336 interest-based advertising rollout Susan Wojcicki, “Making Ads More Interesting,” Official Google Blog, March 11, 2009.
342 the cars driving around Alan Eustace, “WiFi Data Collection: An Update,” Official Google Blog, May 14, 2010. The Street View flap led Google to strengthen its privacy controls, and Google appointed Alma Whitten as its director of privacy.
343 hostile bid made by Microsoft Steven Levy, “Yahooligans at the Window,” Newsweek, February 2, 2008.
344 Microsoft began Sam Gustin, “Microsoft’s Secret ‘Screw Google’ Meetings in D.C.,” Daily Finance, August 28, 2009.
345 “We would have ended” Nate Raymond, “Hogan’s Litvack Discusses Google/Yahoo,” The Am Law Daily, December 2, 2008.
346 One of the speakers James Rowley, “Antitrust Pick Varney Saw Google as Next Microsoft,” www.bloomberg.com, February 17, 2009.
347 Opponents called it Miguel Helft, “Google Makes a Case That It Isn’t So Big,” The New York Times, June 29, 2009.
347 “Why don’t you” Sergey Brin to author. Brin also made similar remarks to Ken Auletta, the author of Googled.
347 “search all books” General accounts of Google Books that proved useful include the chapter “Moon Shot” in Planet Google and Jeffrey Toobin, “Google’s Moon Shot,” The New Yorker, February 5, 2007.
348 several sizes Personal email from Marissa Mayer, August 17, 2010. She identified books in that session by time stamps on the scans.
349 “The sun is setting” Vincent Cartwright Vickers, The Google Book (1913; reprinted Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).
350 If its patents were Steven Shankland, “Patent Reveals Google’s Book-Scanning Advantage,” CNET, May 4, 2009.
355 That was the day An excellent account of the Amazon project is in Gary Wolf, “The Great Library of Amazonia,” Wired, December 2003.
355 “I think it’s an important part” Brin gave me the quote for my column about Search Inside the Book, “Welcome to History 2.0,” Newsweek, November 10, 2003.
356 “innocent arrogance” John Heilemann, “Googlephobia,” New York, December 5, 2005.
357 Page was rhapsodic Page called me at Newsweek in December 2003 to explain the project.
359 books published in 1930 Lawrence Lessig, “Copyright Law and Roasted Pig,” Red Herring, October 22, 2002.
359 Google’s chief economist Hal Varian, “The Google Library Project,” prepared for the AIE-Brookings discussion “The Google Copyright Controversy,” February 24, 2006.
360 aviation industry Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), pp. 1–3.
360 “Google saw us” Heilemann, “Googlephobia.”
363 “a path to insanity” Lawrence Lessig, “For the Love of Culture,” The New Republic, January 26, 2010.
363 “hack the Google Book Settlement” Steven Levy, “Who’s Messing with the Google Book Settlement?,” Wired.com Epicenter (blog), March 31, 2009.
364 In October 2009 Sergey Brin, “A Library to Last Forever,” The New York Times, October 8, 2009.
364 “There are many reasons” Schmidt made the remarks at a press roundtable in New York City on October 8, 2009.
365 “Google Book Settlement: Brilliant but Evil?” Pamela Samuelson, Cisco Distinguished Lecture, San Jose, California, May 13, 2010.
366 In groups of four Transcript, The Authors Guild, Inc., et al. v. Google Inc.
Epilogue: Chasing Taillights
369 On June 8, 2007 The letter is reprinted in Justin Smith, “Insider Perspectives: Ex-Googler Justin Rosenstein on Making the Jump to Facebook,” Inside Facebook, July 9, 2007.
370 MySpace An excellent account of the history of MySpace is Julia Angwin, Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America (New York: Random House, 2009).
370 Mark Zuckerberg I examined his thinking and business goals in “Facebook Grows Up,” Newsweek, August 15, 2007, and “Geek Power: Steven Levy Revisits Tech Titans, Hackers, Idealists,” Wired, May 2009. The definitive book on Facebook is David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010).
372 Oddly, Orkut became Loren Baker, “Google’s Page and Brin Visit Brazil,” Search Engine Journal, February 9, 2006.
374 The company was run Paul Festa, “Blogger Founder Leaves Google,” CNET, October 4, 2004.
378 a February 10 posting Nicholas Carlson, “Warning: Google Buzz Has a Huge Privacy Flaw,” Business Insider, February 10, 2010.
378 Brin boasted Miguel Helft and Brad Stone, “With Buzz, Google Plunges into Social Networking,” The New York Times, February 9, 2010.
379 A domestic violence victim “Outraged Blogger Is Automatically Being Followed by Her Abusive Ex-Husband on Google Buzz,” Business Insider, February 12, 2010.
379 Foreign Policy’s Evgeny Morozov Evgeny Morozov, “Wrong Kind of Buzz Around Google Buzz,” www.Foreignpolicy.com (Net.effect blog), February 11, 2010.
379 “not seen the user adoption we would have liked” Urs Hölzle, “Update on Google Wave,” Official Google Blog, August 4, 2010.
380 “The algorithm is” Steven Levy, “Inside Google’s Algorithm,” Wired, March 2010.
383 Eric Schmidt was giddily Schmidt made his comments at an August 4, 2010, press roundtable.
384 Working with one Alan Davidson, “A Joint Policy Proposal for an Open Internet,” Google Public Policy Blog, August 9, 2010. An example of the criticism is Cindy Cohn, “A Review of Verizon and Google’s Net Neutrality Proposal,” Electric Frontier Foundation Deeplinks Blog, August 10, 2010.
384 On August 13 Tom Krazit, “Google’s Net Neutrality Ideas meet Raging Grannies,” CNET, August 13, 2010.
INDEX
Acharya, Anurag, 39–40
Adbusters, 337
Adkins, Heather, 268–70, 308, 313
Adobe Flash, 53
AdSense, 103–8, 120, 171, 174, 240, 330, 334
adult supervision, 29, 74, 82, 154, 387
advertising:
and antitrust probe, 331–34, 345
and AOL, 95–99
and artificial intelligence, 100
auctions in, 87–88, 89–93, 99, 101, 109, 110, 112–13, 115, 117
banner, 78, 330
billing for, 84
on blog pages, 101, 107
click-through rate, 86, 91, 92, 111–12, 120
and cloud computing, 211
conversion tracking, 113–14, 119
and cookies, 330, 333–36
developing the system, 79, 260; see also AdWords
in different cultures, 97
display, 330–31, 333
and email, 102, 170–73, 177, 179, 180
interest-based, 262–63, 336–37
landing page in, 84, 91
making money via, 83–94, 99, 105–6, 108, 119, 120, 201, 211
and marketing, 76–77
measurable, 115
on nonsearch pages, 101
opt-out feature, 336, 354
original vision of, 75, 78–79, 84
pay-per-click, 88, 89, 91, 93, 95, 99, 101, 106, 109, 118–19
and Phil, 99–103
placement of, 105
profanity in, 107–8
quality rating, 86, 91–93, 96–98, 106, 107–8, 109–10, 111–12, 116, 328
and relevance, 92, 93, 111
and retargeting, 336–37
sales force for, 84–85, 96, 109, 110–14, 118
search results mixed with, 89, 145
self-service system, 99, 102, 105, 112
silver bullet theory, 262
sponsored links, 85, 170, 262
and Super Bowl, 331
updating, 116
and user logs, 84, 180, 333–36
with videos, 262–63
and web pages, 99–109
in Yellow Pages, 87
and YouTube, 262�
�63
AdWords, 116, 159, 206, 208
ad quality, 86, 91–93, 96, 106
and AdSense, 104, 106
and China, 296, 304
click-through rate, 86, 91, 92
conversion tracking in, 113–14
and Phil, 101–2
Premium, 109, 111, 113, 115
profitability of, 83, 85–86, 93–94, 99, 109, 120, 201, 262
Select, 91–94, 99, 109
sponsored links, 85, 170, 262
Aiken, Paul, 360
Ajax, 168, 201
Albert II, king of Belgium, 197
algorithms:
Hilltop, 38, 39
information retrieval (IR), 20, 110, 239
rating systems based on, 16–18, 21, 109, 112, 328, 350
and relevance, 20, 21, 52, 380
secrecy of, 56
social networking vs., 371, 374, 382
unbiased results from, 16
Allen, George, 251
Allison, Dennis, 31
Alpha processing chip, 19
AltaVista, 19–20, 24, 25, 27, 36, 37, 38, 53, 168
Amazon.com, 15, 34, 79, 242, 355–56, 363
anchor text, 22
Android, 214–18, 219–22, 226–30, 233, 372
and competition, 220–21, 229, 237
and Droid, 229
G1, 226–28
and Google Voice, 234
and navigation, 229
and Nexus One, 230, 231–32
and Nook, 228
open system of, 228, 354
success of, 237, 238
and unlocked phone, 229–30
Anza, Juan Bautista de, 132
AOL, 75, 88, 89, 95–99, 204, 375
Apache Hadoop, 200
Apple:
and competition, 218, 220–21, 227, 228, 236–37, 266
iPad, 228, 237
iPhone, 217–21, 227, 228, 229, 237
iPod, 37
iTunes, 242
Macintosh, 209–10, 218
and patents, 237
pinch and swipe, 221, 237
Safari browser, 221
WebKit, 221
Applied Semantics, 103–4, 108
April Fool’s Day, 123–24, 172, 194
aQuantive, 331
Armstrong, Tim, 84–85, 110, 111–13, 259
Arno, Peter, 240
Arora, Nikesh, 234
artificial intelligence (AI), 6, 35, 100
and language translation, 63–64
and machine learning, 47, 62, 64, 385–86
Asimov, Isaac, 117
associate product manager (APM) program, 3–5, 161–62, 166, 259, 371
Association of American Publishers, 358, 361
AT&T:
and competition, 222, 223, 228–30, 234, 329, 363
and net neutrality, 326–27, 384
and user data, 118–19
Atkinson, Bill, 15
auctions:
and ads, 87–88, 89–93, 99, 101, 109, 110, 112–13, 115, 117
ascending block, 202–3
bid by the slot, 90
bid shading in, 89
for IPO, 147–49, 152–55
and resource allocation, 202–3
spectrum, 91, 222–25, 226
supply and demand, 202
Vickery, 90, 202
winner’s remorse in, 90
Authors Guild, Inc., et al. v. Google Inc., 9–11, 358–62
Ayers, Charlie, 133–34, 154, 289
Babel Fish, 63
BackRub, 17, 18, 21–24, 26, 28–31;
renamed Google, 30–31
Baidu, 4, 273, 279, 281, 292–98, 304, 305, 307
Bailey, David, 58, 59
Baker, Mitchell, 208
Bak, Lars, 209
Ballmer, Steve, 197, 282–83, 380
Barnes & Noble, Nook, 228
Barroso, Luiz, 197–98
BART system, 45, 56
Bartz, Carol, 346
Beard, Ethan, 375–76
Bechtolsheim, Andy, 28, 33–34, 73, 74
Bell, George, 29–30
Berkshire Hathaway, 147, 149
Berners-Lee, Tim, 15–16
Bezos, Jeff, 12, 34, 57, 80, 355, 363
Bharat, Krishna, 38–39, 40, 46, 54, 58, 239
Billington, James, 352
Bisciglia, Christophe, 199–200
Blogger, 101, 335, 374, 376
Bock, Laszlo, 141–42, 256–57, 259, 260
books:
and Amazon, 355–56, 363
and class action lawsuit, 9–11, 358–67
digitization of, 11, 347–67
Google Book Settlement, 362–67
metadata in, 351
nondestructive scanning, 348–51, 353, 360
Ocean, 350–55
online future of, 352, 360
“orphan,” 357, 359, 366
payment for use of, 360–63
in public domain, 354
publishers of, 356–62
snippets of, 353, 356, 357, 362
and social good, 360–61, 364, 365, 366
transformative use of, 353–54
Boolean syntax, 36
Boorstin, Robert, 329
Braddi, Joan, 143
brain, virtual, 66, 67–68, 232, 385–86
Branson, Richard, 254
Bray, Tim, 136
Brilliant, Larry, 258
Brin, Michael, 274–75
Brin, Sergey, 3, 5, 16
achievements of, 53, 383
and advertising, 84, 86, 90, 92, 94, 95, 97, 101, 103–6, 108, 110–11, 334, 336–37
ambition of, 128, 139
and applications, 205, 207, 208, 210, 240–42
and artificial intelligence, 385–86
birth and early years of, 13–14, 274–75, 310
and birth of Google, 31–34
and Book Search, 11, 347, 350–52, 364
on capturing all the web, 22–24, 52, 58, 60
on changing the world, 6, 72, 97, 120, 125, 146, 232, 316, 384
and China, 267, 273–74, 276, 277–79, 283, 305, 307, 310–12
and eco-activism, 241
and email, 169–72, 174, 178, 179
and Excite, 29
and funding, 32, 33–34, 73–75
and government issues, 329
and IPO, 146–47, 149–54
and language translation, 63
and management, 74, 75–77, 79–82, 110, 143, 158–60, 162–66, 228, 235, 252–53, 260, 273, 373–74, 386, 387
marriage of, 126, 253
as Montessori kid, 121–25, 127–28, 149
and Obama, 316, 318, 329
and PageRank, 21–24, 48–49
and popular culture, 238
and privacy, 174, 176–77, 253–54, 337
and secrecy, 32, 72, 106, 218