How Google Grows...and Grows...and Grows

Google doesn't market itself in the traditional sense. Instead, it observes, and it listens. It obsesses over search-traffic figures, and it reads its email. In fact, 10 full-time employees do nothing but read emails from users, distributing them to the appropriate colleagues or responding to them themselves. "Nearly everyone has access to user feedback," says Monika Henzinger, Google's director of research. "We all know what the problem areas are, where users are complaining."

The upshot is that Google enjoys a unique understanding of its users -- and a unique loyalty. It has managed a remarkable feat: appealing to tech-savvy Web addicts without alienating neophytes who type in "amazon.com" to find . . . Amazon.com. (Yes, people really do that. Google doesn't know why.)

"Google knows how to make geeks feel good about being geeks," says Cory Doctorow, prominent geek, blogger, and technology propagandist. Google has done that from the beginning, when Brin and Page basically laid open their stunning new technology in a 1998 conference paper. They invited in the geeks in and made them feel as if they were in on something special.

But they didn't forget to make everyone else feel special too. They still do, by focusing relentlessly on the quality of the experience. Make it easy. Make it fast. Make it work. And attack everything that gets in the way of perfection.

Rule Number Two: The World Is Your R&D Lab

Paul Bausch is a 29-year-old Web developer in Corvallis, Oregon. He works with ASP, SQL Server, Visual Basic, XML, and a host of other geek-only technologies. He helped create Blogger, a widely used program that helps people set up their own Web log. And in a way that's intentionally imprecise, he's part of Google's research effort.

"Isn't this great?" exclaims Nelson Minar, a senior Google engineer. Minar and I are fooling with Bausch's quirky creation called Google Smackdown, where you can compare the volume of Google citations for any two competing queries. (The New York Yankees slam the New York Mets; war conquers peace.) Google loosed Smackdown and other eccentric Web novelties when it released a developer's kit last spring that lets anyone integrate Google's search engine into their own application. The download is simple, and the license is free for the taking.

Here's the scary bit: Basically, those developers can do whatever they want. The only control that Google exerts is a cap of 1,000 queries per day per license to guard against an onslaught that might bring down its servers. In most cases, Minar and his colleagues have no idea how people use the code. "It's kind of frustrating," he concedes. "We would love to see what they're doing."

Most companies would sooner let temps into the executive washroom than let customers -- much less customers who can hack -- anywhere near their core intellectual property. Google, though, grasps the power of an engaged community. The developer's kit is a classic Trojan-horse strategy, putting Google's engine in places that the company might not have imagined. More important, Bausch says, opening up the technology kimono "turns the world into Google's development team."

Sites like Smackdown, while basically toys, "are an inkling of what Google could be used for," Minar says. "We can't predict what will happen. But we can predict that there will be an effect on our technology and on the way the world views us." And more likely than not, it will be something pretty cool.

Rule Number Three: Failures Are Good. Good Failures Are Better.

In Google Labs, just two clicks away from its home page, anyone can test-drive Google Viewer, sort of a motion-picture version of your search results, or Voice Search, a tool that lets you phone in a query and then see your results online. Is either ready for prime time? Not really. (Try them out. On Voice Search, you're as likely to get someone else's results as your own.)

But that's the point. The Labs reflect a shared ethos between Google and its users that allows for public experimentation -- and for failure. People understand that not everything Google puts on view will work perfectly. They also understand that they are part of the process: They are free to tell Google what's great, what's not, and what might work better.

"Unlike most other companies," observes Matthew Berk, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research, Google has said, 'We're going to try things, and some aren't going to work. That's okay. If it doesn't work, we'll move on.' "

In the search business, failure is inevitable. It comes with the territory. A Web search, even Google's, doesn't always give you exactly what you want. It is imperfect, and that imperfection both allows and requires failure. Failure is good.

But good failures are even better. Good failures have two defining characteristics. First, says Urs Holzle, "you know why you failed, and you have something you can apply to the next project." When Google experimented with thumbnail pictures of actual Web pages next to results, it saw the effect that graphical images had on download times. That's one reason why there are so few images anywhere on Google, even in ads.

But good failures also are fast. "Fail," Holzle says. "But fail early." Fail before you invest more than you have to or before you needlessly compromise your brand with a shoddy product.