I believe that history is very important, especially when looking at recent history and the ways that our lives have been shaped by it. To me, technological history yields particularly valuable information, both in lessons for today, as well as in lessons for the future.
Today, Google is a little over 12 years old, (just entering its teen years), but it has become, over this brief time, a goliath without which our lives might look very different. Indeed many might remember the first time that they went to Google.com, making that switch that millions would make away from Yahoo and other search engines (I remember the exact first time that I went to Google and I remember my reaction, but I will save this story for a later time). As Google was coming to the scene in 1998 the web was saturated with search engines, to such an extent that, even at the peek of the dot com bubble they were turned down for venture capital funding, with the VC executives stating “There are already too many search engines, we do not think that one more will be able to make money in this market” (this is a decision that this venture capital fund has regretted ever since)
Having come onto the scene Google quickly started to demonstrate the power of innovation, introducing Page Rank (their revolutionary system of ranking websites based on their popularity, named after Larry Page, a co-founder of Google), as well as their Crawler algorithm, which from that point on was to spend every second of every day searching the internet for new pages to index. Not only did they do this, but Google soon figured out a way to profit off of search results (something no exhibiting search engine at the time was able to accomplish). At the time the way that existing search engines worked was primarily as directories, to which one had to submit a website in order to be included, the search engines that utilized crawlers (What is a crawler?) proved to be less than efficient in finding new pages. As far as generating revenue, the primary sources of revenue (to Yahoo, Hotbot, Lycos etc…) came from bulky banner ads, or intrusive pop up ads, indeed my first thought of Google, back in 98’ was “wow, there are no ads”
As the years progressed, and Google got bigger and bigger, getting greater market share away from older, less effective search engines Google began to explore other avenues, largely in response to consumer sentiment. One of these was Gmail, and with Gmail they again entered a saturated market and started to dominate it quickly.
One of the other great things that Google has done and continues to do is to work with SEO experts, having conferences for developers, as well as actively guiding Search engine optimization specialists to how best to improve their sites. Google has understood from the beginning that it helped them to work with SEO guys instead of against them (because if sites had better on page SEO than Google search results would be better).
So what is my point in all of this? Why have you chosen to take time out of your busy life to read this? Well… I’ll tell you… the point I’m trying to make is that as an entrepreneur, (whether you run a medical office in New Jersey, or have an online textbook store) you should always have your eyes open to opportunity, and should always be listening to your clients/customers about what makes them tick and why they may be unsatisfied with the status quo. By understanding what people around you are saying, you might be able to build a better, more effective mouse trap (even in a world already saturated with mouse traps!)
Today, Google is a little over 12 years old, (just entering its teen years), but it has become, over this brief time, a goliath without which our lives might look very different. Indeed many might remember the first time that they went to Google.com, making that switch that millions would make away from Yahoo and other search engines (I remember the exact first time that I went to Google and I remember my reaction, but I will save this story for a later time). As Google was coming to the scene in 1998 the web was saturated with search engines, to such an extent that, even at the peek of the dot com bubble they were turned down for venture capital funding, with the VC executives stating “There are already too many search engines, we do not think that one more will be able to make money in this market” (this is a decision that this venture capital fund has regretted ever since)
Having come onto the scene Google quickly started to demonstrate the power of innovation, introducing Page Rank (their revolutionary system of ranking websites based on their popularity, named after Larry Page, a co-founder of Google), as well as their Crawler algorithm, which from that point on was to spend every second of every day searching the internet for new pages to index. Not only did they do this, but Google soon figured out a way to profit off of search results (something no exhibiting search engine at the time was able to accomplish). At the time the way that existing search engines worked was primarily as directories, to which one had to submit a website in order to be included, the search engines that utilized crawlers (What is a crawler?) proved to be less than efficient in finding new pages. As far as generating revenue, the primary sources of revenue (to Yahoo, Hotbot, Lycos etc…) came from bulky banner ads, or intrusive pop up ads, indeed my first thought of Google, back in 98’ was “wow, there are no ads”
As the years progressed, and Google got bigger and bigger, getting greater market share away from older, less effective search engines Google began to explore other avenues, largely in response to consumer sentiment. One of these was Gmail, and with Gmail they again entered a saturated market and started to dominate it quickly.
One of the other great things that Google has done and continues to do is to work with SEO experts, having conferences for developers, as well as actively guiding Search engine optimization specialists to how best to improve their sites. Google has understood from the beginning that it helped them to work with SEO guys instead of against them (because if sites had better on page SEO than Google search results would be better).
So what is my point in all of this? Why have you chosen to take time out of your busy life to read this? Well… I’ll tell you… the point I’m trying to make is that as an entrepreneur, (whether you run a medical office in New Jersey, or have an online textbook store) you should always have your eyes open to opportunity, and should always be listening to your clients/customers about what makes them tick and why they may be unsatisfied with the status quo. By understanding what people around you are saying, you might be able to build a better, more effective mouse trap (even in a world already saturated with mouse traps!)
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