an important part of making people aware of the variety of Google's reach in media... it would just be nice if the information was a little more detailled.

Kevin noted there were no engineers present... maybe there should have been. I know the guests were savvy and knowledgeable.... but then again we use the products.

Posted by Frank Watson at 11:55 AM | Permalink

December 20, 2007

Free Google Flip Video Camcorder --No purchase necessary

OK, strike "no purchase necessary." Free Flip video camcorder: "big purchase necessary?"

Google gave big-time advertisers and SEMs (whose clients spend big) a Flip Video Ultra Series camcorder with recording time up to 30 min. and 1GB internal memory.

Search marketer Shimon Sandler recorded an Oscar-worthy short film (YouTubed) of his Google Video Ultra gift being unwrapped. You'll watch the film again and again, if only to get into the Xmas spirit of green envy that children of all ages feel during the Holiday Season.

Google Flip flopped with all the SEMs who only received Google 2GB USB memory cards instead of the Google Flip (with MSRP of $149.99!). The 2GoogleByte USB card was described by our friends at SERoundtable as more or less a lump of coal -- way inferior to last year's Google gift gadget: a sweet digital picture frame.

It would seem only the FTC approves of Google acquisitions these days.

Here at Search Engine Watch, we'll be providing the P.O. Box for Google Customer Returns and the address of the secret Google Gift Exchange location.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 6:46 PM | Permalink

September 12, 2007

Adam Bosworth Leaving Google

Adam Bosworth, who was charged with developing health information for Google Health, will be leaving the company to pursue other opportunities, the Times Online reported.

John Batelle notes that Marissa Mayer will take over the position.

Bosworth helped develop XML - the Extensible Markup Language - before joining Google three years ago.

Mayer has held many senior positions with Google. In 2002 she was a product manager, but by 2005 Mayer was Director of Consumer Web Products, though ended the year as VP of Search Products & User Experience.

Got to wish them both the best.

Posted by Frank Watson at 2:43 PM | Permalink

August 6, 2007

Beating Google at the Hiring Game

Google's strengths may also be its weaknesses, according to the Forbes article "How To Beat Google To Tech Talent." Google is seen by many as the ultimate employer, and Google has developed a lengthy hiring process to make sure it gets the "best of the best" talent.

A recruiter shares with Forbes some ways that Google's high standards and lengthy hiring process can actually be seen as vulnerabilities to be exploited by other companies trying to hire the limited talent available:

Google's consensus-driven hiring process is slow. Act quickly and give limited-time job offers.
Google has high academic standards. Target students outside the top tier or those from non-elite schools.
Google's consensus-driven approach introduces the potential for one person to sink a candidate. Target socially awkward but brilliant engineers.
Google stockholders reacted negatively to its recent hiring binge. Expect their pace to slow.
Google stock shot high since its IPO, but may be leveling out. Give new hires an opportunity to share in your potential growth.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:38 PM | Permalink

June 14, 2007

Vanessa Fox Leaving Google

Big news from the world of Vanessa Fox. She is leaving Google, and moving onto a new role at Zillow. It should be fascinating to see what changes result from this.

Google will miss her, because she developed into one of their public faces (ala Matt Cutts, and Adam Lasnik) that they could keep in the spotlight on a regular basis. Vanessa has done a great job of helping to humanize the search giant for webmasters, and always had a smile on her face, even when she was accosted by a troubled webmaster at every turn at Search Engine Strategies and other industry gatherings.

She leaves Webmaster Central to the newly expanded team, which will carry on the good work in her absence.

I am sure that Vanessa will do well in her new role. She is very smart, and very personable. So a public best of luck to Vanessa!

Posted by at 1:35 PM | Permalink

May 30, 2007

Web Is 'Force for Democracy': Schmidt

Goolge CEO Eric Schmidt said, at a conference yesterday in South Korea, that the web is a force for democracy.

"Politicians will be forced to be more transparent," PC World reported Schmidt said.

"Internet tools like search ultimately help make the world a better place, allowing more people to access information that affects their lives and make smarter choices when voting for officials. "More people looking at an idea results in a better outcome," Schmidt said, calling the Internet a "powerful force for democracy."

...

While Schmidt preaches the value of greater information access for democracy, Google hasn't always been so free with information about itself. Relative to many of its competitors, the company has earned a reputation for carefully managing the release of information about its activities and executives, even as it compiles reams of personal information about its users." PC World

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:53 PM | Permalink

May 22, 2007

Google Is Big Brother

I guess it has just gotten to be all too much for the senior staff over at Google.

CEO Eric Schmidt, was quoted by the Financial Times as saying “(t)he goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?' and ‘What job shall I take?’”

Really now.... sort of like the modern-day "mirror on the wall" - or some other twisted piece of macabre theater.

The messages may be mixed, but the intent seems to be focused: "Total Global Domination".

But without being evil.....

We seem to have taken the bitter pill and are living this "Google-in-Wonderland" life.

Guess that makes either Larry or Sergie Alice and the other the White Rabbit.... I already know who the Mad Hatter is!

Posted by Frank Watson at 5:11 PM | Permalink

February 28, 2007

Google Ad Sales Exec Exits

Patrick Keane, until recently the head of advertising sales strategy at Google, has left to become executive VP and chief marketing officer at CBS Interactive. Keane will help CBS implement systems to market and sell its content on emerging media platforms and expand the company's roster of advertisers, according to a press release. Keane joined Google four years ago, having previously been a VP and senior analyst at Jupiter Research, covering the online advertising space.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:49 PM | Permalink

January 3, 2007

Does Google need more bloggers or people who own dogs?

Matt Cutts has a fascinating post in his Gadgets, Google and SEO blog entitled, "The real lesson from this week." He rhetorically asks, "So what does Google need to keep us on the right path?" And his answer is, "I think what Google needs is more bloggers. I'm using a liberal definition of bloggers here; I mean people who monitor the blogosphere. In an ideal world, they'd also respond to feedback online."

Meanwhile, Saul Hansell of The New York Times has written a fascinating story this morning entitled, "Google Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm." He reports that Google is starting to ask job applicants to fill out an elaborate online survey that explores their attitudes, behavior, personality and biographical details going back to high school. One of the potential questions tested in an earlier version of the survey was, "What pets do you have?"

So, does Google need more bloggers or more people who own dogs?

Using "biodata" to create "an automated way to search for talent among the more than 100,000 job applications it receives each month" seems logical for people in Human Resources. The number of employees at Google has doubled in each of the last three years. While the company now has about 10,000 employees, Laszlo Bock, Google's vice president for people operations, told The New York Times that he saw no reason the company would not double again in 2007. That would increase the number of hires at Google to about 200 a week.

However, it turns out that owning a dog isn't a useful predictor of success at the company.

So, what about the idea of hiring more bloggers?

According to Cutts, "Some of the most dynamic teams at Google are the ones that listen to bloggers and respond. The webmaster console team has Vanessa Fox, Amanda Camp, and several others. Mihai Parparita and the entire Google Reader team listens for requests and responds to feedback in the blogosphere. Sometimes I've gone to answer a blogger's question about Google Calendar only to see that Carl Sjogreen already arrived and answered it better than I could."

However, this train of thought took a surprising turn. Cutts continued, "No single person should be Google's unofficial blogger–that's not scalable. I love working at Google, but at some point my wife is going to wake up and smell the coffee. She'll say 'Hey, we agreed we'd try this Google thing for four or five years, and then I'd get to pick what to do next. It's been like eight years now! When do we move on to our next adventure?' Any Google engineer will tell you that a good way to scale something is to shard it. Rather than relying on one person, Google needs lots of unofficial bloggers."

This prompted David Naylor (aka DaveN) to read between the lines and wonder aloud, "Matt Cutts to leave Google?" According to Naylor, "My Gut feeling is Matt is looking at letting all the little Cuttlets down gently."

Meanwhile, back at the Times article, Bock told Hansell, “Last week we hired six people who had below a 3.0 G.P.A.”

Stay tuned. It's too early to tell what "the real lesson" we'll learn from these developments.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 9:00 AM | Permalink

November 28, 2006

Yahoo China's President Xie Wen Resigns After Six Weeks

PC Advisor reports that Xie Wen, president of Yahoo China, has resigned after only six weeks on the job. Zeng Ming, senior vice-president of Alibaba, will replace Xie, who is resigning for "personal reasons." Xie will stay on as a consultant for Yahoo for an undisclosed time period. This follows on Google China's president apparently announcing he would be resigning earlier this month, though I can't find a more detailed story about that.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:00 AM | Permalink

November 27, 2006

Matt Cutts On Site Problems & Mistakes To Avoid

Ever wonder what is going through the head of a Matt Cutts (Googler) while he is sitting on a site reviews panel reviewing sites? Matt Cutts posted his detailed notes of the panel he did in Vegas at PubCon. He explains some on site problems and mistakes a webmaster should avoid. It is worth a read, because Matt totally kicked my coverage of that session.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:19 AM | Permalink

November 21, 2006

Google Beats Microsoft, Yahoo As College Grad Choice

Online Recruitment reports on a CollegeGrad.com poll showing Google is the most desired place for technology students to work for. The poll asked 1,600 respondents in October "Who would you rather work for?" The results:

Google - 49%
Microsoft - 29%
Yahoo - 12%
IBM - 10%

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:30 AM | Permalink

November 15, 2006

Google To Add 500 Jobs In Dublin, Ireland

Reuters reports that Google is going to be adding 500 new jobs in the Dublin, Ireland office. This will make the Dublin office fairly large with 1,300 people, after first opening in 2004. If you are looking for a job in that area, you can check out the job openings page here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:36 AM | Permalink

November 13, 2006

Google's Schmidt Says Cell Phones Should Be Free

CNN Money reports that Google's CEO Eric Schmidt saying, "Your mobile phone should be free." He said Google has no plans to give phones away itself, but he foresees advertising making phones free or near free, in the way newspapers are.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:34 AM | Permalink

November 10, 2006

Battelle "Grilled" Schmidt On Google Video, Google Docs & More

PC Magazine has an excellent write up on John Battelle's interview with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google at the Web 2.0 conference named Google's Schmidt Grilled At Conference . John Battelle (which PC Mag spelled wrong), sat with Eric Schmidt for 30 minutes and asked him tough questions on YouTube, Google Docs & Spreadsheets and more. For example, Battelle asked, "So why did you buy YouTube? Was Google Video not doing well?" Battelle then noted that Google Docs and Spreadsheets were a Microsoft Office replacement, in which Schmidt replied, "We don't see it as a replacement of Office. The focus we have is not the focus they have." Battelle's response to that is the focus is that it is free. I wonder what the audience reaction was to this interview?

Postscript: Danny has coverage on the Web 2.0 conference from earlier this week here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:23 AM | Permalink

November 8, 2006

Eric Schmidt At Web 2.0 On YouTube & Other Issues

John Battelle spoke with Eric Schmidt at Web 2.0 yesterday. What have we got? YouTube's growth made it a necessary purchase. No, money's not set aside to cover YouTube legal claims. Yes, you can have your date if you want it, users. No, Google's not trying to take out Microsoft Office. Plus some more below.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt: We would never trap user data from ZDNet has coverage that has Schmidt saying:

Google bought YouTube because it was growing faster than Google Video, and video was a "fundamental data type" to Google.
Google's still figuring out ways to compensate content owners with video, a complex area.
Google would support exporting personal data (search history, email, etc) to other providers, if it can be authenticated.
Google's office products are "casual" and not aimed at Microsoft.

Google CEO denies rumor of YouTube legal reserve from Reuters quotes Schmidt as saying "not true" to a rumor that $500 million of the YouTube sales prices was set aside for legal claims.

@ Web 2.0: Day One Highlights: Ad 2.0; Google CEO; Skype Content from PaidContent covers Schmidt but also touches on IAC's Barry Diller saying in a separate interview that he doesn't expect Google will become a media monopoly or dominant player.

Web 2.0 Con: Liveblogging the "Conversation with Eric Schmidt" from Valleywag has a nice minute-by-minute rundown of the interview, for those that want more -- and covers that if Schmidt or one of the cofounders Larry Page or Sergey Brin don't agree on something, the cofounder wins. "I'm the one with the experience who's late. Left to their own devices they'd be early and right, but too early."

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:34 AM | Permalink

November 7, 2006

Google's Adam Lasnik Interviewed

Lee Odden interviewed Adam Lasnik of Google the other day. Adam Lasnik is one of the folks at Google responsible for being the voice of the webmaster. His day job is to help webmasters with ranking and indexing issues either through communication or other means. I find the read interesting and helpful - it really shows that Google cares.

As for what questions annoy me the most? There aren't any specific ones that I find particularly frustrating. Rather, I do occasionally grow weary with two types of questions:

1) Questions that are clearly answered in our much-improved Webmaster Central, via a quick search of our Webmaster Help group, or questions that would also be likely answered via use of our Webmaster Tools. There's no such thing as a stupid question, IMHO, but lazy questions… well, that's a different story. 2) Accusatory “questions.” I suppose I need to get some thicker skin, but it stings when people imply that we either don't care or — worse — that a relationship between Webmasters and Google must inherently be adversarial. Every time I've spoken with Larry Page and Marissa Mayer they've made it unequivocally clear that being mindful of Webmaster concerns is something resonating not just in Search Quality, but from the very top of Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:26 AM | Permalink

October 30, 2006

Google's Page or Brin Purchase NY City Apartment For $30 Million?

The New York Metro suggests that either Larry Page or Sergey Brin, they are not sure which one, have purchased an apartment in 15 Central Park West, Manhattan, for about $30 million. The broker of the apartment is Corcoran's Patricia Warburg Cliff, who declined to comment. The NYC "apartment has 5,500 square feet, five bedrooms, and a terrace."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:03 AM | Permalink

Google Interview With Shashi Seth On Custom Search Engine Product

Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting posted an Interview of Google's Shashi Seth. Shashi Seth is Product Lead of Search and was directly responsible for the Custom Search Engine. Eric asked Shashi questions about the new product and Google Co-op platform.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:24 AM | Permalink

October 26, 2006

Charting Google's Growth By Employees

Philipp Lenssen located this chart that shows the growth of the number of Google employees. You can see that Google has grown from 2,000 in 2004 to more than 9,000 employees in 2006.

Here is the chart from Zorgloob.com:

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:12 AM | Permalink

October 23, 2006

Google Tries To Streamline Hiring Process

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has begun trying to improve their well-known hiring process. They have currently reduced the number of interviews from 6.2 to 5.1 people. They have also set up deadlines for when the interviewer has to submit their assessments (within one week now). Google is also trying "short questionnaires for applicants and different interview formats" and "abbreviated hiring process" consisting of just two interviews.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:23 AM | Permalink

October 20, 2006

Yahoo India's CTO To Join Google As R&D Lead

Steve Bryant reports that Prasad Bhaarat Ram, Yahoo India's CTO, has been hired by Google to lead the research and development office in Bangalore. Dr. Ram said, "It is a great opportunity to join Google and be involved with a company that places such great value on innovation and creativity." Dr. Ram is to begin immediately at Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:06 AM | Permalink

October 19, 2006

Google Hires Pizzella Of GSA's FirstGov

FCW.com reports that Google hired M.J. Pizzella to work at Google's Herndon, VA office to "help Google better understand and solve the government's technology needs." Pizzella worked as the associate administrator of GSA's Office of Citizen Services and Communications and was directly responsible for government's official search engine, FirstGov's most recent redesign. Her title at Google is senior business development manager at Google Enterprise.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:29 AM | Permalink

October 10, 2006

Justin Uberti, AOL's Top AIM Developer, Hired By Google

Steve Bryant reports that Justin Uberti, who has been with AOL for about 10 years and working on AIM for almost 9 years, has been hired by Google to work in the Kirkland, WA office. Justin posted this news on his old blog and announces the launch of his new blog at juberti.blogspot.com, where he has links to the Google Blog, Google Talk Blog and Google Video blog - which may be signs as to what he will be working on at Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:57 AM | Permalink

October 4, 2006

Eric Schmidt Warns Politicians That Elections Will Forever Change

The Financial Times reports that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, warned politicians at a Tory party conference in Bournemouth that the outcome of general elections will be changed "within five years" by what Eric Schmidt calls "truth predictor" software.

A politician may be making claims live during a debate and a voter will be searching the internet to validate those claims, in real time.

Schmidt said, “One of my messages to them is to think about having every one of your voters online all the time, then inputting ‘is this true or false?' We [at Google] are not in charge of truth but we might be able to give a probability.”

The Register.com has a link to the speech here (for Windows Media users).

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:10 AM | Permalink

October 2, 2006

Google Buys Birthplace Garage

Google has purchased the garage where the company developed after its initial birth at Stanford University. Actually, they've purchased the home of Google vice president of product management Susan Wojcicki. Before she became a Google VP, Wojcicki rented the garage attached to her home to Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google buys garage that launched Internet's top search engine from the Associated Press has details about the sale, which was probably in the $1.2 million range. As of yet, Google doesn't know what exactly it may do with the home the article reports. It's already a tourist attraction, it seems.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:23 AM | Permalink

September 27, 2006

Evil Matt Cutts: Matt's Evil Twin Brother

Spotted via SEO Home, it appears someone launched an alter ego to Matt Cutts's blog at evilmattcutts.com. You got to admit, this is funny. The picture, the reworded blog posts, and the concept. One example blog post is named How to Verify Google Bot, then Kill and cook him. Who owns the site? Well, I know who owns the domain, http://whois.domaintools.com/evilmattcutts.com.

Matt, what happened to your front tooth?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:41 AM | Permalink

John Battelle Talks With Matt Cutts & Nofollow Attribute The Same As Meta Robots Nofollow?

John Battelle has a short interview with Google spam fighter Matt Cutts. The most interesting part I found was news that the W3C has added a meta nofollow tag to their page with paid links, which Matt seems to say is the same as the completely different nofollow attribute and thus something acceptable for to do by those selling links who fear the wrath of Google.

Let's back up. You can put a meta robots tag on your pages with the value of "nofollow," as described here. This tag, about 10 years old now, long predates any concerns about link selling skewing search results or the nofollow attribute. It is supposed to tell a search engine not to follow any links on a page, for purposes of indexing those links.

In other words, you've got a page with 20 links leading to other pages in your web site. Put nofollow into a meta robots tag, and you're telling the search engine not to follow the links on that page to those other pages.

An important note. Just using nofollow doesn't protect those other pages from being indexed. If there's any other links pointing at them from anywhere on the web, search engines will follow through to them that way. So if you don't want them indexed, you need to make use of a meta noindex tag or robots.txt text to specifically block them.

Now on to the nofollow attribute. Created in January 2005, it was a way to flag particular links to search engines as those a site owner doesn't explicitly approve of. It was never defined as a means to telling search engines not to actually "follow" the link. It was more a way to say that you don't endorse the link. In fact, to my knowledge, Yahoo and perhaps others will still "click on" or follow links even if they make use of the nofollow attribute.

Now to the W3C. W3C Selling PageRank Or Thanking Supporters? covers how some have felt they've effectively been selling links without using the nofollow attribute that Matt Cutts in particular has urged those selling links to do, lest they potentially be penalized by Google.

In Matt's interview, we read that using nofollow in the meta robots tag might be seen as the same thing as a nofollow attribute, at least in Google's eyes. That's a completely new thing to me. I've commented on Matt's blog post about the interview, to see if he'll clarify more.

Aside from nofollow, the interview also gets into some interesting discussion of whether Google should do more to use humans in refining results.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:42 AM | Permalink

September 25, 2006

Google's Marissa Mayer Makes Newsweek Cover

Via Valleywag, news that Google's Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products & user experience, makes the cover of Newsweek and is named one of the most powerful women of her generation.

Good luck trying to find the article on the horrible MSNBC-hosted Newsweek site itself. I finally gave us and did a regular Google search for marissa mayer newsweek sept. 25 to find it here: Leading the Way. Marissa comes up on page 5.

Her home town paper gives her a write-up here: Wausau girl hits big-time, along with a larger version of the Newsweek cover.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:42 AM | Permalink

September 21, 2006

Webmasters Complaining About Google? Get A Job Helping Them Know!

A new job opening from Google, Webmaster Trends Analyst. It's all about helping Google monitor what webmasters are upset or concerned about at forums, conferences and other venues. From the job description:

Responsibilities:

Monitor webmaster issues (in various online forums, conferences, internal questions, etc.).
Analyze data for trends.
Formulate recommendations.
Route issues using appropriate escalation paths.
Investigate specific issues, as needed.

Sounds like a perfect job for Barry Schwartz! Of course, if I lose yet another news editor to a search engine, oh vey!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:13 PM | Permalink

September 7, 2006

Former Google UK Chief Kate Burns Joins AdLink Media Company

Kate Burns, former Google managing director of UK, who has left Google in June for more family time, is reportedly joining a new firm named AdLink. Burns who previously worked for AltaVista was the first Google employee outside of the U.S. Why is Burns coming back so soon? Well she said she has "enjoyed a much needed break over the past couple of months" but she is "ready to return."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:58 AM | Permalink

Matt Cutts Doll Gets New Clothes

We mentioned in June how there's an online Matt Cutts doll, where you can put some virtual clothing on Google spam fighter Matt Cutts. Good news, Matt fans. The Matt Cutts Doll has gained some new clothing, creator Evan Bailyn tells me. Among other things, you can now put him in a ninja outfit, a Hugh Hefner robe (completely with pipe), a Yahoo shirt (I think that's new) or position him with his cat. No, you still can't put him in a black hat nor switch him from being a briefs to a boxer guy.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:20 AM | Permalink

August 30, 2006

Google CEO Eric Schmidt Joins Apple's Board Of Directors

Google CEO Eric Schmidt's looking for another small company to help run -- this time, Apple. He's just been elected to Apple's board of directors.

Google CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt Joins Apple's Board of Directors is the press release on the move, with these quotes from the two main men:

"Eric is obviously doing a terrific job as CEO of Google, and we look forward to his contributions as a member of Apple's board of directors," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Like Apple, Google is very focused on innovation and we think Eric's insights and experience will be very valuable in helping to guide Apple in the years ahead."

"Apple is one of the companies in the world that I most admire," said Eric Schmidt. "I'm really looking forward to working with Steve and Apple's board to help with all of the amazing things Apple is doing."

Google CEO elected to Apple Computer board of directors from the AFP has the expected (and reasonable) speculation that this will mean closer ties for Google and Apple.

The Wall Street Journal in Google CEO Schmidt Joins Apple Computer Board (paid sub. probably required) notes some of the cross-pollination going on:

Mr. Schmidt's election deepens existing high-level personal ties between the two companies. Genentech Inc. CEO Arthur Levinson sits on the Google and Apple boards, while former Vice President Al Gore and Intuit Inc. Chairman Bill Campbell, both Apple directors, are longtime advisers to Google. Mr. Schmidt's appointment means half of Apple's eight-person board of directors has a formal relationship with Google.

Messrs. Schmidt and Jobs also share the battle scars from long careers competing against Microsoft, Redmond, Wash. Mr. Schmidt, one of Silicon Valley's most seasoned technologists, spent more than a dozen years at Sun Microsystems Inc. starting in 1983, rising to the post of chief technology officer during that computer maker's fierce efforts to establish the Java programming language as an alternative to Microsoft's dominant programming standards. Mr. Schmidt joined Novell Inc., a bitter Microsoft rival in the market for network software, in 1997 as chairman and CEO.

Want to comment or discuss? Join our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Google CEO Eric Schmidt Joins Apple's Board.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:32 AM | Permalink

August 23, 2006

Google To Party At Worldcon: Shiny!

Man. I wrote earlier of Google doing a recruitment and PR push at the Star Trek Convention last week. I joked about wishing I could go to that and this week's Worldcon. Today, Google writes that it will be at Worldcon, recruiting and throwing a party as well. And they semi-taunt me about going in the post. Have a great time, everyone who is going. It'll definitely be shiny.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:40 AM | Permalink

Google Keynote Conversation, Part Two

Today's SearchDay article, CEO Schmidt: "Many People are Very Happy with Google Search", continues Andrew Goodman's coverage of Danny Sullivan's keynote conversation with Google's chief executive that began with yesterday's Google CEO Maps Missions, Stays on Message.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:34 AM | Permalink

August 22, 2006

What is Google These Days?

Google is a search engine, but it's also one of the world's largest advertising companies. And many analysts are now calling it a media company, as well. So is Google still focused on its mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible? Danny Sullivan put that and other questions to Google CEO Eric Schmidt in his keynote conversation at the recent SES San Jose conference. And, as has become a tradition, Andrew Goodman was on hand to not only report on the dialogue but to add his own laser-like insights. Read on in today's SearchDay article, Google CEO Maps Missions, Stays on Message.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:18 AM | Permalink

August 18, 2006

More On Google's Warp Speed Run Into The Star Trek Convention

I wrote earlier about how Google was going to be hunting for engineers at the 5th Annual Official Star Trek Convention this week in Las Vegas. Now more news about that and more.

The company's put out a press release about taking part in the show and set up a special site for Star Trek fans. Don't get too excited. The site has little to do with Star Trek and a lot more to do with promoting how developers can now put geo-location files (KML) on mobile phones. Way down at the bottom of the page are links to plot sci-fi related locations on Google Maps (see them here) or Google Earth.

Much cooler is an AFP article, Google builds bridge at Star Trek cult convention, about how Google's booth will feature a mockup of the Enterprise bridge (TOS, probably, rather than TNG or STE. Don't know the acronyms? Then you don't care which bridge it is). The main viewer will access Google Earth, which sounds pretty cool.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:12 AM | Permalink

Googlers Only Have Sold GOOG Stock - Cause Of Drop In Stock Price?

Bloomberg has a very interesting report on why they believe Google's stock has been falling this year, down about 7 percent this year. They say that Google's executives have sold off a boatload of stock since the IPO.

"Google's top executives have offloaded about $7.4 billion of stock, equal to about a third of the company's starting market value when it sold shares at $85 each in the August 2004 IPO," says Bloomberg columnist, Mark Gilbert. Not only that, he reports "not a single Google insider has bought a single share of the company in the 18 months since the IPO lock-ups expired." Can you believe that!

Postscript From Danny: It's worth noting that at least to me, the idea that the insiders are selling their stock and not buying is unsurprising. They've got a lot of stock. A lot of stock!

Buying some shares would probably be a good PR move, and after an article like this one, I can imagine some of the execs might start doing it. But the point of selling, as the article itself notes, is to diversify portfolios that, for these execs, are ironically unhealthily skewed toward Google.

For the curious, there are various places to see insider sales over times. Yahoo has a nice list here. Note how entries for Eric Schmidt and many others are tagged "automatic." That because, to my knowledge, they have preplanned to diversify their portfolios by selling shares automatically over time. That protects them against accusations of insider sales.

Also interesting are entries like exec Omid Kordestani acquiring 76,459 shares on June 12, 2006. Didn't the Bloomberg article say no big Googlers were buying? Yes -- so what's this? I assume that Googlers might still be gaining shares in other ways, which adds further understanding as to why they might not be buying on the open market.

Finally, it's no surprise that that over the past 18 months that neither founders Larry Page or Sergey Brin have been selling. That's because they already said in 2004 that they'd spend the next 18 months diversifying their portfolios through planned sales.

Overall, insider trades are definitely interesting to watch, and I'm sure Google will take a PR black eye over the apparent lack of purchases. But I think there are factors that don't make it as bad as it seems.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:12 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2006

The Inside Scoop from Search Bloggers

The major search engines all have unofficial bloggers talking about what's going on in their respective companies. At a recent SES session, search-blog stars Jeremy Zawodny, Gary Price, Matt Cutts and Niall Kennedy all revealed their modus operandi, and guest writer Sara Holoubek was there to capture their insights for today's SearchDay article, Expose: Search Engine Bloggers Tell All.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 7:44 PM | Permalink

August 15, 2006

Beam Them Engineers Up, Google

Google's boldly going where no one has gone before....in search of engineers at the 5th Annual Official Star Trek Convention next week in Las Vegas. Google's going to have a booth and presence at the event, I'm told by a friend who knows. Apparently, many of Google's engineers already attend Trek conventions, so it's fertile recruiting ground. So far, I see nothing about Google on the convention site. But Google Operating System noted yesterday how Google SketchUp is already doing a cross-promotion.

Have fun at the con, anyone who's going. Wish it were me! Of course, going to WorldCon in LA (ahem, actually Anaheim in beautiful Orange County) later this month would be nice. My first and only one was in Anaheim back in 1984. Too long, too long. Hey, how about Battlestar Galactica Con? Heck, I'd be happy with Xena Con (though Gabrielle Con would be better).

Postscript: Google's got a post up now about the recruitment drive there

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:17 PM | Permalink

Google Hires Linux Coder, Andrew Morton

Andrew Morton, well known in the Linux world for coding under Linus Torvalds, has been hired to work at Google, reports News.com. Linus commented about the job in a message board posting on Aug 6th. Andrew will continue working on Linux, but Google will be paying him to do so.

"In my position as kernel maintainer I feel that I should not be employed by a company which has a direct interest in the kernel.org kernel because this would put me in a position of making decisions which are commercially significant to my employer's competitors," Morton explained. "As Google maintains their own kernel variant for internal use, their interests are largely decoupled from what happens in the kernel.org kernel."

Google's active use of Linux and participation in open source development was another big draw. "It is beneficial to me (and to Linux) that I be in day-to-day contact with people who use Linux for real things. Hence Google is a good all-round fit," Morton added.

More details at Linux Today.

Does this mean a Google OS is coming soon? Well, that may be far fetched. Google is known to write their own kernels for their servers, to best tweak the performance out of them.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:07 AM | Permalink

August 14, 2006

Matt Cutts Confesses To Being GoogleGuy

In Monday Morning Roundup, Rand Fishkin writes:

Did anyone blog about Matt outing himself as GoogleGuy during SES? I believe his exact words were "I backed into that position."

Nope, Rand -- I was surprised about the lack of reaction and blogging to that myself. I'm still doing post-show catch-up, but it hardly seemed to catch any buzz. Perhaps one of the industry's oldest secrets -- Matt Cutts being GoogleGuy -- was no longer a secret to most any longer.

I moderated the panel, and the confession came out when a member of the audience flat out asked Matt if he was GoogleGuy. Matt hesitated just a moment, and I could swear I could almost hear the internal debate of "should I finally confess or not." And then he did, saying as Rand notes that he sort of backed into being the GoogleGuy who posts on forums and blogs. Matt then added that today, GoogleGuy might be one of many different people from Google commenting in public areas.

Matt's been blogging for just over a year now, and it's been great to have him out under his own name. Personally, while I love the Google Guy name, I sort of hope it gets retired. I'd rather have Googlers taking part in conversations under their own names than through anonymous handles. Plus, it would help avoid things where the named person might comment on something they've also posted under an anonymous handle. As I wrote last year:

Matt Cutts, posting over Threadwatch and sounding pretty in sync with GoogleGuy, explains that msn.com is a PR8 site and points to the Future PageRank checker at SEO Tools as a way to see this. (At this point, you're asking "Isn't Matt Cutts GoogleGuy?" For the record, Matt's never publicly laid claim to being GoogleGuy. But since Matt's more active on commenting with things these days, I think it's well time that GoogleGuy step forward with a real name, so that if they are one and the same, there's isn't confusion that two different people are talking. Honestly, at some point we'll have someone citing GoogleGuy, then someone citing Matt against GoogleGuy, which is absurd if they are the same. I and many others do know the real identity of GoogleGuy. I think it's well time everyone knows and hope GoogleGuy will step forward).

By the way, if you missed the panel, Blogging for the search engines from Melanie Colburn at Searchblog is a very nice summary of it. Matt also made many new friends at the last conference and today blogs on how to tell who the real ones are :) That includes these two founding members of his fan club, complete with T-shirts. He also gets search god status on the new Men Of SEO blog.

Postscript: WebmasterWorld's Brett Tabke pinged me to say that Matt's been wearing a "Google Guy" name badge at PubCon for the past two years now, and Thomas Bindl notes this was the case last November at the show, as well. So I guess Matt's been out as GoogleGuy long before this. Then again, despite wearing that name badge in front of plenty of people, he still wasn't fessing up to it when I or others would ask him about going public. And over at Rand's blog in the comments, Matt's suggesting that he was answering a different question.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:54 AM | Permalink

August 9, 2006

The Google Doctor Interviewed

Philipp Lenssen links to an interview of the Google Doctor, Taraneh Razavi at Blogs for Companies. The interview really goes over more about why the Doctor started a blog at Google, then anything else. So you know, Sergey Brin suggested to her that she start her blog at http://dr-razavi.blogspot.com/. Other than that, she helped improve the nutrition and health of the meals provided at Google, and of course, does the day to day doctor duties at Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:56 AM | Permalink

August 8, 2006

August 4, 2006

Google Grabs Former "Time" President As Head Of Ad Sales

MarketingVox reports on AdAge scoop where Google has hired Eileen Naughton, former president of Time magazine, to be the "head of ad sales" in the New York office. Her responsibility will be to improve Google's reputation and ties with the Madison Avenue folks. Eileen Naughton will begin working at Google in several months.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:45 AM | Permalink

August 3, 2006

Eric Schmidt Asks Photos Of Him & Wife To Be Kept Private

The Boston Herald reports that while Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, was at the Circus Flora in Nantucket, he asked reporters not to take or distribute pictures of him and his wife. Marie-Claire Rochat sent an email to "the island media" stating; "One couple has requested that no photographs of them be published - Wendy and Eric Schmidt. It is, of course, important that we respect their wishes."

The article then mocks Eric Schmidt for this request being that he was so upset with News.com for publishing Schmidt's personal info that was found on Google. Schmidt was so upset, that Google blacklisted News.com for a period of time.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:12 AM | Permalink

July 17, 2006

Google Hiring Television Engineers & Wireless Software Engineer

Search Engine Watch Forums moderator evilgreenmonkey (brand new moderator) has informed me that Google posted two new interesting jobs for the London office for Software Engineer, Television Technology & Wireless Software Engineer in Test.

The television technology job does not say much;

We are hiring well-rounded Software Engineers with a proven track record in creating and deploying robust, high-volume applications for consumer devices.

Responsibilities: To develop robust, high-volume applications for consumer devices. To develop prototype applications and manage the evolution of these to scalable, shipping products.

Seems as if they are looking for ways to create mobile solutions and methods to distribute television programming over devices other than televisions.

The wireless engineer is for QA (quality assurance) work on wireless applications.

We are looking for software QA engineers to work with the testing team and the development team to investigate, report and track defects and expand our automated test suites. Your duties will focus on creating test plans, setting up test environments, developing automated tests, executing and maintaining automated test suites and the analysis of the results. They would also include leading test efforts and exploring new ways of UI test automation. If you love coding and testing, are a quick learner, a great team player and able to work independently, this is your chance to join us in our quest to make all the worlds information accessible from the palm of your hand.

Related? I dunno.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:34 AM | Permalink

July 3, 2006

Matt Cutts Is Back From Vacation

We all missed him, Matt Cutts has returned from his long vacation. Hopefully he can get back in the saddle and begin working on those issues at Google. :) Seriously, we all miss you Matt, thanks for coming back and winking (blinking that is) at us.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:47 AM | Permalink

June 29, 2006

Another Microsoft Executive Leaves To Join Google

Business 2.0 in Microsoft exec jumps to Google reports that another Microsoft executive has left the company this month. A 15 year veteran, general manager for platform evangelism at Microsoft, Vic Gundotra, has left Microsoft to join Google. This news comes after shocking news that Microsoft VP Martin Taylor has departed from Microsoft. Vic Gundotra has a non-compete that will not allow him to work for Google for at least one year. During that time Gundotra will be working on his "charitable endeavors."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:02 AM | Permalink

June 26, 2006

Build Your Own Matt Cutts

I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable on a funny little web site that gives you a way to build your own Matt Cutts. To dress up Matt Cutts, go to the Matt Cutts Doll and drag and drop clothing on top of Matt's body. Oh, if you ever wondered if Matt was a briefs or boxers guys, now you know. Too funny.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:21 AM | Permalink

June 23, 2006

Google To Have 1000 Employees In China By 2007

Pacific Epoch reports that Google expect to have over 1,000 employees in Google China by 2007. By the end of this year, Google hopes to have 200 employees based in China. Google will have three research and development centers in China, they will be based in Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan according the article.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:59 AM | Permalink

June 22, 2006

When's Matt Cutts Back From Vacation Countdown Clock

Thomas Bindl does what I was hoping someone would do -- make a countdown clock for when Google's Matt Cutts is returning from his vacation, spotted via Threadwatch. I've seen a number of posts in various places suggesting that Google has been having its recent spam and indexing problems because Matt's finally taken a nice, long break. Bull. Matt's great, a huge resource to Google, but the problems going on seem far more fundamental than Matt being away. If they really are due to him being gone, then Google has even bigger issues to deal with. Still, plenty of us will be happy to see him return and jump back into the search conversation.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:46 AM | Permalink

June 21, 2006

Microsoft Employees Use Google More Than MSN?

Philipp Lenssen reported on a Andrew Hitchcock post that detailed search engine usage by search engine firm. It appears that Microsoft employees prefer Google to MSN Search when searching the web. At Microsoft 66.31 percent use Google, 19.65 percent use MSN and 10.18 percent use Yahoo. Yahoo employees aren't afraid to use Google search either, with 29.80 percent of searches conducted on Google and 68.87 percent on Yahoo Search. Google employees seem to be 100 percent loyal to Google search, based on the data.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:48 AM | Permalink

June 16, 2006

Schmidt Talks On Staying In China, GBuy & More

Conde Nast Portfolio, a new business magazine out next year, landed a nice coup of having Eric Schmidt speak yesterday at its launch party (Schmidt's also apparently set to be one of the first profiles in the new magazine). The video of the interview is online here, covering mostly stuff you've already heard Schmidt say before in other interviews (the LA Times had one last week) over the past years. But here are some things worth highlighting to me.

What would be the one do over for him? He says if Google had done any one particular thing three months earlier, it would have been better.

China was an example of this. In hindsight, he wishes Google had gotten a Chinese government approved version going sooner. "I don't think we would have changed the decision, but I think earlier, the better." He didn't say exactly why. My assumption would be that Google would be stronger in China compared to Baidu, but also that he would say they would have been serving people in China better for a longer period.

Was Google cofounder really suggesting last week that Google was having second thoughts when he said:

"Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense," Brin said.

No -- it was either a nuanced comment, a misquoted one and there was also a whole part of what he said missing, Schmidt said. The missing part Sergey had said was, he explained, was that Google had decided to go ahead with what it considered the lesser of two evils, serving people even though it had to do censorship.

There's more of the how Google operates stuff, the 20 percent time (for engineers -- still not others, apparently), the 70-20-10 time allocation of work time, and the idea of not trying to tell people what to do, for fear of stifling creativity. Instead, Google suggests what are company priorities and hopes employees agree because they, too, want to work on what's important for the company.

He talks about Google doing ads on cell phones in Japan and says they'll come to Europe this summer and to the US within the next 12 months.

GBuy? That's the press name, not Google's name, and "It's not like PayPal at all." He says its designed to help advertisers have their customers buy things more quickly than through other mechanisms. We'll see. If PayPal means sending money between two people, it probably won't be. If PayPal means an alternative to buying with a credit card (or having a credit card account as a merchant), then I think GBuy will be very much like PayPal. And it operates this way already on Google Base. For more, see Google GBuy Launch Later This Month To Challenge PayPal?. And hang in there. Schmidt said it's coming soon.

Will Google do its own hardware? "It's much better to have a partner," and "It's much better to be in the software business," he said. The economics are better, he explained.

Biggest competition? Yahoo and Microsoft are both strong and good competitors, but Yahoo is the "primary competitor."

Is Google too powerful, especially given statements he made years ago relating to Microsoft that could be applied to Google today. There are a number of other choices consumers could go to, he said -- "and we know this."

In other words, Google knows that it could potentially lose customers at any time, so it will self-police itself. Same thing he told me back in 2002 in my Google: Can The Marcia Brady Of Search Stay Sweet? article:

"We have very poor lock in. Microsoft has very high lock in," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt, when we spoke at Google's offices last month. "The switchover cost for you to move to one of our competitors is none. As long as the switchover costs are so low, we run scared. Everyday I wonder if there are very smart people at Berkeley coming up with a new algorithm," Schmidt adds -- but in a way that clearly suggests that he wants Google to run scared, in order to keep the company smart and honest.

Although to update things, Google has much better lock-in these days, given Google's many portal features. People are storing email, web analytics data, photos and spreadsheets to name only few things they may not wish to abandon, not to mention kicking the Google Habit can be hard and people aren't likely to do it unless Google gets really bad, as I've written.

As for having knocked Microsoft when he was at Sun for releasing weak products and using customers as guinea pigs, how does he respond to accusations that Google does the same? He says they have a two to three month product cycle now. To be fair, the endless betas Google used to do have gotten better.

During Q&A, Chris Anderson of Wired asks about the impact AdSense has on fueling spam across the web -- search spam, comment spam, trackback spam and so on. Schmidt responds to say Google looks had at preventing click fraud, not really answering the question.

ClickZ also has coverage of his talk in Google's Schmidt at Conde Nast Lunch Today and Reuters looks at the GBuy comments in Google tests Web buying system, says unlike PayPal.

Need more on Schmidt talking Google? See our Google , Google: Employees and Google: Revenues categories of Search Topics for archived articles going back for years, if you are a Search Engine Watch member.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:57 AM | Permalink

June 15, 2006

Google's UK Chief Kate Burns Leaving For More Family Time

Last time I saw Kate Burns last year, she was about six months pregnant. Now Google managing director of UK, Benelux and Ireland is leaving the company to spend more time with that growing family. Best of luck, Kate! More details in Burns set to leave Google director role from Brand Republic.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:22 AM | Permalink

June 13, 2006

A Look At 20 Googlers Via Orkut

Philipp Lenssen complied a list of 20 Googler Orkut profiles. Orkut is Google's social networking software, and many Googlers have profiles and accounts with Orkut. Some of the 20 compiled by Philipp include; Sergey Brin, Adam Bosworth, Jeff Huber, David Krane, Marissa Mayer and more. Nice work!

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:47 AM | Permalink

May 26, 2006

Google Seeks Employees Through Wired Ad

Google Ad in Wired from Google Blogoscoped covers Google doing print ads. No, not to drum up new users, though it has done some of that before. This time it's to attract employees to work for the company. If you didn't skip three grades and failed to learn Lisp by age 10 like Niniane, there's no need to apply. Darn, and there's me wasting all that time on Basic at age, um, 13? Well, I can still make my name fill the screen of a TRS-80.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:08 AM | Permalink

May 24, 2006

Larry Page Video Interview

Channel 4 interviewed Larry Page and the video is available by clicking here. He discusses that artificial intelligence will play an important role in the future of search. He also answers questions about China and privacy concerns. Watch the video at Channel 4 News.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:21 AM | Permalink

May 19, 2006

Google Collector's Cards

Philipp Lenssen has been creating Google Collector's Cards. So far he has posted three, including;

+ Larry Page Collectors Card + Eric Schmidt Collectors Card + Marissa Mayer Collectors Card + Sergey Brin Collectors Card + Matt Cutts Collectors Card

Guess who will be coming next... :)

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:30 AM | Permalink

May 18, 2006

A Talk With Vinton Cerf On Google Book Search

Leslie Walker from the Washington Post sat down with Vinton Cerf, founding father of the Internet and Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, about Google Book Search. They basically talked about Google's goal in digitizing books to make them easily findable via search. Read the article at WashingtonPost.com.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:10 AM | Permalink

May 17, 2006

Google Adding More Jobs Than Yahoo

BusinessWeek.com reports that Google is adding more jobs than Yahoo. Google has 1,800 open positions this year, up from 800 open positions last year. Yahoo has 800 openings this year, but they have declined from last year, with 935 job openings. Google is also higher a higher percentage of employees overseas, with 51% of their job openings based outside of the U.S. Yahoo has 29% of their job openings based overseas, up 15% from last year. Yahoo still has more employees than Google, with 10,098 employees at Yahoo and 6,790 employees at Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:59 AM | Permalink

May 16, 2006

Mike Grehan Podcast With Google's Matt Cutts

Can't wait for my podcast with Matt Cutts today? Mike Grehan has just posted a 75 minute interview in two parts with Matt that's well worth listening to. They cover issues such as cloaking, "site links" (those little links you sometimes see below the first result), non-indexed links still ranking well and more. Mike's summarized some info in his ClickZ column, Google's Matt Cutts: The Big Interview, and links to the podcasts are at the end. As I said, it's great listening -- I've just finished them both. I'll make sure for my podcast today with Matt that we go into some different areas.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:54 AM | Permalink

Google Loses New Chef

Steve Petusevsky, one of the two head chefs Google hired last month after a much publicized 18 month hunt, has apparently left the company. The news came in a post to a mailing list for former Google employees. I haven't yet confirmed this with Google. I'll check tomorrow and postscript if it turns out NOT to be the case.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:09 AM | Permalink

May 15, 2006

Google Hires SEM For "Better Conversations" With Webmasters

Matt Cutts, the bridge between Google & SEMs, has announced the hire of Adam Lasnik, an old time affiliate marketer and SEO, to help Matt with the communication between webmasters and Google. Adam said his role will be the "Webmaster Advocate" at Google, pushing for Webmaster needs and concerns. He calls himself the "MiniMatt," attending SEM conferences, replying to Google-related blog or forum posts, responding to some Google e-mails, and more. So now Matt can finally take a vacation.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:29 AM | Permalink

May 9, 2006

Google Resets Many Inactive AdWords Keywords to Active

I reported this morning about Google resetting many of the "inactive" keywords in a Google AdWords account to the "active" status. Keywords become inactive often if the "quality" of those ads are too low, most likely because the click-through rate on that keyword is too low. It seems as if Google has reset many of the "inactive" keywords in AdWords advertisers campaigns, so they can start fresh.

Postscript From Danny: This is likely related to what Google announced last month, that for some terms, it would be pushing ads out more often. See Google AdWords Broad Match To Act Differently For Commercial, Non-Commercial Terms for more.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:40 AM | Permalink

May 2, 2006

More On Amazon Dumping Google & Missing Paid Listings

Barry noted yesterday that Amazon's A9 was no longer carrying Google results. More important, this means that Amazon itself no longer carries Google's search results -- and in particular, Google's paid listings.

Google and Amazon partnered back in 2003 for Amazon to offer Google searches on the Amazon site. Google ads also were displayed there. I'm pretty sure at one point, the Google logo was on Amazon's home page, along with a search box. Unfortunately, the Internet Archive simply serves up pages from 2000 no matter what links I try from the years 2003 through 2005 to check on this.

Anyway, these days, there's a small A9 Web Search box in the upper right-hand corner of the Amazon site. Until last week, that box brought back A9 results that were powered by Google. Now they are powered by Microsoft's Windows Live Search.

Few people use A9 -- but many more use Amazon. How many did web searches at Amazon is unclear, but in either place, they are no longer seeing the paid listings that Google also used to provide.

In addition, I'm also pretty certain that an ordinary Amazon search (which lots and lots of people do) used to bring up Google paid listings as part of Amazon search results. Today, I don't see these at all. Over at Threadwatch, others report not seeing these either.

MSN syndicates Search to Amazon from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has more on the new Amazon-Microsoft agreement. The issue of who is providing paid listings isn't covered, but since the Amazon-Google agreement wasn't renewed, I'd assume these are to come from Microsoft.

Amazon Search Finds Microsoft from the Washington Post also has some details on the move, including the inspiring answer to whether Amazon felt Microsoft was providing better search results: "It will be up to users to try that out." So more a business move than a relevancy issue, fair to say :)

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our SEW Forums thread, Amazon Ditches Google For Microsoft.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:15 AM | Permalink

April 28, 2006

Google Finally Hires Two New Chefs

MercuryNews.com reports that Google has hired two new executive chefs, Scott Giambastiani of San Mateo's high-end Viognier restaurant and Steve Petusevsky, a former national director of creative food development for Whole Foods Markets. They come in to replace Chef Charlie Ayers, Google's old chef and old Grateful Dead chef, who has left Google last May. It has taken Google over a year to find a new chef; the search began in December 2004. Congrats Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:21 AM | Permalink

Google Second Most Desired Place For MBA Students To Work For

ZDnet reports on a 2006 Universum Survey MBA Edition, that shows Google has jumped from 129th place in 2005 to 2nd place this year as the most popular place to work for MBA students. McKinsey remains the number one place for MBA students to work, followed by Google and then followed by Goldman Sachs. The top 100 list has five search related companies, including;

+ Google at number 2 + Microsoft at 16 + Yahoo at number 26 + Amazon.com at number 32 + eBay at number 37

Google was not in the top 100 last year, listed at 129 in 2005. Microsoft was ranked 18 last year, up two spots this year. Yahoo was 37 last year, up 11 spots this year. Amazon lost traction this year, being list 19 last year. And eBay also lost some points, being ranked 27 last year.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:29 AM | Permalink

April 18, 2006

Google Australia In Need Of Female Engineers

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Google is having a rough time finding female engineers to work in Australia. The article claims that Google has "hired more than 10 engineers from five ethnic backgrounds" in Australia, but not one of those ten were of the female gender. The issue with not having a woman as part of the Google Australia staff, according to Google, is that they won't be able to match Google employees with the "same characteristics as our [Google's] user." So does this mean that Google is willing to pay more for a female Australian Google engineer?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 2:32 PM | Permalink

April 13, 2006

Google Local Gets New Head

Via Technorati, Google Local to Be Lead by Classified Ventures Exec from The Local Online notes that Sam Sebastian is now apparently head of Google Local. His exact title is not stated. Sebastian oversaw the Homescape site for Classified Ventures, a joint venture backed by major newspaper publishing companies such as Gannett and Knight Ridder.

Postscript: Google Recruits Local Ad Exec from ClickZ has confirmation from Google and a few more details.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:55 AM | Permalink

April 12, 2006

Google Buys Dulance; To Open Russian Research Center

Sergei Burkov, Founder & CEO of Dulance will run Google's development center in Russia. This was first reported by TechWorld yesterday and brought to my attention by Googlist this morning.

I asked Sergei if Dulance was acquired by Google, and he forwarded me to Google's PR department which just confirmed the acquisition.

To provide some context to the acquisition, Google's shopping comparison engine, Froogle, originally started out as a crawler but switched to taking data feeds fairly early on. Because the service is completely free, Froogle probably has around 50,000 data feeds (no confirmation), although the quality of those feeds isn't always that great.

For comparison, many of the leading shopping comparison engines (by traffic) only have 5,000 - 10,000 data feeds, so I've argued for a while that these comparison engines are not truly comprehensive and therefore don't always provide a valuable user experience. In fact, some of the leading shopping comparison engines rely on Google AdSense ads to supplement search results.

Dulance was the first of a new breed of shopping search engine which was based on crawling technology. Today there are a number of these engines inclduding Pronto, FatLens, and ShopWiki.

When I've had time to digest the news and do more research, I'll update you with how Google might use Dulance. In the meantime, here's the official Google press release:

Monday April 10th 2006 ? Moscow: Google announced today that it is to open a research and development centre in Russia later this year as part of its ongoing investment in Europe.

The centre will be based in Moscow and run by Sergei Burkov Ph.D. Dr. Burkov is a former research physicist who has worked at both Cornell and the University of Wisconsin. In addition he co-founded three companies, Bilbo Innovations (computer pedals, distributed through Fry's Electronics), Invincible Data Systems (acquired by VASCO Data Security) and Dulance.

Google plans to use Russia?s phenomenal engineering talent to help develop great new products both for the Russian market and globally. According to the Russian Software Developers Association (RUSSOFT) Russia has the third highest number of scientists and engineers per head of any country in the world. Google also hopes to establish long-term partnerships leading with Russian institutes and universities.

Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President Engineering and Research at Google said: "It?s great to have Sergei on board. Technology is at the heart of everything we do at Google - we?re looking forward to working with our new Moscow team to develop great products for Russian users?.

Google's Russian R&D centre is the latest addition to a growing number of global engineering offices, which include the UK, Israel, Norway, Tokyo, Japan, Zurich, Switzerland, India and America (New York, Santa Monica, California, Kirkland, Washington and Mountain View).

Posted by Brian Smith at 12:27 PM | Permalink

Google's Search & AdWords API Engineer Leaves Google

Angelo Embuldeniya reports that Nelson Minar has decided to leave Google. Nelson Minar was responsible for working on the Google search and AdWords APIs. He has been on leave at Google for over six-months, but he has made his decision recently to leave Google officially.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:57 AM | Permalink

April 10, 2006

Google Hires Orion Search Engine Creator; Gets Extraction Algorithm

Back in September, SEW Forums moderator Edel "Orion" Garcia posted a thread about a new search technology under development. It was coincidentally called the "Orion Search Engine" but not connected with our moderator. Instead, it was developed by a university student who now, according to news reports out this weekend, works for Google. Google's also acquired his search technology.

How great this search engine was is impossible to say. The press release that inventor Ori Allon put out last September was full of excitement, but so are plenty of releases trying to attract the attention of investors and the media. The search engine itself was never available for the public to use.

It sounds like Allon mainly developed an algorithm useful in pulling out better summaries of web pages. In other words, if you did a search, you'd be likely to get back extracted sections of pages most relevant to your query. From the release:

The results to the query are displayed immediately in the form of expanded text extracts, giving you the relevant information without having to go the website.

Such extraction could work well with moves by Google to expand direct answers that it offers, something all search engines are doing. Of course, the more Google and other search engines extract heavily from web pages without sending them actual traffic, the more likely they'll come under legal pressures of stepping over the fair use line.

Via Threadwatch, Google buys search algorithm invented by Israeli student from Haaretz has more details on Google getting the rights to the Orion algorithm and confirmation that Allon now works for Google. His university says that Yahoo and Microsoft were also in negotiations for the technology.

Google wins rights to Aussie algorithm from The Age reports that Allon's been with Google for about six weeks. However, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates never commented on the technology, to my knowledge. The Age just seems confused that Allon's press release mentioned public comments by Gates that there's room for improvement generally in search.

Google does deal for Aussie program from the Daily Telegraph pitches that the technology will revolutionize the way we search. Ho hum. Reality check, OK? When Google acquired the three people from Kaltix along with their search technology back in 2003, it hardly created a revolutionary change for us soon after.

By revolutionary, I mean a radical shake-up of how we search or a major leap-frogging past other players. That didn't happen post-Kaltix. We did indeed see better personalized search come from Google, what I find one of its most impressive features. But that's an evolutionary change. It works on top of other things Google has built. It doesn't overturn and throw out the base technology.

So my reality check alarm is mainly for anyone who thinks Google's going to suddenly change because Allon and this extraction algorithm are now at Google. He gives Google another good employee, and the technology will probably give Google another evolutionary change that may improve things over time, rather than instanty.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, The Orion Search Engine.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:56 AM | Permalink

April 3, 2006

Selling Google's Ads

The World According to Google from Sales & Marketing Management magazine talks to various execs from the Moneyplex, Google's sales side, about pitching their wares.

Interestingly, the article takes angle that rather than there being a church-and-state divide between the Moneyplex's ad folks and the Googleplex's engineering teams, people are said to work side-by-side to help produce a product they hope will serve customers and advertisers alike.

Well, maybe. I get the impression that what the article really means is that technical people who develop ad products and ad sales people who sell those products work alongside each other. The editorial teams don't, to my knowledge.

Overall, not a lot you probably didn't already know about Google here, but it'll give anyone a few more quotes plus some nice pictures of executives.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:03 AM | Permalink

March 31, 2006

More On Google Health & Bosworth's Involvement

Philipp Lenssen writes of an "anonymous" source that tells him Google has a project named "Google Health." Google Health supposedly building out specialized vertical search solutions for health and medical searches, the similar to how Google handles other vertical searches. The source told him that he got the impression that Google was going to "build a self-diagnostic aid." In our past coverage we note of several engines that already have specialized health and medical search features. It is also important to note that Google has yet to respond to our questions about the Google Health project or if Bosworth is involved with that or has the title because he oversees the "health" of Google's tech systems.

Postscript: A reader sends us this note suggesting Google Health is indeed real and Bosworth is involved:

Bosworth was one of the Googlers who came to a recruitment drive at my university and introduced himself as "working on Google Health" or something like that. When I asked him what Google Health was, he said they "didn't know yet" but the kind of stuff he mentioned seemed to point towards a self-diagnosing thing, and how Google has all this information about medical stuff, and people go there for information anyway. He quickly changed the subject thoough, so unfortunately can't tell you much. But thought you might want to know that it seems Bosworth is indeed involved.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:29 AM | Permalink

March 24, 2006

Former Google VP To Speak At The Lincoln Chamber of Commerce Workshop

Chris Gilmer reports that former Google Vice President of Corporate Marketing, Cindy McCaffrey, is to keynote at the Women in Business Workshop in Lincoln, Nebraska. She will be speaking on how she effectively drove awareness of Google through "public relations and direct target marketing," and not through conventional advertising, such as TV, radio or print. She is set to speak on March 29th at 3:00 PM at the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:13 AM | Permalink

March 20, 2006

Google Health To Cure The World?

Garett Rogers reports of a recent Google hire, Adam Bosworth, with the title "Architect, Google Health." Garett asks, what would the Architect, Google Health do at Google? I have read some speculation that Google's enormous database can potential cure the world of illnesses. It can help be a predictive gauge for diseases to come, as well. This is all just speculation, but based on Bosworth's background, something may be up at Google.

PostScript: I wanted to do a follow up on this entry, because I was not able to provide sufficient time to it early.

There are many health related search engines out there. Here is a round up of some of the health related vertical search from some of the big players and he small.

1) Conduct a search on influenza at Ask.com, notice the Smart Answer built in. 2) Try Yahoo also, a search on influenza shows you a Yahoo Shortcut result from the health.yahoo.com portal. 3) Medline Plus contains health information from the National Library of Medicine. There are over 700 diseases and topics updated by experts here and some excellent detailed health tutorials.

Also, Dean Giustini has a good write up on how Google is changing medicine.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:55 AM | Permalink

March 8, 2006

Google Filings Against DOJ Request -- Including Declaration From Matt Cutts

I'm planning a deeper look at Google's rejection of the Department Of Justice search records request, which happened last week when I was on vacation. But a quick head's up. Many of you may have seen Google's blog post on the subject here, which in turn leads to their formal filing here (PDF). But that wasn't the only filing. Catching up on my feeds this morning, I saw that Gary compiled a full list of Google filings over here (PDF). My eyebrows shot-up when I saw Google's Matt Cutts had a long declaration as part of that package. I was planning to help spread the word more about this as part of an overall summary of what's in the various summaries, but Matt himself beat me to it with this blog post. So happy reading! I'll still be working on that general summary of everything hopefully for later this week.

NOTE: This was originally written on Feb. 22, but I've only just seen that it was left as a "draft" and never published. Sorry about that!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:55 PM | Permalink

Google Unites Its Own Videos On One Page

Philipp Lenssen over at Google Blogoscoped spotted a new Videos From The Googleplex area where Google is sharing its own in-house video content with the world. Oddly, a post on the Google Blog today mentions some of the individual videos there but not the overall area itself.

What will you find? Authors who've spoken at Google are now posted, such as the presentation that John Battelle gave that we mentioned before or a recent one from Yahoo alum Seth Godin. Last year's Google Factory Tour is also posted, along with other clips you'll find on this related page.

I like the Google Recruiting Video. It's not new, but it is very inspiring, so much so that I have a feeling many companies will soon create their own recruiting videos and have them hosted at Google Video.

Jen Fitzpatrick, Engineering Director at Google is the narrator of this video, she conducts interviews with different 'Googlers' (Google employees) asking specific questions about the benefits at working at Google. Here is the abstract from the Google Recruiting Video.

I've represented Google at many events for women in engineering, and I'm always asked the same thing: "What's it like to work there?" I certainly don't mind discussing the subject, but I often think it would be great if more people could see it for themselves. Well, now you can. We invite you to take a sneak peek inside Google and hear straight from some of our female engineers what life here is really like.

Of course, our goal of recruiting as many gifted female engineers as we can also means encouraging young women who are still in school. So I'd like to issue a hearty congrats to the winners of this year's Anita Borg scholarships.

What won't you find in the collection of video from Google? Apparently not the Google commercial played to Kansas City Royals fans that Danny found Google had put up itself earlier this year. It's now gone.

Larry Page's CES keynote is at Google Video here, but that's not been associated with the Videos From The Googleplex page.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 12:53 PM | Permalink

March 7, 2006

Google Gets New Spain & Portugal Chief, Catalan Domain

The new CEO of CEO for Google Spain and Portugal has been named today. Isabel Aguilera has been selected to run the Google offices in Spain and Portugal, according to Dirson. Aguilera is a well-respected businesswoman, who was the COO of NH Hotels and Business Unit Director for Dell in Spain, Italy and Portugal.

Google also registered the google.cat domain name on February 14th; no web site is currently live at google.cat.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:03 AM | Permalink

March 6, 2006

Google Employees Are Hard to Find In The UK Google struggles to find enough British staff from the Independent finds that while Google may be one of the most desired places to work in the United States, in the UK, Google is struggling to find new engineering talent. The theory as to why Google cannot attract the talent they desire in Britain is because the candidates possibly feel they may have to move to California in the long run of their Google tenure.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:32 AM | Permalink

February 23, 2006

Baker of Search Engine Journal Visits Google Japan

Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal posted pictures and comments about him Hanging Out With Google Japan. Loren lives just outside of Tokyo and he met up with John Scott of V7N to visit Google Japan. Google Japan's office is in the famous Cerulean Tower, they lease one full floor in the huge tower. Check out some cool pictures of their adventure at Search Engine Journal.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 12:22 PM | Permalink

February 20, 2006

Google's Trusted Tester Program For New Products

Garett Rogers at Googling Google covers Google's "Trusted Tester Program," a preexisting invite-only program that now appears to have gained a formal FAQ left open to public view.

The program lets friends and family of Google employees test new software. The select few login here to access programs. More helpful to anyone is the Google Trusted Tester Program FAQ, which explains the program in more detail. Somewhat amusingly, those in the program aren't even allowed to discuss that it exists despite the fact that the FAQ has been left open to public viewing.

Dirson's blog had mention of this program back last August, but no FAQ was apparently posted then. Google's also long allowed friends and family of Googlers to test beta software. Google Desktop, for example, went out for friends and family testing in February 2004, as covered in the SEW members edition of the Google Desktop launch article:

As for the Google Desktop project, it has been in development for the past year, Google said. The first testing version went out to some within Google in February. Further versions followed, with a release candidate sent to 2,000 Google employees and trusted friends and family.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:30 AM | Permalink

February 14, 2006

Google Adds New Online Job Application Form

Gary Price finds a new Google Job Application form. So if you find a job at Google you like, you can now apply with a simple form. The link to the form is on the left hand side navigation of this page, it says "Apply Online."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:08 AM | Permalink

February 10, 2006

Google Wins Job Discrimination Case

Elinor Mills at News.com reports that Google has won a job discrimination lawsuit filed last year by Christina Elwell. Elwell was allegedly released from her job because as "national sales director" at Google, her job required traveling. Due to her being pregnant with quadruplets, traveling would not be easy for her. The court ruled that the arbitration clause in the employment contract is valid and should be handled through an arbitrator.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:34 AM | Permalink

February 9, 2006

Eric Schmidt Clarifies Google & AOL's Roles at AOL

Nathan Weinberg points to a summary of Google's CEO Eric Schmidt's recent visit to AOL, where a difference between how each company defines "programmers" came up. Are programmers more about technology or programming content, asked AOL senior vice president Sree Kotay:

At AOL, we tend to have Programmers that offer our members a very managed experience that comforts them, whereas at Google, its much more automation and technology oriented - can you comment on this philosophy difference?

Eric Schmidt reportedly replied to that with the following statement;

"When you say Programmer and we say Programmer, we mean very different things... Does that answer the question?"

For many, Eric's reply perhaps did not answer the question. Kotay adds in comments after his original post:

I think he was pointing out, very succinctly, that the cultural values of our companies - reflected in the language we use in our everyday worklives - results in very different (no particular judgment implied) value propositions that we deliver to our partners and customers.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:24 AM | Permalink

Google Cold Calls Battelle On AdSense; Fails To Do Homework

Vignette: Google's Sales Call and the (New?) Fifty Percent Rule is a nice chuckle from John Battelle, where he gets a cold call from a member of Google's AdSense sales force trying to get him to carry Google ads. He's got a loose transcript that's very amusing. But it's also pretty serious. It makes good sense that your sales team should do some homework about those they are approaching. Clearly, that doesn't seem to be the case.

How difficult is it to Google the person you're about to have a talk with? John thinks that would be wise, I agree. It's basic homework you should do for anyone you'd want to approach. At the very least, you might learn something to help you with the pitch.

Had that been done with John, what would the sales person have learned? Let's scan the Google results for john battelle:

In 0.22 seconds (that's the time Google reported taking to generate these results), you'd see at a glance that this "john battelle" character you're about to pitch AdSense to sounds very similar to some "john battelle" guy that talked with Googlers like yourself. And he was on the official Google Video Blog? Alarm bells should be ringing, by now.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:43 AM | Permalink

February 8, 2006

Google Chinese Censorship Protested At Stanford, Berkeley

News.com points at a San Francisco Chronicle article covering protests at UC Berkeley and Google's alma mater Stanford University over its Chinese censorship policy. These came in response to head of Google China, Kai-Fu Lee, talking at the campuses on a recruiting drive.

That reminds me of something I've been meaning to post about, Lee's past statement about insisting on principles, something Google ironically is not doing in China. As I explained in our SEW Forums thread on the censorship issue:

Dr. Lee is the head of Google China. You might remember Google fought a big huge case to get Microsoft's non-compete claims off his back. In the midst of all this, Lee explained some of the reasons why he wanted to go to Google:

No matter how difficult, if you don't follow your heart and insist on principles, how can [you] suggest other people to do it. Therefore I made a very important choice. I have the right to make my choice. I choose Google, I choose China. I want to do influential things. In China, I can help the youth more and do more influential things. I want to make the best of my own efforts, and in Google I can learn the new creativity model and make myself better.

Look at that first sentence. The man heading Google China says if you don't follow and insist on principles (say "Don't Be Evil"), how can you expect others to do so. Then Google ends their post on the China mess this way:

To some people, a hard compromise may not feel as satisfying as a withdrawal on principle, but we believe it's the best way to work toward the results we all desire.

In other words, Google won't stick to its principles. And that's the heart of all this. It would be just another company (US, Danish, Argentinean, whatever) agreeing to Chinese demands and a non-issue except that Google itself very publicly set this entire "Do No Evil" thing in motion as a guiding principle.

Meanwhile, Boing Boing notes censorship might be happening in Google Azerbaijan. But I haven't tried testing this to see if that's for certain. Smaller result sets could be do to things completely unrelated to censorship.

Want to comment? Please visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Google Agrees To Chinese Censorship.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:30 AM | Permalink

February 7, 2006

Udi Manber Leaves A9 to Join Google

Searchblog reports that Udi Manber, formerly the person in charge at A9 (Amazon.com's search site) is heading to the Googleplex where he'll now work. No word on what Manber's title will be at Google. Amazon/A9 is replacing Manber with Dr. David Tennenhouse, who will take over as A9's Chief Executive Officer.

From the Amazon.com news release: [Tennenhouse] joins A9.com from Intel Corporation where he served as Vice President of the Corporate Technology Group and Director of Research. In addition to building Intel Research, he developed Intel's proactive computing vision, drove several Intel Capital Investments and laid the technical ground work for its new Digital Health Group. Prior to joining Intel, Tennenhouse was Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Technology Office where he guided programs in several areas, including search, datamining, information management, machine learning and distributed computing. Additionally, Tennenhouse held positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the Sloan School of Management.

We've blogged or mentioned several items about Manber since he's been at A9 including:

+ Report from PC Forum Search Panel Manber tells the audience, "In general, people will learn to use search better but have to invest the thinking--we are not in the mind reading business."

+ Search as a Platform, Where is it Going: a Web 2.0 Panel (via Zawodny)

+ Webcast: A9's Udi Manber speaks at the University of Washington, 2004

+ Battelle Interviews Udi Manber for Business 2.0

In recent months Google has hired several big Internet names including Vin Cerf and Louis Monier. Meanwhile, Yahoo is now the workplace of Andrei Broder and Ricardo Baeza-Yates.

Amazon's A9 launched in September 2004. A little over a year ago A9 made news when the bfean offering egan offering "block view" or street level imagery for several large U.S. cities.

Last March, A9 began their OpenSearch initiative allowing webmasters and site owners the chance to add their own search buttons or columns to the A9 service.

Postscript From Danny:

Short AP story here, slightly longer Seattle PI story here.

Postscript From Barry:

Looks like not only the CEO left, but also the CTO. Greg Linden reports that A9's CTO, Ruben Ortega, has also left A9. When Greg asked him why he left, he stated family reasons. But he also did add, "I was quite surprised by the news of Udi leaving. I knew we were doing executive level recruiting, but I was under the impression we were looking for my replacement, not Udi's."

Posted by Gary Price at 5:49 PM | Permalink

February 3, 2006

New Gossip Rag On Google Execs Dating

New gossip rag ValleyWag discloses that Google cofounder Larry Page and Google vice president of search products Marissa Mayer apparently used to date, backed up by an anonymous comment on a blog. Hey, that's not the only evidence! Apparently it's an open secret in Silicon Valley. Publications haven't reported this out of fear the Big G might get upset with them, ValleyWag helpfully explains.

Yep, these same publications had no problem slamming Google right and left when it had the gall to stop talking to News.com after a privacy article involving Google CEO Eric Schmidt. But reporting the alleged love lives of Googlers? That would clearly be a step too far.

Meanwhile, expect Gray Hat News to step up and kick some ValleyWag butt shortly. Gurtie and Chris have been all over the Marissa scene from her birthday to her clothes as well as hard hitting interviews about user needs. ValleyWag isn't going to be able to walk into their territory without taking a blow. Gurtie's tough -- plus she's a Brit like ValleyWag's publisher Nick Denton. She can take 'em (FYI, for Nick's love life, you'll have to read Jossip here. I don't think he ever dated Larry, but I'm sure either Jossip or ValleyWag will let us know, if so).

Anyway, I've got it down now. Before asking about things like Chinese Censorship or AutoLink issues or whether partnering with AOL might impact Google's editorial quality, gotta ensure all interviews now cover past, current and future dating partners.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:03 AM | Permalink

January 31, 2006

January 26, 2006

Google Engineering Director Says Google UI Is as Much Science as it is Art

Mickey Alam Khan's story on DMNews.com: Google Expects to Keep Home Page Simple, reports on a keynote address by Jen Fitzpatrick, an engineering director at Google that was given at Shop.org's FirstLook 2006 event.

Fitzpatrick: "Over time, this white empty home page became a symbol of Google's philosophy," she said. "Sergey always says, 'don't put things in people's way.'"

Comment: This is one Google philosophy that has reached the masses and sticks with then. I co-taught a college class during the Fall 2005 semester and pointed out that many other user interfaces are clean and lack clutter. For the most part a search box and a few tabs. MSN Search, Exalead, Yahoo's clutter free interface and even Clusty to name just a few. The students saw and understood what I was talking about but for some reason I got the feeling they thought that the Google page was better. Perhaps it was familiarity coupled with some Google "secret sauce."

On Adding New Tabs to the Home Page If the search engine is going to add another tab on the home page, will it drive at least 20 percent of Google's users to that feature?

Listening to users is critical. Take the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Google's home page next to "Google Search." Entering a term takes users directly to the Web page of the first result. It's there because of users studied interacting with the feature. They liked it because they thought Google had a personality -- people behind them," Fitzpatrick said.

On Getting it Right The company combines internal testing, user studies, log analysis and customer feedback to constantly track its user experience. And there is room for mistakes and adjustment. "As we launch products, we expect not to get things right on the first try," Fitzpatrick said.

Comment: Those of us who follow Google closely know that it seems like a day (ok, a week) doesn't go by that we don't learn about a UI test that some user group is seeing and that Google is monitoring with log analysis.

The UI "I think the [user interface] of Google is as much science as art," Fitzpatrick said.

Postscript: If you're interested in seeing Jen Fitzpatrick in action. She hosts this Google recuiting video about life at Google. It's available from Google Video here.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:01 PM | Permalink

January 23, 2006

Schmidt, Brin, Page Will Once Again Earn Base Salaries of $1.00 in 2006, Other Senior Execs Get $75K Raise

Google has just filed a report with the SEC that lists the annual base salaries (stock options and other items excluded of course) for top execs in 2006. Once again, Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page will have a base salary of $1.00. This is the same base salary they received in 2005.

Other Salaries listed in the SEC Filing David Drummond Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and General Counsel 2006 Base: $250,000 2005 Base: $175,000

Omid Kordestani Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Field Operations 2006 Base: $250,000 2005 Base: 175,000

George Reyes Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer 2006 Base: $250,000 2005 Base: $175,000

Shona Brown Senior Vice President of Business Operations 2006 Base: $250,000 2005 Base: $175,000

The complete SEC filing is available here.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:36 PM | Permalink

January 22, 2006

The Google Podium: Home to Transcripts of Speeches and Presentations by Google Execs

Those of you who watch Google closely might be interested to learn about a new page on the Google Press Center site, titled: Google Podium. It provides access to transcripts (and in some cases video or audio) of speeches and presentations by Google executives. Of course, not each and every presentation by top Googler's are available but this page might be a good place to begin when looking for this type of material.

When I checked the page the other day I found Larry Page's CES presentation, a few items from the Google Zeitgeist conference, links to interviews with Sergey Brin and Omid Kordestani from Web 2.0, and a couple of other links.

An RSS feed is presently unavailable to learn when new items are added to the page but you could use a service like Web-Site Watcher, Trackle, WatchthatPage or something similar to be alerted to changes on the page.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:31 PM | Permalink

January 17, 2006

Google Names New Managing Director in UK; European Job Recruitment Drive Begins

According to this Netimperative article Google has just named Mark Howe as the new managing director of their UK operations.

Howe has worked in the British television industry for over 20 years, including 12 years in multi channel TV. His last position was as managing director of Flextech's media sales house, interactive digital sales.

The article adds that Google is beginning a new European recruitment drive for new employees.

The firm is seeking to recruit other more staff and aims to be the ?number one choice for Europeans wanting to pursue a career in the media or technology industries?.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:29 PM | Permalink

January 13, 2006

The Economist: Larry Page on His Way to Changing the World

The Economist article: St Lawrence of Google, offers a profile of Google co-founder, Larry Page that says he's "well on his way" to changing the world. Many of the comments come from the post keynote press conference last week that we've mentioned and Engadget published a lengthy post about almost immediately after the event ended.

From the article: Does Larry Page ever get vertigo when contemplating his life and future?..."It's not a good thing to think about," said Mr Page behind the stage after his keynote address in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week. But if he must ponder his company's achievements and power, he says in his halting, thoughtful voice, it gives him an even greater "sense of responsibility" to make the world a better place. "The reason your question doesn't make sense", adds Eric Schmidt, the comparative veteran who is Google's chief executive and jointly runs the company with the founders, "is that he's too busy" to have vertigo. Busy, that is, changing the world.

The article goes on to talk about Larry as a boy, Google's culture and future and Google as God. One visitor to the company's ?Googleplex? in Silicon Valley ?felt as if I were in the company of missionaries?. A consequence of the theory that Google is aiming to run the world could be that ?Google may be less liked in the industry than Microsoft inside 12 months,? says Pip Coburn, a technology analyst. Bloggers have started accusing Google of hubris and arrogance. Paul Saffo at Silicon Valley's Institute for the Future says that ?Google is a religion posing as a company.??

Btw, if you want more from Eric Schmidt, who was also at the backstage press event, he sat down with the BBC for a brief interview. This post has a pseudo transcript and a link to the video.

Postscript: It made me both laugh and smile that during his speech Page talked about (joking) Google, the fast food provider. Last April, April Fools Day to be precise, I wrote an overview of what I called Foodgle, Google's move into the frozen food business.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:44 PM | Permalink

January 8, 2006

Google CEO Chats with the BBC About Online Info, Click Fraud (Not a Problem So Far), 20% Time, and the Competition

Google Blogoscoped points to BBC News article about Google Video that includes an "exclusive" video interview with Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO. The story and a link to the interview (look for the link in upper right hand corner of page) is available here. Here are a few quotes from Mr. Schmidt that were made during the interview.

"Google is really about changing access to information and worldwide getting people information that they couldn't get before." "Information just doesn't mean web it also means books, newspapers, and eventually audio/video, and everything." "We think people want to see everything online."

Q: How much further can you go with the company?

"We're clearly just beginning and the easiest way to think about it is, today if you get information that's not available on Google then we have not done our job or we're not there yet but it makes sense that there be a single place, or a few places, as opposed to a thousand of places that you have to go to get digital information. We also know that all information is either currently digital or will be digital. So, we will have to think of ways to pay for it, we will have to figure out ways to get it to you, you'll have to be able to experience it on the right type of device, it will have to be connected on your mobile phone. All of that is what we're up to."

The discussion then turns to Google and Google Video. Schmidt says that some of the video on Google Video is "hilarious" while other content is sometimes in "questionable taste."

"Advertisers are also beginning to shift dollars to the Internet so newspapers and television and so forth have to find sources of revenue that are not just newspapers and television in the old way, they have to have sources of revenue in this new online medium and Google turns out to have invented a lot of the best technology to make money for them.

Interviewer asks about abuse of advertising systems and click fraud. "Whenever you have a large operation on the Internet you are going to have people who will to try to game it. So, we have people who for example, have people who try to unilaterally change their search rankings which we don't permit. So we guard against it using specialized computer technology, some special algorithms and some very smart people. We do the same thing for ads. It's possible you're an advertiser and you're doing a good job and somebody could come in and falsely claim that people were using your site when in fact they weren't. That's not OK with us. So we detect that and we prevent it. So far it has not been a problem. Any significant Internet company has this in the back of their mind and builds systems to combat it. It's not going away, it will be true for many many years."

On Google getting "too big," bureaucratic, with little innovation. "We have studied this and we think we have organized the company to prevent this. Of course, time will tell. For example, we have organized our company into very small teams of engineers and we encourage the engineers to spend 20% of their time working on whatever they want to. Now, they're not going to work on something unrelated to technology, their engineers, right. But we find that many of the most creative ideas come literally, bottoms up. People come up with the most crazy ideas, not all of them are great ideas but they are all interesting and it constantly causes people to question what we are doing and I think that is the key secret for our innovation so far. Looks like we will be able to do that at significant scale growth from today. The company is on the order of 6000 employees, looks like this model of creativity will scale to many more thousands."

On "digs" from Bill Gates "Look, this space, remember, Google is in the information business and the information business comprises huge media companies, small media publishers, books, many many many different players. It's a much much larger industry than what I've been in, the computer industry. There is plenty of room for all of the players that are trying different things. I will tell you that Microsoft's approaches are different and interesting. Yahoo's approaches are different and interesting. All of the people who are leading in this space, there is plenty of room for all of us."

Postscript: After Larry Page's keynote presentation was finished at CES he headed backstage for a press conference with well-known press members and bloggers. Eric Schmidt was also there. Paul Boutin from Engadget was one of those who received an invite and he reports about what Larry had to say here.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:54 PM | Permalink

January 5, 2006

Portions of "Google Jobs" Site Unavailable

UPDATE: The site is back online and functioning properly as of 6.30pm EST.

Looking for a job at Google? Well, don't look now, at least at this hour.

Although, the main page is available, I noticed earlier this afternoon that all of their job listings and many of the pages with info for prospective employees are unavailable. Here's what I found when I went to find openings for "all U.S. locations." (Screen Cap). Searching for openings also proved to be a no go. This page that lists Google's many job benefits is also unavailable (Screen Cap).

It appears that much of Google's jobs site is powered by non-Google search technology and that's where the problem lies at this hour.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:16 PM | Permalink

January 4, 2006

Bill Gates Keynote Address at Consumer Electronic Show Will be Webcast Tonight; CES Podcasts via Yahoo

As many of you know, the Consumer Electronics Show begins today in Las Vegas with keynote presentations from Bill Gates, Terry Semel, and Larry Page. You can view a live webcast of the Bill Gates keynote address live, beginning at 6:30 PM/PST tonight. What will he have to say about search? I'm sure an archived version of the video and a text transcript will be available soon after the speech concludes.

On Friday, Yahoo's Terry Semel speaks at 9am PST and Google's Larry Page addresses a CES audience at 4pm PST.

At the moment, I can't find any links to where webcasts of the speeches by Semel and Page will be available. If I do, I'll add them to this post as a postsript. Often, presentations from Yahoo execs are linked here and Google speeches here.

On a somewhat related note, Yahoo is offering various podcasts and from CES via their podcast service. It's accessible here.

Update: Yahoo CEO Terry Semel's keynote address on Friday will be vidcast. You can find all of the details here.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:28 PM | Permalink

January 3, 2006

Google Still Searching For Executive Chefs

Interviews for jobs at Google are known to be very difficult and demanding on potential job candidates. I wonder if the same "tough" interview approach also applies to those who want to cook for Googlers at the Mountain View Googleplex? Many months after Google started to look for a couple of new excutive chefs, they're still looking.

Let's review.

2005 was the year Google went looking for some chefs after Google's first chef, the famous Charlie Ayers, left the company. Today, over a year after I first spotted the job postings and 5 months after the highly publicized Google "cook-off" I still noticed a job posting for executives chefs at the Googplex.

On December 28, 2004 I spotted two job positions at the Googleplex for a Lead Chef and On-Site Food Services Manager.

In May, 2005 we learned that Charlie Ayers, Google's chef (the person Danny once called Google's Chief Food Officer) decided to leave the company. Note: Since then, Charlie has set-up his own site (recipes, too!).

Then, in August 2005, and with a massive amount of mainstream press attention, Google announced cook-off to help find, select, and hire two executive chefs to cook and serve hungry Googler's in Mountain View.

I'm mentioning this today because it appears that Google is still looking for two executive chefs. I recently came across the job posting and it remains online today.

No word on when the cook-off will be held.

Postscript: Thanks to Mike over at TechDirt for sharing this SiliconValley.com story about one chef's day trying out for a position at Google. The story is headlined (a good one): Pressure cooker: One chef's tryout at Google.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:58 PM | Permalink

December 29, 2005

Google Guys Invest in a Motion Picture Being Made by Friend

Via Philipp at Google Blogoscoped, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that informs us that the Google Guys (Sergey and Larry) are investing in a film titled, " Broken Arrows - the Movie" written and directed by a pal they met while at Stanford, Reid Gershbein.

Kopytoff writes: The investment by Google's founders may give insight into how they plan to use their deep pockets, a topic they have never discussed publicly. Although relatively thrifty, they have splurged on occasion, such as their film investment and buying a Boeing 767 jet to help ferry themselves and employees around the globe.

Is the film production unit of Google far off? How does Google Flicks or Google Cinema sound? They can make pal Gershbein in charge of production. Heck, original content to help drive Google Video and other services sure sounds like a good idea and something already being done at Yahoo. In the mean time, you've got to wonder if this new film might be one day vailable for download/rental on Google Video?

From the article: Eventually, Google may allow owners of video rights to charge users for individual downloads. But Gershbein said he hadn't discussed the possibility with anyone at Google.

For more on Google and the rental/selling/downloading of video content, take a look at some interesting research and writing by Garett Rogers from about a week ago.

Postscript: There is a 25MB trailer of the film linked on the film's web site. However, I was unable to find it today while searching Google Video by title. However, I was able to find it today via Yahoo Video. (-:

Posted by Gary Price at 3:48 PM | Permalink

December 27, 2005

Google Recruits Creator of Python; Blog from Google Spain Manager Debuts; New Compilation of Blogs by Googlers

Here are a couple of Google items that we spotted on two of of my favorite blogs that focus most of their efforts on tracking Google.

+ Dirson, posts about another successful recruitment of progammer by Google. It appears that Guido van Rossum, the creator of the Python programming language, is now a Google employee.

+ Dirson also reports that Miguel de la Reina (the manager of Google Spain) has launched a blog (in Spanish, of course) titled: Googelizados.

And speaking of Googlers...

+ Philipp Lenssen from Google Blogoscoped, posts about a new compilation of blogs by Googlers. It comes from the editor of The Google Planet which is a digest of blog posts by Google employees.

Btw, one of my favorite non-search sites of 2005 also comes from Philipp. If you've never visited his highly addictive, Games for the Brain site, it's more than worth a look and some time.

Also, my previous post about email services, includes a link to another favorite Google blog, Nathan Weinberg's Inside Google.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:06 PM | Permalink

December 23, 2005

Kung Fu Over Kai-Fu Between Google & Microsoft Ends

Microsoft, Google Settle Suit from Red Herring covering the fact that Google and Microsoft are no longer going to fight over Google China head Dr. Kai-Fu Lee. Terms of the agreement aren't disclosed.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:58 AM | Permalink

December 21, 2005

Google Worries Traditional Marketers & Google Print Ads To Enter New Phase

A twofer of stories out of MediaPost looking at how Google will be trying new things with its Google Publication Ads program, a program which is one of the latest things to get traditional marketers worried that Google may be making moves on their turf.

Google Readies 'Phase Two' Of Print Ads Project covers Google about to try new things in a second phase of its print ads program -- but what exactly these will be, the company isn't saying. BusinessWeek found recently that some advertisers were less than thrilled with the program, so perhaps pricing or formats may change.

Google Begins Agency Outreach, Recruits Traditional Media Buyers from MediaPost covers how Google's reaching around ad buyers directly to advertisers, as well as an expansion of ads into the offline world, is making some traditional ad buyers nervous.

Google counters it's doing more to work with ad agencies, from training programs to having "agency development managers" to and the creation of new products. Google's also apparently recruitment more people with traditional ad backgrounds. Gary's covered previously how there are a ton of jobs going for the print program.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:12 PM | Permalink

December 12, 2005

Searches for Google's Share Price, AdWords, and New Homes

So a Googler or the relative of a Googler goes to Google and types in the ticker symbol of Google (GOOG) to see the latest price of the high flying stock. Big deal. It happens all the time from Googler's and lots of other shareholders.

So, what's the big deal? Well, I noticed an AdWord today that shows what might be some good SEM work. The first AdWord when I searched GOOG earlier today was from general contractor selling a brand new 5 bedroom, 4 bath home, in Mountain View neighbor, Palo Alto.

As you know, home sale prices in the Mountain View/Palo Alto area are expensive (very) and rising. Some might say "out of control" (the Google effect?) and this new home might be one that only a person with a few, just a few, shares of Google stock can afford. The price of the new home is not listed. In case you don't see the ad, I have a screen cap here of the ad for this new Palo Alto home. (-:

Postscript: If you're interested in understanding why I saw the ad, this post, article, and sidebar has more info about the builder of this and other homes and the targeting of certain people searching for the Google share price.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:42 PM | Permalink

December 10, 2005

Google Job Opening For Head Of Classified Advertising Efforts

There has been massive amounts of talk about Google's involvement and role in the classified advertising business (Google Base? Google Automat?). Yesterday, Eric, Sergey, Larry and crew posted a job opening for someone to run their classified advertising efforts. The company considers classified advertising as one of its "vertical" markets (ie. entertainment, travel, etc.)

The position would allow the director to be based in either New York City or Mt. View. Here are some things I noticed from the job posting that can be found here and went live on Monster last night:

+ Job Title: Google: Vertical Markets Director, Classifieds ? New York or Mountain View "...your main responsibility will be to develop and execute on a strategy for driving ad sales with all advertisers in the Classifieds category on a national/international level, working with all sales channels and resources (DSO, ISO, Online).

+ Minimum 12 years progressive work experience, 6+ years in Classifieds marketplace, preferably in marketing, brand management, or advertising sales.

+ Hiring and managing Specialist(s) and/or Associate(s) for the Classifieds team.

+ Utilize and leverage all available resources (marketing, public relations, product and engineering, etc) to achieve non-revenue objective. + BA/BS degree required, preferably from top-tier school. MBA Preferred.

Postscript: A little late to the party on this one folks. Rubel had a posting about the job opportunity about a week ago. The job is also listed on the Google site.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:03 PM | Permalink

December 8, 2005

Creativity: The "Hire Me Google" Blog

Score one for creativity. I was looking at a list of brand new domain names and came across this one, HiremeGoogle.com. It links to a blog and bio to a person (I can't find his actual name on the blog) in Germany, who wants to work for Google and hopes this blog gets him noticed. At the moment the blog has some recent news (like Google Calendar not launching yesterday) and the following statements:

A lot of people want to work for Google. I'm one of them. In order to increase my chances of ever getting noticed (let alone hired) by them I have to stand out. This is my attempt to do so In the coming weeks and months I will be writing small apps which in some way utilize or extend the interfaces and features Google already offers. By being creative and efficient I hope to demonstrate Google that I?d make a fine employee.

You'll also find a list of Google Blogs and a blogroll listing our site, Battelle, Lenssen, Weinberg, and more.

Good luck to this wannabe employee of Eric, Larry, and Sergey.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:10 AM | Permalink

December 7, 2005

Google Once Again Looking for Ad Quality Raters

We've blogged numerous times about Google and their quality rater program. A quick note to let you know that once again Google is looking for ad quality raters. It's a temp job for people who are able to work in the US or Canada. Here's a link to the job posting that went live on Monday. This post has a look back at other postngs about human quality raters at Google, MSN, and Yahoo inclduing this item about the raters hub in use at Google.

Postscript: I just noticed that G is also looking for rateers in more languages: + Quality Rater, Chinese Language (Work in U.S., or Canada) + Ads Quality Rater - German Language (Work in U.S., or Canada) + Quality Rater, French Language (Work in U.S., Canada, or France)

Posted by Gary Price at 10:53 AM | Permalink

December 6, 2005

Eric Schmidt Lays Out Google's Ten Golden Rules

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, along with co-author UC Berkeley professor Hal Varian,, has written: "Google's Ten Golden Rules" for Newsweek on getting the most out of knowledge workers. Google's 10 Golden Rules are:

Hire by committee
Cater to their every need
Pack them in
Make coordination easy
Eat your own dog food
Encourage creativity
Strive to reach consensus
Don't be evil (Note: we knew it had to be there somewhere)
Data drive decisions
Communicate effectively

Obviously, the article has a bit of discussion about each rule. I'm going to take some time to analyze. More later. I also wouldn't doubt that Danny and Chris will also share some thoughts later on. Thanks to Greg Linden for the news tip (Greg also has a few thoughts from previous posts that he includes).

I would love to read other search CEO's share their golden rules. I wonder if Semel, Berkowitz, Gates/Ballmer, and even the leaders of smaller engines are already working on their lists. How do they compare.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:48 AM | Permalink

December 5, 2005

Eric Schmidt Tells John Battelle: "We're Not in the Portal Business"

In a new Q&A style interview in Business 2.0 , the covers a lot of ground, John "The Search" Battelle chats with Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt. Topics include:

+ Doing No Evil Schmidt says: You and I may disagree on the definition of what is evil, but at least it gives us a way to have a very healthy debate.

+ Does Google Have a "Grand Plan"

+ What Schmidt does with his 20% time.

+ Google Print (aka Google Book Search)

+ Wi-Fi and Free Bandwith

+ John ask Schmidt a question about MSN Search. He does not comment.

My Favorite Passage:

Battelle: OK, so does that mean Google?s a portal? Because if you think of it that way, as Terry Semel recently pointed out, it ranks as one of the smaller ones.

Schmidt: Well, if I can be obnoxious --

Battelle: Please.

Schmidt: You?re using a tired model of looking at corporate behavior. You?re looking at us based on market share for technologies and ideas that were invented 10 years ago. A much better way to ask that is to say, Are the things that we?re doing consistent with the mission of the company? We?re not in the portal business, we?re in the business of making all the world?s information accessible and useful. We never have the conversation that you just asked.

The test that I apply -- and we do this every day, 70/20/10 -- is to ask how a feature will extend the core, the adjacent, or the innovative stuff to fulfill our mission. That?s the sort of drug that we all take, and it works really quite well. So it may very well be that what you said is correct, and it may not matter very much.

Note: I wonder if Mr. Schmidt would agree with Danny and call Google a stealth portal? I doubt it. (-:

More in the interview titled: The 70 Percent Solution.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:46 PM | Permalink

Latest on Insider Sales at the Googleplex

Via Nathan over at InsideGoogle, this AP article about insiders at Google selling shares of Goog shares titled: Google insiders cash in on company's lofty stock price.

Kudos to AP on the great lead: Google Inc. calls its headquarters the "Googleplex," but it's starting to resemble Fort Knox as new wealth has poured in from the stock sold by the company's insiders.

As of late November, a total of 14 Google executives and directors had pocketed a combined $4.3 billion by selling 18.6 million of their shares so far this year, according to Thomson Financial.

Leaders No surprise. Sergey and Larry who have earned more than $1.3 billion by selling 5.3 million of their individual shares in an automated trading program. Records show they still own 33 million shares.

Others

Omid Kordestani, Google's senior vice president of sales, $559.6 million
Ram Shiriram, a Google director who was among the company's earliest investors, $442.5 million
Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, $344.7 million
David Drummond, Google's vice president of corporate development, $118.7 million.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:46 PM | Permalink

November 30, 2005

Google Looking For Interactive TV Engineers; Yahoo Needs Search Relevance and Monetization Researcher

Yes, it's time for another Google TV job posting!

This time for engineers. The title of the job is: Software Engineer, Television Technology - Mountain View and Google is looking for, "well-rounded software engineers with a proven track record in creating and deploying robust high-volume interactive TV applications and services."

In September, Danny blogged about a posting discovered by Adam Lasnik to be a product manager for Google TV. A couple of days later, I went looking for the posting and it was gone, never to be seen again.

Now, over to Yahoo. How's this for a job title: + Search Relevance and Monetization Researcher As a Search Relevance and Monetization Researcher, you will help to improve the relevance and revenue of our Web search and sponsored search products.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:25 PM | Permalink

November 29, 2005

Yahoo Sponsored Search Simulation Job & Google After API Developer Relation Specialist

You know me, I'm always perusing job listings to see if I can spot interesting positions of tnterest to SEW Blog Readers or new services/trends that might be coming soon. Today, two interesting job openings popped up, one involving "sponsored search simulation" at Yahoo and the other at Google to help reach out to developers.

First, over at Yahoo. How's this for a job title: Engineering Manager - Sponsored Search Simulation

You've heard of war games, well now it's search games:

We are looking for a highly technical, hands on, experienced manager to lead the Marketplace Simulation and Forecasting project in Yahoo Search Marketing...You will be responsible for leading a small team of engineers and analysts, working closely with software architects, business and product managers, to build out a robust, reliable, high performance platform to be used in the testing, evaluation, and forecast of new marketplace design features.

Meanwhile, a few exits away in Mountain View at Google...

Google: Developer Relations Specialist - Mountain View

Are you interested in promoting Google's API's and open source initiatives? Google says:

Google is looking for a candidate who can advocate Google open source technologies and APIs to developers and create vibrant communities around them. The candidate will be responsible for the overall planning, budgeting, execution and success of developer outreach projects and will work primarily with Google engineering. Secondarily, the candidate will act as a liaison with our Legal, PR/Marketing and recruiting personnel.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:48 PM | Permalink

Film Industry Veteran Becomes Google's Newest Board Member

According to this news release, Google has named a new member to its Board of Directors.

The latest addition to the board is Ann Mather who will also serve as Chairperson for Google's Audit Committee. The official filing was made with the SEC on November 23rd when Mather became a " beneficial" owner of Google shares.

Mather also served on the Shopping.com's board prior to the company being acquired by eBay.

Perhaps most noteworthy is that Ms. Mather was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Pixar from 1999-2004.

Prior to joining Pixar, Ms. Mather was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Village Roadshow Pictures, and held various executive positions at the Walt Disney Company in Los Angeles from 1993 to 1999, including Senior Vice President of Finance and Administration for its Buena Vista International Theatrical Division. From 1992 to 1993 she worked for Disney in Paris to help start the international theatrical distribution arm in ten European countries.

So, in addition to getting a new member of its Board of Directors, Google has appointed someone with a "working knowledge" of the media/film industry and Apple's Steve Jobs, who is Pixar's CEO. Smooth move. You've got to wonder if Buzz Lightyear will be appearing on Google Video sometime soon. (-:

More in this news release and a story from News.com. This web page lists the complete Google Board of Directors but hasn't been updated to list either Ms. Mather or Shirley M. Tilghman, who was appointed to the board in October.

Postscript: If you're wondering about Ms. Mather's compensation package, etc. it's outlined in this just filed "Letter Agreement between Google and Ann Mather."

From the agreement text: As compensation for your services to the Company, you will be granted two initial equity grants. The first grant will be an option to purchase 12,000 shares of Google Class A common stock. This will be a non-qualified stock option with an exercise price equal to the closing fair market value of the underlying stock on the date of grant. The shares underlying the option will vest at the rate of 1/5th on the date one year after you commence service as a Director and an additional 1/60th each month thereafter, subject to your continued service as a Director on the applicable vesting date. The second grant will be in the form of 4,700 Google Stock Units (GSUs). Each GSU will entitle you to one share of Google Class A common stock when the GSU vests. Your GSUs will vest at the rate of 1/5th on the date one year after you commence service as a Director and an additional 1/20th each quarter thereafter, subject to your continued service as a Director on the applicable vesting date. Board grants take place on the first business day of the month following the date on which the Board approves the grant and you commence service on the Board. The option and GSUs shall be subject to the terms and conditions of the Company?s 2004 Stock Plan and their respective grant agreements, all of which documents are incorporated herein by reference.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:35 AM | Permalink

Google's Chef Charlie Gains Web Site

Google's legendary former chef Charlie Ayers has a new web site up. Chef Charlie Ayers offers his bio, photos and some recipes you might want to try.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:25 AM | Permalink

Blog On French Search Industry

Via Xooglers, former Googler Franck Poisson is running a French-language blog that covers the search industry, obviously of interest to anyone watching search and France. Long standing site French search site Abondance is well worth checking out, as well. The new Multilingual Search Blog is another resource French search watchers will also want to visit.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:18 AM | Permalink

November 28, 2005

Hey Googlers -- Let Us Manage Your Wealth!

Via John Battelle, Filthy Rich, But Froogle from BusinessWeek looks at the wealth management companies hoping to land Googlers as clients -- and what a tough crowd they are to hook. Check out the sidebar on how a homebuilder is targeting searches for goog -- which brings up Google's stock price -- as a way to reach out to wealthy Googlers.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:09 PM | Permalink

November 27, 2005

Mashup Lover and Google's Chief Evangelist, Vint Cerf, Interviewed

Perhaps Google's most famous new hire, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Vint Cerf, has sat down with Juan Carlos Perez of the IDG News Service for a brief Q&A interview that's posted here. Here are a few selected passages from the interview.

+ On Google loosing its focus as new services are added. Cerf says: Absolutely not. What's happening here is the aggregation of a remarkable collection of people, all of whom have a very visceral and strong appreciation for what is possible to do with software and information. And they are exploring a variety of ways in which to make these computer-driven tools more useful and also more cross functional. The focus isn't simply on search. The focus is on making information discoverable and useful, so all of these things you see happening at Google are side effects of expanding on the original paradigm, which was making search an effective tool. Now we're looking at how to make other information activities more effective and relevant.

+ On Mashups Cerf tells IDG: I can't tell you how excited I am about it. We know we don't have a corner on creativity. There are creative people all around the world, hundreds of millions of them, and they are going to think of things to do with our basic platform that we didn't think of. So the mashup stuff is a wonderful way of allowing people to find new ways of applying the basic infrastructures we're propagating. This will turn out to be a major source of ideas for applying Google-based technology to a variety of applications.

+ On Competition One way to get ahead is to stay ahead, and Google is working very hard to make sure it explores as many new ideas as it can. You won't find Google resting on any of its laurels and letting the grass grow.

+ On Google Book Search/Google Library On the Google [Book Search controversy], I don't think we explained as carefully as we should have how this was going to work and how we would protect the interest of the publishers. And the publishers have leapt to a conclusion which is not supported by what we're trying to do. Part of my job is to articulate that more carefully and I hope we can overcome the concerns that have been expressed.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:04 PM | Permalink

November 25, 2005

Google: The Print Ad Company Ramps Up Hiring

In the past few months we've both posted and read about Google beginning to move into the print advertising biz by purchasing space in print publications and then reselling ads on those pages to members of their ad network.

It looks like 2006 will the year that Google begins to really devote lots of human resources to this ad sales program. Why? In the past few days I've noticed Google ramping up with a bunch of new job postings for people to work in publication ad space. What follows is a sampling of those postings. All of the jobs, as might be expected, are based in New York City.

+ Manager, Publication Ad Sales - New York "...an immediate need for someone who can help us manage the Publication Ad Sales team for one of our new product offerings. The successful candidate will be responsible for managing 5+ Sales Representatives all with solid media/publishing backgrounds."

+ Account Executive, Publication Ad Sales - New York

+ Account Manager, Publication Ad Sales - New York

+ Account Strategist, Publication Ad Sales - New York

+ Media Buyer, Publication Ads - New York

+ Account Coordinator, Publication Partners (Temp) - New York

+ Manager, (Inside) Publication Ad Sales - New York

+ Publication Advertising Sales Representative - New York

+ Strategic Partner Development Manager, Publication Ads - New York

Posted by Gary Price at 9:45 AM | Permalink

Former Google Brand Manager Blogging Days At Google

Spotted via Google Weblog (unofficial), Xooglers is a new blog run by Google's former director of consumer marketing and brand management, Doug Edwards.

It promises to be "a gathering spot for ex-Googlers to reminisce and comment on the latest developments in search." So far, it looks to be Edwards only.

He introduces himself here and potential plans to do a book, but prefers for now to tell his Google story via a blog. Elsewhere in the blog, you can read of him answering Sergey Brin's tough hiring question and his view Google cofounder Larry Page isn't worried about being polite if he knows he's right.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:10 AM | Permalink

The Google Battle For Hiring Tech Talent (Yahoo Sez They Win)

From the Wall Street Journal, Google ignites hiring frenzy is yet another article on how Google and other companies are after tech talent. This has a few more details and more depth about the Google recruiting juggernaut and "Google Stock Units" that are offered. Yahoo says they've won the majority of head-to-head battles over candidates.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:58 AM | Permalink

November 17, 2005

Google Blogoscoped Interviews Matt Cutts

Yesterday, I posted a summary of a PubCon session that featured a live chat between Brett Tabke and Google's answer man, and just about everything else (including blogger), Matt Cutts. Today, Philipp over on Google Blogoscoped continues his great work and has posted a "must read" interview with Matt titled: Matt Cutts, Google's Gadgets Guy. The interview covers many topics including:

+ Matt's work on Google SafeSearch + His interest in insects + What he does or doesn't do on his 20% time + Background about his blog I told the public relations group at Google when I was starting my blog, but no one reviews my posts before they go live. Google has a blogging policy, but it?s pretty much common-sense: don?t post confidential stuff, material financial info, etc. + His feelings about Daniel Brandt of Google-Watch.org + The no-follow tag + Perks about working at the GooglePlex (being able to test new things) + And much more including the fact he still uses Bloglines over the Google Reader. Note: Matt also doesn't use Blogger to publish his blog.

Kudos to P.L. on the post.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:12 PM | Permalink

November 16, 2005

Matt Cutts Has a Cup of Coffee at PubCon Conference

Like he does at many of the Search Engine Strategies conferences, RustyBrick (Barry Schwartz) is blogging from the WebmasterWorld PubCon currently underway in Las Vegas. This post: Coffee Talk with Senior Google Engineer: Matt Cutts, offers a great Q&A style review (not an official transcript) of today's hour long session. Kudos to Barry for making it available.

Here are two of the more interesting Q&A's from the audience:

Q: CSS positioning? How does it affect ranking. A: Good question, I don't know. If your doing an include, it probably wont matter either way. In his mind, positioning text at top or bottom, is over rated. But try it.

Q: Google Analytics, can you confirm that Google will be using that data in the search engine? A: He cant confirm, but he can deny it. :) Matt as a Web spam team member, does not have access to this data. He wont even ask for it. If it becomes a concern, he will post it on his blog. People will always be concerned, so don't use it.

Postscript: Aaron Wall was also at the Matt Cutts session and he shares his overview here.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:52 PM | Permalink

November 11, 2005

Google Looking for Spanish Language Quality Raters

Do you speak and read Spanish have "experience" in Spain and other Spanish speaking countries? If so, than Google has just published a position opening (it's a temp job) to evaluate "search quality."

In particular, applicants will be asked to draw on experience living, studying, and keeping in touch with a Spanish-speaking country's (web) culture and language.

You can work anywhere in the U.S. or Canada. More here. We've posted about Google's quality rater program several times including here and here.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:36 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Recruiting Google's Matt Cutts

You've seen this type of thing before, but time for another chuckle -- Google's Matt Cutts gets a mistaken recruitment email from Yahoo.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:05 AM | Permalink

November 10, 2005

Matt Cutts Banned On Google? And Oct. 2005 Jagger Update Winds Down

The Oct. 2005 Google Jagger update saga that has sucked the life out of so many (but not all; some are blissfully unimpacted by it) seems to be ending. Indeed, so says Google's Matt Cutts in his Jagger winding down post. But Matt, if the update is over and bugs worked out, why's your blog banned on Google?

The article I just posted for Search Engine Watch members (go on, support the site - become a member and get to read the full story) goes into detail about the situation, but here are the highlights for everyone.

He's not really banned, but less savvy site owners could easily get that impression.
Dave Naylor presents the evidence in Jagger3 hahahaha, where he shows how a search for mattcutts.com brings up no matches. That's often a sign that a site has been banned.
He's not banned, however, as a search for matt cutts shows. You'll see how he's ranking in the top results for that, which wouldn't happen if he was banned.
But wait! Notice how he ranks twice, with listings for both www.mattcutts.com and mattcutts.com! That's a canonical error -- my favorite hated word and problem that I wrote about earlier. It's Google getting confused about which domain name to use for Matt's site (and other sites as well).
Overall, another reason for what I said earlier -- it's overdue for search engines to let us register all our domain names directly with them and indicate the ones they should be using.

Also, by winding down, that doesn't mean winding down on Google itself. Matt's post wrote that you'd find it in action if you went to the http://66.102.9.104/ data center. Over time -- the coming days -- changes will migrate to all the Google data centers.

In some related notes, Barry at Search Engine Roundtable points to Update Saga. Part zillion over at WebmasterWorld, where people are wondering if the update has come to an end. It also notes that GoogleGuy has warned of a PageRank/backlink update to happen between now and the end of the year.

Thoughts on Jagger: Recips Got Hammered, Trust Trumps All from Andy Hagans at the Link Building Blog is a nice, short piece summing up what he things were the two major changes in the update.

First, reciprocal links don't see to work as well (What are they? Want to discuss? check out this SEW Forum thread: Reciprocal Linking ? Dead or Alive?). Second, sites with authority/TrustRank seem to do better (What's that? Check out Yahoo My Web: An eBay For Knowledge).

Want to discuss or comment? Visit our SEW Forum thread, Oct. 2005 Google Update "Jagger". C'mon by Matt -- tell us what's going on :)

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:04 AM | Permalink

November 9, 2005

Yahoo's Ass Kicking Statue Controversy

This was one of those, "should I skip it" decisions, but I did find it interesting. Phillip at Google Blogoscoped in Yahoo in Battle Mode summarizes how Yahoo's mail team was given a statue (yep, there's even a picture) for "kicking an enemy's ass." That would be Google's bottom being whacked, specifically.

Phillip then points to Google's Kevin Fox having long commentary on the statue. Kevin used to be at Yahoo, and he does a compare and contrast feeling that Google's about making better products while Yahoo's focused on "how to beat Google" and finds the competition goes too far with the statue's comparison to Britain fighting Nazi Germany.

The comments after Kevin's post go all over the place and are fun to read -- pro-Yahoo, anti-Yahoo, pro-Google, anti-Google. Phillip also points to two Yahoo employees who comment on the statue as well (Ryan Kennedy suggests a toned-down description for the statue; this employee prefers the "be humble" approach).

Yahoo's new email interface is way, way cool (double verified by checking with my wife, who is a regular user) -- but honestly, the old system was already kicking Google's butt for the simple fact that anyone could sign-up for it without getting someone to send you an invite or having to get text messaged a secret code. When Gmail's freely open to anyone, then let the weigh-up really take place.

Speaking of statues, how about Yahoo putting a little message on the Bob's Big Boy statue that Chris and I came across in one of the Yahoo buildings when visiting this summer. I'll see about getting the photo off Chris's phone -- I made him stand there and take it. But it looks just like this, except the hamburger was replaced with the Inktomi logo.

Bob's an old friend I remember well, from my days of visiting Inktomi. He was in the lobby, and I'd sit next to him waiting for someone to come meet me.

If memory serves, Inktomi founder Eric Brewer bought him to represent the serving/caching service that Inktomi used to provide. When Yahoo bought Inktomi, Bob came over -- and apparently was nearly tossed out until someone gave him a home.

He deserves a better home and maybe his own message devoted to the Yahoo web search team -- those from Inktomi, plus the AltaVista and FAST/AllTheWeb vets. They assembled a great product that directly rivals Google's core search results. Heck, put Bob out in the main entrance of Yahoo! Just make the message praising the efforts without dissing the competition, and I suppose everyone will be happy.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:58 AM | Permalink

October 31, 2005

Review: Google and Yahoo Hiring Booms

Those of you who look at our blog regularly know that we try to post interesting and "telling" job openings at Google, Yahoo, and elsewhere. Chris has already blogged about Google WILL hire programs to support Open Office despite reports to the contrary. That's part of the story. This afternoon, Elinor Mills at News.com talks about the hiring rampages at both Google and Yahoo in the article: Google hiring like it's 1999.

In its most recent quarter, which ended Sept. 30, Google added 800 employees, bringing its global work force to 4,989. That's more than triple the total from just two years ago.

Btw, Google employed 2668 as of Sept 30, 2004.

According to Hoover's, Yahoo had more than 7600 employees in 2004, growing about 38%.

Here's a quick review of a few (and I mean just a few) recent Google and Yahoo job related stories and employment postings from various sources: + Via News.com: Google Hires New Public-Affairs Chief + Via News.com: Google hires another China exec

+ Via SEW Blog: Google Hiring Mac Developers + Via SEW Blog: Google Begins Hiring for Some Sort of Facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan + Via SEW Blog: Google Seeks Sales Team For Payment Solution + Via SEW Blog: Google TV Job Posting: Gone After a Day Online

And some very recent postings: + Google: Creative Maximizer Coordinator Now, that's a job title! Work in Chicago! + Google: Gmail Coordinator and Froogle Coordinators (Temp Jobs) + Google: Inside Sales Representative, Google Payment Solutions - New York + Google: Google Earth Inside Sales Representative

+ Yahoo: AJAX Web Developer - My Yahoo + Yahoo: Senior Editor, Yahoo! Tech: Yahoo! Inc + Yahoo: Yahoo! Research Scientist, Search Content Analysis Team + Yahoo: Product Manager, Yahoo! Search Submit + Yahoo: Product Manager, Yahoo! Global Search Syndication + Yahoo: Principal Software Engineer - Chinese Search Technology + Yahoo: Director, UED for PC Client -- Yahoo!

Posted by Gary Price at 7:59 PM | Permalink

October 17, 2005

Google Recruits Lead Programmer of Open-Source IM Project

According to the CRN Australia article: Google snaps up Gaim programmer, Google has recruited another well-known programmer in the instant messaging space. According to CRN Australia, Sean Egan, the lead developer of the open-source Gaim instant messaging project, has left open-source, multi-protocol IM project the to work at Google in Seattle.

From the article and Gaim Site: "The goal of Google Talk is to make real-time communication as open as possible, and in that regard, I've been working to offer all of Google Talk's features into other clients," wrote Egan. "Currently, I'm working on making it as easy as possible for other clients to use Google Talk's voice features."

Gaim was a participant in Google's Summer of Code initiative.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:16 PM | Permalink

October 16, 2005

Is Google Gearing Up for a Mac Software Assault?

One question we often get asked comes from Macintosh users. They ask, "Does Google have any plans to release some/any/all of their desktop client applications (Google Earth, Google Talk, Picasa, etc.) for my system?" It's a great question and while we don't have the answer, two recent job postings have got us thinking that Google is beginning to ramp up development of Macintosh software and services.

A job listing that was posted on an IEEE site last Friday and is for a Macintosh Developer. Another posting, this time directly on the Google job site, includes a listing for a Senior Macintosh Developer. Mac users stay tuned.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:22 PM | Permalink

October 13, 2005

Google's Onsite Dentist Is A Hoax!

It turns out there is no onsite dentist as Google, as we and others reported yesterday. Yeah, you got us! Google Blogoscope's got the official denial from Google over here. Those worried about the dental hygiene of Googlers can relax to know onsite visiting dental service for them is still available.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:50 AM | Permalink

Want to Be A Google AdWords Coordinator in China?

I noticed for the first time this afternoon (am I late to the party on this one?) that Google is advertising on its website for non-tech positions in China. The job currently posted is for an Online Coordinator for AdWords. Yes, of course, Chinese language skills are a must. A few week's ago I blogged that Google received 1000 resumes for 50 jobs in five hours.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:34 AM | Permalink

Nice Work if You Can Get It: Details Emerge About Google's Newest Board Members Stock Package

Here's some nice additional work if you can get it, get on the Google Board of Directors! It was widely reported last week that Princeton University President, Shirley Tilghman had been asked to join Google's Board of Directors.

Today, Michael Liedtke from the AP takes a closer look at what it's worth to Tilghman in his article: Newest Google Director Joins Wealth Parade.

According to Liedtke's article, her Google board position could provide her with more income than her job at Princeton. Her salary as a molecular biologist at Princeton was $485,000 salary during Princeton's 2002-03 school year (the latest numbers available).

Instead of cash, the online search engine leader is paying Tilghman like all its other directors ? with a bushel of prized stock that eventually could turn her Google duties into a better-paying gig than her job running an Ivy League university.

Key Numbers: + Compensation package includes an award that can be gradually converted into 6,000 Google shares during the next five years.

+ Google also granted Tilghman 12,000 stock options with an exercise price of $318.68. Here's the actual SEC FORM 4 filing.

Shirley Tilghman is the first woman to be joining Google's board.

Here's a copy of Ms.Tilghman's Letter of Agreement with Google dated August 16, 2005. It points out that if she needs to travel to certain events, she'll be reimbursed for first-class air travel. If that's a no go she'll be reimbursed to fly on a private plane. Maybe she could travel on Google's new 767 jetliner or maybe Google's plane offers only all-coach service? (-:

Job Requirements Attendance at most of Google's board meetings. The company held 15 meetings last year and according to the SEC each director attended at least three-fourths of them

The Other Google Board Members

Larry Page
Sergey Brin
Eric Schmidt
John Doerr
Michael Moritz
K. Ram Shriram
Paul Otellini (CEO of Intel)
Arthur Levinson CEO of Genentech Inc.)

Postscript: If you're wondering about director compensation at other companies, Liedtke writes: The median compensation package for directors at companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 was $139,060 during the fiscal year ending in May 2005, according to Equilar Inc., a San Mateo firm specializing in compensation issues. The figure includes cash retainers, stock awards, stock options, but excludes fees for committee meetings.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:07 AM | Permalink

October 12, 2005

Google Tooth: Google's Onsite Dentist

If you're going to give your employees free meals, I guess you've got to give them a dentist to take care of the aftermath. I'm not sure if the dental work is free, but via SiliconBeat, you can read more about Google's full-time dentist Dr. Sam Gustard and see pictures of his clinic on his blog, That's The Tooth.

The initial post covers Googlers giving him a "Google Tooth (beta)" logo and why it's cheaper for the company to have a dentist on site than have those employees spending hours going offsite for dental work. Plus, what if you get a toothache during a key product release?

OK, but honestly -- somehow other companies manage to get by with employees making use of personal time to visit a dentist and managing to maintain good enough dental hygiene that an unexpected emergency doesn't stop products from shipping.

Then again, if the money's flowing, who wouldn't want to have a company giving you easy access to a dentist, especially if it's free.

Postscript: Turns out, this is a hoax. More details in Google's Onsite Dentist Is A Hoax!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:24 AM | Permalink

October 10, 2005

Talking With Google's Matt Cutts

Interview Of Matt Cutts from Aaron of SEO Book is a nice talk with Matt Cutts, Google's spam fighter, webmaster relations guru, quality assurance czar and hands-down winner of the needs a better title sweepstakes at Google. Matt, officially a Google software engineer, covers not all SEO being spam, no one being able to guarantee a top ranking free listing on Google, asking for SEO references when hiring a firm, LookSmart's distributed Grub spider being his favorite crawler, how he color codes his email, buzz marketing, Mick Jagger being the Matt Cutts of rock 'n' roll and lots, lots more.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:05 PM | Permalink

October 8, 2005

Sergey Brin: The Video Lecture

Several weeks ago Danny blogged about Professor Marti Hearst's "awesome" UC Berkeley class featuring many presentations by some of the biggest names in the search biz including Battelle, Pedersen, Norvig, Dumais, Horowitz and MANY others. Even more exciting, all of the lectures are on the web and archived.

This past week it was Sergey Brin's turn to speak to SIMS 141: Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business.

View the lecture here (RealVideo). It runs about 40 minutes.

I haven't had a chance to watch Brin's presentation yet, I will, but this news release offers a few highlights and quotes:

Casual and relaxed, Brin talked about how Google came to be, answered students' questions, and showed that someone worth $11 billion (give or take a billion) still can be comfortable in an old pair of blue jeans. ...it was his unspoken message that was most powerful: To those with focus and passion, all things are possible. Simple ideas sometimes can change the world, he said. On Wikipedia: This is a simple idea ? one you would assume would not work, but it does, said Brin. One reason is scale: it taps the power and potential of a global audience. We believed we could build a better search. We had a simple idea, that not all pages are created equal. Some are more important," related Brin.

On Other Companies -- Microsoft? Burning up time and energy worrying about what other companies are doing is a mistake, he said. Instead, think about where you and your enterprise are going, your ambitions and your hopes.

Brin also touched on free speech issues in China and what role, if any, Google could play in ending the digital divide.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:46 PM | Permalink

October 7, 2005

Google's Omid Kordestani Talks; Larry Page Enjoys Timing Queries

Conversations between John Battelle and search industry officials at Web 2.0 keep pouring out of the Argent Hotel in San Francisco. This time, the SearchViews team (thanks!) offers highlights of a conversation between John and Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Business Development at Google.

Battelle: Lots of new announcements converging on Microsoft. Given the experience with Netscape, do you think about that as Google makes new announcements every other day? Kordestani: The business model works. Google is obsessive about users & services. Part of the culture is to focus on new ideas but learn from the past. We'll only fail if we fail our users. Google is not focused on competitors.

I often wonder if "every other day" as John puts it means that there are just too many announcements for the average person to keep up with. Sure, those of us who follow the industry TRY (it's not easy) to keep up with what's going on (sometimes not allowing us to get much sleep).

Recently a few non-search types told me that with Google announcing something new/different everyday it's difficult to keep up and have time to understand what's new, different, and useful before they get word of another annoucement. In other words, it can be confusing. Of course, another reason (and a GOOD one) for Google's constant stream of announcements is that it helps keep others out of the mainstream press or at least, reduces the amount they're discussed. Everything Google seems to do appears newsworthy. Their contest to find a new chef was mentioned all over the place. Talk about brand reinforcement. It's all part of Google's brilliance and something everyone else must struggle with, at least at the present time.

Kordestani also tells JB that he thinks Google is just getting going and adds that Larry Page still thinks that Google doesn't work very well.

While we're on the topic of Larry Page, Elinor Mills from News.com shares other comments that Kordestani made during his Web 2.0 conversation. He said, "Larry literally sits in front of our search engine and counts how long it takes...He doesn't think it is fast enough." Yes, Larry speed/peformance is important (my search for your name just took .07 seconds, that's fast) but given Google's responsibility as a research tool and it's already rapid speed, try not to forget that search and IR from the point of a researcher or advertiser is more than about how fast something is returned.

Btw, this is not the first time we've heard that Larry doesn't think Google works very well. Back in May 2003, Page told Walt Mossberg during the D: All Thing Digital Conference that he thought Google was terrible.

I would like to meet the search executive who publicly exclaims that their search engine is perfect and couldn't get any better. If someone said this I think we would all walk away as fast as possible. (-:

Posted by Gary Price at 12:39 PM | Permalink

Google Opens Lobbying Office In Washington D.C.

It looks like I have some new company here in DC, Google. According to Andrew McLaughlin, a Google Senior Policy Advocate, big "G" has opened an office here.

The Google Blog says that Alan Davidson, will lead Google's lobbying efforts. Key issues that Davidson will be working on many issues including:

+ Net neutrality From the blog, "hould network operators be able to block their customers from reaching competing websites and services (such as Internet voice calls and video-on-demand)? Should they be able to speed up their own sites and services, while degrading those offered by competitors? Should an innovator with a new online service or application be forced to get permission from each broadband cable and DSL provider before rolling it out?"

+ Copyrights and fair use Quite the popular issue these days given the Google Library Project

+ Intermediary liability From the blog, "Not surprisingly, we don?t believe the Internet works well if intermediaries and ISPs are held liable for things created by others but made searchable through us."

Much more in the Google Blog post: Google goes to Washington.

Postscript: Yahoo has had an government affairs office here in D.C. since 1999. You can read a bit about it in here and here.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:53 AM | Permalink

October 5, 2005

Google Names Princeton President Shirley Tilghman To Board

News from Google that it has appointed a new member of its board of directors, Shirley M. Tilghman, president of Princeton University and professor of molecular biology there. She's not yet been added to the full board list, which you will find here. Tilghman brings the board up to 10 people, and she becomes the first and only woman on the board.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:18 AM | Permalink

October 4, 2005

Search Engine Employees Appear on Technology Innovators Under 35 List

I was reviewing the new Technology Review list of top innovators under the age of 35 (the TR35) and came across three names in the search, online info business. Make sure tointeresting. review the complete list, a very interesting read. A tip o' the SEW Blog cap to:

+ Stewart Butterfield, 32 Flickr/Yahoo

+ Dennis Crowley, 29 dodgeball (acquired by Google)

+ David Pennock, 34 Yahoo Research

Others on the list include Bram Cohen (BitTorrent) and Regina Barzilay, 34 (MIT). During her time at Columbia University, Barzilay helped develop the automatic news summarizer, NewsBlaster. The service remains online today.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:51 PM | Permalink

Google Seeks Sales Team For Payment Solution -- Also, Google Job Openings in the OC

We know that Google has plans in the online payment business (Google Wallet?, something else?). Today, I noticed that Google is now advertising positions for people to sell their "payment solution". It's an inside sales job based in New York City.

Inside Sales Representative, Google Payment Solutions - New York Google is looking for upbeat, focused and well-organized individuals to join our Inside Sales team for Payment Solutions. You will be part of a group of specialists dedicated to expanding and supporting Google's merchant solutions.

Also, if you love Orange County, California (just ask Danny if you need a few reasons why you should) I noticed that Google has posted several positions to work in their Irvine, CA sales office. Positions include:

Posted by Gary Price at 12:01 PM | Permalink

October 3, 2005

Google After SEM Execs To Woo & Train Agencies?

Google Searches for SEM Talent at ClickZ covers how various search marketing firms are reporting that Google's after their execs apparently to beef up its agency outreach. It follows on a recent Yahoo hire.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:43 PM | Permalink

Google Wins Age Discrimination Suit

Google Prevails in Age Discrimination Suit from the Associated Press covers Google winning in an age discrimination suit that was filed in July 2004. Brian Reid, one of AltaVista's founders who went over to Google, filed the suit when he was aged 54 and alleged that he was told by a Google exec that he didn't fit into Google's youthful atmosphere. Reid's firing from Google cost him stock options estimated to be worth $38 million. Reid's complaint against Google was also featured in John Battelle's new book The Search (page 233-234).

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:47 AM | Permalink

September 29, 2005

Google Partners With NASA For Expansion Space, Space Data & Supercomputing Talent

Google, NASA sign `a very big deal' from the San Jose Mercury News gives the rundown on the aforementioned plans by Google to expand onto NASA's Ames facility in Mountain View. It's not just getting more space. It's also about collaborating with NASA scientists and getting NASA data, as well. So literally, the sky's not the limit, for Google.

In particular, Google will get access to scientists behind to supercomputing technology that NASA has developed, the article says. Google also gets more access to NASA space data and images, additional fodder for Google Maps and Google Earth, no doubt.

"We already have Google Earth....We'd like to have Google Mars and Google Moon," Google's Peter Norvig is quoted as saying.

NASA Takes Google on Journey Into Space is the official press release from Google with more details, and the NASA version is here.

Postscript from Gary: Google already owns many of the domains that they might need for outer space exploration. See this collection of domains that Google registered a few months ago including GoogleMoon, GoogleMars, and GoogleNeptune.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:14 AM | Permalink

September 28, 2005

Lots of Job Resumes Appear at Google China; Chef Position is Still Open

After Dr. Kai-Fu Lee officially began his job (at least for the time being) last week at the head of Google efforts in China, Google received more than 1000 resumes for 50 positions at their soon to be built research facility in .CN. In fact, all of the resumes were received in a five hour period. The InfoWorld article: Google gets 1,000 resumes for 50 jobs in China, has more including word that Lee is looking to hire employees for a variety of positions including product managers, software developers, wireless developers, and of course, a chef.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:09 PM | Permalink

September 27, 2005

CNET Off Double Not-So-Secret Probation With Google

I mentioned this in my earlier post, but it deserves better play. Google's talking with CNET again. Google stopped talking with the news organization in a dispute over whether CNET crossed a privacy bounds in reporting on privacy issues, when it used examples of information about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. More background on the dispute in our Google Not Happy With CNET post and our Google Blacklists News.com forum thread. Schmidt himself spoke with CNET's News.com for its article over today's size announcement. Glad to see that Google has changed its mind over what I and many others felt was a bad policy. You can see the positive reaction flowing in already elsewhere, such as from Dave Winer and Steve Gillmour.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:04 AM | Permalink

September 26, 2005

Google's Marissa Mayer Profiled

John Battelle called Google's Marissa Mayer a "hummingbird" of a woman in his new book The Search, which is a great description for anyone who has ever met her. She's literally flying around constantly with excitement and activity about various products. Managing Google's Idea Factory is a new BusinessWeek profile on Marissa, the company's director of consumer web products, covering what her workday is like, her background and how she goes about managing so many of the things Google develops. See also Google's Mayer: Searcher Behavior & Google Factoids.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:37 AM | Permalink

September 23, 2005

Scale is a Key Technology Challenge at Google

Lengedary computer programmer, Peter Weinberger, now works at Google as a software engineer. Unix geeks might already know that Weinberger is the the "W" in the AWK programming language named for its developers. In an interview (free access) with Laurianne McLaughlin from IEEE's Security & Privacy magazine, Weinberger talks Google, future search, and privacy.

From the interview: Security and Privacy: What are the biggest technology challenges for Google today?

Weinberger: Scale is the problem. Our business grows rapidly. That means every year, a lot of the technology decisions made a year ago don?t look so good any more. Exponential growth is a very pleasant problem but requires a lot of work.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:39 PM | Permalink

September 22, 2005

Sergey, Larry, Eric, David and Jerry - Forbes Says Rich!

The 2005 edition of the Forbes 400 list of the of the wealthiest Americans was published this afternoon and includes Brin, Page and Schmidt from Google as well as Filo and Yang from Yahoo. Of course, Gates and Ballmer from Microsoft are also on the list. Here's a quick look at how several people who have interests in the web search biz fared.

Bill Gates, Microsoft Estimated Wealth: $51 Billion Ranking: 1st

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Estimated Wealth: $14 Billion Ranking: 11th

Sergey Brin, Google Estimated Wealth: $11 Billion Ranking: 16th (tie)

Larry Page, Google Estimated Wealth: $11 Billion Ranking: 16th (tie)

Fast Fact: In case you're wondering, both Brin and Page ranked 43rd on last year's Forbes 400 with. Their wealth was then estimated at $4 billion each. Hat tip, Google IPO!

Jeff Bezos, A9/Amazon.com Estimated Wealth: $4.8 Billion Ranking: 42nd

Eric Schmidt, Google Estimated Wealth: $4.0 Billion Ranking: 52nd

David Filo, Yahoo Estimated Wealth: $3 Billion Ranking: 73

Jerry Yang, Yahoo Estimated Wealth: $2.5 Billion Ranking: 93rd

Mark Cuban, IceRocket Estimated Wealth: $1.8 Billion Ranking: 164th

Barry Diller, Ask Jeeves-IAC/InterActive Estimated Wealth: $1.3 Billion Ranking: 258th

Posted by Gary Price at 9:01 PM | Permalink

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee Begins His Job as Head of Google China

Asia Pulse reports that Kai-Fu Lee has begun his job as the person in charge of Google's operations in China.

He begins his job after a Washington judge ruled nine days ago that Lee could recruit for Google and work on getting government permissions but cannot work on search or speech technology. A trial that begins in January will offer a final ruling.

Lee told Asia Pulse that Google will soon decide in which city (either Beijing or Shanghai) they'll build their China research enter.

The top Chinese scientist at Google said his job is to hire at least 50 college graduates by the end of this year, as the job-hunting season for graduate students starts this month. "We are here not to steal talent from other companies, but to train local people," he said. More in the article: Lee starts job as head of Google in China.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:47 AM | Permalink

September 20, 2005

Former Google Chef Charlie Ayers Starting His Own Restaurant

While Google is still seeking a replacement for its former celebrity chef, Charlie Ayers, Charlie's plans post-Grateful Dead, post-Google are now public. From Google to Noodles: A Chef Strikes Out on His Own from the New York Times covers how he's going to open his own restaurant in Silicon Valley. Aside from investing some of his own money, former Googlers and private groups are backing him. Name of the restaurant? Calafia!

If that name sounds familiar to some readers, it's because that's the name of my consulting company, Calafia Consulting -- and I own the calafia.com domain. I'm a native Californian and named my company after a Spanish story of California being an island ruled by Amazon women.

Charlie loves California as well, having heard the story behind the name at a Grateful Dead concert from a woman at the show. It stuck with him, he told me, and he's always had it in mind as a name for a future restaurant.

He doesn't have a site yet live for the restaurant, so I can't point you at that. But I'll do a follow up when it opens, plus I'll be linking to it off my calafia.com home page, just in case anyone ends up at the wrong place.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:47 AM | Permalink

September 15, 2005

Watch "The Google Boys" Video

Well, John's new "must read" book is now out and in about five weeks, The Google Story by David Vise and Mark Malseed will be released. Lots to read. If you're looking for a history of Google on video, you might want to check out: The Google Boys. This 50 minute program originally aired on The Biography Channel last year and is available on tape (VHS). Comments from John "The Search" Battelle, Terry Winograd, and Fred Vogelstein are featured in the program.

Postscript: Btw, I noticed today that short bios of Sergey Brin and Larry Page are now in the The Biography Channel's BiograpySearch database.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:13 PM | Permalink

September 14, 2005

Microsoft Email On Employee Loss To Google & Sneaking Lee In The Back Door

Google exodus feared early on, e-mail reveals from the Seattle Times passes along two tidbits out of the recent Google-Microsoft fight for Kai-Fu Lee. Microsoft has been worried about Google gaining its employees since at least March 2004, when the leader of MSN's search team wrote an email called, "Losing people to Google -- and a potential solutions." Sorry, what was actually in that email wasn't released to the public, but high-ranking execs up to Bill Gates took part in the discussion from it. And also, to keep things quiet about Lee coming over, Google brought him into a remote building on the campus with a private entrance and no receptionist for his interview. Hmm -- I didn't know Google had many remote buildings. They've all seemed pretty close to each other to me. But getting past a receptionist is easy for any employee with a key card.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:38 PM | Permalink

Vint Cerf: Helping People Understand the Potential of Google

News.com has some comments from Internet founding father and one of Google's newest employees, Vint Cerf, about what he'll be doing in his new job at Google that begins next month. Cerf spoke today at the FirstMile.US broadband conference today and told the audience:

"What (CEO) Eric Schmidt had in mind is to go around helping people understand both inside and outside of Google what Google's potential is...I want to have the opportunity to challenge people in the labs with problems that need solving.""

Cerf also said that he plans to ask Google engineers if they've explored voice-enabled search.

Vint, I'm not a Google engineer but I can answer that one. The answer is yes. Google Labs once offered Google Voice. The demo is not working but info about the project can be found here. Of course, if Vin "Googles", [voice search Google] he would also find this info. (-:

Posted by Gary Price at 12:37 PM | Permalink

September 13, 2005

Google's Dr. Lee Can Recruit In China But Can't Work on Search or Speech Technologies

A ruling from a King County, Washington judge was handed down today that says Google employee (formerly of Microsoft) Dr. Kai-Fu Lee can immediately begin recruiting for Google's new research center in China but can not work on speech, search and other technologies. The ruling comes after Microsoft asked for the court to stop Dr. Lee from doing any work for Google until after the January trial saying that it would violate a noncompete agreement he has with Microsoft.

From a News.com article: In his 13-page ruling, Judge Steven Gonzalez restricted Lee to recruiting for Google in China and to talking to government officials about getting a license to do business there, but said Lee cannot work on technologies including search or speech. Lee also cannot set budgets or salaries or decide what research Google will do in China, according to the order.

If you would like to read the ruling, a copy of it (13 pages; PDF) is available here.

Postscript: Danny emailed me that the Google blog is touting the win while Microsoft has just posted this statement.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:08 PM | Permalink

September 8, 2005

Google Hires Vint Cerf As Chief Internet Evangelist

Google has hired internet "founding father" and pioneer Vint Cerf to be the company's first "chief internet evangelist." His job seems to be to help build Google leadership within the internet community, plus it's said that Cerf will help Google "build network infrastructure, architectures, systems, and standards for the next generation of Internet applications." You can expect that to further fuel the idea that Google is constructing what Om Malik has termed a GoogleNet of univesal internet access. More details on the appointment from Google here.

Postscript - Some further press coverage:

'Father of Internet' returns to roots with new Google job from the San Jose Mercury News on Cerf coming aboard in early October, taking with him his chief of staff at MCI, where he's president of technology strategy. He says he wants to get more involved again in developing applications.
Cerf's Up for Google at BusinessWeek has some further speculation on how Cerf may fit into Google's plans to to into internet access and telecommunications.
Internet Pioneer Vinton Cerf Joins Google from the AP says Cerf will remain chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees domain names.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:57 AM | Permalink

Ruling In Google-Microsoft Dispute Over Lee Comes Next Tuesday

Judge to rule Tuesday in Kai-Fu Lee case from News.com says that a ruling on whether Kai-Fu Lee can leave Microsoft and become head of Google China will come next Tuesday. As issue is whether a preliminary injunction will be lifted ahead of a trial to permanently settle the matter in January.

The article also talks of Google statements that Lee wasn't a "key advisor" to Microsoft over China as Microsoft claims, especially in terms of recruitment. Microsoft says Lee was the company's "public face" of its recruiting efforts in the country.

Having Lee help recruiting is certainly key to Google. Day two: Microsoft-Google courtroom showdown from News.com covers more of yesterday's testimony where Google also says it has a backup plan if Lee can't come to work them. However, the company says this wouldn't be as effective as having him to help recruit students this autumn.

That article also covers Lee telling Microsoft in June that he intended to return to the company after a sabbatical to finish some projects regardless of whether he went to work elsewhere. But in response to the trial judge, he said his answer wasn't "complete" but was "honest."

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:01 AM | Permalink

Mac Mozilla Chief Mike Pinkerton Joins Google Firefox Team

Via Dirson, news that Mike Pinkerton of the Mozilla Mac browser project is jumping over to Google's "Firefox" team. Pinkerton suggests it may mean more Mac love for Google users.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:42 AM | Permalink

Google Appoints Former Microsoft Employee Head Of Google Israel Office

Gary wrote earlier that Google was to open an office in Israel. Via the SearchMarketing.co.il blog, Google opens Israel branch at Globes has further news that a branch is planned and that Meir Brand has been named as the first Israeli employee there, apparently to head up operations as the Google Israel "country manager." Brand formerly worked AOL and Microsoft.

Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread, Google To Announce Israel Country Manager.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:12 AM | Permalink

September 7, 2005

Google Guys Are Top Powerbrokers

As Google celebrates its seventh birthday the NY Daily News reports that the "Google Guys" (Sergey Brin and Larry Page) have debuted on Vanity Fair's annual list of business "powerbrokers" at number one. Dropping to second place in the rankings is Wal-Mart (a company that Google has been compared with) CEO, H. Lee Scott.

Yahoo's CEO, Terry Semel, made the list. Others powerbrokers include Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone, and Larry Ellison. More in the article: Google duo tops power list.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:48 AM | Permalink

Opening Day In Microsoft-Google Fight Over Kai-Fu Fee

Courtroom showdown for Microsoft and Google from News.com covers the opening arguments in this week's court fight over whether Google China chief Kai-Fu Lee violated a non-compete clause by going over to Microsoft.

Microsoft says Lee's conduct shows he wasn't willing to live up to the restrictions, with allegations of helping Google with recruitment and advice even before departing Microsoft.

Google argues that Lee should be able to work for Google until a formal trial over the issue happens in a few months. This week's case is over lifting a temporary injunction on Lee doing work for Google. Google says Lee would do no work for Google in speech or search technology, the areas said to be the biggest concern to Microsoft.

Videotape depositions from Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer were introduced. Ballmer called Lee "the godfather" of Microsoft's China strategy. More use of the f-word by Microsoft execs also comes into the case, as Lee explains Gates told him "First, we were f'ed by the Chinese people, and now the Chinese government has f'ed us." Microsoft denies Gates made such statements, as it previously denied statements by Ballmer on how he was going to "f*king kill Google."

Meanwhile, John Battelle gets more legal documents in the case, highlighting parts of Microsoft's request along with Google exec Jonathan Rosenberg calling Lee an "all star" who will contribute "substantially beyond China" and wanting Google to close around and protect him like "wolves."

He also highlights a Google rebuttal with parts saying this isn't over specific areas covered in the non-compete by Microsoft wanting to delay Google's entry into China.

Postscript from Gary: The Seattle Times provides reports on what went on in the courtroom on Monday. The article also contains the full text of an email that Kai-Fu Lee sent to Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt that began a discussion about a job at Google. Finally, the article mentions a couple of research areas that were discussed in court yesterday. A Microsoft attorney talked about voice-activated search research (speak your search) going on at MS. This type of work is also going on at Google, In fact, Google Labs once offered this type of thing with Google Voice. The demo is no longer available but you can read about it here. Also mentioned by the MS attorney was "Geegle," research going on at Google that uses, "natural-language processing to extract information from the Internet."

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:47 AM | Permalink

Google Loses Another Employee To Odeo; Yahoo Gains Nokia Guru

Some employee shifting news, this time someone from Google's Blogger service jumping over to Odeo plus Yahoo gaining a noted Nokia employee.

Dirson notes that Biz Stone from Google's Blogger has jumped ship to the Odeo podcasting service (which I find pretty cool and hope to do a longer review shortly). Evan Williams, cofounder of Blogger, started Odeo after leaving Google last October. Stone explains his reasoning here, saying:

Blogger is hitting a high note right now in more than one aspect with lots of cool stuff to work on over the next year. It's been awesome here at Google and I'm going to miss working with such a great group of people....

Odeo was officially founded in December of last year and recently announced funding. There's already an awesome group crowded into that little San Francisco office and I figured if I wanted to play, then now is the time. So I looked into it and Williams told me I have a face for Odeo. Well, not in so many words but you understand. There's lots of potential here and I'm excited about doing my part to help see it through. I'll miss working with my Google friends but I look forward to shaking things up and, er, making some noise at Odeo.

Meanwhile, Russell Beattie notes that Yahoo has gained Christian Lindholm, who he says is the "father" of the Nokia Series 60 an Navi-key UI. He'll be VP of global mobile products. Lindholm shares more on his blog here, including his three reasons for going to Yahoo:

A perfect blend of content and communication
Yahoo being well positioned for expected growth in the next generation of the web
Yahoo really wants to "crack" the mobile internet nut

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:46 AM | Permalink

September 5, 2005

Google's Pizza Ambassadors: Winning Computer Science Graduates One Slice At A Time

Honestly, just when you think you've heard it all. Spotted via Dirson, apparently Google hires college students to order pizzas for their "computer science peers" who may be too busy to get up from their computers and eat. From the Google Pizza Program page:

Google ambassadors identify opportunities to order pizza for their computer science peers, most often around project deadlines or exams. The pizza ambassadors are Google's main point of contact, and responsible for making the Google Pizza Program successful at their university.

Apparently, only those in computer science deserve such attention.

Postscript: A search for [google pizza] brings up an amazing number of pages from various colleges where, as part of the requirement of getting pizza, it seems you have to post a picture online. Slice: American's Favorite Pizza Weblog has a nice overview here, drawing off this Baltimore Sun article with details such as the initial $500 budget that's given to a school (need more, no problem!) and that the program's been running for over three years.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:00 PM | Permalink

"I'm Going To F*king Kill Google" - Alleged Ballmer Temper Tantrum

The Microsoft-Google fight over Dr. Kai-Fu Lee takes another bizarre turn as allegations are levied in court documents that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had a tempter tantrum involving chair throwing and a declaration to "f*king kill Google" over another Microsoft employee departing to Google.

John Battelle's got a screenshot and extract of a legal declaration in the case by Mark Lucovsky, the former Microsoft distinguished engineer who went over to Google earlier this year and has posted of Microsoft not knowing how to "ship software" any more.

In a November 2004 meeting, Lucovsky met with Ballmer to talk about leaving, with Google being where he was going:

At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "F*king Eric Schmidt is a f*king pussy. I'm going to f*king bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f*king kill Google.

The * are mine. We're a family friendly blog :)

For his part, Ballmer denied the allegations, saying in a statement:

Mark Lucovsky's account of our conversation last November is a gross exaggeration of what actually took place....Mark's decision to leave was disappointing and I urged him strongly to change his mind. But his characterization of that meeting is not accurate.

More on other developments in the case from Court docs: Ballmer vowed to 'kill' Google at News.com, including Microsoft documents submitted to back claims of Lee telling Google that he was a VP at Microsoft working on areas "related" to Google as well as "unprecedented" signing bonuses to come work at Google (though given how much the company and many of its employees are worth, $2.5 million here or $1.5 million there doesn't sound so high).

FYI, another former Microsoft employee Joe Beda blogged yesterday about having been out of Microsoft at at Google for a year now:

It is one year later and I'm sure that I made the right decision. I've been much happier over the last year at Google. I'm sure some of it was the excitement of just doing something different, but a lot of it really came from the energy of those I work with and actually shipping product.

Oh yeah, and my non-compete and non-solicit contracts with Microsoft have now expired. If you are looking for new challenges feel free to send me a resume.

Of course, Google's got it own accusations to deal with. Former Google Exec Files Suit Over Alleged Pregnancy Discrimination from a few weeks ago covers allegations that Google unfairly fired a pregnant executive with quadruplets who later lost three of her unborn children. As with the Ballmer allegations, the allegations in that filing (PDF file) raise eyebrows as well, such as:

The employee called an "HR nightmare"
The employee being fired over the phone
The rehired employee given work similar to that of interns and being placed in a remote cubicle

As with Ballmer's denials, Google also denies the allegations in the pregnancy case.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:52 PM | Permalink

August 31, 2005

Google and Microsoft Back in Court

The News.com story: Google asks court to void Lee's Microsoft pact, discusses another chapter in the case that took place last week when Google asked a federal judge in California to rule that Dr. Kai-Fu Lee's contract with MS is "unenforceable." Dr. Lee is a former MS exec who was Google hired in July to head a new research center in China.

Google has now asked that federal court judge to--as a matter of law--rule on Google's behalf without a trial. In court papers filed Friday, Google argued that "this motion for summary judgment is made on the grounds that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact" and that the noncompete clause of Microsoft's employment contract violates California law.

More SEW Blog coverage: + Google Anticipated Potential Problems in Lee Hiring + Microsoft Gets Temporary Restraining Order in Google Case + Ruling Soon In Dispute Over Microsoft Exec With "Playbook" At Google + Lee Hits China For Google, Didn't Foresee Non-Compete Problems + Microsoft Sues Google Over China Hire + Google Will Open Research Center in China, Hire Microsoft VP to Run China Operation

Posted by Gary Price at 2:18 PM | Permalink

August 22, 2005

Happy Belated Birthday to Sergey Brin

We're a day late in extending Happy Birthday wishes to Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin! According to our sources, he turned 32 yesterday.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:20 PM | Permalink

August 17, 2005

Kai Fu Lee: Following His Heart To The Miracle Of Google

Kai Fu Lee: I need to follow my heart from ZDNet is a continuation of the Microsoft-Google fight over Kai Fu Lee, the in limbo head of Google China. It summarizes a letter Lee published on the web to former students, explaining that he's following his heart to Google because of the new passion he finds there to explore technology and products "beyond just the search." He even gives a formula of:

youth + freedom + transparency + new model + the general public's benefit + belief in trust = The Miracle of Google

Google's been compared to God before, and now it's miraculous as well. Whether it will be able to work a miracle in getting Lee free of his non-compete clause with Microsoft remains to be seen. More background on that in our past post, Microsoft Gets Temporary Restraining Order in Google Case.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:51 AM | Permalink

August 10, 2005

Google's Matt Cutts Launches Blog Google software engineer Matt Cutts is well known to our readers, attendees of our SES shows to those who read up on search issues everywhere. Matt's now launched a new blog where he's sharing stories of being on the front lines of Google indexing and quality control issues, among other topics.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:34 PM | Permalink

August 5, 2005

Google Not Happy With CNET

John and Philipp point to a News.com article (about Google's search for a chef) that mentions that Google is not talking with CNET/News.com writers for about 11 more months. Why? It seems that Google is upset with a recent story that included personal info (found via Google) about Eric Schmidt.

As Battelle correctly points out and I agree with 100 percent with, the personal info in the article is available either in Google's own database or legally, in specialized (Invisible Web and proprietary) databases.

Actually, if most people in the U.S. knew what a good researcher could find (legally) in proprietary and public record databases they would be blown away.

Seems strange for Google to be upset about information found on and via the web, if that indeed was what the source of the complaint was about.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:33 PM | Permalink

August 4, 2005

Get Cookin' at Google

Let's take a look at another example of Google's genius for creating buzz.

Last December I posted that Google was looking for a new chef.

A few months later we learned that Google's legenday chef, Charlie Ayers, was leaving the company.

So it has been eight months since Google began posting job openings for exec. chefs and they're still searching (no pun intended) to find two the culinary geniuses to come to the Googleplex and begin feeding hungry Googlers. Who would have thought that finding great chefs would be so hard for a company with such amazing buzz (and stock options) like Google.

Well, it appears that traditional methods (help wanted listings in the usual places) to find the chefs have failed to this point and now Google is cranking its search up (again, no pun intended) by press releasing their new "worldwide search" and for two chefs. Finalists will particpate in a cook-off. The news is also on the Google Blog.

As I said earlier, they've been posting for these postition since December.

So what is today's announcement and blog post about really? Yes, it's a way of alerting people to the job openings but it's also another great example of Google's marketing, branding, buzz/publicity, reputation enhancing, and recruitment (not only for chefs) genius. I'm betting the cook-off itself will also get plenty of attention.

The blog post also includes a sample menu of what Googler's eat for free. As Linden points points out: Having the best perks in the industry magnifies this effect and likely is part of why Google has been so successful in poaching from other firms while avoiding losses themselves.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:08 AM | Permalink

August 3, 2005

Google Anticipated Potental Problems in Lee Hiring

The MS/Google "search war" (aka the hiring of Dr. Lee) continues with newly unsealed court documents showing that Google anticipated possible "issues" when they hired Dr. Kai-Fu Lee to lead Google China.

Via the Seattle Times:

When it hired Kai-Fu Lee, Google agreed to pay his full salary and let his stock options vest even if he couldn't work for up to 12 months because of a noncompete agreement he signed at Microsoft...Google declined to comment on the employment agreement, but spokesman Steve Langdon said the company is still on track to open the China lab this fall. Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake said the employment agreement "underscores the fact that Google was aware that Dr. Lee had a noncompete agreement with us and had the expectation that by hiring him, he could be breaking that agreement."

Btw, several of the unsealed court documents (some heavily redacted) are available (PDF) via the Seattle Times.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:12 PM | Permalink

July 28, 2005

Microsoft Gets Temporary Restraining Order in Google Case

A Washington State Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order today barring Dr. Kai-Fu Lee from performing his duties as the recently appointed head of Google China.

According to the AP,

Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez granted a temporary restraining order barring Kai-Fu Lee from working at Google on any product, service or project similar to those he worked on at Microsoft, including Internet and desktop search technology. In a statement e-mailed after the ruling, Google lawyer Nicole Wong called the judge's decision "only a temporary measure to maintain the status quo and to give the court more time to fully consider the parties' positions. "We are confident that once the judge has done so he will side with Google and Dr. Lee. Microsoft will not prevail in their intimidation campaign."

No word on the Google's countersuit in a California court.

A full text copy of the temporary restraining order is available here.

More in this News.com report and this blog post from yesterday.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:47 PM | Permalink

And More On Search Hiring!

At the end of my post about Yahoo raiding IBM for employees, I originally concluded, "Where have all the engineers gone? Off to Google, Yahoo and MSN." Sounds better if you hum the tune of "Where Have All The Flowers Gone." Thought it was a bit lame so cut it -- then just came across Anyway, Revenge of the Nerds -- Again from BusinessWeek, where Ben Elgin looks at the brain drain happening as Google and Yahoo suck up tech talent. Geez, 230 engineers hired by Google in the second quarter of this year! A nice recap of who's gone where.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:06 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Hiring From IBM

We don't need no stinkin' Microsoft execs like Google, says Yahoo. We'll rob IBM! Yahoo Is Wooing I.B.M. Technical Talent from the New York Times looks at how Yahoo just picked up Prabhakar Raghavan, formerly of the much cited Clever project (and part of the foundation for Teoma), as head of research. He's not directly from IBM but comes to Yahoo via Verity. But another direct IBM hire has happened and Yahoo says more are in the works. This follows on Yahoo recently opening a new research lab at UC Berkeley, though they did lose their former Yahoo Labs head to Microsoft in April. Google, meanwhile, prefers to raid Bell Labs. See From Bell Labs To Google Labs for that.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:30 AM | Permalink

Ruling Soon In Dispute Over Microsoft Exec With "Playbook" At Google

Google: Microsoft Suit Is 'Charade' Aimed At Scaring People from Dow Jones covers court arguments in the fast moving tussle between Google and Microsoft over Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, the former Microsoft exec now at heading Google China. Arguments were heard yesterday with some interesting revelations and accusations, and a ruling may come today.

Google says Lee had no real connection to search at Microsoft, so issues over a non-compete aren't an issue. Microsoft says the opposite, and that Lee is leaving with Microsoft's Google "competition playbook."

Lee also says Microsoft chair Bill Gates warned him he'd be sued, apparently to make an example of him to others who might be thinking of jumping ship to Google.

You've got to feel sorry for Yahoo in all this. Why? They are a serious thread to Microsoft as well, but executives attended a "The Google Challenge" meeting in March, the arguments say.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:36 AM | Permalink

July 27, 2005

Lee Hits China For Google, Didn't Foresee Non-Compete Problems

Spotted via InsideGoogle, Kai-Fu Lee in China from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog covers how Dr. Kai-Fu Lee -- the former Microsoft exec now at Google and at the center of lawsuits between the two companies -- has been out to Beijing to lay the groundwork of the research center he's to oversee there. It also notes that Lee, the new president of Google China, says he wasn't involved in search research at Microsoft, which is why he apparently didn't feel the existing battle over a non-compete clause would emerge. Gary has past details on the fracas over here: The Hiring of Dr Lee: Google Strikes Back.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:30 AM | Permalink

July 26, 2005

Former Google Exec Files Suit Over Alleged Pregnancy Discrimination

Another week and news of another lawsuit involving Google makes the papers. I'm thinking that the busiest department at the Googleplex these days is the legal department.

The NY Newsday article Suit accuses Google of pregnancy bias reports on a new lawsuit filed by Christina Elwell, a former director of national sales for Google who saw her star dropped after she became pregnant, the suit alleges:

She was even singled out at a meeting of Google's sales force as contributing to the company's ability to file for an initial public offering.

However, things changed for Ms. Elwell after she notified Google that she was pregnant with quadruplets and experiencing medical complications.

Over the next year, according to her suit, Elwell, 35, of Manhattan, would see her position deleted from a Google organizational chart, a promised lesser role rescinded and filled by a man she had hired, and her career derailed by a series of demotions and a firing. The suit says she was branded a human resources "nightmare" by her boss, Timothy Armstrong, Google's vice president of national sales, who is also named as a defendant in the suit.

More background in the article. I've also tracked down a full text copy of the complaint Christina Elwell filed with the U.S. District Court in New York City, it's posted here (PDF).

Postscript: Amy Lambert, a Google attorney, shared the following comment with SEW this afternoon:

Google has from the beginning supported the career advancement of all employees, including women, in many ways and has exceptional support benefits for employees who need to balance work with family, including generous benefits for expectant and new mothers. The lawsuit against Google and Tim Armstrong is without merit and we will defend vigorously against it.

Postscript 2: As John notes, Google previous has had a case brought against it involving a different type of discrimination allegations, that of age discrimination. Some further details on that can be found here and in our forum thread Another Google Lawsuit: Age Discrimination.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:06 PM | Permalink

Google's Brin On Keeping The Googlers Happy

Can Google Stay Google? from Fast Company, spotted via John Battelle, does the usual "can they stay ahead" type of thing we've seen before but with some fresh quotes from Google cofounder Sergey Brin, who disarms the interviewer with his bare legs after a volleyball game. Brin still thinks Google is the type of place he'd like to work at, if being asked to join now, because of the challenges and opportunities it offers to scientists who want to solve problems. And while Google has tons of employees now, he's still like to see new ones get the big time -- or at least semi-big time -- compensation as if Google still was a start up. Hence the Founders Awards we've blogged abut before, plus "bonuses and refreshers."

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:06 PM | Permalink

July 22, 2005

The Hiring of Dr Lee: Google Strikes Back

The Microsoft vs. Google "Search War" continues to escalate. Another lawsuit was filed yesterday, this time by Google.

Here's a review:

Episode 1: On Tuesday we learned that Google has hired Dr. Kai Fu-Lee away from Microsoft to lead Google China

Episode 2: Several hours later, news that Microsoft was suing Dr. Lee in King County, WA Superior Court. The lawsuit claims that Dr. Lee was breaching the Microsoft employee confidentiality and non-compete agreements by joining Google before the agreements had expired.

Episode 3: Late yesterday, word that Google is was countersuing Microsoft in a California court.

Via the AP: Google retaliated with its own complaint in California seeking to override Microsoft's noncompete provision so it can retain Lee. In its suit, Mountain View-based Google contends the clause violates California laws giving workers the right to change jobs. Microsoft's restriction is "clearly an illegal restraint of trade," Nicole Wong, Google's associate general counsel, said in an interview Thursday night. "Google is trying to create an environment for innovators. Microsoft is focused on litigation and intimidation."

The AP's Michael Liedtke continues: In its complaint, Google argues California laws should apply because its headquarters ? and most of its nearly 4,200 workers ? are in the state. What's more, Google said Lee already is registered to vote in California, pays taxes in the state and plans to buy a Silicon Valley home. But Google's initial announcement of Lee's hiring made it sound as if the engineer will be based in China, overseeing the company's new research office there. "I look forward to returning to China to begin this exciting endeavor," Lee said in a Tuesday statement. Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake McCredy described Google's complaint as a desperate act. "Microsoft is confident in our case and that Google's legal maneuvers will ultimately be rejected by the court," she said.

On a Related Note If you're in need of a smile, take a look at the great "Search Wars" logo that Philipp Lenssen has posted over at Google Blogoscoped.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:49 AM | Permalink

July 19, 2005

Microsoft Sues Google Over China Hire

It's time to take the Google vs. Microsoft rivalry to court.

In my post earlier today about Google expanding their presence in China by opening a research lab, I noted that Google had hired Dr. Kai-Fu Lee away from Microsoft where he was serving as a corporate vice president.

Well, it didn't take long for the folks in Redmond to sue Dr. Lee claiming he's breaching the Microsoft employee confidentiality and non-compete agreements by joining Google.

From a ZDNet article:

Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake said in an e-mail. "We are asking the court to require Dr. Lee and Google to honor the confidentiality and non-competition agreements he signed when he began working for Microsoft."

In an email to SEW, Google's David Krane tells us: "We have reviewed Microsoft's claims and they are completely without merit. Google is focused on building the best place in the world for great innovators to work. We're thrilled to have Dr. Lee on board at Google. We will defend vigorously against these meritless claims and will fully support Dr. Lee."

Postscript: Dirson points to comments about the lawsuit from an ex-Microsoftie now working at Google.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:13 PM | Permalink

Google Will Open Research Center in China, Hire Microsoft VP to Run China Operation

News from the Googleplex today that the company is increasing their presence in China by opening a product research and development center sometime this quarter.

And now an item for your Google vs. Microsoft file.

Google also announced today that they've hired away Dr. Kai-Fu Lee from Microsoft (ouch!) to run Google's operations in China. Dr. Lee was most recently an MS corporate vice-president and also the founder of Microsoft's research lab in Beijing. It will be interesting to see if Dr. Lee brings some/many/all of his MS colleagues with him to Google.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 15, 2005

Google CEO Shares Thoughts About Information Industry

In late May I mentioned that Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, would be giving a lecture at the University of Washington in Seattle. Today, I came across an archived copy of Schmidt's presentation that's viewable on the web.

The 58 minute lecture is titled, "Perspectives on the Information Industry," and you'll need either Windows Media Player or Quicktime to view it.

Here's the blurb: In this special colloquia, Dr. Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google in Redwood City, California discusses the information industry and Google's approach to innovation. Dr. Schmidt has a 25-year record of achievement as an Internet strategist, entrepreneur and developer of great technologies. Since taking the helm at Google, he has focused on building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum. Previously, Dr. Schmidt was chief executive and chairman of software maker Novell, and before that was chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems.

You can find more video presentations by Eric Schmidt and other Googlers here.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:55 PM | Permalink

July 12, 2005

Google Employees Affect Real Estate Prices in California Town

The Wall Street Journal story (free to non-subscribers): Searching for a Home In Atherton, Calif.? Look Out for Googlers, reports on the booming price of real estate in this California town due in part to Googlers taking profits from stock sales and using the money to purchase homes.

More than half a dozen Google employees have bought Atherton houses for between $3.5 million and $17.8 million since September, say local brokers, and another dozen Googlers are still looking to buy in the town. "There's been an obvious Google effect," says Tom Dallas, a local broker who specializes in homes in Atherton and neighboring towns. "I estimate 25% to 35% of recent upper-end home sales, meaning sales over $7 million, are from Google people."

The article also lists home or property sale prices for a few Google employees:

Omid Kordestani, a senior vice president at Google, paid $17.8 million for a 16,000-square-foot Atherton home.
Aydin Senkut, a Google business-development manager, paid $5.7 million for an Atherton property.
Salar Kamangar, a 28-year-old Google product-management director, purchased a 12,400-square-foot Atherton estate for $10 million. The property is now back on the market with an asking price of $11.65 million.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:48 PM | Permalink

July 11, 2005

Belated Happy Birthday, Marissa

Gray Hat News tips us and others to the fact that Google's Marissa Mayer -- who we often quote on all matters Google -- celebrated her 30th birthday in style at the end of May. Gray Hat has photos, as does Sachin Agarwal, who got stuck with a number of party guests in an elevator afterward.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:21 PM | Permalink

June 27, 2005

Google Insiders Sell and Make Huge Profit

The Mercury News article: Bonanza from Google stock's rise, reports on the more than $2.1 billion Google "insiders" have realized since the company went public last August.

In May, Googlers sold just shy of $400 million of stock, second nationwide only to the $515 million in sales by Microsoft insiders, according to Bloomberg News data.Since the Mountain View company's IPO, Page and Brin have sold stock worth $619 million and $589 million, respectively, while Schmidt's sales have totaled about $191 million. In May, Page and Brin sold 400,000 shares each, fetching $93 million and $90 million, respectively. Schmidt sold $29 million. Page and Brin have sold similar numbers of shares in June, too. Thanks to the stock's steady rise, the sales totaled nearly $116 million for Brin and $111 million for Page.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:53 PM | Permalink

June 23, 2005

Official: Monier Is Going To Google

It's official! The rumblings about search legend Louis Monier taking a job with Google are true. Searchblog has just posted an interview with the new Google employee.

Monier tells JB that he's known the Google Guys for years and he's had a standing invite to come work at the Googleplex. All he had to do was send Larry and e-mail and the move from eBay to Mountain View was a go. Monier also tells Battelle that he has an agenda to work on whatever he wants to at Google. Monier does say that since he's been working on e-commerce for several years, "a change would be welcome." He calls the rumors that he might be working on Froogle, "hasty." Bottom line on what we'll be doing? We'll have to wait and see. I wonder if GoogleVista or AltaGoogle are on the horizon. (-:

Posted by Gary Price at 4:55 PM | Permalink

June 22, 2005

AltaVista Founder Louis Monier Moving To Google?

When AltaVista came onto the search scene, it had all the impact for people in the way Google is thought of today. It drew raves for relevancy, comprehensiveness and came up with plenty of innovations. But it never had the proper respect from owner Digital, then Compaq and suffered further when forced into becoming a portal. Louis Monier was a founder of the service and a driving force who left in 1999: Father Of AltaVista Resigns. He wound up over at eBay as their chief technical officer. Now via SiliconBeat, rumors reported by Om Malik that he's heading to Google to work on the Froogle shopping search engine: After Yahoo, Google takes on eBay. See also Search Memories which covers a panel at our SES San Jose show last year where Louis reflected on the early days of search and AltaVista.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:22 PM | Permalink

June 16, 2005

Dan Senor Not Joining Google

So we had a report last month that Google had hired Dan Senor as vice president of global communications and strategy, replacing the spot vacated by Cindy McCaffrey earlier this year. Senor recently served as advisor to the US presidential envoy in Iraq. Too Early to Google from the Washington Post today says it ain't so. Now Google says it was to early for them to have confirmed that. Senor, meanwhile, apparantly may do contract work for Google providing "strategic advice.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:42 AM | Permalink

June 10, 2005

From Bell Labs To Google Labs

Forget the famed Bell Labs. It's Google Labs now, says Google Recruits Mature Minds to Join Brainiac Kids, from Newhouse News Service. It looks at how Google has gained a dozen or so Bell Labs alumnus over the years.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:08 PM | Permalink

June 2, 2005

Wayne Rosing: The Google Astronomer

About a month ago, Searchblog posted that Wayne Rosing had left his position as Google's Senior Vice President of Engineering to do work in astronomy. If you would like to learn about what Rosing is up to these days and more about his interest in astronomy, the Space.com article: The Google Astronomer, has the scoop.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:07 PM | Permalink

Interested in Evaluating Search Quality and Advertising for Google?

About three months ago I posted about Google looking for "quality raters" to evalaute advertising. These could be some of the people using the "reviewers hub" that Danny and Henk are talking about in their posts. According to a couple of job engines, some of these "temporary" and "off-site" positions to evaluate both "search quality" and advertising and are still available.

Here's how the "search quality" position is described:

This is a temporary assignment at Google through ABE Services. ABE/Kelly Services are recruiting part-time remote workers to help with search quality evaluation on a project basis for Google, Inc., the search engine company based in Mountain View, California. Candidates must be web-savvy and analytical, have excellent web research skills and a broad range of interests. Specific areas of expertise are highly desirable. Participants in web evaluation projects must have a high speed internet connection. All work will be performed in the U.S. or Canada and participants must be able to demonstrate legal eligibility to work in one of those countries...n particular, applicants will be asked to draw on experience living, studying, and keeping in touch with Chinese (web) culture and language.

In a quick search this morning, I come across "quality rater" positions posted for people who speak the following languages:

+ Chinese Language + Dutch Language + French Language + German Language + Italian Language + Japanese Language + Korean Language + Spanish Language

Google is also looking for temporary workers to evaluate "ad quality. Positions for German and French speakers are also still posted.

Update: Many of these same positions along with a few "quality evaluation" positions are also listed on the Google job opportunities page. (Thanks M.N.)

Posted by Gary Price at 11:00 AM | Permalink

Google Rater Hub - Details Of Human Review System Unveiled

Google Secret Lab, Prelude from Henk van Ess's new Search Bistro blog looks at how Google uses human reviewers to improve search quality. Ess has a screenshot and a Flash movie of how the system works, for Google's temporarily hired Q&A checkers. Very nice details so far that I've never seen posted anywhere before. However, this type of system isn't new.

WebCrawler used to have a feedback system like this back in the late 90s, and other major search engines have had human reviewers, as well. Gather enough data of what's deemed good and bad, and the hope is that you can create a better search algorithm to improve relevancy.

What almost certainly is not happening is that the human reviewers are actually moving sites up and down with their ratings. Ess is promising more details in future posts, so watch his blog. Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread, Secrets of http://eval.google.com revealed?

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:17 AM | Permalink

May 20, 2005

Google Factory Tour Recap

So Google's first Google Factory Tour has ended. Overall, I'd say it was a great success on the PR front -- at least if you weren't that familiar with Google. One reporter I corresponded with told me that seemed the case for plenty there, many of whom were overseas reporters. For them, Google trotted out real live people doing interesting things. While it was very stage managed, kudos for the plentiful Q&A periods that let some good questions (and sometimes answers) get out.

Gary and I watched and instant messaged each other throughout the night, offering each other commentary on what was being said. If the tour repeats (or when Yahoo and gang inevitably decide to do the same), we might do some live alternative commentary for everyone as a sort of Pop-Up Video or Mystery Science Theater 3000-type of thing.

Most of what was said was old ground for us -- and will be for many of our readers. But here are the highlights I found interesting. Before diving in, a reminder. A webcast of the event is here. You can also view all the slides at once here. Be aware it's a big page, not for the broadband challenged.

Schmidt & Brin Do Q&A: Near the end was a long period where Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Google cofounder Sergey Brin answered questions. Andy Beal of Search Engine Lowdown diligently blogged live coverage of some of the answers. I think it's worthwhile for anyone interested in Google to watch the webcast of this. I'm also hoping Google will make an actual transcript available.
Google: We Are French: I especially liked Eric Schmidt getting a little riled over the suggestion that France and all "continental Europe" are viewing Google as a dark force in the wake of print. He pushed back especially on Google supposedly favoring English language books, asking for proof Google said they would do this or are actually doing so. Sergey Brin scored the real goal, however, pointing out that about half the Google Print team is French.
Google Goes Portal: Yes, Google launched a personalized home page, essentially making it official that it is a portal. News from us on that here: Google Launches Personalized Home Page. Reaction from across the web here: Reactions To My Google Personalized Home Page.
Google's Master Plan: Google's come under accusations of not having some master plan, which in part it helps to perpetuate. Just see yesterday's post about Google engineers being encouraged to run "rampant" and "wander around," according to Google's Schmidt. Still, Google's been pushing back on the idea that it's not focused enough. One slide was used to illustrated Google's view that all this creative activity happens in the non-core stuff they do. The core search+ads effort still takes up apparently 70 percent of the engineering time. And more to the point, that's work all done according to some master plan, Google says. You see this push back again in today's post from Google on the launch of its new personal home page.
Does Google have a strategy, or are we just a bunch of mad computer scientists running around building whatever we want? Today this question gets an answer: we've launched our personalized homepage via Google Labs. It's part of a strategic initiative we refer to as 'fusion' to bring together Google functionality, and content from across the web, in useful ways.
Google & Endless Betas: John Battelle reports on Google repeating what they've been saying recently -- expect products to start coming out of beta and perhaps stop seeming to be endless. He also has Eric Schmidt commenting that the Google mission isn't just web search. It's about organizing information anywhere.
Lesson On Web Accelerator: Again from Andy, comments from Google on having learned products perhaps need to be more aggressively tested internally, before releases. However, Google also says that some things you don't find out, until they are released. Oh, and some site owners got blamed again for problems in not knowing how to set up their servers. I hope the fix isn't some idea that everyone will magically solve that problem. Not gonna happen.
Click Fraud: From Andy, Google saying it is pro-active in trying and stop click fraud and yes, we will look around to see if a refund given one advertiser means others are entitled to the same.
Google Employee Heroes: Frankly, this started off with Gary and I rolling our eyes, a slide on the amount of food eaten by engineers. Sort of funny, but who cares? And why just the engineers? Are they the only people of any import at Google? Do any of those ad people who earn all the money eat? If so, how much chicken? Fortunately from a PR angle, things picked up with a rundown on various people behind the scenes that create and improve Google products. Matt Cutts, who is known to readers for his many comments over the years on webmaster issues, got highlighted as one of the heroes. In the end, it served well to put a human face on an increasingly growing and dominant company. Andy's got a rundown on slides here.
Ads, Ads, Ads: A big chunk of time was spent on how wonderful it is that Google has devised a way to monetize the entire web. Seriously. And that organizes the world's information how? OK, I know -- it funds it. But the backslapping of how clever Google was figuring out how to make all the world is its billboard felt, I dunno, a little dirty to my ears. But it was honest, I suppose.
Google & Privacy: It was raised, addressed but this new News.com article on the subject also out the same day goes into more depth: Google CEO defends privacy policies. In short, Google doesn't reveal stuff not already public and wants to safeguard information. If I spot something more in depth detailing what else was said, I'll update.
Mash Ups With Google Maps: Everyone's mixing everything with Google Maps from crime stats to apartment rentals (hey, put both of those together!). Google said they want to make that easier, so people don't have to hack it. Ah, but what about those who license the maps to Google. Are they cool about that? There wasn't a clear answer -- Google just hopes it won't be an issue. SiliconBeat has comments on that.
Google Earth: We already knew earlier that Google's Keyhole software had been given upgrade maps. Soon, the software itself will be upgrade and gain a new name, Google Earth. And better maps will come to Google Maps, as well. Postscript: More from eWeek here.
Google Translations: Apparently the company has been greatly increasing its abilities in this area, including having just won what was said to be some important award in the area. Key takeaway was that if it really could do good automatic translations, it makes information even more accessible to everyone, given we all speak different languages. Postscript: Google Blogoscoped has more on this here.

Some Related Material:

CNET's Charles Cooper in Growing pains at Google? comes away finding the event a pure PR snowjob and thinks Google needs to open up even more to win the hearts and minds of journalists. Cooper also looks at Google's continued success and wonders when it will tumble, like every other tech company does. Oh, it will tumble -- but can we please, please stop having people call it a tech company? Geez, CNET even just had a story out with Schmidt himself saying they're an information company, not a tech company. Google's not a tech company, folks! What's the main product, the breadwinner? It's ads.
Google Hones Cutting Edge from The Street is a very nice read and balanced roundup of the day. But another story, A Walk Through the Google Search Factory, by the same author shows where Cooper is wrong about the PR impact. "Others outlined in relatively deeper detail how Google has leveraged its superior search algorithms in ways that are beginning to transform how advertisers connect with customers on the Internet," the story says. Actually, what was outlined was how Google has leveraged WHAT IT BELIEVES is its superior search algorithms. But have enough people tell you something as if it is a fact, rather than their opinion, and slips like this come through, from me, from other experienced journalists and even more likely from those newer to Google.
Ten Things I Didn't Know About Google from PC World has Harry McCracken commenting on what his eyes were opened to.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:51 AM | Permalink

May 19, 2005

Engineers Running Rampant at Google

What's Google CEO Eric Schmidt's advice for getting new ideas flowing at Google? During a speech at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in San Francisco he said that letting the engineers "run rampant" is what works at the Googleplex.

The most clever ideas don't come from the leaders, but rather from the leaders listening and encouraging and kind of creating a discussion," he said. "Wander around and try to find the new ideas."

He also told the audience that an open-door policy is best in the IT world.

"You want to see every conceivable demo, no matter how wacky it is," he told the audience. "People love that. They get a chance to present to someone important like yourselves. All of a sudden the whole (corporate culture) becomes about leadership and innovation."

Finally, Schmidt had a comment about a Google web browser speculation since the company recently hired a couple Mozilla engineers.

Schmidt downplayed this speculation Wednesday, saying that the Mozilla hires played into his company's strategy of supporting both Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox browser. "We have decided to work on a browser-independent strategy," he said. "We don?t want to be specialized on any particular one, so that's why these people are working at Google."

More in the article: Google CEO says 'set the engineers free'

Posted by Gary Price at 12:22 PM | Permalink

May 18, 2005

Google Hires Dan Senor To Head Communications; Other DC Hires & Lobbying

Google has hired Dan Senor as vice president of global communications and strategy, replacing the spot vacated by Cindy McCaffrey earlier this year. Senor recently served as advisor to the US presidential envoy in Iraq. Rumors that he was being interviewed emerged last month. Google searches for, finds top level execs in D.C. from the Washington Business Journal has more details. The story also looks at hiring in the Washington DC area, including a manager of sales to US Defense Department agencies, efforts to apparently win more federal contracts, and the recent hiring of Alan Davidson, who apparently is heading up lobbying in Washington DC.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:43 AM | Permalink

May 17, 2005

Google's Chef Decides to Say Goodbye

In late December, I blogged that Google was searching for a Lead Chef. I was a bit surprised to see this. What about Charlie, Google's star chef? Today, it appears that we now know why Google was looking to fill this position. Charlie Ayers, Google's famous chef, has decided to leave the company according to this story from the San Jose Mercury News.

In addition his work at Google, Ayers was also a chef for The Greatful Dead.

Ayers even had the chance to speak to financial analysts during an event at Google last year. Danny called Charlie the CFO, the Chief Food Officer. Worth noting that the other CFO (Chief Financial Officer) did not speak at the event.

According to the article the precise reason for his departure is unknown but, "rumors swirled among employees and corporate cafe circles that he was retiring rich or wanted to start something on his own."

Btw, during a visit to the Googleplex I was able to sample several of Charlie's culinary delights. In my opinion, all of the reports about his cooking being first-rate are very accurate.

You don't think he's leaving to work on the Foodgle project that we blogged about on April 1st. (-:

Posted by Gary Price at 8:13 PM | Permalink

May 11, 2005

After More Than A Year, Google Remains Without Chair

Over a year ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave up his other title, that of chairman. Why? It's a growing trend that good corporations should have a chair who ideally looks after the interest of shareholders, rather than company insiders. Despite this, Google's chair seat remains unfilled. Google chairman's seat sits gathering dust from the San Francisco Chronicle looks at how the Google board has been "really busy" and so far unable to attend to the matter. Google's strong performance is noted as one reason why investors might not be concerned.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:18 PM | Permalink

May 6, 2005

Google's VP of Engineering Plans to "Pull Back"

Late last year Danny blogged about Google's vice president of corporate marketing, Google, Cindy McCaffrey, leaving the company.

Today, John blogs that Google's VP of Engineering, Wayne Rosing, is "pulling back" on his work at the Googleplex to focus on his passion for astronomy. Rosing was named VP of Engineering in 2001.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:12 PM | Permalink

May 5, 2005

Another Googler to Give University Commencement Address

Larry Page will not be the only Googler giving a commencement speech this year.

Margaret J. Thomas, a human resources manager at Google's Santa Monica, California office will deliver the commencement address to the undergraduate class at the University of Richmond on May 8th. Thomas is a 1992 U of R grad. We'll try to track down a copy of her remarks.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:27 PM | Permalink

April 27, 2005

Google Interviews, Yahoo and Blinkx Hire

Three search engine personnel stories in the news today. Here's a roundup.

+ Stefanie Olsen reports that Google is interviewing a former U.S. State Department employee, Dan Senor, to head Google's marketing team. Recently you might have seen Senor on TV at press conferences while he served as Advisor to the U.S. Presidential Envoy in Iraq. Senor is interviewing for the position that Cindy McCaffery left last year. Google isn't commenting.

+ Yahoo has hired Shawn Hardin as vice-president of content development. Hardin comes to Yahoo from AOL where he was senior vp of broadband. Before that he worked at several studios and was the head of NBC Internet. He'll be based at the Yahoo Media Division hq in Santa Monica, California.

+ Blinkx, the provider of both contextual search and video search technology, has hired Jonathan Gregg as Vice President, Business Development for the U.S. Gregg comes from Yahoo where he served as Manager of Global Alliances.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:17 AM | Permalink

April 13, 2005

Jobs at Google and Yahoo

I'm always reviewing job openings in the web search biz. They can be a great way to see where a company might be headed or just where they need some help.

Here's just a small sampling (and I mean small) of postings that I've come across in the past week from Google and Yahoo.

Google

+ Do You Speak English, French or German? Google is looking for temporary help (remote workers) rating the quality of ads.

+ Marketing: Creative Director

+ AdSense: Upsell Coordinator

+ AdWords: AdWords Rep

+ Sell Google Advertising in NYC

+ Technical Writer: Write About Google Products and Services Jobs in Operations and Software Engineering.

Yahoo

+ Engineering: Help Yahoo Develop a New Front-End for Yahoo Photos

+ Technical Writer: Write About Overture (Yahoo Search Marketing Services) Products

+ Product Manager at Yahoo Small Business

Posted by Gary Price at 11:21 AM | Permalink

March 30, 2005

Google Employee On 20 Percent Time

Many of you have heard about the "20 percent time" Google employees are allowed to spend on anything they want. In Google 20%, Google software developer Joe Beda blogs his personal views on how it works.

It's an interesting short read on how people may move between project teams in a "fluid" manner, how two teams might be allowed to work on similar projects in hopes things will ultimately be resolved, and how having 20 percent time isn't just a time to goof off. Do what you want, but do something interesting, Beda seems to say:

Heck, I don't have a good 20% project yet and I need one. If I don't come up with something I'm sure it could negatively impact my review.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:45 AM | Permalink

March 23, 2005

Bonuses For Several Google Executives

I just spotted a new SEC filing containing info about the cash bonuses several top Google execs received for their work in 2004.

Omid Kordestani Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Field Operations $ 700,000

George Reyes Chief Financial Officer $ 605,000

David Drummond Vice President of Corporate Development and General Counsel $ 600,000

Wayne Rosing Vice President of Engineering $ 600,000

Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page did not receive a cash bonuses. However, all of the execs mentioned earlier as well as Schmidt, Brin, and Page each received a $1566 holiday bonus in 2004.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:01 PM | Permalink

March 3, 2005

From Redmond to Mountain View: Top Windows Architect Joins Google

Microsoft Watch reports that Marc Lucovsky, a key Windows architect has left Microsoft after 16 years and is now a Googler. More in the article: Microsoft Loses Key Windows Architect to Google.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:43 PM | Permalink

February 13, 2005

He's a Googler and a Doodler

The Toronto Star has published a profile of Dennis Hwang, the Google programmer who is also the artist behind Google's many special logos (aka Google Doodles). Doodling with the Google logo.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company's founders, had been experimenting with revisions to the Google logo for special events (in 1999, the first time they tried it, they added a "burning man" to the logo to let pals know they'd be at the Burning Man festival in Nevada for a few days). But Page and Brin were unhappy with the quality of the drawings they were getting from a freelancer. On one occasion, they asked Hwang, knowing that he was an art major, to redraw one of the submissions. He did and it was exactly what they were looking for.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:25 PM | Permalink

February 9, 2005

Former Google Employee Mark Jen Was Fired For Blogging

Yahoo blogvangelist Jeremy Zawodny has confirmation that Mark Jen was fired from Google because of his blogging activities. Until now, this was suspected but not confirmed. A Chat with Mark Jen from Jeremy provides more. More background on Jen's blog in this past post, Mark Jen, Controversial Google Blogger, At Google No More.

Jen told Jeremy he didn't believe he'd done anything wrong and that the interest in his blog took him by surprise. Jeremy then goes on to look at how Yahoo has had to consider issues of employees blogging and what to allow.

He notes that he's removed a few posts and made changes at his own blog as part of the process of finding out what the "line" is in terms of what's acceptable and that Yahoo is working on formal guidelines.

He calls on Google to do the same, and I'd encourage that. It's somewhat amazing to read views on some blogs suggesting that employees of a company -- whether posting on their personal blogs or not -- might have some type of right to say whatever they want about a company but not suffer any type of repercussion.

Forget blogs. Does anyone think that a company employee could say anything they want about a company in a public forum, to a media outlet or other public venue without limitation? I'd say not at all.

Rules are definitely helpful, so that everyone knows where they stand.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:03 AM | Permalink

February 8, 2005

Mark Jen, Controversial Google Blogger, At Google No More

Mark Jen's had a short but eventful stay at Google. Google Blogoscope noted earlier today a rumor that he'd left the company, updated later with a confirmation from Google. Google tells me directly that Jen's no longer a Google employee as well. Why? The company declined to provide more specifics.

Fired? That's what someone claiming to be an anonymous Google employee over at Google Blogoscope said:

I regret to inform you that Mark Jen was fired from Google on Friday, January 28th. I don't have any details, but I can tell you that he was quietly let go.

The post goes on to express upset that Google may have fired Jen to silence him.

Was he fired? Did he decide to leave? Perhaps we'll hear more from Jen on his blog. Meanwhile, a timeline of Jen's quick rise to fame via his blog about life at Google:

January 17: He posts about starting work at Google.
January 25: He gains attention after Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscope blogs about Jen's blog and some critical remarks about Google on it. The blog posts disappear soon after.
January 26: The blog returns, along with Jen's explanation of why he pulls some of his material down.
January 31: The blog gains attention again, after ads for it are spotted on Google.
February 8: News that Jen is no longer with Google emerges.

Postscript: Confirmation now that Jen was fired. More in Former Google Employee Mark Jen Was Fired For Blogging.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:53 PM | Permalink

January 19, 2005

"Hack" Google and Get a Job Interview?

Alan Docherty from The Independent tells the stories of Jon Barker, Elias Torres, and Mark Lyon. All three wrote Gmail "hacks" and were then promptly contacted by Google to ask if they were interested in working for the company. After phone interviews and for one person, a visit to the GooglePlex, none of these "Gmail hackers" were offered jobs.

More in the article: Google is watching you

Posted by Gary Price at 9:30 AM | Permalink

January 10, 2005

Tension at the Googleplex?

News.com offers up a discussion of some of the human resources issues that Google has to or will need to deal with: Google riches outed on the Web.

Just a week ago, Eric Schmidt told 60 Minutes that managing a company growing so quickly is an "internal enemy" and a daily worry.

The News.com article focuses on "unaccustomed tensions" at the Googleplex since even small sales of stock (by many Googlers NOT just top shareholders) need to be reported to the SEC.

"The whole culture's really strange when there are two people in the same cubicle and one's worth $1 million and the other is worth nothing and they both know it," said one person close to the company. "It's created this asymmetry where some people feel more entitled than others."

Stefanie Olsen and Michael Kanellos also cite "sources" that "many other" early Googlers will leave the company early this year after a stock option lock-up ends. Google's vp of corportate marketing has already announced her plans to leave the company.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:13 PM | Permalink

December 27, 2004

Google's HR Challenge

The News.com article: Will Google stay as hot as its lava lamps takes a look at what the company will faces from a human resources perspective as it works to keep its top spot. We've read similar articles in the past.

This new article focuses on recruitment (especially vs Microsoft), company perks* (a daycare center is in the works), and the possibility that Google veterans will cash out and leave the company. Just last week we learned that Cindy McCaffrey, vice president of corporate marketing (and someone who should get PLENTY of credit for Google's succcess) is leaving the company. In October, Evan Williams, the founder of Pyra Labs/Blogger decided to leave Google. Jupiter's Gary Stein also points out that other tech companies have "lost farsighted leaders" like Jobs and Wozniak at Apple.

Google's challengers not only face developing new and better technology but then getting the potential users to visit their service and realize/understand that it might offer advantages over what they've been using at Google. In other words, to some degree they need to change user behavior at a time when many people believe that if it's not in the Google database or if Google doesn't offer the service, the info doesn't exist and/or the service isn't all that useful.

* One of Google's most well-known perks, the tasty food provided free to everyone at the Googleplex, was just discussed in a S.F. Chronicle story: Variety of healthy food fills up oodles of Googlers Search engine workforce gets meals for free.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:05 PM | Permalink

December 20, 2004

Marketing Head Cindy McCaffrey Leaving Google

Forget PageRank. If Google had a secret weapon (or two or three) to count toward its incredible successes, Cindy McCaffrey was a key part of the arsenal. And now, according to SiliconBeat, she's departing: McCaffrey leaving Google.

McCaffrey, vice president of corporate marketing at Google, helped create a marketing and PR team for the company to be envied -- and I speak as someone who has had to deal with numerous PR teams pitching search from companies large and small over the years.

Google's had PR stumbles, of course -- Gmail being one of the biggest to spring to mind. But the successes the company's enjoyed have far, far outweighed these.

I can remember interacting with Google when it was just Larry and Sergey and Craig, which is pretty far back to 1998. But it wasn't too long after that when Cindy arrived.

Now, as SiliconBeat rightly points out, she's the highest ranking Google exec to depart following the IPO. Good news for Cindy -- and good luck to her. As for Google, the marketing and PR team has an all new challenge -- how to spin that losing a top exec isn't a bad thing for Google.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:37 PM | Permalink

December 7, 2004

Google Gains Microsoft Employees, But Only A Handful

Just a brief mention from the Seattle Times on the increasingly popular look at Google grabbing Microsoft employees. Try Google to find alums of Microsoft quotes a Microsoft VP from the Windows division as saying they've lost people they didn't want to see depart, but only a "handful" of them.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:33 AM | Permalink

November 22, 2004

Google Names Head of European Operations

The Industry Standard reports that Nikesh Arora, former chief marketing officer and member of the management board at T-Mobile, has been named the head of Google's European operations.

Arora will work from Google's office in London. He's the first vice president outside of the United States.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:17 PM | Permalink

No Thanks Google, Hello Yahoo, Says Consultant

Earlier this month, Russell Beattie sent a public no thank you note to Google over a job interview. Now he's signing on as a consultant for mobile technology at Yahoo: Starting on Monday I'm Working at Yahoo!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:10 AM | Permalink

November 19, 2004

Amazon & Microsoft Party At Google

Google opened its new offices near Microsoft in Washington State and Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble reports that Microsoft and Amazon employees were out in force for a party. News and photos here: Just got back from Google's Kirkland office opening party.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:13 AM | Permalink

November 1, 2004

No Thanks To Google Interview

We've had some past mentions about Google recruiting wins from Microsoft, such as Google On Hiring Spree For Nooglers? and this item. Now here's a twist that's not so rosy for Google. Russell Beattie decides to pass on the four hour in-person Google interview after clearing preliminary hurtles: On Cancelling My Google Interview.

Why? No clear business plan or product unification theme from the company and a penchant for mean-spiritness are among his reasons. Be sure to check out the sometimes heated comments from others, including some who apparently work for Google.

Meanwhile, some related posts. Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny weights in on Microsoft trying to recruit him: Microsoft Comes A Knockin' (again) and Microsoft's Robert Scoble on not fearing that public blogging of employees will lead to losses: The blogger recruiting wars.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 22, 2004

Does Google Plan to "Steal" Microsoft Engineers?

Google already has a sales office in Seattle but this Seattle Times business brief let's us know that the company is opening another office in suburban Kirkland.

Why?

"Some observers said yesterday Google's move is clearly intended to steal Microsoft employees."

Greg Linden from Findory adds,

"Google has some pretty extraordinary benefits and a very free-form, chaotic, research lab-like atmosphere, which is very different from the atmosphere inside of Microsoft, where things tend to be very well considered and planned out."

Posted by Gary Price at 8:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 2, 2004

Keeping Googlers at Google

Lisa Baertlein's article, Google Challenge: Keeping Wealthy Workers, takes a look at Googler "retention" issues post IPO. Baertlein mentions that more employee "perks" are coming.

>From the article: To be sure, Google -- which has vowed to remain unconventional -- is seen as a very employee-friendly company. It has even promised to beef up perks, which already include an in-house masseuse and free lunches prepared by the former chef to the Grateful Dead.

While such extras are nice, if Google fails to instill a continued sense of mission among employees, "they're crossing their fingers and just hoping that good people will stay," said Vince Poscente, a management strategist and author.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 23, 2004

Sergey, Larry, David and Jerry - Forbes Says Rich!

The Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans was just released and for the first time Sergey Brin and Larry Page have made the list. The duo tied for No.43 with $4 billion each. They're also the youngest members of the list.

Yahoo's David Filo appears at No. 74 ($2.6 Billion) on the list while Jerry Yang is ranked at No. 97 ($2.2 Billion).

and in other Brin and Page news... Both have been named 2004 Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University.

>From a ZDNet article, "Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who won the same prize in 2002, said in a statement: 'Google held a mirror up to us, reflecting the myriad little actions of linking as a set of concepts which society has discussed and sought."

Posted by Gary Price at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 20, 2004

Google On Hiring Spree For Nooglers?

Google Picks Gates' Brains from the New York Post talks about Google being on a hiring spree. It's unclear to me whether this is really a spree. I imagine that picking up half-a-dozen people over a couple weeks is probably business as usual, for Google.

It IS interesting to read that four people formerly working on Microsoft's Internet Explorer have recently been hired by Google, though they'd left Microsoft by the time they were hired. That will further fuel the idea that Google will launch its own browser, which has been explored recently on blogs and voiced in the past, as with Andrew Goodman at the end of last year. (We also have some forum discussion here: How About a Google Web Browser?).

Also interesting is news that someone who is a direct steal from Microsoft by Google, Joe Beda, is keeping a web log that documents his experiences as a Noogler -- a new Google employee. Adam Bosworth is also a Noogler, part of that team of four browser developers now at Google. You'll find his blog here and more about his hire here: Bosworth Leaves BEA for Google.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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