AUFBRUCH - Issue 24 (English)

Issue 24

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AUFBRUCH Society and self in the digital age

How does Google work?

How it all started: The “father of the internet” discusses its early days

Exclusive insights: Behind the scenes of Google Search

Germany asks: Questions and queries that move the nation

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Content One more question Stories of people looking for and finding answers – Page 4 Why ranking matters The inside scoop behind relevant and reliable search results – Page 9

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The moonshot goal: zero carbon How Google wants to make its services carbon free – Page 12 “600,000 experiments” Elizabeth Tucker and her team keep Search up-to-date – Page 16

Reaching new customers Retail companies discover additional potential online – Page 24

From question to answer A step-by-step guide to how the Google search engine works – Page 18

How Google makes money Why ads often appear alongside search results – Page 26

“An incredible timesaver” Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist, on the future of the internet – Page 20

“Openness is crucial” In conversation with Vinton G. Cerf, one of the “fathers of the internet” – Page 30

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Germany wants to know The country’s latest Google Search trends – Page 34

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Publishing information Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, 4 Barrow Street, Dublin, D04 E5W5, Ireland | Tel.: +353 1 543 1000 | Fax: +353 1 686 5660 | Email: support-deutschland@google.com | Managing Directors: Elizabeth M. Cunningham, Nicholas Leeder | Google Ireland Limited is a corporation formed and registered under Irish law | Company number: 368047 | EU VAT identification number: IE6388047V This is a special promotional publication by Google. Thank you to the team at SZ Scala GmbH.

Cover photos: Jared Soares; Content page photos: Winni Wintermeyer, Felix Adler, Julia Sellmann; Illustration: Bratislav Milenkovic; Editorial photo: Google

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Editorial Dear readers, “Seek and ye shall find,” as the old saying goes. And that certainly applies to the billions of search queries people ask Google every day. Many of these questions are new, even for us. What it reveals is that as a species, our curiosity and desire to learn, understand, and grow is boundless.

Hopefully, Google Search will always provide the answers to our questions, and in the process, help people do things like expand their skill sets and knowledge, learn how to live more sustainably, protect their online data, or bring their business into the digital age. It’s more important than ever now, as people in Germany and around the world start seeking out inspiration and ideas for new beginnings after a time of upheaval.

This issue of Aufbruch is dedicated to all things Google Search. Take a look behind the scenes and learn how we work every day to keep it fast, up-to-date, and reliable.

We wish you an enjoyable read!

Philipp Justus

Vice President Central Europe at Google

The Aufbruch series We now have over 20 issues of our magazine series on digitalization under our belt. Visit goo.gle/aufbruch-de to access all past editions.

Ausgabe Nr. 22

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AUFBRUCH

AUFBRUCH

Journalismus

Daten und Fortschritt

Ausgabe 23

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Mensch und Gesellschaft im digitalen Wandel

Ausgabe Nr. 21

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AUFBRUCH Mensch und Gesellschaft im digitalen Wandel

Mensch und Gesellschaft im digitalen Wandel

Frische Stimmen: Eine neue Vielfalt bereichert die Medien

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Digitaler Umbruch: Wie sich Redaktionen weiterentwickeln

Gemeinsame Projekte: Julia Jäkel im Gespräch mit Philipp Justus

11.02.21 19:04

Auf Erkenntnissuche: Im Labor der Virologin Melanie Brinkmann

Mitten im Spiel: Wie Datenanalyse den Fußball revolutioniert

Für die Privatsphäre: Daran arbeitet das Google-Team in München

Zukunft Handel König der Nische: Warum Expertenwissen zu mehr Umsatz führt

Raus aus der Krise: So gehen Sie die ersten Schritte ins Digitale

Minister im Interview: Wie Peter Altmaier dem Handel helfen will

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Aufbruch Google Search

One more question People ask questions to find their bearings; the answers help them get ahead. Nine stories about searching – and finding – in everyday life.

INTERVIEWS: JULIA BAST, GRETA SIEBER

How do you prune a fruit tree?

“We’ve dug up all kinds of crazy things in our allotment garden – from early 20th-century tableware to mystery plants seeded by previous tenants. Google helped us identify and find out how to care for them. One of the things we’re always asking Google is how to correctly prune trees and bushes. We usually use Image Search, and the diagrams that show up in our results outline what to do, branch by branch, so we don’t cut away too much.”

Deborah and Florian share their allotment garden experiences on their Instagram channel, Ein Stück Arbeit (roughly: “A little elbow grease”), and on einstueckarbeit.de

Curiosity and discovery

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Can hearts really break?

“Young people want to better understand their bodies and have thousands of questions as a result. I can tell from the comments on my videos that many are afraid to ask their parents or doctors, which is why I address questions about health and medical matters on my YouTube channel. I think it’s really important to build up the next generation’s self-confidence and help them develop more of an awareness for their own bodies. I also believe that every question deserves an honest answer. A heart can’t really break, by the way. But there is a temporary condition called ‘broken heart syndrome’ that’s often brought on by emotional stress and that can be hard to distinguish from a heart attack.”

Dr. Florence Randrianarisoa answers questions about health and the human body on her YouTube channel, Dr. Flojo

When do babies finally sleep through the night?

“Our daughter Mia is nine months old. Every day since she was born, we’ve discovered new questions to ask: How long do babies sleep? Do babies purr? And why is it that newborn babies don’t cry tears, at least not at first? When our daughter’s first two teeth suddenly came in at three and a half months, we were puzzled. But we looked it up and found out it’s nothing to worry about – some babies just teethe earlier than others. I do most of my Google searching at night when my baby and my husband are asleep. I often have to repeat a search two or three times due to my acute ‘momnesia’ and sleep deprivation.”

Yu-Rin is a new mother

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Aufbruch Google Search

How do I become a do-it-yourselfer?

“I’m really big into DIY. When COVID-19 forced our university library to close, my best friend and I decided to build a desk where we could study. We looked on Google Images for inspiration, then jumped right into it. Whenever I have an idea, I look for tutorials online. I also rely on tutorials in my studies and in all kinds of other areas too. Right now, for instance, I’m teaching myself a programming language, and I constantly consult the internet as a reference. After a recent trip to visit my family in Ghana, I looked up how to sew T-shirts using traditional cloth.

I’m also currently reading up on agriculture in Ghana, because I want to launch an initiative to create jobs for women there.”

Barbara is majoring in computer science and French

How do you dance around a Maypole?

“I’ve been playing folk music since the age of seven. I search the web for anything and everything to do with the topic: used instruments, music teachers who can show me something new on the Styrian dulcimer, sheet music to old tunes I want to learn. I often look up songs and then listen to them on YouTube while playing along on the guitar. Google has led me to some great musical finds. Perhaps my funniest search yet was looking up how to dance around a Maypole, a tradition that involves interweaving colored streamers as you dance. The videos I watched reminded me of stories my Uncle Charly used to tell about the old days.”

Christa is an educational consultant

Questions make the world go ‘round

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How do the visually impaired find their way to the nearest pharmacy?

“I lost my sight at the age of three. Google Maps helps me get around, especially in places I’ve never been before. There’s also BlindSquare, a GPS app for the visually impaired that describes your immediate surroundings, but Google Maps is what I use if I’m going somewhere more than 55 yards away and have to get there on my own.

When I was visiting my girlfriend in Marburg recently, I used it to get to the doctor’s office.

Navigation apps give me independence in everyday life. I also use them to do geocaching, a type of scavenger hunt that makes use of GPS data. As far as online searches go, I search just like sighted people do. My screen reader lets me read search results in braille or have them read out loud to me. Google Search organizes results by heading, and my screen reader gives me an overview of the page. I can then navigate from one heading to the next using keyboard commands. I’m really interested in music and astronomy. When I hear something interesting on a podcast and want to delve deeper, I end up discovering all kinds of new things.

Robbie is a youth advisor at the German Federation of the Blind and Partially Sighted (DBSV)

How do you make an avocado cheesecake?

“We launched Lisa|Li at the beginning of the pandemic, when conditions for establishing a food start-up were less than ideal. For us as a young company, Google is an important addition to social media, because it’s how many people find our website. Naturally, we do a lot of online searches – especially when we’re looking for recipe inspiration. Both of us love improvising and experimenting in the kitchen. We use Google to find recipes, then adapt them to fit our needs. Cooking is so multifaceted, so exciting, and so creative – and the internet lets us discover new things at a time when we can’t travel or stroll through markets.”

Lisa and Lilly are the founders of LISA|LI catering

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Aufbruch Google Search

“My family and I live in a so-called ‘tiny house’ in Brandenburg. For some time, we’ve been trying to live plastic and waste free due to the irreparable damage being done to the oceans. And plastics aren’t good for people, either – plasticizers are pretty nasty. Going plastic free is especially challenging when you have kids: Most toys are plastic, and things like diapers and disposable wipes create a lot of waste. We searched the web for ways that we as parents could avoid plastic and trash. Now we almost always buy second-hand toys and use washable cloth diapers and towels. And we buy our groceries at the market or from a packaging-free store. I know I can’t save the world on my own, but I can inspire other people to take action.

That’s why I use my YouTube channel to talk about zero-waste living – and about our life in a tiny house.”

Max reports on zero-waste living on his YouTube channel, Max Green

What does that Indian street sign say?

“In 2017, I was in India – in Kolkata and Delhi.

Whenever I needed to find the next subway station, I’d ask the way using the ‘translate by speech’ function in Google Translate, since I couldn’t pronounce the names properly. I’d also use it at restaurants to figure out if dishes were vegetarian. I often use Google Translate for short conversations in my work as a photographer along the Balkan route. It’s really useful that the app can read images as well: I used it in Bulgaria to translate Cyrillic.”

Lena is a photographer and journalist

Photos: p. 4-5: Charlotte Schreiber (2), Julia Sellmann (4), p. 6-7: Lara Freiburger (2), Florian Generotzky (2), Lêmrich (2), p. 8: Felix Brüggemann (2), Ines Janas

How do you live a plastic-free life?

Trustworthy search results

Why ranking matters Google Search aims to provide relevant and reliable information for each and every search query. Given the amount of spam and misinformation lurking online these days, it’s more important than ever to provide high-quality results. How is Google tackling the challenge? A closer look.

ILLUSTRATION: BRATISLAV MILENKOVIC

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Aufbruch Google Search Google’s prime objective has always been to give people access to relevant and reliable information, whenever and wherever they’re searching for it. Over the years, many teams have set themselves the task of making sure the Google search engine finds the right answers for every query. That’s no easy task, particularly given that around 15 percent of each day’s questions have never been posed before. What’s more, the internet has changed. Alongside long-established phenomena like spam, malicious misinformation and conspiracy theories have been posing new challenges in recent years.

The man responsible for ensuring that people get trustworthy search results is Pandu Nayak, Vice President of Search at Google. His mission: to make sure that there’s “No query left behind.” In order for people to comfortably navigate the mountains of information available online, he and his team use ranking alongside many other tools. “Without ranking,” says Nayak, “no one would be able to find their way around the web.”

“If we publicized the exact algorithm, it would break Search.”

PANDU NAYAK, VICE PRESIDENT OF SEARCH AT GOOGLE

Google ranks websites based on factors such as how relevant, reliable, and up-to-date they are. As well as looking for lexical matches, the search engine considers how recently a website has been updated, how many other websites link to that page, whether there are thematically relevant images, what the querier’s geographical location is, and how trustworthy and/or accurate a website is considered to be.

When Nayak is asked just how Google’s ranking works, he grins: “If we publicized the exact algorithm, it would break Search; people could use that knowledge to manipulate our ranking system.” In the late ‘90s, when Google first launched, it would scan around 25 million websites for each query. Today, it scans several hundreds of million websites – and that number is growing daily. But, as Nayak points out, around 40 percent of all websites are spam. Some publish senseless strings of text automatically generated by artificial intelligence. Others deliberately spread false information.

Fighting disinformation together To ensure it continually provides access to reliable information, Google is constantly updating its Search algorithm. It also collaborates with partners who share its interest in ensuring the availability of trustworthy information on the internet. These include newsrooms, fact-checking organizations, NGOs, electoral commissions, and researchers.

Google Germany has worked for many years with fact-checkers from organizations such as BR24, dpa, and CORRECTIV, supporting their efforts in the fight against disinformation. In the open-source tagging system ClaimReview, journalists can tag their fact-checks so they show up as additional information alongside relevant search results on sites like Google and YouTube. In cooperation with dpa, the Google News Initiative runs a project called Faktencheck21, which offers fact-checking workshops to newsroom staff and equips them with the knowledge and tools they need to identify and tackle misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Google contributed 25 million euros to help launch a project aimed at combating misinformation and supporting fact-checking.

The last few years have been busy ones for fact-checkers around the world, what with the many major elections and the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the past 12 months alone, they published more than 50,000 factchecks, which were displayed on Google News and Google Search. During that time, they were viewed around 2.4 billion times.

In the meantime, projects like the European Media and Information Fund are working to promote media literacy among adults and teenagers throughout Europe, so they can learn to distinguish fact from fiction.

Early this year, Google contributed 25 million euros to help launch the project, with the goal of combating misinformation and supporting factchecking. With this contribution, Google aims to ensure that people always get the information they want, the answers they need, and the accuracy they deserve.

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Aufbruch Google Search

The moonshot goal: zero carbon Urs Hölzle, one of Google’s first employees, is not only responsible for ensuring that billions of search queries are processed within a fraction of a second. As Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure at Google, he’s also been working for decades to make Google’s data centers as energy-efficient as possible.

TEXT: CHRISTOPH HENN PHOTOS: WINNI WINTERMEYER

When Urs Hölzle first looked into Google’s technological heart in February 1999, the internet was still in its infancy. Google co-founder Larry Page had invited Hölzle for a tour of a data center in Santa Clara, California, where internet companies could rent space. Among the companies that had their servers there were the online auction site eBay and the search engine AltaVista. Google had been founded just a few months earlier, and the space it had rented at the facility was cramped: 30 PCs were stacked in a tiny cage just seven by four feet in size. The majority of the budding search engine’s servers housed the website index, while the others hosted the crawler that scanned and indexed websites. Recalling his first visit, Hölzle says, “The room was chaotic and so small that you couldn’t really set foot inside.”

“The biggest obstacle is often the idea that something can’t be done.”

Yet Hölzle decided to take the job at Google anyway. At the time, the move was hardly an obvious choice. Hölzle had a good job teaching computer science at the University of Santa Barbara, and a pay cut seemed certain. But like many other computer experts on the West Coast who were already using the new search engine, he was convinced it was better than what was out there. He also liked Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s vision of making the world’s knowledge easily accessible to everyone. And so he became the start-up’s eighth employee, and with him came its ninth: his dog Yoshka, a Leonberger, who paved the way for Google to become the dog-friendly company it is to this day.

A conversation with one of Google’s first employees

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Aufbruch Google Search

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“By 2030, we aim to run all our data centers on renewable energy around the clock,” says Urs Hölzle.

The Google data center in Eemshaven on the North Sea.

As Google’s Chief Engineer, Hölzle worked from the time he was hired at age 35 to build a powerful infrastructure that could meet the search engine’s growing needs. It was always on Mondays that he found out how well he was doing. Back then, most people didn’t have internet at home, so they’d start off the work week at the office by asking all the questions they’d saved up over the weekend. With each passing Monday, the number of search queries would increase by five to ten percent.

Besides the many technical challenges, sustainability was a central topic for Google founders Page and Brin and the rest of the team early on. Hölzle himself had grown up in Switzerland volunteering for the World Wildlife Fund. When the team moved into Google’s first office building, one of the priorities was to use environmentally-sound building materials and carpets. Before long, however, the focus turned to the servers’ energy consumption. “At the time, it was also a question of money,” explains Hölzle, “because power and cooling are very expensive.” The more Google’s technical infrastructure grew, the more important the issue of energy efficiency became. The company gradually began to develop their own, more economical solutions – first for the computers in the data centers, then for the data centers as a whole, which Google started building themselves in 2004 as they transitioned away from renting.

“The potential for savings was enormous, because for decades, computers and data centers were all about functionality rather than efficiency,” says Hölzle. But the initial progress they achieved wasn’t enough, either for him or for the company. To this day, one of Hölzle’s most important tasks as Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure is to maximize the efficiency of the computing centers at the company’s now 22 locations around the world. His efforts have paid off: On average, a Google data center is currently twice as energy-efficient as a typical enterprise data center. And Google can derive around seven times more computing power from a given amount of electrical power than it could five years ago.

Of course, Google still consumes enormous amounts of electricity, no matter how energy-efficient its infrastructure may be. In 2019, the company used around 12,200 gigawatt hours – an amount roughly equivalent to the total electricity consumption for the city of Berlin, which was 12,800 gigawatt hours in 2020. But long before it reached these impressive figures, Google had started taking action to address its impact. In 2007, it became the first major company to become carbon neutral by calculating and reducing its emissions and offsetting them through a variety of climate protection projects.

Carbon-neutral Search

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Since 2017, Google has been purchasing enough renewable energy to cover its entire electricity demand. In Europe alone, the company plans to invest two billion euros by 2025 in projects promoting carbon-free energy generation and sustainable infrastructures. Although it’s not yet possible to power every data center with carbon-free energy 24 hours a day – partly due to intermittent availability of wind and solar power – Google compensates for all of the conventional electricity it uses with the additional generation of renewable energy. “By 2030, we aim to run all our data centers on renewable energy around the clock,” says Hölzle,

“Using artificial intelligence, we’ve managed to reduce the energy we use to cool our data centers by an additional 30 to 40 percent.” outlining Google’s most ambitious environmental goal yet. If it achieves this target, not only will every Google search query be carbon free, so will every email sent through Gmail and every video watched on YouTube. And this won’t just be a statistic based on balance-sheet averages, as is the case now; it will be true every second of every hour of every day.

Currently, five of Google’s data centers are carbon free 90 percent of the time. As Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in an April 2021 blog post for Earth Day, “Our carbon-free goal is as ambitious as other moonshots like building a quantum computer or developing a self-driving car.”

Photos: Google (1); Screenshot: Google Maps

Hölzle is also fully aware of how difficult this undertaking will be. “It would be an exaggeration to say we already know exactly how we’re going to do it,” he admits. Still, he feels the target is realistic and is counting on technological innovation, as he so often has over the course of his career.

The real goal, after all, is much bigger than making Google the first major company to operate carbon free. “The greatest obstacle is often the idea that something can’t be done,” he says. “That’s why we want to demonstrate to other companies that it is economically viable to rely on renewable energy.” Becoming a role model is one way Google can promote the cause of sustainability. Another is through its own products. Even now, Hölzle argues, huge amounts of carbon are being avoided thanks to Google Maps, because people aren’t getting lost and driving around aimlessly trying to get back on their route. Google plans to continue expanding its key services, so that by 2022, they can help one billion users make more sustainable choices. For example, Google Maps will soon show not only the fastest and shortest routes, but also the routes with the smallest carbon footprint.

Hölzle firmly believes that the significant experience Google has gained and the progress it has made with its data centers since 1999 can have an even greater impact. “Using artificial intelligence, we’ve managed to reduce the energy we use to cool our data centers by an additional 30 to 40 percent,” he explains. The control system, which responds to the individual requirements of each building through machine learning, has now been tested on office buildings as well, and will soon be made available more widely. Hölzle sees this technology as another example of how digitization is having a positive net effect on the climate. “This one thing alone could save more energy than the entire internet consumes.”

Trailblazers in sustainability: European data centers

Google operates five data centers in Europe, four of which are located in countries bordering Germany. The latest of these was completed at the end of 2020 in Denmark after two years of construction. From the very start, 90 percent of the facility’s power has been carbon free. Google achieved this remarkable goal by investing in five solar parks in Denmark during the construction phase. Under optimal conditions, these photovoltaic power plants can supply up to 160 megawatts of green electricity. In the company’s other European data centers, the focus is also on energy efficiency: Upon opening in 2016, the center became the first of Google's data centers to match 100 percent of its power consumption with renewables from day one. When the facility in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, began operations in 2010, it became Google’s first data center to run entirely without traditional cooling methods, turning instead to recycled wastewater from a nearby industrial canal to cool the servers. And the data center in Hamina, Finland, uses seawater from the Bay of Finland in its cooling system.

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Aufbruch Google Search

“600,000 experiments” Data analyst Elizabeth Tucker and her team keep Google Search up-to-date, useful, and fast. How do they do it? An inside look.

INTERVIEW: GRETA SIEBER PHOTOS: WINNI WINTERMEYER

Instantaneous updates Ms. Tucker, when I search for something on Google, I get results in less than a second. How is that possible?

In order to provide our services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Google owns and operates data centers around the world. This means that a search query isn’t sent across the globe, but processed in the nearest server. That’s what enables us to deliver relevant results so quickly.

What does daily development entail?

Before we change anything in Search, we conduct extensive tests and experiments with skilled developers, search analysts, and legal and privacy experts. Only if these tests show that a change really yields more useful results do we introduce it. In 2020, we conducted more than 600,000 such experiments and live tests and introduced 4,500 improvements.

There are billions of websites, with hundreds of new ones being published every second. How do you ensure that search results are up-to-date?

The internet is indeed ever evolving. When we’re dealing with content that changes within seconds, we make updates every second. For example, if you’re looking for the latest score of a soccer match, we provide answers to the second. On the other hand, when it comes to historical events, information may remain static for years. Google processes trillions of search queries every year. That’s why we’re constantly developing Google Search.

What makes a good search result?

Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, once described the perfect search engine this way: It “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.”

Today, it’s things like machine learning that help Google understand users’ search queries – regardless of how search terms are arranged, and whether they’re spelled correctly or incorrectly. In the past five years, thanks to machine learning, we’ve made one of the biggest advances in the history of Google Search: With the help of the newly developed DeepRank algorithm, Search can better classify the linguistic context of a question and display even more fitting results. But to answer your question: We’re satisfied if we deliver relevant answers quickly and prepare the information we’re looking for in suitable formats in a meaningful and helpful way. We’ve found that relevant search results mean users also spend more time on the websites they find through Search.

Can you describe what this looks like in concrete terms?

People’s curiosity is infinite, so we’ve developed ways to deliver results to unpredictable queries. In concrete terms, this means that we constantly search the internet – both new and existing websites – for content and sort it into the Google Search index. You can think of it as a library, where information from web pages is sorted by keyword. Without this preliminary work, it would be almost impossible to find what you’re looking for, given the amount of information online. Our ranking systems consist of not one, but a whole series of algorithms designed to find and highlight relevant and useful results for any given search query.

But how do algorithms recognize relevant results?

Our Search algorithms take many factors into account, including the terms that appear in the search query, the relevance and usability of the web pages, the expertise of the sources, and the location and preferences of the users. The weighting of each factor depends on the nature of the query. For example, the timeliness of the content plays a greater role in answering questions about current news topics than general definitions. We continue to develop our Search algorithms every day.

17 Google’s Search algorithms rank relevant results particularly highly. Under what circumstances does Google remove search results?

We always try to strike a balance. On the one hand, we want to make sure people have free access to information; on the other, we do our best to protect our users from harmful content on the internet. In certain situations, we remove search results – whether for legal reasons or because webmaster guidelines have been violated or at the request of the webmaster responsible for the particular page.

How does Google deal with spam?

Thanks to our Search algorithms, relevant and reliable websites are displayed at the top. The factors that go into our rankings are public, so web developers understand what content Google considers high quality. Spam, on the other hand, only simulates meeting these criteria without actually providing high-quality content. Our guidelines list all types of spam that result in lower rankings – for example, keyword misuse. Spam will rank poorly in Google Search.

The fight against spam is a never-ending game of cat-and-mouse, which is why we have to weigh how many details we can reveal about the Search algorithms. That said, we value transparency, so web developers can create great content and get visibility and traffic via Google Search.

You’ve already sort of hinted at this: These days, Google Search doesn’t just display web pages as search results. What else is there?

We organize information on the search results page in a way that makes it as easy as possible to scan and process. For example, if you’re looking for a restaurant, Google Maps helps you find a place near you. If you’re looking for a particular sweater, it’s helpful to see if a nearby store has that piece in stock. Presenting information in this way makes it more likely that users will find what they’re looking for.

About Elizabeth Tucker works as a data analyst at Google in California. The photo on the left shows her on her commute to work.

Aufbruch Google Search

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recipes plant cultivation

1. Start your search Enter a search term or question in the Google Search bar. The query is processed by the closest Google server.

How to g question t

When you enter a search query second to yield reliable res A good amount of preliminary work goes into making sure a search query yields results. Google programs called “crawlers” regularly explore new and existing websites, identifying their content and filing the datasets into the Google Search index. Here, websites are sorted according to relevance. Over 100,000

terabytes in size, the Google Search index contains billions of websites. With the help of artificial intelligence and a new algorithm called DeepRank, Google Search can now better understand the context and linguistic nuances of search queries, making results even more helpful. Globally, Google

6. Et voilà: your results!

5. …and personalized

Google Search provides the user's results not only in the form of websites; new formats are increasingly being added to the roster.

The search results are adjusted according to cultural context, previous searches, and the user's preset Search settings, such as preferred language.

Behind the scenes

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2. The term is analyzed To make sure the results are relevant, Google compares the search with similar words and phrases, automatically corrects any misspellings, and pinpoints the topic and its current popularity.

get from to answer

3. The Search index is scanned The query is compared with terms, images, and videos in the Google Search index. You can think of the index as a kind of library whose shelves store nearly all the world’s websites.

into Google, it takes less than a sults. Here’s how it works: operates a total of 22 data centers, each of which contains a complete copy of the Google Search index.

Within this vast pool of data, Google finds the most relevant results and displays them first. Search queries don’t need to be sent around the world, only to the nearest data center, so results arrive as quickly as

possible. Google is able to keep its search function free of charge by selling advertising space. Advertising is only shown when it’s relevant to a query and is always clearly marked as an “Ad” or “Sponsored link.”

Advertisers cannot buy preferred placement within Google’s search results.

4. The results are prepared…

Search results are sorted according to various parameters such as how up-to-date and trustworthy they are, the user's physical location, and even a website’s user-friendliness.

ILLUSTRATION: BRATISLAV MILENKOVIC

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Aufbruch Google Search

“An incredible timesaver” As Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian is interested in exploring how the internet will evolve over time. An analysis of the future of the company, artificial intelligence, and whether Google, too, might one day disappear from the market.

TEXT: CATALINA SCHRÖDER PHOTOS: WINNI WINTERMEYER

Mr. Varian, Google provides many free digital products, including Google Search, Gmail, and Google Maps. How much do you think these products are actually worth?

Even if users don’t pay money for them, I believe they’re worth a lot. Economist Erik

Brynjolfsson once conducted a study where he asked people how much money they would have to be paid to give up the Google search engine for a year. People wanted an average of $17,530 to forgo the service. Email was worth less to them; they would have asked for an average of only $8,414 a year to give up Gmail.

You can see from this how ingrained these products are in our everyday lives and how unwilling we are to do without them.

How much would you personally be willing to pay for Google Search?

I can’t put a figure on it. The search engine is

Analysis and prognosis

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simply an incredible timesaver. We once did an experiment where we asked test subjects a series of questions that could only be answered by gathering information at the library. While they were at it, we asked these questions of the Google search engine. The result was that the test participants took 22 minutes to gather all the answers in the library, while Google needed only seven minutes. This time-saving aspect is the crucial thing.

Let me tell you a little story about how Google was developed. In 1995, the US National Science Foundation launched a development project called Digital Libraries that involved the universities of Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley, Stanford, Santa Barbara, and Michigan. The result was three search engines: Lycos, Inktomi – a search engine that’s now part of Yahoo – and Google.

At the time, I was a dean at the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California, Berkeley, and was working on some of the Digital Libraries projects.

What would you say to economists who complain that the value of digital products isn’t adequately reflected in economic indicators like gross domestic product?

The users themselves might not pay anything for the products, but they are financed through advertising. And advertising has always accounted for around one percent of the gross domestic product in many Western countries for the past 100 years. Of course, there’s been a big change in advertising: Budgets are shifting massively from print to online. That’s a trend we’ve been seeing for a long time. With respect to measuring the value of products, there are several ways to proceed. One thing to do is to measure time saved. Twenty years ago, you had to go to the reference section of the library to

“The internet is no longer the sole source from which Google draws its information.”

look up facts; now you just ask Google. Another approach looks at costs saved. It used to be that photographs were expensive, since you had to buy film and pay for the development.

Not only that, you had to wait several days for the process to be done. Nowadays, digital photos are essentially free and ready for immediate viewing. Yet a third approach is to use willingness to pay, as was done by Erik Brynjolfsson in the study I mentioned earlier.

Your job is to predict the future of the internet...

Yes. That’s part of it. …How do you know how the Internet will develop?

How does that tie in to future of the internet?

Google was initially developed and used in an academic environment – and no one would have thought it possible at the time that the internet would one day be used in as many different ways as it is today. In the future, we’ll continue to use internet developments in a way we can’t anticipate today, or that we don’t even know about yet.

What role do you think the Google search engine will play in five years’ time?

Providers like Google must position themselves more and more as answer engines and not just as search engines. As a search engine, Google scours the web. As an answer engine, Google supplies answers itself, for example, as a spoken answer via Google Assistant. This is often done in cooperation with partners, and of course only applies to relatively simple tasks. Take the weather: Wanting to know what the weather will be like tomorrow or next week is a very popular query. Here in the US, for example, we work with The Weather Company from IBM, which provides the weather report for our users. There are similar collaborations for the results of football or baseball games, stock prices, and dictionaries. In other words, the internet is no longer the sole source from which Google draws its information.

What other changes might we see in the future?

We’ve been working nonstop on artificial intelligence, and I believe that one day we’ll be able to speak to our computers in natural language, to conversationally ask them anything conceivable: “How good is this or that restaurant?”

“How long will it take me to get from Berlin to Frankfurt?” We’ll talk to our machines the way we’re used to talking to friends. In my working group, we’ve been looking at how we can predict the future of the economy and manage it better. The gross domestic product we talked

about earlier is normally calculated once a quarter. But we’re working on calculating it in real time. There’s plenty of data to do that.

In what way can that be useful?

Well, if a country sees that one of its regions is recovering from the economic impact of the corona pandemic at a slower rate than the others, the government could take targeted action – for example, with stimulus money.

“We’re working on calculating gross domestic product in real time.”

But how does all this help you predict the future of the internet?

A while back, we published an essay called “Predicting the Present with Google Trends.” It’s already quite a challenge to know what’s happening in real time. But if we can accurately assess present trends, we have a much better starting point for predicting the future.

Would you say that the Google Corporation has serious competitors?

If we look at how Google makes money – mainly through advertising – then Facebook and Amazon, for example, are very serious competitors, and we’re in strong competition with them and others.

They’re also both large companies. Do you think it’s possible that a company that’s still small today or doesn’t even exist yet could overtake Google one day?

Think of other companies that used to be market leaders and are no longer around today. I’m sure the same thing could happen to Google.

The average lifespan of many companies is much shorter than the lifespan of a human being.

And yet there are many people who see Google as a threatening corporate giant.

The company’s growth is the result of what’s known as the “network effect”: If nearly everyone uses Google as their search engine, then I, too, must be findable on Google or present on the platform. In that way, Google facilitates its own growth.

The evolution of Search

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About Hal Varian has been Google’s Chief Economist since 2007. Before that, he worked for many years as a professor in the Department of Economics of the University of California, Berkeley. He has also taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University, among others. One of his areas of expertise is information economics.

When it comes to advertising, I don’t have the impression that the network effects are working in Google’s favor alone. We actually have a lot of competition in that industry.

only holds a small portion of it. If we look at the online advertising space, we have a slightly larger one. And if we look at online advertising on search engines, we’re very visible there.

There are also critics who say that Google holds a monopoly.

Look at the global advertising market: Google

But shouldn’t the state ensure that such monopolies aren’t permitted to arise in the first place?

If a company has managed to get into such a position through fair competition, then that’s not against the law, but the deserved reward for good work. In Europe, dominance is not a problem in and of itself, but rather the fear that those in dominant positions might abuse their power.

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Reaching new customers

Even before the pandemic hit, online sales were on the rise. Both online shops and brick-and-mortar retail outlets benefit from a strong internet presence. Two companies reveal the tools they use to help them run their business on a day-to-day basis.

TEXT: GRETA SIEBER PHOTOS: FELIX ADLER, FELIX BRÜGGEMANN

Retailer reports Katharina Staniok and Frédéric Krauser are a team – both at and away from the workplace. The couple met as graphic design students and started working together shortly after graduating. It was while selling the greeting cards they designed at craft markets that they realized how much they enjoyed having personal interactions with the people buying and using their products. So, in 2017, Staniok and Krauser took the plunge and opened a store in the center of Leipzig called Eisenhauer Bürokultur.

Here, the pair sell self-designed and carefully selected stationery items, while continuing to run their graphic design studio on the side. The store was doing well, but in the spring of 2020 when the pandemic hit and Germany went into its first lockdown, sales plummeted by roughly half.

Staniok and Krauser already had an online shop where they offered a selection of their wares. But after the lockdown went into effect, traffic skyrocketed – going from 30 online orders a month to around seven times that amount. The couple set about photographing and uploading more and more of their products and shifted their focus to the digital side of the business. “The online shop doesn’t replace our brick-andmortar store,” says Staniok. “But it’s a huge help, and it means we can cover our costs.” Eisenhauer Bürokultur now generates around 60 percent of its income online.

“I believed in my idea, but that wasn’t going to do me any good if people couldn’t find me.”

SOHRAB MOHAMMAD, REISHUNGER FOUNDER

Many retail companies in Germany experienced a similar shift last year.

According to reports by the German E-Commerce and Distance Selling Trade Association (bevh), while stationary retail sales fell, online retail turnover rose by 14.6 percent. So it’s certainly a wise move for retailers to draw attention to their digital offerings. If you do a Google search for “office and stationery Leipzig,” the name “Eisenhauer Bürokultur” is right near the top of the page. There are several reasons for this. One is that Staniok and Krauser actively manage their business profile on Google Search and Google Maps, making sure their contact information and opening hours are up-to-date and that recent photos are uploaded and visible. These pieces of information appear on the results page whenever people search locally for the company or for products or services they provide. Customers can contact the business directly via the messaging function, and there’s even a route planner to help people get there.

“Google is our digital shop window,” explains Krauser. That’s why the couple puts so much effort into the quality of their photography: “When someone searches for a particular product, our colorful images immediately stand out – especially in Google Search and Google Maps.”

In an industry study, marketing agency Ignite Visibility surveyed over 500 internet users to find out how they search for local businesses. Almost 70 percent said they use Google Search to find companies in their area, and

25 more than 80 percent said they take reviews and company descriptions into consideration. This explains why bars and restaurants, hotels, and medical practices also use the business profile in Google Search to help more people find – and make use of – their services.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Eisenhauer Bürokultur in Leipzig has gained most of its new business online. The personal interactions that Staniok and Krauser value so much now take place via email, video calls, or Instagram. Since the spring of 2020, the two have been shipping more and more of their goods all over Germany. But they work hard for their laurels. “We write an average of four messages to Click & Collect customers before a purchase is made,” says Krauser. For this young company, it’s worth going the extra mile to gain loyal customers.

Sohrab Mohammad and Torben Buttjer, who founded the Bremen-based company Reishunger in 2011, also recognize the importance of online visibility. The idea of selling rice online was the brainchild of Mohammad, whose parents are from Iran. “In my parents’ home country, rice is the centerpiece of every table, and there are so many more varieties than in Europe,” he explains. German supermarkets often only stock a handful of grains, and in Mohammad’s opinion, they’re nowhere near as aromatic as those found in Iran. As a result, he started importing rice directly from farmers in Asia, the Middle East, and South America. Despite the extremely high quality of his product, Mohammad recalls that Reishunger’s online shop had only moderate success in the early days: “I believed in my idea, but that wasn’t going to do me any good if people couldn’t find me.” It was Buttjer who suggested placing ads on Google Search.

“Once we started doing that, we could barely keep up with all the orders,” remembers Mohammad. Even today, the founder estimates that 20 percent of the company’s revenue comes from Google Ads. Like many online companies, Reishunger enjoyed a very successful 2020. Sales of the more than 20 varieties of rice, as well as pulses, spices, and sauces doubled to almost 20 million euros. “In times of crisis, staple foods like rice and pasta are in higher demand,” says Mohammad. “Plus, since restaurants were closed, people were cooking at home more.”

The Reishunger founders particularly appreciate being able to decide for themselves how their products are presented in Google Ads. “I like that I can control how my ad looks, put one together on short notice, and predetermine how much I want to spend,” says Mohammad. “And the tool is really self-explanatory, so even small companies will find it easy to use.”

Today, Reishunger has a team dedicated to thinking about what potential customers are looking for. The ads they place pop up when people search for things like “risotto rice” or “basmati rice.” And these days, reishunger.de is much more than just an online shop – it’s a platform that also features recipes, cooking tips, and interviews. “We want to be known as the rice experts,” says Mohammad.

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26 “The great thing about advertising on Google is that it gives equal opportunities to companies of all sizes in all sectors,” says Julia Stern, Director of Large Customer Sales at Google.

How Google makes money Advertising keeps Google Search and other online services free of charge for users.

TEXT: CATALINA SCHRÖDER PHOTO: CONSTANTIN MIRBACH ILLUSTRATION: BRATISLAV MILENKOVIC

Google’s business model your focus is on learning how to play the guitar.

So if there aren’t any ads relevant to your query, you won’t see any with your search results.

“The great thing about advertising on Google is that it gives equal opportunities to companies of all sizes in all sectors,” says Julia Stern, Director of Large Customer Sales at Google. “Large and small companies can compete for the same target groups – not just locally, but globally.” Stern points out that these best practices also minimize what’s known in marketing as “scatter loss”: “If you’re someone who sells guitars from an online shop, your ads are more effective if they’re only being shown to users who’ve expressed an interest in guitars.”

27 to Google. Ultimately, everyone benefits. Users get plenty of free content plus offers that may be of interest to them; advertisers are able to increase sales; bloggers or site operators get a share of revenue for making ad space available; and Google makes money by providing an online platform.

Above all else, transparency is key. Ads aren’t disguised among your search results, but clearly marked with the word “Ad.”

Why do I see ads on Google Search?

Let’s say you want to teach yourself how to play the guitar. Your first step might be to do a Google search for useful content showing guitar pros demonstrating basic finger positions and teaching you how to play some chords for easy songs. Enter the term “learn to play guitar” in the search bar, and in less than a second, Google will display millions of relevant results.

These will feature videos with titles such as “Your first guitar lesson” or “20 tips for beginners learning the guitar.” You’ll also see diagrams detailing the fingerings for simple chords as well as websites offering guidance and advice. Then, at the top and bottom of the page, clearly separated from the search results, you’ll see advertisements. These might be for books on how to play guitar, accessories like picks and straps, or paid online lessons.

Advertisements such as these are an important source of income for Google. If you click on an ad for a teach-yourself-guitar book, the company that placed the ad pays Google a fee. If you don’t click on it, Google doesn’t earn money with that ad.

As this example demonstrates, Google only profits financially when advertising is of relevance. If you searched “intro to guitar playing” and were shown advertisements for shoes instead, chances are you’d ignore it – after all,

Why do I see ads on other websites or apps?

In addition to providing advertising space on Google Search and in Google apps, Google generates revenue by helping other websites use advertising to make money. Starting to sound complicated? We’ll stick with the guitar example to explain.

Let’s say you’ve clicked on a website full of free blog posts and videos that teach you all about the basics of playing the guitar. If it’s done well, the person who made that site has probably invested a great deal of time and energy into making it. By hosting advertisements on their site, they can earn money for the work they’ve done while continuing to make the site available free of charge. Google provides a service that lets website operators and bloggers allocate advertising space on their pages to Google. The ads that appear here – purchased by advertisers and placed by Google – usually relate to the content of the site. So while you’re getting to grips with your first chords, you might see ads for online shops that sell guitars or guitar tabs. If you click on an ad, the website operator providing free content receives one part of the revenue, while the other part goes

Why do I see ads for guitar paraphernalia on other websites after leaving the guitar website?

Let’s say you’ve had enough of learning the guitar for the time being and have moved on to reading about current events on a news site.

There, you’re also shown an ad for some kind of guitar accessory. You’re no longer searching for guitar-related topics, so why are you being shown this ad?

Retailers want to target their ads at people who might be interested in their products. So how does Google know to show you a guitar ad when you’re on a news site? Naturally, this is only the case if you’ve given Google permission to personalize your ads and if the website you’re on has partnered with Google Ads. Well, Google remembers your recent guitar-related search and has categorized you as a guitar fan.

Another key piece of the puzzle involves painting a picture of your browsing habits across websites. This is where cookies come into play.

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Cookies are tiny crumbs of data saved in your browser that record your browsing activity.

Google can read these cookies to show you advertising for products it thinks you might be interested in. Now, when you visit websites that work with Google, a music shop wanting to target guitar players can make sure their ads are being shown to people like you who actually have an interest in playing the guitar. That’s made possible because Google can connect your visits between different websites. “Our goal is always to show you ads that are as helpful and relevant as possible,” says Stern.

What data does Google use to personalize ads?

“We make our money from advertising, and never from selling personal data,” stresses Stern. Strict advertising policies prevent personal information such as the content of emails and documents, health data, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation being used to personalize ads.

What if I don’t want to see guitar ads anymore?

Maybe after a few days of playing around with chords, you’ve decided guitar playing isn’t for you. In that case, you probably don’t want to see any more guitar-related ads. What to do?

Next to every advertisement in your search results, you’ll see a small, upside-down triangle.

When you click on it, the note “Why this ad?” appears. Inside the info box, you can switch off advertisements from that particular advertiser or for that specific advertisement. If, more generally, you want to adjust the type of ads that are shown, you can click on the “Ads Settings” button at the bottom of the info box. This takes you to a page where you can provide information to personalize your ads, or switch off ad personalization altogether.

In your Google Account settings, you can decide which activities Google is permitted to save and use for personalized advertising. This can include data derived from browsing habits or from the personal information you’ve saved in your Google Account – like your age group and the languages you speak. Under “Ad personalization,” you can also add information about the things you’re interested in – like boating, volleyball, books, or specific brands.

The settings you choose will then apply everywhere you use your Google Account.

The privacy and security of its users is of fundamental importance to Google. It protects all its users’ data using a range of different technologies. A staff of more than 200 at the Google Safety Engineering Center (GSEC) in Munich works to constantly develop and expand those technologies (see interview on the right). All Google Account users can run a Privacy Checkup and a Security Checkup, where they can review and alter a large number of different settings. To find out more about the Privacy Checkup, visit myaccount.google.com/ privacycheckup.

Google Safety Engineering Center in Munich

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“User-friendly settings” The Google Safety Engineering Center (GSEC) in Munich is the hub for all of Google’s work on data privacy and security. Raquel Ruiz is part of the team helping people understand and control what Google does with their data – for instance, how it’s used to personalize Google Search.

Photo: Sima Dehgani

Ms. Ruiz, you’re a technical program manager at the GSEC. What exactly does your job entail?

My team and I try to make it as easy as possible for Google product users to configure their privacy settings. We collaborate with teams in software development, product management, and research and design to make these settings user-friendly and easy to understand.

What does that mean in concrete terms?

To give an example: We can display more relevant search results if we have access to activity data about your internet usage. But you should always be informed and able to decide exactly which data is processed by Google services and for what purposes. You should also have a say in how Google uses your activity data. We try to facilitate this by making your data privacy settings straightforward and transparent.

Where do I find these settings?

You can manage your most important privacy

and security settings in your Google Account.

This is also where you can see which activity data is being used for personalization. Simply enter “Google account privacy” into Google Search, and you’ll see information and recommendations on which settings can be customized in your Google Account.

What configuration options are available?

In your Account, you can decide whether you want your activity data to be used to personalize Google Search, for instance, or you can delete your web and app activity. You also have the option to view and manage your location history and adjust your ad settings. If we can use your activity data and search history to personalize ads, they’ll be more relevant for you. You can always opt out of personalized ads at any time.

How will my search results improve if I enable personalization?

If you’re looking for an ice cream parlor, let’s

say, and your phone is set to share location data, we can show you nearby options. This is just one example of the advantages of personalized settings. It’s important to note that your personal data will always be treated confidentially – and will never be sold to third parties.

Focus on data privacy and security Since 2019, the Google Safety Engineering Center (GSEC) in Munich has been the global hub for all Google’s work on data privacy and protection. In total, more than 1,000 people from 70 nations call Google’s offices in the Bavarian capital home. Find out more at → goo.gle/GSEC

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“Openness is crucial” Vinton G. Cerf is considered one of the fathers of the internet and is “Chief Internet Evangelist” at Google. In this interview, the co-inventor of the TCP and IP communication protocols talks about the role search engines played in the development of the World Wide Web and the challenges facing the network today.

INTERVIEW: CHRISTOPH HENN PHOTOS: JARED SOARES

How the internet was born

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“The fact that the internet could later serve the public was due to its open architecture. We chose it because we knew that new applications and communication technologies would come along.” Vinton G. Cerf at his home in Virginia.

“I’d be lying if I said we foresaw exactly how popular it would become.”

The computer network ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) is considered the precursor to the internet. From 1969, it connected American universities that were doing research for the US Department of Defense.

Mr. Cerf, do you remember the moment when you first thought, “the internet works”?

I remember it very well; it was November 22, 1977. Bob Kahn and I had been working on it since 1973. On that day, from Washington, DC, we wanted to prove that three different networks – radio, satellite network, and ARPANET – could be linked together to form the internet.

Using the TCP/IP protocols, we sent data from a van in California across the US and via satellites to Europe and back. When that worked, I was convinced that we had proven that the internet protocol could work. That was very exciting – even though it was years before we could really turn on the internet.

Did you ever dream back then that one day billions of people would be using the internet?

Technically, I had no problems imagining it. I’d be lying if I said we foresaw exactly how popular it would become. However, with the internet

Communication protocols define rules for data transmission between several parties on the internet – they decide, for example, how a message is formatted. The most important protocols are TCP and IP. TCP/IP stands for “Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol” and refers to a group of communication protocols that enable two devices to exchange data.

Protocol standards are independent of any specific hardware or operating system. The IP address ensures that a data packet is sent to the correct recipient; TCP establishes and maintains the connection between a sender and a receiver.

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The internet, a further development of ARPANET, is a global system of interconnected computer networks. Computers that are connected to one another via the internet exchange data using standardized internet protocols. Important internet services include the World Wide Web (WWW) and email.

“One particularly exciting development is the interplanetary expansion of the internet, which I have been working on since 1998.”

The internet protocol (IP) is designed as an open standard. It works independently of the network relaying the data packets and of the content of those packets. This is an important basis for innovation, alongside the fact that the internet does not have any “owners,” who can approve or deny new applications.

CERN is a major research organization situated close to Geneva. It was here that Tim Berners-Lee developed the idea for the World Wide Web – a system of websites connected to one another via hyperlinks.

precursor ARPANET, we’d already noticed the strong social effects that arise from electronic communication. ARPANET was only used by the military and research institutions, but the great potential for civilian purposes was apparent.

The fact that the internet could later serve the public was due to its open architecture. We chose it because we knew that new applications and communication technologies would come along. We wanted the internet protocol to offer maximum flexibility for new developments.

When did you realize that the internet would need some kind of search function?

Tim Berners-Lee launched the World Wide Web at CERN in 1989. It became visible to the general public at the end of 1991, and even then only to a few. It was only thanks to the Mosaic browser developed by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina that the number of web pages increased rapidly from 1993. From then on, it was clear that some kind of indexing was going to be needed in order for the content of the World Wide Web to be found. Gradually, the search engines AltaVista, Yahoo, and Google came into play.

What role did Google play in the development of the internet?

An incredibly important one. The mission to organize the world’s knowledge and make it universally accessible is still Google’s main driver today. Back then, however, the method Google relied on was crucial. In the beginning, there was an index that covered all the pages and words on the web. But when ten million pages contain a term, the order in which they are presented matters. Larry Page and Sergey Brin solved this with their PageRank idea. This enables the pages that are most frequently referred to on the internet via links from other pages to be displayed first. Today, the ranking is based on hundreds of indicators. Around 1998, however, the metric led to Google delivering better search results than the other search engines.

Some of the memorabilia belonging to one of the “fathers of the internet” Vinton G. Cerf, including commemorative photos with former US President Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth II.

Google stands for open access to information. How important do you think it is that the internet is open to everyone?

It’s absolutely crucial, because that’s the only reason countless companies and innovations have been able to emerge. Think of the role the internet has played during the coronavirus pandemic – for example, in research and exchanges on vaccine development. The entire internet and its applications have only been able to develop to this point because the protocols are

Looking to the future

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About In the 1970s, computer scientists Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn developed the TCP/IP communication protocols – and thus the basis of the internet.

Cerf has received numerous awards, including the Turing Prize. Since 2005, he has been Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a large and international open standards community that focuses on the further development of the internet and its smooth operation.

Photos: Jared Soares

Cloud computing enables the on-demand availability of computing resources such as servers, storage, and applications via the internet. Data storage and computing power are no longer managed by individual users’ devices; instead, they come from data centers distributed throughout the world.

open, but also because organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force are accessible to all. Equally important, however, is the free flow of information over the internet on a global scale; it is elementary for cloud computing, over which a large part of computing power takes place today.

Are you happy with how the internet has developed over the past decades?

I’m very pleased with how much it has grown in every respect – whether we’re looking at the number of users, the networks, or the bandwidth. On the other hand, there are very disturbing developments. Disinformation on social media, for example, has had negative social and economic consequences that were hardly foreseeable.

How can problems like disinformation and hate speech on the internet be solved?

Some say artificial intelligence will solve it, but I don’t think so. Technology companies should build tools that help people protect themselves on the internet. At the same time, people are responsible for their actions, and limits must be set on their behavior. This can only be done through international cooperation, because

perpetrators and victims can be located in different countries.

How will the internet change in the future?

The most important trend is that technological advances will make it faster and more accessible, even in remote regions. One particularly exciting development is the interplanetary expansion of the internet, which I have been working on since 1998. We are well on the way to standardizing network protocols for data transmissions within the solar system.

How is searching on the internet changing?

We’re seeing an increase in semantic responses to search queries. In the past, it was all about keywords and which pages they appeared on.

Today, the system tries to understand the meaning of a search query. Increasingly, it not only refers to pages, but also tries to provide a suitable answer – for example, in info boxes at the top of the page. Internet searches are also becoming more collaborative: They’re becoming increasingly accessible, for example, via voice and all kinds of devices that are now online – from smart speakers to automobiles.

The Interplanetary Internet is a computer network conceived to take the internet into space.

Because TCP/IP cannot function over the vast distances between planets, new protocols will have to be developed.

A semantic response to a search query considers the contextual meaning of the query.

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Germany wants to know From diversity to miniature poodles and hula hooping, Google searches in Germany are as diverse as the country itself. Recent trends show that people have been looking for guidance and inspiration – as well as ways to be more socially engaged.

ILLUSTRATION: BRATISLAV MILENKOVIC

Search trend analysis Whether we’re doing a quick mid-conversation fact-check, seeking out advice, or looking for like-minded people, the internet is often our go-to source for a fast answer. Google Trends anonymously records the most common search queries, as well as those that rise in search volume over a period of time. As Simon Rogers of Google Trends puts it: “Google Trends gives us honest insight into what people are interested in.” So, what does Germany want to know?

There’s a strong willingness to help Crisis situations can bring out the best in people. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Germany witnessed a spike in searches containing the word “help.” People frequently typed the query, “Corona, how can I help?” into the search bar. +++ Many people were and still are looking for ways to offer support in their communities, for example, by asking Google how they can aid individuals with depression. +++ The search query, “Moria, how to help?” saw an increase of over 5,000 percent after the Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos was leveled in September 2020. +++ There have never been so many searches on donating blood in Germany as in 2020, when reserves were running low. +++ People in the country took action in a variety of ways. Since March 2020, twice as many people have been looking up how to “support companies.” +++ Searches for “local businesses” or “local stores” have risen by more than 1,600 percent.

Environmental awareness is growing Environmental awareness in Germany has steadily grown over the past years, and this trend is reflected in people’s Google searches. In recent months, “sustainability,” “renewable energies,” and “vegetarianism” have been searched for more than ever before. +++ As a country, Germany currently ranks second worldwide in terms of searches about “vegetarianism” and “veganism.” +++ On the topic of “climate change,” however, Germany only takes 48th place. Searches related to this topic are highest in Fiji and South Africa, where the effects of climate change are already being strongly felt. +++ What is sustainability? It’s something internet users have been asking themselves too. In Germany, the three most frequent search queries on the topic in the past twelve months were: “Is the cultivation of soy sustainable?”, “Is pellet heating sustainable?”, and “Is veganism sustainable?”

A focus on free time at home These days, many of us spend both our working hours and free time at home. As a result, at-home family leisure activities have grown in popularity. The term “puzzle,” for example, was looked up more often in Germany in 2020 than it had ever been in previous years. In April 2020, searches for “virtual museum visit” broke records. +++ Germans are spending a particularly large amount of time gardening. Never before has search interest in the terms “plants” and “greenhouse” seen such activity. +++ Arts and crafts are also experiencing a boom. The most popular recent keywords here have been “paint by numbers,” “macramé hanging baskets,” and “Pikler triangle” – a climbing frame designed for children. +++ Pets, too, have been in demand: The number of searches for “buy cat” and “buy dog” reached an all-time high. +++ Incidentally,

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the most common search query worldwide relating to dogs was “miniature poodle.”

People are looking for guidance People look to the internet for help and guidance – and have been doing so even more during the pandemic, which has been challenging for everyone. Data from April 2020 suggests that people have been losing track of time: Google Trends recorded peak values for the question “What day is it?” +++ Children have been attending virtual classes, and many adults have been working from home. Over the past twelve months, searches like “What is homeschooling?” have increased by more than 5,000 percent. +++ The top ten searches on homeschooling in Germany included questions such as “Best laptop for homeschooling?” and “What age to start homeschooling?” +++ People are also asking “How to spell homeschooling?” +++ The workplace shift has also created a clear need for guidance: The top ten search queries related to working from home have been about tax benefits and recommended monitors, printers, and office chairs. +++ People have also been looking for concrete help and inspiration in their everyday lives. The most frequently searched-for instructions have included how to perform coronavirus self-tests and spit tests – but there have also been some non-coronavirus queries, like how to work out with a hula hoop. +++ The search “What am I cooking today?” had its biggest surge in February 2021. In Germany, particularly popular searches included recipes for “Schupfnudeln” – thick noodle dumplings from southern Germany – “kale,” and “stuffed zucchini,” as well as instructions for “yeast-free pizza dough.”

Diversity is here to stay At no other time has the term “diversity” been searched for as often as it was in early 2021 when queries more than doubled in Germany. +++ Diversity – whether in the form of skin color, cultural background, religion, gender, sexuality, or disability – is becoming more important to companies, politics, and even TV programming. This shift in social awareness is also gradually being reflected by search trends. In June 2021, Google Trends registered a record count for the search query “discrimination,” and the same was true in April for the word “gender.” +++ Search interest in the acronym “LGBT” peaked in June 2020 +++ Top recent searches to do with gender include “How many genders are there?” and “How do you use gender-neutral language?” +++ There was also a spike in searches related to queer culture. Searches that registered a significant influx in activity in recent months include “What is queer?” and “queer sexuality explained.” +++ Current affairs also influence our search queries. Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020 and with the growing visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement, more people were looking up the term “institutional racism” in Germany than ever before in Google Search history. The topics “white privilege” and “anti-racism” also reached an all-time high.