

What would you do if you were CEO of Google? - mrduncan
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ceo-of-google/

======
nostromo
There are a lot of interesting advanced projects (AI, automated driving,
etc.), but I would be worried about the search core right now as CEO.

The proliferation of content-mills and SEO companies is really starting to
take a toll on search results. I find myself avoiding Google and going to
niche sources directly now (like Wikipedia or StackOverflow) just to avoid the
Demand Media trash that is everywhere now.

I think Google should really invest in a new approach to rank -- one that
could maybe focus on the content itself using AI and NLP instead of link
juice.

~~~
cdr
I agree completely about search quality, as my comment history here and
elsewhere might indicate. The majority of my Google searches anymore return
very low quality results without some serious query mangling or heavy
filtering. At this point I too skip Google completely as much as possible and
go straight to the "niche sources".

People like Matt Cutts at Google unfortunately don't seem to care about the
extent low-quality sources have gamed Google - Cutts is still even defending
Mahalo as far as I know.

~~~
cdr
Also, I forgot to mention the amount of outdated forum posts that you get with
technical searches - that's the other huge problem with search quality for me
aside from content mills and content scrapers. If I go directly to Stack
Overflow et al to do a search, I can at least be reasonably sure to get an up-
to-date answer.

More recent forum results should definitely be weighted higher than older
ones, for a start.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
If you're not happy with the dates of the results we show now, one option is
to click on "More search tools" on the left-hand bar on the search result
page. Then pick a date option like "Past week" or "Past month" or "Past year."

~~~
cdr
I don't feel like I should have to narrow down date ranges, though I end up
doing so every time a search returns forum posts. The algorithm ought to know
that something posted six weeks ago is much more likely to be relevant than
something posted six years ago, but older posts seem to instead have more
weight in the unfiltered results rather than less.

------
cryptoz
Seeing as Peter Norvig is already Director of Research, Schmidt is probably
already doing exactly what I'd go for as CEO of Google:

 _Push hard in developing AI._

Seriously. Focus on ML and NLP, use their vast resources of data and computing
power and really smart engineers. It'll take years, maybe decades but of
course this goal is worth it.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
It's fair to say we have a lot of people working on AI-related projects. AI
can be hard though.

I'd love to hear other HN thoughts on products we should be doing.

~~~
pavs
Matt. I would love to see Google do some full scale investment in Accredited
Online Higher Education.

I know Google made Donations to Khan Academy. But in my view Khan Academy
solves (at least in its current format) only somewhat partial problem. There
is a huge potential on what can be achieved in Online Education.

Hypothetical Online Google University can:

\- Liberate Higher Education from the grasp of the lucky few.

\- Anyone can spend any amount of time to learn on a subject/class/course
online, wake up the next morning walk up to an "Exam Center" and give exam to
pass the course (with a reasonable fee).

\- "Socialize" education in the sense that teachers and students from all over
the world can communicate in "forum/chat/discussion" to help each other to
study and learn.

\- Ability to setup "meetups" to form study groups IRL.

\- Study materials can be wiki-fied. With only verified expert on the field
can contribute, with diffs to see what has been recently changed. No more
waiting for book revisions.

I know there are some genuine limitations to this concept and some problems to
be solved, before it can be viable replacement of what can only be classified
as "clusterfuck" that is the present education system. But if any company can
help the ball rolling, I honestly believe Google can be the only one. If I had
the money I would drop everything I have today and jump in to this.

We need to liberate higher education from its artificial barriers.

Hopefully, you will read this and take this in to consideration and discuss it
with whoever is concerned.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
I think there's a couple parts: 1) digitizing the curriculum, which might
include video, and 2) everything else.

I think Google would be great at the first one. I'm not sure how good we'd be
at the second part, but I totally agree this is an important problem. My dad
was a physics professor for 30+ years, so I've seen a lot of issues with the
current model. I have to think there are ways to educate people better than we
do it now. You can't tell me that in 20 years we'll still be using the same
practices to educate people that we do now.

~~~
pavs
Yes there are some genuine problems with the idea, but nothing in the realm of
impossibility IMO. It will need a reasonable amount of investment and time.

The thing about education system is that everyone knows its a problem and
everyone knows it needs to be fixed but no one wants to be the first to jump
in to it (I don't think Khan Academy counts).

I think the first effort is important and whoever does it first needs to set
an example for everyone else to follow.

~~~
deyan
pavs, that was a very interesting set of suggestions. are you interested in
this space? if so, would love to get in touch as I am thinking of doing
something in it for my next venture.

------
amichail
Show who just searched for something similar to what you just searched for.
This might lead to real-time collaboration and sharing of search results.

Making your searches and profile public in this way would be optional
obviously.

~~~
alain94040
Instant mobs? Serendipity? Fascinating idea...

It's only doable with extremely high volume search traffic. Guess what, that's
exactly what Google has.

Some way of chatting with other people who are searching for the same thing as
me would be like a extra-real-time Quora.

~~~
eitally
Assuming Google won't do this, wouldn't it be possible to create a meta
version using a browser extension to capture search terms and provide a
collaboration/communication UI?

------
Jun8
First, I'd emphasize that Google absolutely has to win the TV battle with
Apple and other would be contenders. To do this, I'd force my way out of the
TV content logjam by buying a content provider, much like Comcast's buying of
NBC. Otherwise, any effort in changing the game in the TV domain can easily be
dynamited by cable operators.

~~~
nostromo
Tech companies buying media companies seems like a bad idea to me. It reminds
me of Sony -- remember when they tried making MP3 players that didn't play
real MP3s? That was because they owned Sony Music and were in the awkward
position of trying to sell MP3 players and records at the same time. Because
they didn't pick a side, they ended up losing both battles.

If Google bought a content company, they would be on both sides of the battle
as well -- and if they really wanted to liberate the content, then they would
have to explain to shareholders why they bought a company only to hurt its
revenue.

~~~
Jun8
You're right, Sony never could work the synergy between its deep vertical
component companies much. It doesn't have to be that way, though. Problem with
the current video entertainment situation, I think, is the difficulty to bring
about that first separation from the pact, much like Apple did with the phone
companies. But remember that, Verizon laughed at the level control that Apple
wanted with iPhone idea, so Apple went to AT&T. OTOH, Time&Warner and Comcast
are pretty much monopolies in their areas, so there's no big competitor that a
company like Google can turn to to force their hand. On top of that content
providers have seen what happened in the music industry so are very weary of
giving control (though the music industry is not in such bad shape as people
make it appear, e.g. see this article
[http://www.economist.com/node/17199460?story_id=17199460&...](http://www.economist.com/node/17199460?story_id=17199460&fsrc=nlwhig10-07-2010editors_highlights#footnote1)).

So the situation is a chicken and egg problem, someone has to break through.
Apple TV and Google TV has shown that this will not happen as a halfhearted
effort. Either Apple or Google should bet and bet _big_ on TV and should not
shy from spending a few billion, they've got the money.

------
codypo
If I were Google's CEO, I'd build a transparent, Internet-driven political
election infrastructure. Why? First, having regular, fair, accountable
elections is a problem that all countries in the world face. Second, the
problem I just described has a technical solution. Third, only a company with
tremendous resources like Google could successfully battle the entrenched,
questionable powers that control many of these elections and the vote counting
therein.

What's in this for Google? Users. Data. Brand awareness with every dang voter
in the world. Incredible PR. Continued support of that whole 'do no evil'
thing.

Of course, there are some catches here. The system has be to completely open.
As a citizen, I should be able to audit every part of this whenever I want.
Second, you'd have to abstain from all political contributions. People
counting the votes can't have a preference or a vested interest in one part
over the other. I'm sure there are more that I haven't thought of.

It'd be a tremendous investment on Google's part, but it has the potential for
some truly world-changing technology.

~~~
jacques_chester
Nitpick: even Google can't solve 'watchful husband' and 'untrustworthy
administrator' problems. I prefer my electoral systems to be distributed,
cumbersome and adversarially supervised.

------
maxharris
I would do my best to find someone capable of becoming Google's CEO, hire him
or her, and quit.

Contrary to popular myth, being a successful CEO is extremely difficult, and
it requires skills that most people (myself included) don't possess.

------
citizenkeys
If I were Google's CEO, I would quit hiring a bunch of pretensious blow-hard
phd's. Seriously. The problem with Google is that Google doesn't attract
creative talent. Google attracts stuck-up phd's that don't want to be told
that their ideas are goofy and un-cool.

The vibe around Google, with its goofy pretensious phd's is one major reason
why all the real creative talent is leaving the googleplex.

On a related note, the thing about Mark Zuckerberg, whether you like Facebook
or not, is that he's the exact type of person that if he went to Google
looking for a job, Google would tell him "you're not a fancy phd" and tell him
to go online and fill out a request to be an intern. Think about it.

~~~
shadowfox
Err. What did phds do to you?

------
silverlake
Make search easier for my mom. God bless her, but she's a moron. One idea is
to take the related search terms and turn them into natural questions: "Did
you mean baseball bats or flying bats?"

Does Google have a Search for Dummies group? I'd start one.

------
kenjackson
I'd like see Google do something to make me smarter.

For example, I'd love to be able to do something Matrix style, "Learn Complex
Analysis" and then Google creates a curriculum and feeds it to my brain.
Ideally this would happen during downtime (such as sleeping or on the train).

Brain science seems pretty far from injecting material into the brain, but
what about finding ways to increase my comprehension when I read stuff.
Reading content is so slow and generally requires my undivided attention.
Unfortunately its the only way I know to learn anything non-trivial.

------
ujjwalg
I would put a focus group around improving add-ons for gmail, one at a time.
Though I use multiple project management tools, I still use email the most.
Having a direct project/todo management tool in gmail would make the life so
much easier and no one will have to go and get different accounts for
different clients. They can just add a project within gmail. But it has to be
at least at par with the current best. This will completely disrupt the
project management tool provider industry.

------
toddh
Space colonization. It's the big item on the advanced civilization checklist
that we haven't even got a good start on yet. If you want more information,
use your AI guided self-driving spaceships to wardrive around and slurp it all
up.

------
underdown
Start developing a customer service mindset.

have you tried getting support from Google? /mashes keyboard

------
BvS
Buy, integrate or compete with dropbox.com and bring this service to the
masses through Google-Apps and maybe Gmail.

~~~
inthewoods
I'm amazed that Picasa hasn't become dropbox quite honestly. It's such a
common problem with photos (and files) to want them on multiple computer, and
yet Picasa continues to have an outdated web albums concept with only 2 gigs
of storage. Gmail has more.

------
marze
Interesting question.

I would try do diversify more aggressively than Google seems to be doing
presently. Even though Google has a excellent grip on the search market,
market share in the internet arena has been demonstratedly ephemeral in some
cases, so diversifying more aggressively is a hedging strategy. Specifically:

Continue to concentrate on making search better, more useful, faster, etc., as
number one priority.

Start two new independent clean-slate next-gen mobile OS efforts, in case they
are needed, that are closed, in case that is an important advantage.

Acquire wind turbine generator technology firms

Buy up many transportation efficiency startups, i.e., new electric motors,
improved internal combustion motors, new transmission, new battery, system
integrators, etc.

Invest in hydraulic hybrid technology; buy patents, startups, etc.

As other have mentioned, leverage the massive amounts of data Google has to
advance NLP and related, and try to figure out a way to make money from it

Fund three startups the goal of creating a hybrid drive conversion that would
turn an existing car into a hybrid car in a cost effective manner

Fund a few internet education startups, look for opportunities in education
area generally.

------
db42
Well, no one has talked about technologies related to distributed computing
i.e. Mapreduce/Hadoop, BigTable/HBase/Cassandra etc. Google deserves the
credit for developing these technologies in the first place. But Yahoo did the
trick by providing open source implementations of these technologies. By
providing them as open-source(may be first open-source product from
yahoo),hadoop has quickly grown to what it is now in a very short span of
time. Currently, almost all the big players in the web market are adopting
these technologies for their use and, at the same time, contributing to these
technologies. Facebook and twitter, both are now dependent on these tools. I
know that internally Google may be far too ahead than the current distributed
computing technologies available in the market. But google is just using them
internally, they are not using them either to offer them directly or by
offering some other service depending on these technologies. I think, google
need to think in this direction.

------
balakk
I'd like Google to be more aggressive on chasing Enterprise customers. Make
something compelling/disruptive enough for the enterprise space - things like
CRM, ERP etc. Aggressively price/promote your cloud product.

I'd set a target like getting 40% enterprise marketshare in desktop/server OS,
apps in the next 5 years. Make IBM sweat for their mainframe share.

Compared to the consumer market, enterprise software is still largely
bloatware and legacyware. It is ripe for disruption.

------
anamax
All of: * Implicit search. (Yes, initiating a search is too much work,
especially if I don't know that I should be searching.) * It should be
possible to search the ad databases. * adkeeper (I've been ranting about that
for years). * Actionable search results

------
seanmcq
Wonder exactly how insane the world was for letting me have such an important
job.

------
arethuza
Build the augmented reality technology from Vernor Vinge's _Rainbows End_.

------
jason_slack
Drive without a license plate like other high powered CEO's

First thing I would do....Hire someone better than myself and spend my time
getting deeply involved in the details that make the company unique....

------
lowglow
Start a private internet in the name of free speech to capture all the fallout
when the government shuts down the one we're on now.

------
gojomo
Implement an 'advanced search operator' that allows filtering AdSense sites
from search results.

------
maximilianburke
I'm pretty sure I'd inadvertently run the company into the ground, but it'd be
one hell of a learning experience.

------
VladRussian
may be spend a bit of money toward making human species to look ... err ...
more humane. Several millions of dogs and cats are euthanized annually in the
US alone.

<http://www.aspca.org/about-us/faq/pet-statistics.html>

------
db42
Wow, ideas here are much better and relevant to google compared to ideas on
parent site.

------
aresant
If I were King of Google for a day, I would fix the completely broken lead
generation industry.

I'm talking mortgage, debt consolidation, payday loans, auto warranty,
elective surgery, retirement homes, car quotes, etc.

I know senior managers @ Google Sales that say internal policy for many
"dirty" categories of lead generation is "ignorance is bliss".

This is irresponsible to your "Do no evil" tagline, but I’m sure it’s
imperative to maintaining shareholder value.

Shutting down the tens-of-thousands of FTC non-compliant, half-baked, lead-gen
shysters that resell user data like so many grains of sand might be a costly
dent to sales and profits in the short term.

But man is there opportunity here - build a great, trusted system on the back
of Google’s brand that balances transparency to consumers with advertiser’s
need to profit and you could hit a home run.

I can only imagine what a sticky subject this is internally - competing with
our customers? That would be insane!

But as the lead gen arbitrage continues to heat up you're only going to be
selling more and more of your users down the very black hole of the lead
generation industry.

And hey - you kind of stuck your toes in the water with the mortgage
comparison product right?

I've spent a decade in and around lead generation, founded, built and sold a
large lead-gen business, and manage lead gen & conversion rate optimization
for many of the big players in the space.

I’m tooting my horn in case you’d like to drop me an email (via my profile) so
I can help you guys build a great product!

------
meatsock
if i was CEO of google i'd take the day off and try to spend my paycheck in
the same amount of time it took to earn, because i like grand challenges.

------
dj_axl
Start a new company called Page Brin Consulting and offer outrageously priced
(aka highly profitable) business consulting services, similar to what
Microsoft and IBM do.

------
jfb
Where's my goddamned space elevator?

~~~
cdibona
We don't have any materials that are can be strong enough along the entire
length of the strand to use in an elevator, and likely will not for some time.

142 gigapascals, along say 38,000 kilometers, ain't easy.

(Disclaimer, I work for google, but not on the sekrit space elevator team,
which may or may not exist)

~~~
jfb
What the hell are you doing wasting time on HN, then? Come _on_ , Google!

------
jhrobert
buy twitter

------
prakash
Redirect google users to DuckDuckGo.

~~~
lpgauth
Wonder how many milliseconds it would take before DuckDuckGo goes down...

