Updated: The UBS lunch crowd for Jonathan Rosenberg, Google VP-product development is into the hallway, drawn by the strength of a presentation on one of the market’s hot stocks. So far, it’s been a long product demo and history. Not sure how many people got the slight disconnect between the claim that Google is a passageway to other sites’ content and the examples of newer, far stickier products like Google Earth and Google Maps that actually keep people within the Google network.
Rosenberg gives a very energetic presentation but I’m not quite sure he reaizes how far away some of the people here are from the tech/web universe. One example: He started to quote “The Long Tail”, assumed everyone (probably more fair to say most) had read it and then, as he saw some quizzical responses, urged everyone to do so. He followed that up by referring people to Chris Anderson’s blog:”It’s a very insightful blog.” … I just want a hands-up show of how many people in this room know what a blog is; many do and some are even our readers. (Hi, Sam.) But this is still a crowd on a learning curve when it comes to the internet. Then again, Google is still on a learning curve when it comes to Wall Street, $400-plus shares aside.
The q-and-a is pulling out more specifics:
– On negotiations wtith AOL: “AOL is obviously one of our largest and long-time partners and I’m not going to provide any other comments or color.”
– On Google Print Ads: It’s a “category in very nascent stages. … We’ve done all sorts of tests her; there’s a danger looking at the tests and saying, ‘oh, it won’t work.'”
– A warning: “Don’t focus on the limited number of things you can see.” In other words, when you see a certain kind of ad, it may be just a test, not a new direction.
– Hiring process has changed: Google is hiring so many people it’s halted the process of having every resume reviewed by CEO Eric Schmidt and his staff; instead it’s been divvied up between engineer and non-engineer resumes for groups withinm senior leadership to review. Rosenberg says Larry Page still reviews them all.
Pay per call: “Interesting model. … Our general experience has been the more we show advertisers specifically the results we’re delivering the more they spend. … I think we will see cost per call increasingly more successful.”
Google Book Search: “Print is kind of another example of one of these big category shifts. I like to think it’s like Kennedy talking about putting men on the moon … ”
Update: Unlike many of the other speakers, who have assistants or other execs standing nearby to ease their way out of the room after a presentation, Rosenberg simply stayed and talked with anyone who was interested for a considerable amount of time. As the crowd died down, I had the chance to ask him a couple of questions before another interested investor stopped by — an almost evangelical investor, actually, who stepped in first to explain to me why Google, the anti-IBM, is extraordinary. I wish I had a recording.
I asked Rosenberg about what I described above as a “slight disconnect”. What I see as efforts to make many of the Google sites stickier, he says is nothing more than Google’s effort to improve search — the more information about a user, the better the results. The move toward a single account structure is part of that — everything you do while signed on through that account builds into that search profile. Everything flows from fulfilling the search mission. You or I might see sites being built to increase monetization; Rosenberg says they are being built because they fulfill perceived user needs.
We also talked about what I call the sport of Google tea-leaf reading. For instance, the idea that people shouldn’t assume they understand Google’s plans based on something the company is doing. “Our plans change on the basis of how people react to what we do,” Rosenberg explained.
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