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pg: But all it would have taken in the beginning would have been for two Google employees to focus on the wrong things for six months, and the company could ha
by apathy 19y ago
pg:
But all it would have taken in the beginning would have been for two Google employees to focus on the wrong things for six months, and the company could have died.
Actually, it's even more interesting than that. Prior to AdWords (and, more importantly, the acquisition of Applied Semantics that gave them AdSense), Google did not have a real source of revenue. At all. Google Appliances were cute but negligible.
After AdWords and AdSense, they began to replace magazines, the yellow pages, and 411.
It is difficult to underestimate how important Ad(Words|Sense) has been to Google's success. And it was the idea of an intern.
- paul 19y agoWhat was the idea of an intern? Ads were part of the plan from very early on. Also, AdSense predates the Applied Semantics aquisition.
- brlewis 19y agoOK, maybe not exactly an intern, but wasn't it some guy who would work for $.00?
- kleevr 19y agoHaving been an intern/co-op with both a very large and couple small/medium startups. My experience and interaction with student interns (mostly from public universities), have led me to believe you must pay your interns. Most students in the current economic climate, particularly those attending college for the first time in there family, simply cannot afford an unpaid internship.
- brlewis 19y agoSorry, inside joke. http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/12/is-there-more-to-life-than-money.html http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/12/is-there-more-to-li... (Note this is the same paul who asked for more details on the intern, and who came up with adsense.)
- apathy 19y agoAdSense predates the Applied Semantics acquisition That's not what your press release says: http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/applied.html http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/applied.html What was the idea of an intern? The self-service approach to buying AdWords, IIRC. The mail-order lobster nonsense that led to the streamlining of the horribly broken logfile/MySQL system when it became popular. I may be confused -- 'intern' may be the wrong word. But if you want an example of a 'tipping point' or a critical decision I can't think of much better than Google and their ad sales mechanism.
- paul 19y agoAdSense the product and technology (content targetting) predates the acquisition, which is why the press release is titled, "New Technologies and Engineering Team Complement Google's Content Targeted Advertising Programs". AdSense the trademark may have come from AS, but that's not very relevant. I'm guessing that the "intern" that you are referring to is Salar: http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html#salar http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html#salar He was maybe the 10th employee of Google.
- fbailey 19y agoAdwords is till more important than Adsense and on a technological level ( I mean the basic core not the quality score etc etc.... ) it's pretty simple. All Google needed was traffic.