IndustryGoogle’s Omid Kordestani Talks; Larry Page Enjoys Timing Queries

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. (-:

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