GoogleFog

Google dominates the search industry. Millions of users have become enthralled and web publishers have become dependant on their traffic. The company is one of the most recognized brands on the planet. The company is the conduit between millions of consumers and thousands of businesses. An entire industry has developed to help businesses interact with Google for both their organic and paid listings services. These services and those clients help the company generate revenues widely believed to be approaching $1 billion per year (and growing).

Even better (for them), is the fact that they’ve been able to accomplish all this under an amazing cloak of secrecy. They create value by organizing the work of others, yet provide only superficial guidelines to help those supplying the content obtain the maximum potential benefits from their participation. They generate a substantial portion of their revenues via a distribution network, and but don’t even tell these partners how their commissions will be calculated.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people would like to ask the good folks at Google a few questions. A rare opportunity to do so appeared this past week in NYC at Search Engine Strategies. Unfortunately, the results were about as relevant as far too many Google searches – there were some keyword matches but the actual value was almost non-existent.

Google’s Director of Search, Craig Silverstein participated in a number of panel sessions. I saw him in four different ones – and learned that you should build web pages for users, not really worry about your Google rankings, and that in 300 years he thinks we’ll all have a dog named ‘fetch’. Craig sat quietly and listened while other panelists shared inaccurate facts and strategies with the attentive audience, but did take the time to point out that his silence shouldn’t be taken as agreement or endorsement with anything that was said. He didn’t point out why he lacked the ability or courtesy to helpfully join in the conversation. When asked direct questions during session segments brazenly identified as ‘Q&A’ Craig pointed to a clause in his speaking contract that allowed him to only answer questions of his choosing.

The worst of it came at a morning session called ‘The Future of Search.” Here Mr. Silverstein faced probably 500 people who took nearly a week out of their schedules, spent a grand or two, and did both largely because they’re trying to run their businesses better in terms of how they interact with Google. Faced with this opportunity to offer practical, insightful, and useful information about what the company would be doing, Silverstein instead spent his minutes entertaining the crowd with a fairy tale about what searching might be like in 2304 – when we’re all quite dead.

Craig Silverstein is clearly a very smart man. He's Director of Technology at Google, was their first employee, graduated from Harvard and much more. He came off as a very pleasant and nice guy too. He devoted a lot of his time to the conference, spoke well, and represented his company with humor and personality. I’m sure he’s a great guy. Too bad that in the search for answers about Google, he just wasn’t relevant.

Posted by Craig Danuloff at March 5, 2004 5:36 PM