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I proposed "GIDYAP" (Google's Interactive Do-It-Yourself Ad Program). Everyone immediately barfed all over it. I tried "BuyWords" next: a play on "bywords" (words to live by) and "buy words." The sales team allowed that they could dance to that, and Bart agreed the name was catchy. Larry gave it his blessing.

"All done," I thought, once again mistaking consensus for final approval.

Then the lobbying began.

Salar pointed out that the keyword-targeting concept was relatively new and we wanted a name that made clear how it worked. BuyWords might imply that we were selling placement in our actual search results, rather than just ads next to the results. Still, he liked BuyWords better than AdsDirect, which I argued was too generic and evocative of old-fashioned direct mail.

Susan countered that "AdsDirect" reminded users they didn't need a middleman to create or place their ads and thus suggested the benefit of a discounted price.

Cindy expressed a slight preference for BuyWords, because she viewed it as a way to engage the press on our refusal to sell placement in results. But she could live with DirectAds too.

Once again we were at an impasse. I went home that night and spent an hour generating more names while my boys did their homework and Kristen gave the baby a bath. In the morning I sent out a new list of possibilities.

"promote Control."

"Ad-O-Mat."

"Ad Commander."

"Impulse Ads."

I didn't love any of them, but I did feel pretty good about the last name on my list: "AdWords."

"It's new! And improved!" I shilled. "It's like BuyWords without the Buy! It also sounds like Edwards, which is a big plus in my book."

Salar liked AdWords better than BuyWords. Omid liked it. Bart liked it. Larry liked it.

Sergey cast the final vote. He informed the engineering team that our new system would be called "AdWords." He neglected to tell me—or anyone else in marketing—about his decision. It's hard to imagine such an oversight at a brand-driven company like Procter & Gamble. From an engineer's perspective, however, the name question only needed to be resolved so the proper string of characters could be entered into the program before the "code freeze," at which point no major changes were allowed. The marketing stuff that went along with establishing a brand was secondary and could be dealt with once the program had been locked down. It was Jen McGrath of the front-end team who let me know that my family's name would live forever, enshrined in Google's revenue stream.

Lobsters and Porn, Redux

AdWords had a long way to go before it could go out to the public. The engineers wrestled with the software that would actually place the ads and charge for them. The UI team worked with Salar to finalize the interface advertisers would navigate to create and activate their campaigns. PR would introduce AdWords to the press. I owned the language we used to explain it directly to our users. There was a great deal to explain. We needed an FAQ, error messages, terms and conditions, customer service emails, and sales materials. And engineering kept changing things in the weeks leading up to the launch. Many long nights ensued.

I didn't mind at all, because AdWords added another dimension to my role. I was not just building Google's brand but also our bottom line. From that point on, I wrote almost all of the words that appeared on our website aimed at either consumers or clients. I began envisioning myself as the human interface between the company and the people who used our products. It may have gone to my head a bit. If I was going to be the voice of Google, Google's voice would sound like me. I terrorized colleagues with imperious screeds about tone, style, and the overuse of capitalization and exclamation marks. Engineers viewed letter size and punctuation as knobs they could twist to raise excitement in otherwise uninspired writing—LOOK! THIS MUST BE IMPORTANT! I emphatically told them that most exclamation marks were completely superfluous! Unless they were writing about Dick and Jane! And Spot!

It all got