I'm Feeling Lucky_ The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - Douglas Edwards [218]
* I believed users felt a deeper connection if they learned about Google via news reports or friends and thus felt they had discovered it themselves. Paid advertising depersonalized that experience because "the product" was clearly being sold to many people simultaneously. Danny Sullivan, the noted search guru, described it this way in July 2000: "When I speak about search engines to groups and mention Google, something unusual happens to some members of the audience. They smile and nod, in the way you do when you feel like you've found a secret little getaway that no one else knows about. And each time I speak, I see more and more people smiling and nodding this way, pleased to have discovered Google." Danny Sullivan, Searchenginewatch.com/2207571, "The Search Engine Report," July 5, 2000.
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* Fred Vogelstein, Wired.com, April 9, 2007; http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2007/04/my_other_interv/.
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* Tim became CEO of AOL in 2009.
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* Rainbow 6 was a Tom Clancy novel turned into a videogame featuring a heavily armed paramilitary group.
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* Stephanie Olsen, CNET, December 19, 2001, http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-277198.html.
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* Referred to as "FIGS" for French, Italian, German, and Spanish, and as "CJK" for simplified and traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
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* http://www.commercialalert.org/issues/culture/search-engines/.
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* Other ads team members at various times included Amit Patel, Jeremy Chao, Erann Gatt, Peter Kappler, Radhika Malpani, John Bauer, Zhe Qian, Laurence Gonsalves, and Jane Manning.
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† Chad named the project "Smart Ad Selection System," which was usually shortened to "SmartASS."
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*Eric once interviewed a job candidate who began explaining the problem at the heart of his doctoral thesis and the way he had arrived at an elegant solution. Before he could describe his breakthrough, Eric asked, "Was it a Hamiltonian system?" The candidate stared at him in awe. That answer had eluded him for months. Eric had deduced it from their five-minute conversation.
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* Though, ironically, I was the one who showed Sergey how to press a shirt when he needed to look presentable for an event. We had an ironing board set up next to the massage table. It may be the only time after my interview that I was able to teach him anything useful.
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*Overture reported revenue of $288 million at the end of 2001, up from $103 million in 2000; http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-962209.html.
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* Mark Sweeney, Revolutionmagazine.com, January 23, 2002, www.brandrepublic.com/news/ 135039.
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* "Margins may tell Overture Story," TheStreet.com, February 19, 2002.
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* AOL sounded like "Aloha," hence the nickname.
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* For more on AOL's culture of negotiation, see Alec Klein, Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner (Simon and Schuster, 2003).
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* http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum10003/3089.htm.
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* Inktomi did have an extensive "paid inclusion" program that allowed websites to ensure they showed up in search results.
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* http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1548269.
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† http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jul/21/business/fi-yahoo21.
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* PMMs focused on marketing our revenue-generating products and working with sales on customer acquisition, market analysis, retention, and loyalty. APMs were usually recent grads in training to be PMs.
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* All important Google meetings after this one included a digital countdown clock that showed speakers how much time remained before they had to end their presentations.
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* Overture subsequently sued InfoSpace, a move that sent other potential Overture partners a rather negative message.
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* Director of search technology at Yahoo.
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* There were still tweaks to be made. When the New York Post ran a story about a murder victim whose dismembered body was found