
What were the key decisions that Page and Brin made in the early days of Google - helwr
http://www.quora.com/What-were-the-4-or-5-key-decisions-that-Larry-Page-and-Sergey-Brin-made-in-the-early-days-of-Google
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pg
The highest ranked answer on that thread, though it contains some interesting
details, is way off. Managing VCs well was not what made Google successful--
or what makes any startup successful. The real key decisions were things like
realizing search itself was important, at a time when all the other search
engines thought it was unsexy, and were trying to get people to start calling
them "portals" instead; designing the architecture to work on large numbers of
unreliable, cheap computers; understanding how important speed was; making the
site uncluttered; deciding to hire only very smart people; etc. That's what
made the company valuable, and if it hadn't been valuable it wouldn't have
mattered how well they'd avoided dilution.

~~~
paul
It's also full of inaccuracies. The "interesting details" are largely wrong.
Unfortunately it's written in an authoratative style, so people assume it's
true and upvote, demonstrating one of the major flaws in vote based systems.

~~~
resdirector
Agreed re voting systems.

I believe that a good Q&A site should use "voting" to recursively find smart
people who are similar to you and can provide you with good answers....as
opposed to showing the most popular/well-written/pithiest answer.
"PeopleRank", maybe.

~~~
joe_the_user
That's an _interesting_ idea.

The problem is preventing this leading a site dominated by a group of people
who share a set of extreme opinions of one sort or another. There's no now
site where you can't get karma for reinforcing some commonly held group
opinion and if Karma became self-reinforcing, the problem would get harder.

It might not be impossible - maybe you could have secret algorithm for
rewarding people only for making well-respected non-polarizing posts. But it
would be quite tricky.

~~~
resdirector
Ah, yup, there's ways around that.

The Q&A PeopleRank idea will probably be my next start-up, if Vark doesn't
beat me to it. Reading <http://blog.vark.com/?p=352>, it seems that they're on
the right track. (Although their UX is a little clunky).

However, even if Vark builds a kick-ass product, you can still apply the
PeopleRank idea to _news_ -sites like HN.

Anyone interested in building a Q&A/news site feel free to message me.

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hga
Wow.

 _LOTS_ of useful stuff here. In addition to a lot of the usual stuff, most
especially keeping control, there are these not unrelated gems:

" _Retaining control over the company proved to be crucial to Google's
success. Most of the early company revenues came from enterprise search, and
the investors and Eric Schmidt pressured the company to drop consumer facing
search and to focus on the enterprise market. However Page and Brin
disregarded this advice as they anticipated the growth of a market for online
advertisement. At the time this decision was being made, the New York Times
was quoting experts as saying "No one will ever make $250 million dollars a
year from online advertising." It has also been said that Page and Brin
disregarded pressure from investors to copy Yahoo! and diversify Google into a
portal site, deciding instead to focus on the core search and advertising
market._ "

We also now understand their particular style of secrecy: avoiding getting
crushed by Microsoft back when that was the fear of every high tech company it
could possibly compete with.

The comments as of now are also of high quality and some are not to be missed.

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dennisgorelik
It was surprising to learn that Larry Page's brother already had successful
startup experience.

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wslh
As a customer I know these key decisions: i) Self managed ads system. Before
AdWords it was impossible to buy $ 5 of ads. Even years after AdWords Overture
(Yahoo) and AdCenter (Microsoft) couldn't even copy the smooth process (I
remember Overture charging me a minimum of $ 15 and their staff changing my
keywords) ii) Text Ads instead of banners as a more respected way of
advertising.

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smakz
Lots of entrepreneurial navel gazing going on both in the linked site and in
these comments. Everybody has their own theory about the reasons x y z why
company a b c is successful, be it Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. The problem
is every opinion is partially correct, no one can disprove anything, and there
is no right answer.

The stories of successful companies are inspirational to some degree, but as a
way to vicariously learn how to be successful they fall woefully short of the
mark.

The best thing for entrepreneurs to do, is simply to make something happen.
Build something people want, and if you fail, learn what you can and try
again.

You never know and can't know which decisions are the ones that matter, so
forge ahead.

~~~
HaltingState
God bless you.

This is the most reasonable thing I have seen said here.

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caffeine
I think none of the answers in that summary really say it. Google won (in the
beginning) because:

    
    
      1. It *just* searches. Really well.
      2. Ad auctions.
    

That's basically it.

It's the same way Starbucks won in the beginning:

    
    
      1. *Just* coffee. Tasty coffee.  
      2. Charge for it.
    

Or Apple:

    
    
      1. *Just* the user experience.  A great one.
      2. Charge for it.
    

(Google, Apple, and Starbucks have now all diversified widely, with mixed
results).

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Jun8
Excellent set of answers, this was my first foray into Quora, btw; if other
answers are half as good, it's a great resource.

Among other key decisions they got right (and some lucking out), the one thing
they got _absolutely_ right is the culture. Not just perks, food, etc. because
during the boom almost all cool startups had these (or better), it's much more
than that. The culture components ones that I think were most influential were
the 20% time and committee decision making (with actual engineers, not suits).

Having the right culture is not sufficient for success, but without it, I
think, all most certainly will be lost.

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samd
There are many factors that lead to Google's success, but I know what made me
switch to Google back in its early days. It was faster (probably because it
was sparse), it got good results, and I felt cool for using it (maybe because
it was the underdog, or maybe because it had a "for geeks, by geeks" feel to
it).

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ruang
Provides a good reason to downplay having a fancy interface - avoid tipping
off the competition.

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known
Nobody was really serious about web search prior to Page & Brin.

