I'm Feeling Lucky_ The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - Douglas Edwards [163]
Overture's contract expired on Wednesday, May 1, 2002. AOL and Google were prepared to handle the transition throughout the day so that at midnight AdWords ads would begin filling the holes left by Overture's departure from AOL's pages.
But Overture threw one last wild punch. The contract would end on May 1, they agreed, but at exactly 12:01 a.m. Wednesday morning, not Wednesday night—twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes earlier than AOL had expected. "Overture were sore losers," Alan told me. "They said, 'No, no, no. Not at the end of Wednesday—at the beginning of Wednesday. We hate you guys. You're dead.'"
The Google team couldn't believe the depths of spiteful stupidity being displayed. Overture not only gave up a day's worth of revenue but pissed off AOL.
"You guys picked the right horse," Alan assured AOL. "We would never have done that to you." Overture's pettiness had AOL jumping through hoops to advance the schedule by a full day, just in the hope that Google would panic, drop the ball, and send AOL rushing back to their jilted partner. It didn't happen. Google's search results and syndicated ads launched at 12:01 a.m., May 1, 2002, and the world took note.
"The America Online pact now establishes Google as a major competitor in the paid-listings market, which Overture had dominated," wrote the Wall Street Journal. Overture's stock dropped thirty-six percent. Inktomi, whose search results Google had replaced as part of the same deal with AOL, dropped twenty-five percent.
"It represents an attempt to capitalize on Google's search brand," rationalized Overture CEO Ted Meisel. "paid listings just came with the package." AOL switched because of the weakness of Inktomi's search results, according to Meisel's spin. Overture was just collateral damage.
Eric Schmidt's choice of Susan's mid-range revenue estimate proved unduly conservative. By the end of the contract's first year, we were far above the highest projections. Part of that success may have been attributable to a small shift made by an enterprising engineer. The day after the deal went live, John Bauer added code that boldfaced the keyword a user had searched for when it appeared in an ad, making it obvious that the ad was relevant. That single improvement increased clickthrough rates by four hundred percent. One engineer. One change. Four hundred percent.
I had plenty to do in the run-up to AOL's switch to Google. All of our advertiser communications had to be revamped; our new, more stringent editorial policies had to be communicated; and numerous slides showing the power of Google and AOL combined had to be prepared. It was clear that marketing had a role to play, and I plugged in to do my part as well as I could. It wasn't very exciting. Sheryl's support team was closer to the advertisers, and Jonathan's new product-management team did the deep thinking about integrating Google with AOL. I and my group were, as Jonathan described us to his team, "the ad agency"—a service bureau for implementing others' strategic visions. There was pressure, though. Everything had to be ready for the launch, which coincided with deadlines for the GSA team and Google answers, a service that used live researchers to answer complex questions for a fee.
I had no complaints, but after two and a half years, my job was taking the shape of a more traditional communications manager in a mid-sized firm. You wouldn't know it watching from the outside, but things were settling into a groove in my part of the Googleplex. Come in, work out, eat breakfast, answer email, put out fires, eat lunch, clean up messes, eat dinner, answer email, go home, write copy, answer email, go to bed.
Sheryl Sandberg, on the other hand, was sitting on a volcano. Her AdWords support team of four people could not possibly handle the incoming barrage of work AOL required. Google ads now had to meet AOL's editorial policies, and AOL was