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Based on Netscape's Open Directory project, G.O.D. would siphon users from Yahoo, though it would have been impolitic to admit that publicly in January 2000. We wanted to maintain our friendly relationship with Yahoo—they owned the galaxy in which we were but a small rising star. Mostly, though, G.O.D. was an annoying, if necessary, distraction.

"Everyone should just use search," Larry complained. Directories were dead. To find something in a directory, you had to understand the structure of the categories within it and then drill down through layer after layer to the hidden pool of knowledge you sought. With search, you just threw everything into a big ol' sloppy data bucket and fished out answers using words describing what you wanted to find. It didn't matter where your data swam, because a good search engine would catch it, review it, rank it, and serve it to you before your fingers stopped twitching from clicking the mouse. Search? Efficient. Directories? Not.

People, though—irrational, illogical, and idiosyncratic as they are—sometimes preferred to troll the data themselves instead of dispatching a helpful search engine with an enormous net. Perhaps they wanted to see what other information fell into the same category. Perhaps they felt more comfortable worming out the perfect little fact or file or figure for themselves. If people insisted on wasting time with a data-retrieval method other than search, Google would oblige by offering an alternative—a far less useful alternative, but an alternative nonetheless.

We couldn't incorporate the best-known directory into Google, because it belonged to Yahoo. So Google hooked up with the Open Directory, a project under the stewardship of Netscape (and its parent AOL). Thousands of volunteers reviewed websites, then added them to the appropriate directory categories. That human involvement also offended search purists. Who could be trusted to categorize sites accurately? Even if a semi-intelligent agent looked at every site, figured out what it was about, then slotted it into its appropriate cubbyhole, there was no chance a manual operation could keep up with the Internet's growth. Robotic software tirelessly scouring websites at the speed of light—that was the future.

Once Google had found a directory, we couldn't just duct tape it onto the search engine. You don't put a rust-stained camper shell on a Ferrari. So Paul Bucheit added a search component to our version of the Open Directory. Now people who insisted on browsing for information could at least use search to get to the appropriate category to browse. It was an ugly baby, but it was our ugly baby.

Now our ugly baby needed a name.

Product naming is a tricky process. Do you give a product a new name that suggests it's completely separate from your core business? Do you incorporate your primary brand name to show that it's equal to, but distinct from, your existing product? Or do you simply use a generic term to describe it so that it becomes just another service you offer, rather than a distinct product that stands alone?

"Let's label it with a lower-case d and make it a feature," I said to Salar. "And let's use that as the model for future product launches. We want all our brand equity to reside in the Google name, not in each sub-product." I sketched out a brand architecture showing Google in a separate box at the top, with "directory" and other potential services in smaller boxes underneath. "That makes Google more powerful as a primary brand," I explained, "so it can add credibility to any new service we introduce."

Salar agreed. "Let's stay with this strategy as we build out the information types accessible from our site," he said, "like Google images. We'll brand them as extensions of Google's service rather than new products." That decision, which took a few minutes to make, ensured that all of our engineers' awe-inducing achievements would accrue to the benefit of the Google name, rather than be parsed out to a hundred different product