Inside the Mind of Google

Posted 30 Nov 09 In less than a decade, Google became one of most powerful technology companies in the world.  The creation of the Google Internet search engine has changedthe way we interact with information, the Internet, and each other. Google's creative business sense, innovation and work culture allow them to dominate the search industry and make it a lucrative business.  Click ahead to look Inside the Mind of Google!

Photo Courtesy: Getty Image Google’s headquarters in Mountainview, CA.  Home to some of the brightest minds in the world, it is often described as a fun place to work amid an atmosphere of spontaneous creativity.CEO Eric Schmidt:  “Its an essential part of the Google culture. I tend to think of Google as an extension of graduate school.  Similar kinds of people, similar kind of crazy behavior, but people who are incredibly smart and incredibly motivated and have a sense of change, a sense of optimism."

Photo Courtesy: Getty Image Google’s campus has been called a playground on steroids complete with toys, games, gyms and snacks.  There is a team of seven executive chefs working in 18 cafes.  Everything is free.The company strives to keep employees attention on work and off the mundane stuff … like your laundry which Google will do for you...or your commute, Google will drive you.

In 2008, Google earned more than $4 billion in profits – with more than 95 percent of that coming from advertising tied to its search engine.   What makes it so good? Google’s innovative search engine and easy-to-use clean layout have attracted nearly two-thirds of Internet searches done worldwide...that’s almost two billion per day.

Old-world craftsmanship took a gigantic step forward when Arizona boot-maker Paul Bond started advertising on Google. For decades he relied on word of mouth to sell his product.  After advertising with Google, Paul Bond Boots orders instantly spiked more than 20-percent…and they’ve only gone up since then.George Bond is Paul's son and business partner: "You can hit the people who are actually looking for the product.  And in a product such as this, that's (for) a relatively small number of people, but they do know what they're looking for if you'll just help them get there."It’s so successful…Bond has to literally shut it off so he can catch up on the flood of new orders.

95 percent of Google’s multi-billion dollar profits come from selling AdWords. Its one of the most revolutionary developments in the media world since television itself, says author John Battelle:  “"AdWords is what made Google…Google.”AdWords is what generates the ads – or “Sponsored Links,” you see on a Google results page.  You only have to pay for the link when someone actually clicks on the link and goes to the advertisers web site.  It’s called “pay-per-click.”

The simple address google.com has become our portal to the world.   But did you know that Google keeps its users’ search terms?   Some experts are concerned about how much Google knows about you.Kevin Bankston is a Senior Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation: "Google keeps every search query, what you type into the box, forever. They have every query ever since, you know, they started running this on a few boxes at Stanford.  The question is whether that data's identifiable to you."Google's Privacy Policy

Google says they keep the search to refine their search engine and other programs.  Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products and User Experience explains to Maria Bartiromo when asked “If I’m a typical you – Google user— you know, you have years worth of my search terms.  If I use other Google services – email, my documents, etc. You guys really know everything about me.Marissa Mayer – “Well, we don’t know everything about you.  But I think the most important thing of all these products, is our philosophy is transparency, choice and control.  Be very transparent about what data you have associated with that particular user, give the users very clear choices about whether or not to use the product at all and then give them control over their data because we really do believe that the users own their own data and they should be able to control it.

Photo Courtesy: Google What started out as a search engine quickly became a high-tech juggernaut… and one of the most successful companies on the planet with an array of cutting-edge products:Google Voice,  Google Maps, Picasa and Book Search, just to name a few. And then there’s YouTube (owned by Google)… home to twenty hours of new video uploaded every minute.

Source: Google Google’s internet search engine is its crown jewel and greatest creation.  Among Google’s top products are YouTube, Blogger, Google Earth, Gmail and Android.  Google Earth offers a view of maps, satellite imagery, ie: historical landmarks to the moon.  The satellite imagery in Google Earth covers over 25% of the world’s land surface and over 60% of the world’s population in sub-meter high resolution and 50% land mass coverage and 75% population covered at 2.5m resolution or better.There are more than 500 million unique Google Earth user activations.  Earth has been used for scientific purposes including discovering a new forest in Mozambique and identifying the location for a possible future tsunami in the Caribbean.

Mobile phone use is skyrocketing with more than 4-billion phones in use worldwide.  Google’s Sergey Brin wants to make sure Android – Google’s operating system for mobile phones – gets a big piece of that market.Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering: “We are seeing a very fundamental shift where increasingly, particularly among the young demographic and in Asian countries, the primary access to the internet is not through the PC, but through mobile devices."

Source: Radicati Group & Pew Internet & American Life Project, Fall 2008 In 2008 there were 1.3 billion email users worldwide.  According to Pew Internet & American Life Project, 69% of online Americans use web applications such as web mail, online data storage, web photo services and online word processing.  Gmail has tens of millions of users worldwide.

Source: Google Google Chrome, a new web browser, is one of Google’s many significant creations.  Chrome was launched in 2008 and by November 2009, Google Chrome had 40 million active users.  Currently, Chrome is only available for Windows but Mac and Linux versions will be out very soon.

One of the most dramatic uses of Google is as a life saving application by the Washington D.C. Fire Department.  D.C. firefighters use a customized version of Google Earth to show the location of abandoned buildings, fire hydrants, fire trucks and EMS units throughout the city.  D.C. officials say the Google application has saved taxpayers more than $3 million in its first year alone.

It may be hard to believe that all this success stems from something as innocuous as a thing called “Google.”  But underestimating any of the creative minds there has never been a good idea.  Just ask Yahoo.  In  1998, they had a chance to buy Google.  But Yahoo turned it down.

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