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What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google

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Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google

#31

Post by [deleted] »

greenlblue wrote: post #18
paul wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also full of inaccuracies. The "interesting details" are largely wrong. Unfortunately it's written in an authoratative style, so people assume it's true and upvote, demonstrating one of the major flaws in vote based systems.

Plus, quora is not really living up to it's promise of a high quality question/answer social site. Most questions and answers are as inane as on yahoo answers and the only difference is the more pleasing UI but that wears off pretty quickly.

[deleted]

Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google

#32

Post by Retric »

greenlblue wrote: post #18
paul wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also full of inaccuracies. The "interesting details" are largely wrong. Unfortunately it's written in an authoratative style, so people assume it's true and upvote, demonstrating one of the major flaws in vote based systems.

Plus, quora is not really living up to it's promise of a high quality question/answer social site. Most questions and answers are as inane as on yahoo answers and the only difference is the more pleasing UI but that wears off pretty quickly.

I don't know it seems to have a reasonable summery:

The most common decisions cited are:

    * Realizing that search was important.
    * Focusing on speed.
    * Maintaining corporate control.
    * Focusing on the user experience and deferring revenue.
    * Scaling out computation over a large number of cheap computers.
    * Hiring very smart people.

Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google

#33

Post by jakevoytko »

pg wrote: post #4

The highest ranked answer on that thread, though it contains some interesting details, is way off. Managing VCs well was not what made Google successful-- or what makes any startup successful. The real key decisions were things like realizing search itself was important, at a time when all the other search engines thought it was unsexy, and were trying to get people to start calling them "portals" instead; designing…

The two of you are looking at their success from opposite directions. You're looking Google from day zero and asking, "Why were they successful at all?" The first answer looks at their mammoth success and asks, "How did they avoid becoming a smaller company as they grew?" The answer isn't as simple as the initial design of Google, or how they managed investors. They took hundreds of great small steps in the beginning that made them number one. Cultural ones, such as free food, "don't be evil," and hiring the best people. Technical ones, like BigTable, MapReduce, the Google File System, and their obsessive focus on operations. Business ones, like the terms of their IPO and their managing of VCs. And entrepreneurial ones, like 20% time, acquiring lots of startups, and awarding employee bonuses by product usage. "In the early days" is a fuzzy measure, but these are all decisions that Google has made to continually grow their company in value

Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google

#34

Post by caffeine »

I think none of the answers in that summary really say it. Google won (in the beginning) because:

  1. It *just* searches. Really well.
  2. Ad auctions.
That's basically it.

It's the same way Starbucks won in the beginning:

  1. *Just* coffee. Tasty coffee.  
  2. Charge for it.
Or Apple:

  1. *Just* the user experience.  A great one.
  2. Charge for it.
(Google, Apple, and Starbucks have now all diversified widely, with mixed results).

Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google

#35

Post by samd »

There are many factors that lead to Google's success, but I know what made me switch to Google back in its early days. It was faster (probably because it was sparse), it got good results, and I felt cool for using it (maybe because it was the underdog, or maybe because it had a "for geeks, by geeks" feel to it).

Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google

#36

Post by lisper »

jeb wrote: post #28
lisper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adwards came MUCH MUCH later It's AdWords, not Adwards. And it launched in September of 2000, when Google absolutely did not "dominate the landscape." Do you even bother to check your facts, or do you just make shit up?

In September 2000, Google was already the most important search engine out there. It was already successful, and adwords had nothing to do with its success. It had 20million in the bank already. Please avoid the personal attacks, it's not good form.

In September 2000 Google had money in the bank only because it had closed a $25M VC round just over a year before. Its revenues were tiny. Its market share was tiny. It was not profitable. Its success was far from assured. By the time Google turned its first profit, the vast majority of its revenues came from AdWords. To say that AdWords had nothing to do with Google's success is akin to saying that Windows had nothing to do with Microsoft's success.

And personal attacks are not nearly as bad a form as promulgating demonstrable falsehoods as if they were facts.

Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google

#37

Post by jeb »

lisper wrote: post #36
jeb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In September 2000, Google was already the most important search engine out there. It was already successful, and adwords had nothing to do with its success. It had 20million in the bank already. Please avoid the personal attacks, it's not good form.

In September 2000 Google had money in the bank only because it had closed a $25M VC round just over a year before. Its revenues were tiny. Its market share was tiny. It was not profitable. Its success was far from assured. By the time Google turned its first profit, the vast majority of its revenues came from AdWords. To say that AdWords had nothing to do with Google's success is akin to saying that Windows had nothi…

It's market share was not tiny. It was growing rapidly, and was already dominating.

I think I've had enough of this argument. People like you are never wrong - you are arguing absolutely orthogonal to me, and punctuating it with personal attacks.

Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google

#38

Post by jamiequint »

resdirector wrote: post #24
paul wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also full of inaccuracies. The "interesting details" are largely wrong. Unfortunately it's written in an authoratative style, so people assume it's true and upvote, demonstrating one of the major flaws in vote based systems.

Agreed re voting systems. I believe that a good Q&A site should use "voting" to recursively find smart people who are similar to you and can provide you with good answers....as opposed to showing the most popular/well-written/pithiest answer. "PeopleRank", maybe.

I agree with this and have been saying it for a while. Quora could avoid inaccuracies like this one by weighting a person's answer on a topic based on their endorsements in PageRank fashion. e.g. I endorse you on Google, which has more weight if I am myself endorsed on Google with the weight increasing based on the number of times I am endorsed and how many people have endorsed the people endorsing me and so on. I'm relatively sure Quora will do this eventually.

Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google

#39

Post by [deleted] »

jeb wrote: post #37
lisper wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In September 2000 Google had money in the bank only because it had closed a $25M VC round just over a year before. Its revenues were tiny. Its market share was tiny. It was not profitable. Its success was far from assured. By the time Google turned its first profit, the vast majority of its revenues came from AdWords. To say that AdWords had nothing to do with Google's success is akin to saying that Windows had nothi…

It's market share was not tiny. It was growing rapidly, and was already dominating. I think I've had enough of this argument. People like you are never wrong - you are arguing absolutely orthogonal to me, and punctuating it with personal attacks.

[deleted]

Re: What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google

#40

Post by lisper »

jeb wrote: post #37
lisper wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In September 2000 Google had money in the bank only because it had closed a $25M VC round just over a year before. Its revenues were tiny. Its market share was tiny. It was not profitable. Its success was far from assured. By the time Google turned its first profit, the vast majority of its revenues came from AdWords. To say that AdWords had nothing to do with Google's success is akin to saying that Windows had nothi…

It's market share was not tiny. It was growing rapidly, and was already dominating. I think I've had enough of this argument. People like you are never wrong - you are arguing absolutely orthogonal to me, and punctuating it with personal attacks.

Growing rapidly is not mutually exclusive with being small. In fact, it's much easier to grow rapidly when you're small than when you're big.

Here's a reference in support of my position:

http://searchenginewatch.com/2165081

This article is from October of 2002, two years later than the time frame in question. At that time, after two years of exponential growth, Google's market share was 30%. In September 2000, Google was still an upstart. Three months earlier the big news was that Google had beat out Inktomi for a contract with Yahoo:

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-242392.html

Google's overall market share at the time was so small that the press reports don't even mention it. Google didn't even register on anyone's radar as a major player.

Can you cite any references to support your claim that Google was "already dominating"? No, you can't. Because they weren't.

> I think I've had enough of this argument

A common tactic from someone trying to defend an untenable position.

> People like you

Excuse me? Weren't you saying something earlier about personal attacks?

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