Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…We’ll have to see. Let’s go into playbook for part one. Ben, what do you got? The way that I framed playbook for this one is I tried to just itemize the bullet points of why did Google work. As I think through them, if I had to lay them out to someone, starts with the best original algorithm insight. They had the best organic relevance out there, which created the best results in order: fast, delightful clean, simple UX. They were truly dedicated to organic search. The aversion to paid inclusion, for as long as they were, served them very well. This amazing original algorithm for organic search is one. Two, best execution of the search advertising model. Once you get all those puzzle pieces in place—the auction, the switch to cost per click, factoring in relevance with click-through rate—it really is this truly beautiful system. Advertisers are incentivized to make their ads more relevant, and only bid on the most relevant keywords because it means they don’t have to pay as much. It’s the best ads to the right users at the right time. And to your point, David, it is literally the algorithm to maximize Google’s expected value. It is a harmonious system that they developed. Three, clever infrastructure advantages. They just invented stuff. They thought about problems differently and they reasoned from first principles. Four, they hired the best people. Truly only world-class people for a very long time. Because when the dot-com crash happened, they could basically get anybody that they wanted there in this second half of this episode. Paul Buchheit had a great quote when I was talking with him. I don’t even think I realized it at the time, that it was truly just the best people in the industry working around him. That’s four. Five, culture. A culture of thinking insanely big mostly by inexperienced, untainted people, that helps you with creativity, that helps you come up with new ideas. It was like the naivete of kids on a college campus who are dreaming, matched with the brain power of the very best PhDs, and this hardcore belief that whatever our big ideas are, we always have to think with scale. Every little implementation detail has to be, as this scales, will this work? Or do we need to rearchitect the system, is very impressive. So, culture, which includes power law dynamics, by the way. Being willing to make big, bold bets because they could be these multi-billion dollar payoffs. That’s five. Six, the self-reinforcing data network effects once it takes off. I think that is underappreciated about Google. A lot of people say oh the algorithm, but the algorithm is so dependent on all the data that is generated. Then lastly, a mission that has stood the test of time. Organize the world’s information. It’s not too broad, it’s not too narrow, it feels altruistic, but of course, the business behind it is actually the best business of all time. I would add on to the second to last one you had there the data network effects. It also is the flywheel effect of liquidity in the marketplace of users and queries and advertisers. Everything that we just talked about. Once Google had that realization of oh, our business gets better the more users and advertisers we have, and thus we should be willing to spend basically anything to increase those two pools.…

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