Speaker 1: Guess what, Mango, What's so the other day I was
Speaker 1: thinking about our visit to the Google headquarters. You know,
Speaker 1: this was several years ago. You remember this. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's when we tried to stump those employees, right, And so, listeners,
Speaker 1: Mango and I were invited to speak to the employees
Speaker 1: of Google after the release of one of our Mental
Speaker 1: Flaws books. This was around the time where it felt
Speaker 1: like everybody was talking about just how smart Google employees were,
Speaker 1: you know, all these tests that they had to take
Speaker 1: and everything they had to go through just to get hired.
Speaker 1: And so we thought we'd put them to the test,
Speaker 1: and we were sure we could stump them. We designed
Speaker 1: the world's geekiest crossword puzzle. So to explain what this was,
Speaker 1: we decided to not only create a really difficult cross word,
Speaker 1: but we decided to hire an expert in constructed languages
Speaker 1: and make all of the answers and constructed languages as well,
Speaker 1: like Elvish and cling On and Esperanto. And we were
Speaker 1: so cocky that we sent a message ahead of time
Speaker 1: saying that anyone who finished the puzzle would win a
Speaker 1: free subscription to Mental Flaws and a few gifts from
Speaker 1: our online store. Well, not only were there more than
Speaker 1: a dozen people who completed it, they were actually correct
Speaker 1: thing are grammatical mistakes. Yeah, it's pretty great. And as
Speaker 1: it turns out, that's not the only smart thing these
Speaker 1: people have done. They've also built this little company called Google.
Speaker 1: That's impressive. Yeah, and I guess it's pretty big now.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, we were curious about how they
Speaker 1: managed to pull off this total dominance in the search
Speaker 1: engine world. So today's show is all about the origins
Speaker 1: of Google. Let's dive in. Hey their podcast listeners, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always
Speaker 1: I'm joined by my good friend man guest Ticketer, and
Speaker 1: on the other side of the soundproof glass one of
Speaker 1: the half dozen people on the planet who still uses
Speaker 1: dog pods his search engine of preference. That's our friend
Speaker 1: and producer Tristan McNeil. I do respect him for this choice.
Speaker 1: I know you just want those search results just dog
Speaker 1: piled up, right. So I was thinking about search engines
Speaker 1: a little bit. When you were in high school, did
Speaker 1: your library have one of those like thick telephone books
Speaker 1: of websites? Totally? I remember that was so ridiculous. Like
Speaker 1: people actually thought that's how you search the web, Like
Speaker 1: that's how you'd find a great history site or whatever,
Speaker 1: and and you look up the page. But there's even
Speaker 1: a magazine called Yahoo Internet. It was the most magas
Speaker 1: told you about websites, like your websites you should go to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even like Roger Ebert was a contributor. I love that magazine. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So I pulled some numbers for today's show, and according
Speaker 1: to Statista, Google's worldwide market share amongst search engines roses
Speaker 1: highs eighty nine percent last year. I know, so dominant.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about it. It's really hard to
Speaker 1: name more than like five search engines five I know. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you can get like Google bing Yahoo, asked Jeeves.
Speaker 1: That's still around, I think so. And then and then
Speaker 1: you're just like grasping right like or or you're in
Speaker 1: dead website territory like x it and Alta Vista. The
Speaker 1: one of choice for me as a high schooler was
Speaker 1: I think it was called web Crawler. Do you remember
Speaker 1: that one? Yeah, tipe and web Crawler. I'm sure one
Speaker 1: of the others bought it up. But anyway, well, for
Speaker 1: all the Googlers out there, and there must be a
Speaker 1: lot of you. Today's show is really for you. Now.
Speaker 1: In past episodes, we've delved into the histories of iconic
Speaker 1: companies like Amazon and Sears and Ikea, and so now
Speaker 1: we're doing the same for Google, because while it may
Speaker 1: be the world's most popular search engine and the second
Speaker 1: most valuable brand this side of Apple, that hasn't always
Speaker 1: been the case. So we want to take some time
Speaker 1: to explore the early days of the company, and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of trying to make sense of the business model
Speaker 1: that propelled this link fetching startup from this rented garage
Speaker 1: all the way to the five million square foot Google
Speaker 1: Plex it calls home today. That's right. But before we
Speaker 1: even get to the garage, we we need to talk
Speaker 1: about a dorm room at Stanford University because that's really
Speaker 1: where Google's story starts. So this is back and engineering
Speaker 1: major from the University of Michigan named Larry Page was
Speaker 1: just beginning his computer science PhD program at Stanford, and
Speaker 1: he was searching for a topic for his thesis and
Speaker 1: he kept coming back to the fairly new phenomena that
Speaker 1: was the Internet. As an engineer, Page was interested in
Speaker 1: the math behind it, and he actually recognized that each
Speaker 1: web page was a point on a graph, and that
Speaker 1: each link on a given page was a connection between
Speaker 1: the points and this underlying structure he gave the Worldwide
Speaker 1: Web it's form, and Page really wanted to understand it
Speaker 1: from the inside out. All right, but you know, kind
Speaker 1: of getting this group on the Internet's link structure seems
Speaker 1: pretty far off from actually building your own search And
Speaker 1: just so I'm curious, like, what's the line of thinking
Speaker 1: that leads from one to the other. So you've got
Speaker 1: to remember that Page was getting an early start on
Speaker 1: his thesis, so he still had plenty of time to
Speaker 1: find the final shape of his project. And one realization
Speaker 1: that pointed him in the right direction was that the
Speaker 1: Internet didn't provide a way to tell which websites were
Speaker 1: linking to a given page. So, for example, if you
Speaker 1: go on someone's tumbler page, right, you can follow links
Speaker 1: from one page to another, but you can't actually tell
Speaker 1: which sites link back to that person's tumbler. Is that true?
Speaker 1: I have to admit I don't really use tumbler, And
Speaker 1: so Page was annoyed. But yeah, so he thought it
Speaker 1: was important to know who was linked to who man,
Speaker 1: And while that might not be super interesting to most
Speaker 1: of us, it actually makes a lot of sense why
Speaker 1: it would be a concern for someone like him. I mean,
Speaker 1: think about how important publishing is among academics. For math
Speaker 1: and science scholars, especially, publishing research papers is a chief
Speaker 1: way to make a name for yourself, and the only
Speaker 1: thing that might get you more credibility is to be
Speaker 1: cited as an authority in someone else's paper. And that's
Speaker 1: because citations make up the backbone of academic papers. Like
Speaker 1: you're always citing previously published research as evidence to back
Speaker 1: up your points. So for the academic community, it's not
Speaker 1: just the original content that determines the paper's worth, it's
Speaker 1: also the citations in that paper and the number of
Speaker 1: future papers that later cited. So the links are kind
Speaker 1: of like a form of citations. As he's putting this
Speaker 1: idea together, that's right. So in page his mind, the
Speaker 1: whole Internet was more or less based on a citation system,
Speaker 1: except that, unlike an academic publishing nobody was keeping track
Speaker 1: of which pages were actually being cited by others. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that it's it's starting to make sense here. So
Speaker 1: in the academic world, if you saw that, you know,
Speaker 1: like a chemistry professor's paper had been sighted by a
Speaker 1: hundred other chemists, you could walk away from that being
Speaker 1: fairly confident that it was an important paper. And so
Speaker 1: what you're saying is Page wanted to find a way
Speaker 1: to apply that kind of ranking system to the Internet
Speaker 1: as a whole, exactly, and he figured that by counting
Speaker 1: up the back links associate with every web page on
Speaker 1: the Internet, you could actually determine the importance, or at
Speaker 1: least the relative popularity of each one. And with that
Speaker 1: goal in mind, project BackRub was born. You know, we've
Speaker 1: talked about this fact before that that it was called
Speaker 1: BackRub at first, But I don't think I actually know
Speaker 1: how they came up with that, do you do? You
Speaker 1: know why I was called that at first? I know,
Speaker 1: I initially I thought they just had like a closet
Speaker 1: full of masseuses. Actually it goes back to the idea
Speaker 1: of retrieving and quantifying back links. So that would explain
Speaker 1: the backpart. But but what about the rub I need
Speaker 1: I need to know the rub man go why the rub? Well,
Speaker 1: the program built for backroub was actually known as a
Speaker 1: web crawler, because you know, like you're saying, it crawls
Speaker 1: the whole Internet and he counts up links as it goes.
Speaker 1: So I guess Backroub just sounded better than back roll.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean they both found a little
Speaker 1: crazy to me, so I'm kind of glad they ended
Speaker 1: up changing names to it. But but maybe Larry Page
Speaker 1: doesn't bear the full blame for that, because he actually
Speaker 1: had a lot of help in bringing back rub to life. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the other co founders for gay Brin also got
Speaker 1: into the act around then too, and at the time
Speaker 1: he was a second year grad student at Stanford's Computer
Speaker 1: science department. He was ultimately the one who helped Page
Speaker 1: figure out how to make use of a rock count
Speaker 1: of links that Backgroub accumulated. So were these guys like
Speaker 1: old friends. I'm curious how did Brand get involved? I mean,
Speaker 1: did he just want to help out a friend, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to start this project or not? Really? In fact,
Speaker 1: for a while they were really antagonistic. And the two
Speaker 1: had first met in the summer of nine. This is
Speaker 1: when Page was visiting the Stanford campus as a prospect.
Speaker 1: Then Britain was the tour guide and he took him
Speaker 1: around and also showed him nearby San Francisco. But it
Speaker 1: didn't actually go that well. So Britain Page argued the
Speaker 1: entire time, really and they debated everything that came up
Speaker 1: during the tour, and and they weren't shy about their
Speaker 1: initial dislike for one another either. So there's this two
Speaker 1: thousand and five I've interview with Wired, and in it,
Speaker 1: Page says Serge is pretty social, he likes meeting people.
Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty obnoxious. He had really strong
Speaker 1: opinions about things, and I guess I did too. And
Speaker 1: Brian's own account kind of just shows that the whole
Speaker 1: feeling was mutual but maybe also not that serious. He said, quote,
Speaker 1: we both found each other obnoxious, but we say it
Speaker 1: a little bit jokingly. Obviously we spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time talking to each other, so there was something there
Speaker 1: and we kind of had a bantering thing going on.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's pretty interesting. So they were fast for enemies.
Speaker 1: So after first impressions like that, like what made them
Speaker 1: want to work together? Well, pages projects sound amazing and
Speaker 1: this uh sort of made its way around campus and
Speaker 1: Brin was actually attracted to the challenge. He'd already bounced
Speaker 1: between a few different thesis topics of his own, but
Speaker 1: none of them seemed half as interesting in light of
Speaker 1: Backrupt And as Bryn put it, I talked to lots
Speaker 1: of research groups and this was the most exciting project
Speaker 1: because it tackled the web, which represents human knowledge, and
Speaker 1: because I liked Larry. So see, they truly liked each other,
Speaker 1: just like uh, Tommy Boy or Stepbrothers or any good
Speaker 1: buddy comedy. Just like that. I mean, they definitely had
Speaker 1: their work cut out for them, though, I mean crawling
Speaker 1: the whole web. There's actually this site I've never heard
Speaker 1: about until Gabe told us about it, but it's called
Speaker 1: Worldwide Web Size dot com and it gives a daily
Speaker 1: estimate of how big the Internet is. And today the
Speaker 1: Internet contains at least four point four nine billion pages,
Speaker 1: and these are the ones that we can see. So
Speaker 1: it's a ton of links to count. Yeah, But but
Speaker 1: to be fair, Backroub launched almost twenty five years ago
Speaker 1: and the Web was only made up of about ten
Speaker 1: million documents back then, which you know, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: there's still an insane amount of links between those pages.
Speaker 1: But you've got to remember Page and Britain weren't just
Speaker 1: trying to count all those links. They were actually looking
Speaker 1: for a way to rank the pages being linked to,
Speaker 1: But but ranked by what? Like earlier you mentioned ranking
Speaker 1: pages by importance, But what what makes one web page
Speaker 1: more important than another? Sure? So the pair's ranking system
Speaker 1: was designed to favorite links that came from important sources
Speaker 1: while downplaying those that didn't. So, for example, there are
Speaker 1: all kinds of different sites that link to Amazon, and
Speaker 1: some of those links might come from business partners like
Speaker 1: Whole Foods, but others just come from random people like
Speaker 1: I don't know, like a teenager who's sharing gift ideas
Speaker 1: on his blog. And from most people's point of view,
Speaker 1: the business partner would be the more important link. Right.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, But to an extent, it still feels
Speaker 1: like a pretty human centric judgment call on this. I mean,
Speaker 1: how would search engine know how to prioritize the company's
Speaker 1: business partners over just their customers. Well, it wouldn't unless
Speaker 1: you were able to translate that human measure of importance
Speaker 1: into a set of criteria could recognize. And this is
Speaker 1: really where page and Brand's biggest innovation comes in. It's
Speaker 1: this algorithm known as page rank, and yeah, it is
Speaker 1: actually named after page himself, and using this algorithm, BackRub
Speaker 1: was actually able to keep track of both the number
Speaker 1: of links into a particular site and the number of
Speaker 1: links into each of those linking sites. So, to go
Speaker 1: back to the Amazon example, like, imagine that only a
Speaker 1: few other sites linked to the teenagers blog in a friends, family, whatever.
Speaker 1: Since most of the sites that linked to his are
Speaker 1: likely personal as well, they probably don't have many sites
Speaker 1: linking to them either. But on the other hand, there
Speaker 1: are thousands of sites that linked to Whole Foods, and
Speaker 1: plenty of those sites also have thousands of sites linking
Speaker 1: to them, So page rank would recognize this distinction and
Speaker 1: deemed the Whole food site more important than the Teenagers
Speaker 1: site with respect to Amazon at least. All right, so
Speaker 1: it's importance by way of popularity. Then, you know, it's
Speaker 1: also not a perfect system, but it's definitely pretty ingenious
Speaker 1: the way they came up with this, And I'm also
Speaker 1: guessing it didn't take long for Page and Brand to
Speaker 1: realize these page rankings could make for a pretty incredible
Speaker 1: search engine. Yeah not at Also, they quickly found the
Speaker 1: backrupt delivered better results than you know, any other search
Speaker 1: engine out there, and because engines like Alta, Vista and exite.
Speaker 1: We're only pulling in ranking sites based on giving keywords.
Speaker 1: You could get linked to sites that really weren't that
Speaker 1: authoritative or useful. They didn't have that secret weapon of
Speaker 1: a link counting algorithm like page rank. But Page and
Speaker 1: Britain search engine wasn't just superior at the time. Its
Speaker 1: design meant that it would only get better and better
Speaker 1: the bigger the Internet grew, and as more pages and
Speaker 1: links were added to the web, the BackRub engine scaled
Speaker 1: accordingly and was made to become more accurate. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a phenomenal design and it's actually from this
Speaker 1: infinite scalability that we get the name Google. The founders
Speaker 1: chose to play it as a word on Google, which
Speaker 1: is uh the term for the number one followed by
Speaker 1: a hundred zeros. I mean, honestly, anything is better than
Speaker 1: the name BackRub. So good choice there. But all right,
Speaker 1: so they have a name, they have a working engine,
Speaker 1: but you know, complexity aside. This is still a school project, right, like,
Speaker 1: it's not a business at this point. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: first version of Google was actually released as a feature
Speaker 1: on the Stanford website in August of nineties, which by
Speaker 1: the way, was only one year after Page and Brand
Speaker 1: first met and, as we said, immediately hated each other.
Speaker 1: And wait, now that we've covered Google and how it
Speaker 1: got it start, let's talk a little bit about it
Speaker 1: that made the transition to you know, a proper company. Sure,
Speaker 1: but before we do, let's take a quick break. You're
Speaker 1: listening to part Time Genius and we're talking about how
Speaker 1: Google became the go to source for information on well
Speaker 1: just about everything. Okay, So, by the fall of ninety six,
Speaker 1: Larry Page and Serge Brand knew they had to hit
Speaker 1: on their hands, but they weren't sure if they were
Speaker 1: ready for all the responsibilities and headaches that come with
Speaker 1: starting and running a business. I mean, doing so would
Speaker 1: mean leaving Stanford early without graduating, and that was a
Speaker 1: tough pill to swallow given their academic backgrounds. Or they
Speaker 1: obviously went for it anyway. So so what caused them
Speaker 1: to change their minds? Ultimately They're big push came from
Speaker 1: Brian's college advisor, offering a bit of perspective. He said, uh, look,
Speaker 1: if this Google thing pans out, then great, If not,
Speaker 1: you can return to graduate school and finish your thesis.
Speaker 1: And that seems sensible enough to brin. So he said, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: why not, I'll just give it a try. I love
Speaker 1: how nonchalant this whole thing was. Like, I know they
Speaker 1: can't know then what they know now, but just think,
Speaker 1: get this idea of like, okay, like ditch school and
Speaker 1: start a multibillion dollar tech company. You want to do it? Okay?
Speaker 1: I mean there actually was a little hesitation in there.
Speaker 1: Apparently they brought the idea to Excite and asked them
Speaker 1: to buy it for one point six million dollars one
Speaker 1: point six million, I know, And and there was actually
Speaker 1: a discussion they had it In the story I read,
Speaker 1: it was really more Larry Page trying to sell the idea.
Speaker 1: But he said he'd stay with Excite for like a
Speaker 1: few months, and then he wanted to return to school.
Speaker 1: But the CEO of Excite said BackRub was actually too
Speaker 1: effective and it would actually drive people off the site
Speaker 1: too quickly, like he wanted to slow it down to
Speaker 1: its speed, just to make sure that the customers stayed
Speaker 1: on the search engine and looked at display ads. And
Speaker 1: then like the talks broke down from there, and and weirdly,
Speaker 1: like while there's talk of conversation for page in those discussions,
Speaker 1: there's actually no mention of Britain, at least that's what
Speaker 1: business insiders reporting in the memos showed. That is so strange,
Speaker 1: all right, So they took their professor's advice. They moved
Speaker 1: out of the dorm room and the Google's first office
Speaker 1: you know, which, as we mentioned, was actually just a
Speaker 1: garage and the suburbs of I think was Menlo Park, California.
Speaker 1: You know. This is August of and shortly after that,
Speaker 1: the duo received an investment I think it was a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars and this was from the co founder
Speaker 1: of Sun Microsystems. This was actually a pretty risky move.
Speaker 1: I mean, Google wasn't even incorporated as this legitimate company yet,
Speaker 1: so they were forking over a good bit of money
Speaker 1: for this unproven private enterprise just a couple of college dropouts.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's definitely not a safe bet. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I read that their first investment check was actually made
Speaker 1: out to Google, Inc. Which, as you said, didn't exist yet.
Speaker 1: So Patroon Brent figured, hey, now might be a good
Speaker 1: time to incorporate, and so they did. Wow. Of course
Speaker 1: that investment paid off for everyone in the end. In fact,
Speaker 1: we talked about the garage that they rented that was
Speaker 1: from somebody named Susan W. Jicki And and she went
Speaker 1: on to become the marketing manager for Google, and I
Speaker 1: think she was their sixteenth employee. Well today she's the
Speaker 1: CEO of YouTube. That's awesome. And I know from our
Speaker 1: Amazon episode that all kinds of eccentric business practices and
Speaker 1: cost saving measures crop up during the garage based days
Speaker 1: of these giant companies. So like you remember the bell
Speaker 1: Amazon employees would ring whenever they made a sale, or
Speaker 1: those makeshift desks they called together from old doors. Did
Speaker 1: do you come across anything like that for Google? Oh definitely,
Speaker 1: I mean there's there's a bunch of examples. But you
Speaker 1: know how companies use these big server racks and cabinets
Speaker 1: to to keep you know, like they're all their computing
Speaker 1: power and everything. Well, the rat Google started with was
Speaker 1: built entirely from legos. This was actually a pretty smart move.
Speaker 1: You know, they were pretty cash strapped and it helped
Speaker 1: them expand along the way as long as they had
Speaker 1: some you know, extra bricks lying around. But actually the
Speaker 1: most famous bit of a reverence is probably the rotating
Speaker 1: assortment of those Google doodles that show up on the
Speaker 1: site's landing page. And believe it or not, they also
Speaker 1: got their start in Susan's garage. I didn't realize they
Speaker 1: went back that far. According to Public Radio International, they're
Speaker 1: well over four thousand different Google doodles today, but the
Speaker 1: very first one dates back to August thirty. N Now,
Speaker 1: all the stress from their impending in corporation was really
Speaker 1: starting to get to the guys, so before they even
Speaker 1: finished all the necessary pay or work, they decided to
Speaker 1: spend a week of the Nevada Desert at the annual
Speaker 1: burning Man Festival. Serious. Yeah, it's so funny because, like
Speaker 1: you'd think of it as a thing now where like
Speaker 1: over Norquist is going and all these c t O
Speaker 1: s I like have to show up. But this was
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. I know, it's pretty wild. So so
Speaker 1: they just had a vision for the doodle out and
Speaker 1: the fly off. Well, no, the first toodle actually came
Speaker 1: in the form of this out of office message that
Speaker 1: page and brand added to the company's homepage before they
Speaker 1: headed out to the desert. I guess they weren't planning
Speaker 1: to spend a lot of time in their computer at
Speaker 1: Burring man, but you know, appropriately enough. They decided to
Speaker 1: use that burning man logo just a little stick figure guy,
Speaker 1: and they placed it behind the second oh in Google,
Speaker 1: and the guys liked the idea of decorating the company
Speaker 1: logo as a way to mark notable events, and so
Speaker 1: much so. In fact, two years later, the founders asked
Speaker 1: one of their interns to drop up a doodle for
Speaker 1: Best Deal Day. I love that this was the next
Speaker 1: one that they decided. But the result was a hit,
Speaker 1: so Page and Brand requested more and then promoted the
Speaker 1: intern to the rank of chief Doodler. I feel like
Speaker 1: his parents must have been so proud. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know how proud they were then, but they
Speaker 1: definitely should be now. So the guy's name is Dennis Wang,
Speaker 1: and I know when we visited Google, that was probably
Speaker 1: the most excited we got. We were like, dude that
Speaker 1: I think we even took a picture that was pretty awesome. Well,
Speaker 1: in addition to cranking out about fifty doodles per years
Speaker 1: since two thousand, he actually later became the company's international
Speaker 1: webmaster too. That's pretty amazing, And I do love how
Speaker 1: that seems to be a theme with these guys. Like
Speaker 1: the woman who read them her garage became one of
Speaker 1: their c e o s. And the guy who made
Speaker 1: the funny drawings was put in charge of all their
Speaker 1: international content. You know, it's pretty cool. And obviously they've
Speaker 1: won lots of awards for employee satisfaction. You know. It
Speaker 1: was funny when when we went out to the Google campus,
Speaker 1: which was you know, forever ago, it just seemed like
Speaker 1: such a dream place to work. Like they did your laundry,
Speaker 1: people had their dogs with them. There were these like
Speaker 1: free T shirt bins that everyone was so excited about,
Speaker 1: like rationally excited about. And I remember it was sunny
Speaker 1: and there were just people on the green with their
Speaker 1: tops working, but then they'd seven into like a set
Speaker 1: of volleyball that was going on. It was it was
Speaker 1: phenomenal to see, like I'd heard all these things about Google,
Speaker 1: but seeing it is completely different. Yeah. Well, since you're
Speaker 1: bringing up Google's more benevolent aspects, I mean, why don't
Speaker 1: we talk a little bit about the guiding philosophies that
Speaker 1: that that kind of took shape during those early years
Speaker 1: of the company. Because it was around this time that
Speaker 1: Google laid out both its mission statement and that mission
Speaker 1: statement is quote to organize the world's information and make
Speaker 1: it universally accessible and useful. And then its official motto,
Speaker 1: which used to be don't be evil, right and and
Speaker 1: I mean the company kind of downplays that model more
Speaker 1: and more over time, not that I think they're pro
Speaker 1: evil now. Well, you know, for a good long while
Speaker 1: Google seemed to take the mantra pretty seriously, and it
Speaker 1: was actually a big part of the founders two thousand
Speaker 1: four letter when they were announcing that Google was going public.
Speaker 1: And those three little words. I mean that there's still
Speaker 1: the cornerstone of the company's code of conduct if you
Speaker 1: were to go look it up. So I am curious
Speaker 1: who actually came up with mono was a page or
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, it might not have been either
Speaker 1: one of them, although both of them took to it
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, and and the real origin of the phrases
Speaker 1: is still somewhat disputed, but the best guest credits the
Speaker 1: inspiration to Paul Bouchette, who was the engineer who created Gmail. Now,
Speaker 1: in his mind, the motto was quote a bit of
Speaker 1: a jab at a lot of other companies, especially our competitors,
Speaker 1: who at the time, in our opinion, we're kind of
Speaker 1: exploiting the users to some extent, which is a little
Speaker 1: bit too be funny to hear, given what they do
Speaker 1: with everything. But you know, Google wanted to set itself apart,
Speaker 1: and most of the higher ups agreed the best way
Speaker 1: of doing so was just to not be evil, which
Speaker 1: is interesting because like, what does it really mean? I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems like, just like with that question of how
Speaker 1: to define the importance of a web page, there isn't
Speaker 1: actually like a single clear cut definition for evil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true, but you know, if you look at some
Speaker 1: of the reports that that have come out about this,
Speaker 1: that there there was actually this interesting interview that Eric
Speaker 1: Schmidt did with Wait Wait, Don't tell Me, and I
Speaker 1: remember hearing him on the program that time, and he
Speaker 1: was blaming the motto and he said, the idea is
Speaker 1: that we don't quite know what evil is, but if
Speaker 1: we have a rule that says don't be evil, then
Speaker 1: the employees can say, I think that's evil. So now,
Speaker 1: when I showed up, I thought this was the stupidest
Speaker 1: rule ever, because there's no book about evil except maybe
Speaker 1: you know, the Bible or something. So what happens is
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in this meeting and we're having a debate
Speaker 1: about an advertising product, and one of the engineers pounds
Speaker 1: his fists on the table and says, that's evil, And
Speaker 1: then the whole conversation stops. Everyone goes into connections, and
Speaker 1: eventually we stopped the project. So it did work well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do love that story. And I know
Speaker 1: we can get hung up on whether Google is always
Speaker 1: behaving ethically, but I also kind of like that it's
Speaker 1: just this looming guideline. Yeah, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: get too philosophical here, but we should talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about what evil might be and and how
Speaker 1: Google actually makes its money. But first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. Okay, Well, so give it to me straight.
Speaker 1: How evil is Google? Like? Are they lex core people?
Speaker 1: Are are they more like that company from Alien that's
Speaker 1: like constantly getting its employees killed by Alien? So those
Speaker 1: are my two options there. I'm not so sure on
Speaker 1: that one. Now. Recently, there's been a bit of a
Speaker 1: love hate relationship between Google and the general public, and
Speaker 1: I think about all the half hearted jokes you hear
Speaker 1: about Google and them taking over the world, or the
Speaker 1: way we assume and kind of accept that the company
Speaker 1: is keeping tabs on what we do online and probably
Speaker 1: knows everything there is to know about us. You know,
Speaker 1: we we we did an episode I guess a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago about how much the Internet knows about us,
Speaker 1: and some of that was a little bit troubling, I
Speaker 1: have to admit. And you know, the truth is that
Speaker 1: folks are right to be somewhat wary of any company
Speaker 1: that gathers data on you and then uses it to
Speaker 1: turn a profit, right, which is something Google definitely does,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's not alone. Movie passes model is
Speaker 1: also based on this, and everyone's tracking our data now,
Speaker 1: and I do think those people are at least dimly
Speaker 1: aware that Google keeps track of where you are and
Speaker 1: what you use its services for and and then it
Speaker 1: uses that info to generate targeted ads. But what people
Speaker 1: might not know is that this kind of advertising is
Speaker 1: actually the most profitable part of the whole company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I feel like that's kind of an open secret, though,
Speaker 1: don't you. I mean, if you really stop to think
Speaker 1: about it, all of Google services don't cost anything. You've
Speaker 1: got the search engine and the web brows or the
Speaker 1: email service, all the various apps. But you know, the
Speaker 1: old saying goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Speaker 1: And you know, in Google's case, the unspoken cost, I
Speaker 1: guess is our privacy. Yeah, but which is really weird
Speaker 1: to think about, because like then you can kind of
Speaker 1: make the case that we're actually the product that Google
Speaker 1: is selling to its real customers, which you know, from
Speaker 1: that point of view, all that handy free services that
Speaker 1: they offer are just really incentives to get us on
Speaker 1: board with being sold. Yeah. Well, why don't we talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about when Google got into the ad game,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I would have to think that was
Speaker 1: a huge turning point for the company. It was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because for the first three years that are incorporated, Google
Speaker 1: really wasn't making much money, you know, despite having the
Speaker 1: best search engine in town. But that all changed in
Speaker 1: two thousand when Google launched AdWords. So this was the
Speaker 1: company's first venture beyond its search engine. It was an
Speaker 1: automated paper click ad auction platform, and with Google's ability
Speaker 1: to tailor the ads sold to specific users based on
Speaker 1: their search preferences, the company was able to corner the
Speaker 1: market and digital advertising for what's coming up on I
Speaker 1: guess two decades now plus you know, all that income
Speaker 1: in cash allowed Google to invest in new services like Gmail, Blogger,
Speaker 1: Google Maps, YouTube, and in turn, each of these services
Speaker 1: provided its own new stream of ad driven revenue. Well,
Speaker 1: it's obviously really smart. And you said the AdWords platform
Speaker 1: that works with all these services. I mean, that's where
Speaker 1: Google's profits really come from. So how much are we
Speaker 1: talking about? Exactly? So in two thousand seventeen, AdWords accounted
Speaker 1: for ninety five point four billion dollars of Google's total
Speaker 1: revenue that year, of their total revenue, which was what
Speaker 1: about a d billion? Good lord, I mean that's the
Speaker 1: difference of around fifteen billion dollars between those two. And
Speaker 1: we say a lot of things are insane on the show,
Speaker 1: but drawing basically a hundred billion dollars from advertising a loan, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's insane. That counts more insane than cats, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, I mean I don't know. Well, so you
Speaker 1: know what else is crazy? Is that? Uh? That Eric
Speaker 1: Schmigay who quitted earlier, the CEO who thought don't be
Speaker 1: Evil was a stupid idea. He was a big supporter
Speaker 1: of Google going all in on ad driven revenue and
Speaker 1: pretty much all of Google's services, the ones we mentioned
Speaker 1: are are came about on his watch. So he stepped
Speaker 1: down from his exact role last December and favor of
Speaker 1: a more advisory role with the company. But after steering
Speaker 1: the ship for the last seventeen years, his fingerprints and
Speaker 1: business eat those are all over Google. Well, there's definitely
Speaker 1: a lot to talk about on the privacy front. But
Speaker 1: one of the other things that that many people might
Speaker 1: find a little bit troubling, and it's something that people
Speaker 1: have been talking about in terms of, you know, what
Speaker 1: the Internet knows about us for years now, is that
Speaker 1: by providing instant, unfettered act says to information about literally everything,
Speaker 1: the Internet is actually retraining our brains to act more
Speaker 1: like high speed data processors and less like tools for
Speaker 1: careful contemplation. And I mean, i'd say that's a valid
Speaker 1: concern for sure, but maybe it's not fair to pin
Speaker 1: something like that entirely on Google. Like everything in moderation, right,
Speaker 1: And if we take advantage of these services to the
Speaker 1: point that we impair our own thinking or decrease our
Speaker 1: attention spans, that's kind of on us, you know, sure,
Speaker 1: But to an extent, I mean, there's also reason to
Speaker 1: think that companies like Google and Facebook are are maybe
Speaker 1: exacerbating the problem on purpose. I actually came across this
Speaker 1: old Atlantic article from two thousand eight, and it pointed
Speaker 1: out just how much this brain reprogramming is really in
Speaker 1: the best interest of Google and all these other data
Speaker 1: farming companies. The author is Nicholas car and he writes, quote,
Speaker 1: the faster we surf across the web, the more links
Speaker 1: we click and pages we view, the more opportunities Google
Speaker 1: and other companies gained to collect information about us and
Speaker 1: to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietor RUMs of
Speaker 1: the commercial Internet have a financial steak in collecting the
Speaker 1: crumbs of data we leave behind as we flip from
Speaker 1: link to link. The more crumbs, the better. The last
Speaker 1: thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or
Speaker 1: slow concentrated thought. It's in their economic interest to drive
Speaker 1: us to distraction, That's what he said. But so Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley companies are going to say things like, you know,
Speaker 1: do no evil, or have these grand mission statements about
Speaker 1: bettering the world. It does only seem fair to hold
Speaker 1: the company's feet to the fire a little bit when
Speaker 1: it fails to live up to these kinds of statements.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'd say that encouraging that kind of
Speaker 1: thoughtless thinking if it makes any sense, you know, for
Speaker 1: the sake of profit, kind of qualifies as one of
Speaker 1: those cases. Well, I mean that that is very smart.
Speaker 1: And on that note, I want to mention this is
Speaker 1: a way to avoid bias. All of the research for
Speaker 1: today's program was conducted exclusively through bing. There's no ways true.
Speaker 1: It definitely wasn't true. That's not true. But you know
Speaker 1: what true every single fact in this fact. So let's
Speaker 1: get started, all right. We'll to put a bit of
Speaker 1: perspective around just how much traffic is driven by Google.
Speaker 1: Consider the fact that back in August of two thout,
Speaker 1: Google had a power outage for all of about five minutes.
Speaker 1: But during that time, everything from its search engine, to
Speaker 1: YouTube to Google Drive, we're all down. And during that
Speaker 1: five minute period, web traffic around the world plummeted. Bye.
Speaker 1: So earlier we talked about the whole constructed languages crossroad
Speaker 1: puzzle that we made. So do you know that you
Speaker 1: can actually select Swedish chef as a preferred language in Google?
Speaker 1: Did not? It's called work, work, work, and you can
Speaker 1: also choose cling on take Latin Pirate and Elmer Fud,
Speaker 1: among others. I'm really hoping our college friend John is
Speaker 1: not listening today's episode since he always liked to talk
Speaker 1: in a work work work, all right, Well, when we visited,
Speaker 1: I know, we were blown away by all the perks
Speaker 1: and the free food and everything else at Google, But
Speaker 1: you know, reading about some of the employee benefits is
Speaker 1: pretty interesting too. Apparently they have these unbelievable death benefits.
Speaker 1: I know that's kind of a funny phrase to say,
Speaker 1: but if an employee dies, their partner actually gets half
Speaker 1: of the deceased employee salary for a decade, and the
Speaker 1: kids of that employee get a thousand dollars a month
Speaker 1: until they're nineteen, or actually until twenty three if they're
Speaker 1: in school full time. And that's really stunning. So have
Speaker 1: you heard about this flying taxi startup that Larry Pages
Speaker 1: behind the company is called Kittie Hawk, and they recently
Speaker 1: had to reveal for this thing. It's an autonomous air
Speaker 1: taxi named Cora. Two people can actually ride in it.
Speaker 1: It takes off with these rotors that are on the wings,
Speaker 1: you know, like a helicopter, but then it just flies
Speaker 1: like a plane. So it doesn't really need a runway.
Speaker 1: They've been doing some secret test flights in New Zealand,
Speaker 1: where we like to do all our testing for our
Speaker 1: secret project. I don't want people to know that, and
Speaker 1: in fact that they've been working with the government there
Speaker 1: in New Zealand to get a whole fleet to these
Speaker 1: ready to release. So how far and and and how
Speaker 1: fast can these things go? They can apparently travel for
Speaker 1: a little over sixty miles at about a hundred ten
Speaker 1: miles per hour. They travel at about three thousand feet elevation,
Speaker 1: and I'll definitely be interested to see what happens with these.
Speaker 1: I might give it a little bit of time before
Speaker 1: I happened. I think I'm gonna give it more than
Speaker 1: a little bit of time. But it is really interesting alright. Well,
Speaker 1: on a lighter note, I always look forward to seeing
Speaker 1: what Google is up to on April Fool's Day. Their
Speaker 1: pranks are always pretty funny, you know, from the Google
Speaker 1: UK and Google Australia sites. Rick rolling every featured video
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and that's a real commitments giving
Speaker 1: us some serious ad revenue there to the Auto Awesome
Speaker 1: for Resumes project, where you could take a boring resume,
Speaker 1: and it would add emojis and animation, you know, to
Speaker 1: make it more exciting. I wonder if anybody used it
Speaker 1: and then submitted those resumes. But I think some of
Speaker 1: my favorites are the fake food and drink products they've launched,
Speaker 1: Like they had one called Google Gulp, which came in
Speaker 1: these delicious flavors like sugar free, radical and Beta charity
Speaker 1: and and it was quote designed to maximize your surfing
Speaker 1: efficiency by making you more intelligent and less thirsty. Then
Speaker 1: there was also the Google Fiber Bar, which they announced
Speaker 1: by saying, as we started thinking about fiber, we realized
Speaker 1: that there hadn't been real innovation in the world of
Speaker 1: fiber in a very long time. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: shame these things weren't real, I know. So I recently
Speaker 1: read a story that the details of the acquisition of
Speaker 1: YouTube were negotiated at a Denny's over a delicious safotazer
Speaker 1: of Mozzarelli's at it. Yeah, so the YouTube co founder,
Speaker 1: Stephen Chen said, quote, we didn't want to meet at offices,
Speaker 1: so we were like, where's the place none of us
Speaker 1: would go to. I'm guessing the one point six five
Speaker 1: billion dollar deal was probably the biggest deal ever negotiated
Speaker 1: at a Denny's. But you know what's weird. At that
Speaker 1: time that amount of money seemed huge. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess it still sounds huge, but we're talking for YouTube. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is kind of crazy. You would think it would
Speaker 1: have been sold for much much more. But you know,
Speaker 1: the only thing that would have made an even better
Speaker 1: fact would benefit deal had been negotiated over a plate
Speaker 1: of moons over my family, don't you think? Definitely? But
Speaker 1: the fact that you've successfully gotten meat or reference moons
Speaker 1: over my hammy, Mango, I think it means I've got
Speaker 1: to give you this fact offico congratulation. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys for listening. If we've forgotten any great
Speaker 1: facts about Google or the Internet in general, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. As always, you can email us
Speaker 1: part time genius at how stuff works dot com or
Speaker 1: call us on our seven fact hot line one eight
Speaker 1: four four pt Genius Health. Can they reach us, Mango, Well,
Speaker 1: they can reach us through email, Twitter, all all sorts
Speaker 1: of ways. But there's one more fact I wanted to mention. Uh,
Speaker 1: today's Gabe's birthday. Oh, happy birthday, Game, Happy birthday Gave
Speaker 1: and if you want to send Gave a message, just
Speaker 1: put on our Facebook and we'll a forward it to him. Awesome. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you guys for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part
Speaker 1: Time Genius is a production of how stuff works and
Speaker 1: wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the
Speaker 1: important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Christa McNeil
Speaker 1: does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song
Speaker 1: and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does
Speaker 1: the exact producer thing. Gave Lousier is our lead researcher,
Speaker 1: with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Speaker 1: Brown and Lucas Adams and Eves Jeff Cook gets the
Speaker 1: show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
Speaker 1: what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
Speaker 1: really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
Speaker 1: a good review for us. Do we do? We forget
Speaker 1: Jason Jason who