I'm Feeling Lucky_ The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - Douglas Edwards [153]
Some software surreptitiously took ownership of computers and made them "slavebots" that could be harnessed as part of a gigantic network to launch denial-of-service attacks or send spam. Techies called these parasitic programs "malware," "adware," or "spyware." We lumped them all together and called them "scumware."
Matt Cutts hated scumware. Intensely, personally hated it. His job focused on blocking people who tried to trick or "spam" Google into listing their sites higher in our results. He fought "black hats" every day, and scumware distributors were the worst of the worst. It sickened him that users thought we were the ones degrading their Google experience. In late 2001, he began monitoring the rise of scumware and pleading with any Googler who would listen to do something about it.
I was with Matt. I loathed seeing notes from users threatening to quit Google because of something over which we had no control. I worked with him to draft a lengthy email response, in which we explained what was happening and how to fix it. People replied with apologies and thanked us for alerting them to problems they hadn't been aware they had. Matt wanted to do more. He proposed that the Google toolbar include software that killed pop-ups and that we forward complaints we received to the FTC. He also suggested we post a note on our homepage explaining that Google was not at fault.
Wayne Rosing supported the idea of a "full-scale crusade-jihad" against those responsible, but others worried about the danger of declaring war. We suspected there were hundreds of scumware creators, and we knew they could be ... scummy. And spiteful. They didn't like to be thwarted, and they had no scruples about attacking those who tried to stop them. If we aggressively pursued them, they would target our site to make an example of us, causing even worse problems for users. Marissa suggested a compromise. If we could detect that a computer had been infected with specific scumware applications, we could show a message telling the user what to do about it. With that approach, we wouldn't confuse people who weren't experiencing problems and we wouldn't make ourselves too broad a target.
That solution turned out to be infeasible, so we fell back to posting a note linked from the homepage. We would tell users their pop-up ads weren't coming from us and casually mention that we did have our own, very discreet, very targeted, keyword-advertising program. Two marketing objectives satisfied simultaneously.
Larry didn't like the second part. Most of the people seeing our homepage would never advertise with us and might not even know we ran ads. Why disillusion them if they had no need to know? Larry never wanted to give people more information than he thought it was useful for them to have. I deleted references to AdWords.
In January 2002, we added a line to the homepage: "Google does not display pop-up advertising. Here's why." It was linked to a page that began, "Google does not allow pop-up ads of any kind on our site. We find them annoying." The response was immediate and positive, and I found it intoxicating. Google was becoming my own personal publishing platform. Mentalplex, the 9/11 news page, "Ten Things We've Found to Be True," and now "No Pop-Ups." The hits kept coming. We had built a global bully pulpit and my voice rolled forth from it. My thoughts, my ideas, my imprecations would be seen by more people than read the New York Times or watched a network newscast. I was the man behind the curtain giving voice to the all-knowing Oz. I tried to keep my ego in check.
The day after AdWords Select launched, the Associated Press ran a story about the service that said in part, "Online search engine maker Google Inc. is introducing a program that allows Web sites to be displayed more prominently if sponsors pay more money—an advertising-driven system derided by critics as an invitation