In general, I had a harder time writing comments down on the fly during Omid’s talk than I did during Diller’s – Omid seemed significantly more glib, less direct. So, a lot of my notes below are boiled down versions (filtered through my subconscious biases, of course) of what Omid said, wrapped in a lot of ‘that’s a good question’ and repetition, and when there’s that much condensing there’s bound to be some distortion as well. But for what it’s worth, here they are. No exact quotes, just the gist. John Battelle’s the questioner.
Q: What were you doing with Google in 1999 when you started?
A: AdWords didn’t exist back then. Really, was trying to build a company back then, hiring the right folks, getting in business development people.
Q: Did you ever think Google would become what it was?
A: The focus from day one – I could see the passion for innovation in Larry / Sergey’s eyes. Knew they were building a company to last.
Q: The company has an announcement maybe once every two days. These ideas seem to be converging onto a foe – Microsoft. Particularly yesterday’s announcement with Sun. You’re from Netscape, which was eviscerated by Microsoft – is this still on your mind?
A: (didn’t really answer the question) Not focusing on competition. Focus on innovating.
Q: You don’t think about Microsoft? They’re thinking about you – see it in the court records.
A: Well, we don’t throw any chairs.
Q: Wall Street. Unusual S-1 – a finger towards Wall St. A year and a half in, how’s it going? Do you feel the pressure of making quarterly numbers?
A: Absolutely. At Netscape, a classic business, trying to making quarterly numbers involved looking to do last-minute deals. At Google, looked for / found a business model that’s more scientific. Monitor everything, have Ph.D.’s working on it, etc., so pressure to meet quarterly exists but it’s a very different experience.
Q: AdSense – used as an initial revenue stream by many. What inning are we in (to use the baseball metaphor) – what percentage of the revenue model has been played out? Is it early still? How far can it go?
A: Larry – he times our search results, doesn’t think our service is a good one today. Wants more improvment. Is passionate about improving our service today. Don’t think we’re even in the first inning yet. Business models on the web are evolving into different ones – hoped AdSense will create an ecosystem, enable additional investments in great content, great services on the web.
Q: Is there a rubric to understand what business Google’s actually in? Because you’re in a lot of stuff. Taking up a lot of turf…
A: It’s a good question – we feel a sense of responsibility, sensitive to how perceived, don’t want to be seen as a gorilla. Innovation happening – look, conference is sold out. Google trying to innovate, be nimble – it’s harder, since Google is big.
Q: How do you hire so many and not blow up?
A: Trying to make it a science. Executive team looks at every offer from the receptionist up, trying to keep the quality high.
Q: Media – recent ‘Everybody Hates Chris’ example. Where’s this going, what’s Google’s role in bring media online?
A: As an industry we don’t have a choice – distribution of video, music, etc. is going to change.
Q: Is Google going to play a lead role in that? Is the AdWords / AdSense structure going to extend to video, etc.?
A: We’re going to try to extend these business models. Access to content is core to our mission, and we’re going to try to find the right business models for these.
Q: Media companies are worried about Google. Should they be?
A: The industry is changing – it’s not just Google. We just ask ‘does this make sense for the end users?’ when acting. Media companies may be nervous, but there is nervousness whenever there is change.
Audience questions:
Q: As a seller, I want to move to a percentage of sales that actually close – revshare instead of cost-per-click. Would help with Google’s fight against click fraud. Will Google move in that direction?
A: We’re watching ROI now, making sure it’s there for users of our CPC basis. Discount certain types of traffic based on conversion data, so we’re already adjusting to a cost-per-lead model somewhat. But right now the CPC model is working well. [...] Click fraud – we don’t see that as a serious problem for us today.
Q: (Incredulous.) Seriously?
A: Yep, we’re very sophisticated about catching click fraud.
Q: Google is a tech company and a pretty closed tech company at that. No publication, no shared information. But we have an obligation to share technology to move forward to next series of events. Why not share more, open up?
A: There’s a lot of thinking going on about how to be more open, be a better citizen.
Q (from Tim O’Reilly) – about the famous statement ‘don’t be evil’ – discovered that we were running ads designed to manipulate Google rankings. Removed them. Yet these people buying the ads were monetizing them through Google AdSense. Seems like a slippery slope.
A: Lots of behaviors like this – click fraud another example – when we find them, we change them. Trying systematically to get rid of these people.
Q (from Tim O’Reilly again, a polite calling-bullshit if you ask me): Seems to me that there’s a lot of obvious examples of manipulative sites using AdSense still out there, but you are trying?
A: Yep, we are.
Ended with another Q from O’Reilly regarding data supplier like NavTech, suddenly Google distributes NavTech’s data for free (mashups), NavTech not expecting this, wishing they could renegotiate the contract. Not much in the way of an answer – Omid didn’t know the specifics of the case. Suggested Tim talk to him later.
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