Ask Google: your questions answered

Ariel Schvarzstein, marketing manager, Expedia.co.uk, Expedia.nl and Hotels.com

Dennis Woodside: “I think the question generally is where is search going and how does Google see its business evolving as searching goes.  If you were to go back two to three years ago, people were asking ‘what about specialist vertical search?’ ‘Are people going to want to look for travel needs in a certain verticalised search product, and their video needs in a different product?’ We haven’t really seen that. People generally want to find things on the internet and they tend to go to whatever search engine they think is going to deliver the fastest and most relevant results regardless of whoever that is.

"I think with Google we have been successful because we do just that, we deliver results, which are very relevant and very fast in a way that is trustworthy. People pretty much know that if something is in the organic results it is objective and they can trust it. So I think that, generally speaking, what we are going to find is more and more types of information that are available in our general index and we talk about something called universal search where you can search over information that is in a digital format whether it is books, whether it’s video, whether it’s HTML, through global search, and you see elements of that today. We are blending in things that are of general interest, things like weather results, things like stock listings and so forth. My belief is that you are not going to see a huge fragmentation of search as long as we keep innovating in the space and as long as our competitors keep innovating in the space. That’s why video search is so important and people want to find video and that’s why we are investing in that area.” 

Revolution: “Isn’t the real question there about ‘how is MSN doing and how is Yahoo doing and do you see them doing any better?’” 

DW: “I think that’s more of a question for them.  I really cannot comment on how their business is doing. I can tell you how Google is doing.”

Question 2: Given the difficulties with seeing the implementation of know who the partners are, what’s the best way to get the most out of the content network?

John Martin, internet business manager, Gold Shield Consumer Health

DW: “I think that the content network, I would argue, is heavily under leveraged. First of all, if you look at relative pricing, the content network is price-right now and pretty well discounted (fair value, so to speak). So one way that we see the advertisers using the content network is to broaden the aggregate volume of clips that they are getting and lowering the overall pricing.

The other thing is about why we built the content network. The whole idea is to provide access for advertisers to a slew of sights that are much more niche, much more targeted, that they otherwise couldn’t get access to because they were too small and it wouldn’t be efficient for them to buy. That’s the real power of the network. I think that we are just starting to discover how to take advantage of that; you are going to see more and more science applied on our side to the targeting of advertising in the content network. You are going to see more and more innovations around things like display advertising and video advertising that is available now on the content network, where as that wasn’t available before. There are some advertisers who are thinking of it as a volume play, there are some advertisers who are thinking of it as getting into specific niches that offer demographics they couldn’t otherwise get to in an efficient manner.”

Question 3: Does Google plan to become end-result oriented, with services that go beyond the click to focus on conversion. If so what’s the key tools Google plans to launch and when?

Paul Shalet, MD,  E-prize Europe

How is Google planning to offer CPA advertising, and how important does Google see this becoming to its revenue stream in the coming months/years?
Paul Coggins, executive sales director, Zanox

DW: “We are starting to, actually we have been for a while actually, experimenting with CPA-type models, it is something that our products teams are working on. I was in California earlier this week talking to our product managers and it is something that is going to be increasingly more of a focus for us. It will make sense for certain types of advertisers where they have the right kind of information. The real issue with CPA is it requires an advertiser to be relatively transparent with what their cost per acquisition is. Some are willing to do that and some aren’t. So, for some, it will make a lot of sense and it will actually be quite effective. So, I would expect to see something in the near future. 

“Like anything what we do is test. What you are likely to see early might not necessarily be what the product might be in a year or two. The early test may or may not generate the kind of results that advertisers are looking for. So it is a complicated science problem to try and solve for CPA. But, I think over time we will be able to apply the same kinds of techniques around relevance, around targeting, that works so well for advertisers and apply that to some of the other models that are out there to come up with a pretty good answer.

Question 4:

Isn’t the problem with [Google apps] docs and spreadsheets that, if the internet connection goes down, you can’t work? What customer success stories show the power of Google apps? What is the biggest concern for the future of Google UK?

Ed Anderson, online communications technical manager, Microsoft

DW: “Let me describe what Google apps is, and then why we did it. It is basically web-based common computing applications like word processing, spreadsheets and email. It essentially allows people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to that kind of computer power to have those applications whether they are a small enterprise or individual. 

“An example is a reporter for the Sunday Times in Hong Kong trying to file a story when his PC broke, the hard drive crashed. Luckily he was using apps so he went to an internet café, logged in and there was all the document, so he could finish his story and file it. That’s the power of the product, which is instead of having everything on your hard drive which is subject to all kinds of wear and tear, and most of us aren’t professionals on how to keep our hard drive working, Google stores that information for you. Instead of worrying about upgrading your word processor every three years we update ours whenever we want. We can add new functionality and new features at any point of time, and it is globally available. There is this notion about called ‘Cloud Computing’, which is that your computing power sits in the cloud on the server side of the internet and the power of that is that you don’t have to worry about whether you have the latest version of software, you will always have the latest version of the software. Google is essentially one big cloud application, it is a very powerful programme, but it doesn’t suit on your hard drive, you can access it from anywhere in the world, and that is really a change in computing that’s going on, as profound applications for how software services are delivered and how people interact with software services. 

“So our view is that more and more computing power is going to move to the cloud, and docs and spreadsheets are just one example of what you can do. I would still say that this is the kind of thing that we are still in the experimental stage with. We have put the product out there, it is free - we have just announced more of an enterprise class product - and we are going to see how the adoption works and what issues there are. 

“As for the future of Google UK, I think the thing we worry about the most is the two guys in the garage that think up the next big idea. Just think about what has just happened in the last year. Youtube officially launched in December 2005, and, by December 2006, they had over 100 million users. In a world where cloud computing is how software is delivered, you can have a killer application with not a lot of people. Youtube had 69 employees when we acquired them, and they literally were two guys in a garage. It is kind of funny but it always seems to be two guys, you know, like Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin]. So that literally could happen and I think we worry ‘are we innovating fast enough?’, ‘are we keeping on the cutting edge of what’s going on in web development?’, ‘are we keeping on the cutting edge of what our advertisers want to do and what our partners are trying to do?’ That’s the primary fear that we have."

Rev: “So you fear the next Google.” 

DW: “Yes – that would be a good answer.”

Question 5: If Google had to choose between love or hate regarding affiliates, which would it, be and why?

Mark Walters, COO, Affiliate Window

DW: “I don’t think it is love or hate - that’s kind of a strange way of putting it. I would say, with affiliates where affiliate networks are providing relevant experiences for consumers, we think that is fine, and there’s plenty of affiliate marketers who are aggregating information in an interesting way and putting together information from many of their clients in ways that provide valuable to the consumer. In those instances we think that’s great. In the instances where we think people push the line and try to trap people into clicking into stuff to make money, and that’s we don’t view that very well.”

Question 6: How much, either by percentage value or percentage clicks, do affiliates account for PPC traffic through Google UK?

Mark Walters, COO, Affiliate Window

DW: “To be honest I don’t know, and if I did I don’t think we would share it.”

Question 8: Does Google expect video revenue in the UK to eventually outstrip search online add revenue in the market place? And if so by when?

Phil Cooper, CEO, U-Target

DW: “We are all trying to figure out how large this market can be. I think the first thing for people to understand is how popular video has become online. I was watching an interview with Tony Blair last night on the BBC web site, that kind of thing wasn’t happening a year ago. As I said before, if you look at Youtube, it has gone from virtually nothing to over 100 million users world wide and a huge number of video streams are going up and going down every day. One of the most popular videos, ‘the evolution of dance’ saw 43 million playbacks in about seven months - that’s a huge number of playbacks for a 6-minute video of a guy dancing. I show it to my wife and she laughs and that’s the kind of thing that, if the internet starts having that kind of engaging effect with people, then there are going to be opportunities for marketers. We are all trying to figure out is what those opportunities are. 

“You are going to see a period, just like you did with search in 2000-2001, of experimentation where people try different advertising formats, different advertising models - sponsorships, in-stream video ads, pre–roll, interstitials whatever - before we get to a model that is working for the advertisers and more importantly that is working for the consumers. But, look, when you have that much consumer usage, you going to have a business. The question is when and the question is how much, and who is going to provide the technology that powers that business, and that is not necessarily Google, there are a lot of companies out there that are competition in that space.”

Question 9: What are the long-term plans for Youtube and with regards to illegal posting. Are there opportunities for premiership clubs to work more closely with Google

Mark Hargreaves, general manager, Manchester United Interactive

Mark Rowan, head of communications, Everton Football Club

DW: “There are absolutely more opportunities for premier clubs to work more with us. We actually have a deal announced with Chelsea where we are hosting content on Youtube. There are a lot of opportunities for sport. If you think about sports as an incredibly emotional subject and their is a lot of strong bond between sports fans and their home team. So for someone like Manchester United and Chelsea to put all the other content that never makes it on the air about their players and players lives and where they came from, and their strategies and support and make that available to their consumers, that strengthens the bond with the sports fans. The stronger that bond the more likely they are to come back to the game, or watch the game, or buy that product that is sponsored by the team, so it is a tremendous win  (in this case) for the Chelsea fans and Chelsea Football club. It enables them to engage in ways they could never engage before because you had a couple of hours on Saturdays and that was basically it. Now you can engage with the team and, if you are a fanatic, you can spend all your time there. So I think there are a lot of opportunities for sports clubs. 

“In terms of copyright, we take content copyright very seriously. We are not a content company, we are a technology company. What our technology does is it provides people with an opportunity to access information with whatever content it might be. With respect to video, we are providing technology that allows people to share content and sometimes that could be the BBC deciding to share it’s content, sometimes that could be individuals sharing and making videos. Now some people take advantage of that and post content that they don’t own, and, as soon as we are notified of that, we take it down, and we are working on tools to automate that, but I think this is a problem we are going to have to work on, and we are going to have to solve.” 

Rev: Does Google’s position and power put Youtube in a better position with content owners? 

DW: “If you’re a content owner today, you recognise that the internet is a huge opportunity for you. And like I said earlier, it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of how. How do the content owners get their content out there, put it in the hands of people who want to watch it, fund it, and so be able to fund that content creation compensate all the sub right holders that they have to manage and negotiate. And they are dealing with a model that really has developed over a long period of time that was never really intended for the internet. So they have a set of legitimate issues that they have to work out with other rights holder that go into that content. It is a legitimate issue of how to protect those rights online. 

“So, again, I don’t know how it is going to work out. A good example of how it has worked out in another area is how iTunes has created a very profitable model that is fair and projects the rights of video content holders and music content holders and that is one very viable model. Now what’s the model that’s going to apply to video on the Internet more broadly? I don’t know that answer. I think again we are going to have to experience a bit and that’s why we are obviously talking to people to try and figure that out.”

Question 11: I would like to know why your approval process to registering your trademark takes a long time i.e. up to 3 months?

Rebecca West, phones4u

DW: “More broadly, the question is what is Google doing about trademarks and how do we try to protect them? We have a registration process where you can register your trademark. As you know, we need to clear that registration to make sure it is legitimate because we don’t want people registering our trademarks that aren’t legitimately. That, of course, takes time, and we wish it would not take as long as it does. But, the fact is you need to do real work, you need to do legal clearance to get that done and it takes some time.” 

Rev: From what we have been hearing, you have to send it California, you can’t send it to the regional office. 

DW: “You can work with your team here - if you have a team in London - who will help you do that.

Question 12: Why does Google change ranking methods periodically for optimisation?

Shane Ryan, Axciom

DW: “That’s a good question. Our strength is matching relevant advertising with queries and we are always looking for ways of improving the relevance of the advertisers that we serve. It’s a fairly detailed science as to how to do that, so we have PhD’s and scientists in California and Zurich who’s job it is to improve the ranking algorithm. And, when we find breakthroughs that are going to benefit advertisers by putting more relevant ads on the page, we are going to do that. Also, it’s not just important that you put the most relevant adverts on the page, but that you don’t put the least relevant ads on the page, because that winds up detracting from the ads that are relevant.” 

Rev: So there is an editorial process to that? 

DW: “It’s not really editorial, it’s a real science to ask if the advertising is delivering for both the user and the advertiser. If you have ads on the page that aren’t delivering for the user, it is as bad as you have ads on the page that aren’t delivering for the advertiser. So, as the science evolves and as we get better at crunching the data, we are going to make changes. As Eric [Schmidt, Google’s CEO] says the ideal is when you do a search and only one ad appears that offers the perfect product at the perfect price. Until we get to that point we are going to have to experiment.”

Question 13: Is Google going to be using the personalised search features to provide better-paid advertising, and thus allow advertisers to optimise activity against behavioural use of profiles?

Andrew Burgess, CEO, Equi-Media

DW: “Good question, I honestly don’t know the answer. It’s probably something we are looking into but I don’t know the answer to that.”

Question 14: I’m putting together a mission and vision statement for my brand. We are a premium brand in the educational resources sector – multi-channel business. I’ve been looking at other companies and I came across Google’s… ‘Google's mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful’. What I’d like to know is how the guys at Google approached this and how they eventually reached their statement.

Sarah Wilson, recruitment brand manager, NES Arnold, Findel Education

DW: “I think the great thing about Google’s mission statement is that it really is user focused and it has a clear value to the user, which is that to give information is a good thing and we are going to try and provide everybody with access to it.” 

Question 15: How is Google trying to monitories property such as U-Tube given in the near future ad blockers are going to be more prevalent?

Raf Rasile, head of production, Good Technology

DW: “On ad blockers, I don’t have a point of view. People click on ads for a reason, they actually want to find out what the advertisers are selling and they want to make decisions as to whether or not to purchase it or research it or look at it. Advertising is a useful thing. I think the premise of ad blockers is that advertising is bad. As long as people find advertising relevant and good we were are not too concerned.”

Question 16: In what year will Google take over the world?

Scott Andrews, senior copywriter, Good Technology

DW: “People totally overestimate Google, in interesting ways. I think that when I joined Google there were about 1,000 employees. Now there’s about 10,000, but you can look at probably 1,000 companies in the world that have more employees and more revenue than Google.

“I think that people get excited and interested because we have gone from basically no revenue in 2000/20001 to $10 billion last year and you know people have ways of projecting a trend and that’s what they do.

“I think what really is more interesting is, where is the internet going and how much are our lives are really going to be spent online? Because I think people are finding themselves always in front of a computer, we are constantly going back to it. I have a Mac at home, it is always on, it is always hooked up to the internet. I find just having it in the living room draws me to it. I know even a year ago I wouldn’t go as much as I do just to check email. I do go to the BBC web site a lot. I go to the FT, because it’s there. I think that we don’t fully know the power of that yet. We don’t know how big that can become, that’s much more interesting than how any player can do or how big any specific player will become.”