Google me
Today is a momentous day. Today, I can finally throw away all my VHS tapes of Twin Peaks. Yes...my DVD complete-series boxed set has ARRIVED.
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Yesterday, I was thinking about Google. In a general way, because that's how I roll. I think about random stuff.
I'm sure someone's written a book (probably more than one someone) about Google's success. It's probably shelved in the Marketing or Big Business section. I've heard it said that marketing is all about branding, and online branding is even more important when your choice of retailers or websites is only a click away instead of a car ride away...and as far as Google goes? Mission accomplished. I think you can legitimately call yourself well-branded when your company name makes it into the dictionary.
I got to thinking about why that is. What was the secret? I remember pre-Google and the myriad search engines we had. Infoseek, Lycos, Yahoo. Does anybody use them? Probably. But there was a time they were the only game in town. Then Google came along and like Ron Howard, politely informed them to please eat its dust.
Google currently has 16,000 employees. It is the largest American company that is not part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company has only existed for nine years. Their 2007 US revenue was 10.6 billion dollars which was a 73% increase from 2006. Google as a search engine has a whopping 53.6% marketshare, compared to second-place Yahoo! with a measly 19%. Is there another corporation with that much market penetration? eBay, probably. Maybe Amazon.
Why? What made it so special that it was very quickly the standard? Was it really that much better? Their searching algorithm was new at the time, based on backlinks and page connectivity instead of straight page-hits, but...does that explain it?
I have a theory: it's the name.
It seems to have been an accident. A misspelling of the numerical term "googol." Plus, "googol.com" was already registered. But if it was an accident, it was a happy accident, because the incorrect spelling's "-le" ending suggests a verb. Meaning it felt natural to say "google something" in a way it didn't feel natural to say "yahoo something" or "lycos something."
Well...like I said. It's a theory.
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Yesterday, I was thinking about Google. In a general way, because that's how I roll. I think about random stuff.
I'm sure someone's written a book (probably more than one someone) about Google's success. It's probably shelved in the Marketing or Big Business section. I've heard it said that marketing is all about branding, and online branding is even more important when your choice of retailers or websites is only a click away instead of a car ride away...and as far as Google goes? Mission accomplished. I think you can legitimately call yourself well-branded when your company name makes it into the dictionary.
I got to thinking about why that is. What was the secret? I remember pre-Google and the myriad search engines we had. Infoseek, Lycos, Yahoo. Does anybody use them? Probably. But there was a time they were the only game in town. Then Google came along and like Ron Howard, politely informed them to please eat its dust.
Google currently has 16,000 employees. It is the largest American company that is not part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company has only existed for nine years. Their 2007 US revenue was 10.6 billion dollars which was a 73% increase from 2006. Google as a search engine has a whopping 53.6% marketshare, compared to second-place Yahoo! with a measly 19%. Is there another corporation with that much market penetration? eBay, probably. Maybe Amazon.
Why? What made it so special that it was very quickly the standard? Was it really that much better? Their searching algorithm was new at the time, based on backlinks and page connectivity instead of straight page-hits, but...does that explain it?
I have a theory: it's the name.
It seems to have been an accident. A misspelling of the numerical term "googol." Plus, "googol.com" was already registered. But if it was an accident, it was a happy accident, because the incorrect spelling's "-le" ending suggests a verb. Meaning it felt natural to say "google something" in a way it didn't feel natural to say "yahoo something" or "lycos something."
Well...like I said. It's a theory.
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