Bret Taylor: evaluation

Transcript context

…It may not be the biggest, but it was my first prominent mistake as a product manager at Google. So for me, it feels big because it was very formative for me as a product designer. So I joined Google in late 2002, early 2003, and I was one of the earliest associate product managers at the company and first, was working on the search system, essentially expanding our index from 1 billion webpages to 10 billion, which was a big deal at the time. It seems quaint now. Then I did a decent job and so my boss, Marissa Meyer, gave me the opportunity to lead a new product initiative, which was a big bet on me and it was both an opportunity to do something for Google, but I was also being pretty scrutinized just as a young new product manager and the premise given to me was work on local search. At the time, the Yellow Pages was still dominant and well, Google was really good at searching the web. It wasn't really good for finding a plumber or a restaurant just because it wasn't really a huge part of the internet at the time. So this content wasn't necessarily on the internet and even if it was, you didn't really want to find plumbers in Manhattan, you wanted to find plumbers in San Francisco, if you're me. And so it was both a technical problem and a product problem and a content problem. We launched the first version of that product that I was the product manager for, was called Google Local and it was, I'll be a little bit more critical now than I might've been at the time, but it was a little bit of a me too version of Yahoo Yellow Pages, essentially grafting on Yellow Pages search on top of Google Search and with a properly crafted query you could see those listings at the top of your search results but a standalone site at local.google.com. Actually, it was an important enough initiative that actually, there was on the Google homepage, it had Web, Images and Local was up there as well, so it's got top bill. I mean you could put almost any link on the Google homepage and get a lot of traffic to it. And despite that, it didn't do that well and to not do that well with a link from the Google homepage is embarrassing. There's not much one can do more than giving you that kind of traffic to give you an add that as a product leader or a product manager. And the product was fine, it worked, but it really wasn't differentiated. And in many ways, I think, again, I think I've had these reflections more sense than at the time, that I had some of the time, but why use this instead of Yahoo Yellow Pages? But more than anything else, why use this instead of the Yellow Pages? It was a digital version of something that had come before. Had a pretty tough product review with Marissa and Larry and others and it was fine. I wasn't about to get fired or something, but it was, I don't know, the shine on my reputation was waning a little bit. a pretty tough product review with Marissa and Larry and others and it was fine. I wasn't about to get fired or something, but it was, I don't know, the shine on my reputation was waning a little bit. And they gave me another shot to do a V2 of it and I got the impression it wasn't like my last shot, but I certainly was feeling a little dejected from going from a hot shot, new PM to a new thing. So, we spent a lot of time thinking about how can you make something that's just much more compelling and not just a digital version of the Yellow Pages and not just so similar to some of the other products out there. And that ended up being the thread that we pulled that resulted in Google Maps. We had licensed from MapQuest, the ability to put this little map next to the search results, it was always the ugliest part of the product and we always made these backhanded comments about it internally and we spent a lot of time saying, what if we inverted the hierarchy here and made the map the canvas? We ended up finding Lars and Jens Rasmussen who had been working on this Windows mapping product and we got them into the company and started exploring this space and it ended up where, through that exploration we ended up integrating a lot of different products. We ended up integrating mapping local search, driving directions, like all of these products at the time were actually separate product categories and ended up with something that redefined the industry and certainly my career. But it took, I think for me as a product leader, it changed the way I think about product just because there's feature and functionality and then there's like why should I use this thing in the first place? And it was notable, there was a couple of interesting moments. When we launched Google Maps we got about 10 million people using it on the first day, which at that scale of the internet at the time was huge. And then in August of 2005, we integrated satellite imagery from a recent acquisition called Keyhole, which became Google Earth and we got 90 million people using it on the same day. Everyone wanted to look at the top of their house when the imagery came out. And it was really interesting because there's so many subtle product lessons in there. First is, I think as you have these new technologies, rather than literally digitizing what came before, if you can create an entirely new experience, it answers the question for a new customer, why should I give this the time of day? And so, really disassembling the Lego set and reassembling into something new rather than just digitizing what was there before. Certainly, that was the lesson I think in Google Maps, really was native to the platform in a way that a paper map couldn't be and that was a really meaningful breakthrough. And then with satellite imagery, it honestly wasn't the most important part of Google Maps, but it was the sizzle to the steak and it created, I don't think the term viral was a thing people said back then, but it created a viral moment. We were on Saturday Night Live, which is the coolest thing. t was the sizzle to the steak and it created, I don't think the term viral was a thing people said back then, but it created a viral moment. We were on Saturday Night Live, which is the coolest thing. Andy Samberg in, I think it was called Lazy Sunday rapped about Google Maps and Lars and I were texting each other. We did it. We're on Saturday Live. Mission accomplished. And it was also showing that as you're there thinking about products, there's the why you decide to use a product and then what is the enduring value. And those are deeply related but not all the same thing. And I just learned so many lessons that I took with me for every subsequent product that I worked on.…

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