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theory on demand
of which copies are mushrooming all over the world, like Valhallas of technology’s über-gifted. And it’s not just about ‘Being Good’, and yet making a lot of money, combining brazen commercial strategies with academic culture and F/OSS communities through its incentives and funding. Where the image and reputation of Google also, and mostly, resides, is in its ‘philosophy’, which is expressed, in a clear and easy to understand language, as the ‘Google thought’. The word ‘philosophy’, however, might be slightly misplaced, since this ‘thought’ is not really informed by the love of knowledge and transparency. But anyway, one can find the Ten Commandments that guide the actions of the ‘Good Giant’ Google online.15 The first sentence of this gospel already sets the tune: ‘Never settle for the best’, as indeed, according to Larry Page, Google’s ultimate goal is the ‘perfect search engine’, which understands exactly ‘what you mean and gives back exactly what you want’. Thus Google does not strive to reach the greatest number of people possible, it wants to reach all people, satisfy everybody’s desires; in short, it wants to bring happiness to Earth. In order to achieve this, it works relentlessly on research and innovation, as laid down in ‘The ten things we know to be true’. 1.
‘Focus on the user and all else will follow.’ Google’s growth was fueled by word of mouth, and attracted users who were enthusiastic about its performance. This is the exact opposite of aggressive advertisement campaigns. Ads should not jump on users, but instead present something useful.
2.
‘It’s best to do one thing really, really well.’ ‘We do search. With one of the world’s largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better. Through continued iteration on difficult problems, we’ve been able to solve complex issues and provide continuous improvements’.
3.
‘Fast is better than slow.’ ‘We know your time is valuable, so when you’re seeking an answer on the web you want it right away–and we aim to please. We may be the only people in the world who can say our goal is to have people leave our website as quickly as possible.’ Two major intuitions, and realizations, have enabled Google to arrive at this ‘speed’: the development and constant amelioration of the PageRank[TM] algorithm, continuously indexing the networks, and the use of modular platforms that are interlinked and extremely flexible (‘clusters’). Now speaking of speed as the Holy Grail, it might be a timely idea to think a little deeper. Sometimes, even in the realm of IT, slow maybe a virtue. ‘Democracy on the web works.’ ‘Google search works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting websites to determine which other sites offer content of value.’ We already know that Google uses PageRank[TM] to evaluate the sites linked to another web page and to assign them a value partially based on that of the sites to which they are linked. The representation of this electronic democracy is rather idyllic: Google’s index results are allegedly a ‘people-based ranking index’ based on an algorithm doubling as electoral law. This would supposedly enable the users-citizens of the Net to express their confidence
15. See, http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/.