Scaling Google's peaks
Published: 11 May 2004 15:00 BST
Do you think that Microsoft is creating fear and uncertainty around search, considering that its products are not likely going to come out until 2006?
I do not really pay so much attention to those kinds of things. Microsoft has decided and stated publicly they think search is very important to people, and that is certainly something that we would agree with.
What are the complexities of building a video or audio search engine?
Part of the complexity is speaking of and (leveraging) nontextual information -- having humans describe it in some way. I think that is possible for audio and video, though certainly, the challenges are nontrivial.
It is a hot area in the academic community, but I would say the challenges in the short term are nontechnical issues. The people who own this content do not necessarily want to make it publicly available or available for searching. We respect that and, until a time comes where there is a business model or some other arrangement where they feel comfortable making the information available for searching over the Web, we are not going to really provide the functionality.
There are some personalisation tools emerging. Amazon's A9.com and MSN are using different techniques. Google's tool is a little bit more like, "give us information, and we will help you out," and the others take the approach, "We will learn from you, and then we will help you out." Tell me why your approach is superior.
In the latter scenario, where first you learn, and then you help the visitor out, you have two places where the computer has to make intelligent judgments. I am not saying that is not an interesting or promising approach, but it does put more strain on the computer. When you tell it what your interests are, then the computer only has to be intelligent to use that information to try to help you out. They are both part of the same goal of trying to help people out with personal information -- it is just a matter of how you get there. We will be seeing more of this in the future.
Can you talk about how the culture at Google has changed since you started there, as employee No. 1?
It has certainly changed. I used to know everyone in the company, and now I do not, and it makes me sad. But what impresses me and is basically the reason I am still here is that even though the culture has changed, the basic principles that underlie Google, both in terms of the products and how we run internally as a company, have not really changed since it started.
We still believe that it is important to have a work environment that is fun. That is still true, just as much now as it was when we started, even though instead of having one massage therapist come in, you know, a few times a day, we have, you know, a whole crew going in, making sure that everyone can get a massage who wants or needs it.
And on the other side of the products, we're a very technology-focused company, and we are very much focused on the user experience. There are a lot of pressures on a company, as it goes through its life, and certainly, five and a half years is a long time for an Internet company. To see it stay so constant through all those pressures, I think, is really remarkable, and I am really grateful for it.
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