Google Gets Bigtime Funding 117
EtherSnoot writes "Google just got $25 Million in funding from some Internet Big-Wigs. I guess there going big time. Awesome to see such a cool search engine getting the bucks. The article is here. " Wow-they've got both Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins for VC funding. Excellent-I'm glad to see they are getting what they deserve.
the problem with google (Score:1)
Re:Micropay me (Score:1)
Everything shouyld be free
I'm not,paying for anytihng
Revenue models (Score:1)
Ok, here's where I start talking way over my head. Let's say that a search engine is a public service (it's hard to get more public than the Internet). All the search engines I've seen (except Google) have been based on the model of commercial television, where you don't pay directly for the service, but you do have to put up with ads. A different model is public television and radio which (in the U.S.) severely restrict their ads, but request that their listeners donate money once a year, for which the patrons receive some kind of extra bonus (magazine, coffee mug, etc.) At the end of the scale is cable television, where you have to pay charges for your level of service each month, and extra charges for certain shows (pay-per-view), but you get exactly what you pay for and very few ads.
The key here is that the consumers choose the level of service they want. I like avoiding ads, so I avoid commercial television and listen to a lot of public radio.
Another public service that springs to mind is phones. Everyone (again, speaking for the U.S.) gets a phone book when they get basic phone service. They can look up phone numbers themselves. Or, for an extra charge, they can call the operator and have the operator look up a phone number for them. They save time and get more current information that way, but at a cost.
Google's got enough good word-of-mouth that I'll bet they could charge for their service and still retain a significant number of users. If they keep it flexible, maybe using one or more of the revenue models described above, they could keep people happy (they get to choose their level of service) and still tie in seamlessly with other sites and services.
Anyway, enough economic pontificating from this computer geek.
--
Carl Patten
Re:Corporate poo (Score:1)
One point of view is that at the very least, you'll only be subjected to one page of ads at most (the results page) as interfaces to sites become more distributed.
This is already evident with the true usefulness of things like Apple's Sherlock, and to a lesser extend, the googol search slashbox. Content is opening up -- at some point, users will take the power into their own hands and decide how they want their content presented.
Re:Wow, Blocking banner ads, what a great idea! (Score:1)
Television and movie advertising are not the appropriate model for the Web. You can get away with eye-popping visuals in those media because you have either interrupted the programming (TV) or not yet begun it (movie).
The Web is more like a newspaper. Sure, the content is dynamic and all that jazz, but the bottom line is that nearly every page I'm interested in consists of content that has to be read, and animated advertising actively hinders my ability to do so.
I don't know if you're involved with advertising or if you just hate to see people proxying ads off their browsers, but consider this: when advertising consisted of billboard-like banners and plaintext hyperlinks, I occasionally clicked-through. Only when the marketing whores turned it into a cross between a casino and a video arcade did I seek out a proxy filter (specifically, Junkbuster).
Re:Will anyone let me have a shit in thier mouth? (Score:1)
I'll do it but I'm not paying as I could use a perfectly good toilet instead.
Unless you're willing to lick my arse clean afterwards then I'd be willing to pay.
Re:Hello (Score:1)
No I don't shaft sheep!!!!
Re:Pleas two meat yew (Score:1)
You are correct; the proper word in this context would have been their.
However, for some reason, it seems especially easy to confuse these homonyms (and others, like to, too, and two) in the world of electronic communications. Even I, who would never make such a mistake in (traditional) writing or speaking, have caught myself misusing such words. I am not sure why this is the case, but it does seem to be common.
Furthermore, in the world of the internet, it is incorrect to assume that everyone you meet is a native english speaker. Having attempted to discuss classic computers in french (after 3 years of high school french, 2 years of college, and occasional use at home and socially) I am continually amazed at how well non-native english speakers actually do. How good is your French, German, Tagalog, mandarin, cantonese, etc.?
And lastly, a lack of emphasis on good grammar does not necessarily indicate lower intelligence. I know plenty of geniuses who are barely coherent, grammatically speaking. Personally, I'm one of the few people I know who knows the proper use of a semicolon, yet I am still patting myself on the back for finally comprehending the function of a capacitor. Eloquence of communication does not equal general intelligence.
So, you scoff at the mistakes of others, yet is that any different from any other type of discrimination? It is simply the labelling of some attribute of another as a weakness so that one can feel better about one's own inadequacies.
Re:Google may have missed a big opportunity. (Score:1)
Well I was using it in June, so there!
Re:And to celebrate... (Score:1)
I recently found an eBay auction of one of Cornoyer's works from Google, but when I jumped to eBay, the page was long gone. I was able to use Google's cached copy to get enough information to be useful. Without Google's caching, I would have missed out on a great painting.
While I, too, question the overall usefulness of caching very dynamic sites, if they've got it, I'll be happy to use it.
Re:Hello (Score:1)
No I don't shaft sheep!
Lynx (Score:1)
Josh
Re:Google is going to be the next Red$at (Score:1)
It better not be as we all know Red$at $ux. DIY is the only way to be. Make your own Linux distro and don't be lame.
Re:Iffy (Score:1)
Exactly, a good point.
Iffy (Score:1)
First is that it's great to see a web site this
good get this much money. Google is the best and
fastest search engine I've ever used. The
front page loads up fast, the graphics are
minimal, and the results are most reliable.
On the other hand, money like this can only
mean the coming of more useless graphics,
plenty of annoying advertising, and more
annoying and useless features. (And from
a completely selfish point of view: More
funding might lead to more people using it
which means it might also slow down. But even
that's a bit iffy right now.)
I wish only the best for Google, but I hope this
isn't the first step to self-destruction.
-Augie
Re:Google may have missed a big opportunity. (Score:1)
yes
And to celebrate... (Score:2)
Seriously, I do find it quite strange that many of the tops hits when searching for the name of my site are cached
Indexing dynamic content (Score:2)
Re:Google (Score:1)
Yeah whatever
Oh dear (Score:1)
It's also really nice to see a search engine with no banner ads, they really get on my nerves (even though I don't see many, thanks to Junkbuster [junkbuster.com] --- awesome program.
Re:Bill (Score:1)
Probably doesn't give a fuck
Re:Just how big is the web? (Score:1)
Re:Google may have missed a big opportunity. (Score:1)
We are planning to keep a large focus on our technology development.
A bunch of us at Goog
-Larry Page
CEO, Google.comle have enjoyed reading all these comments!
Re:Portals and their (over?)valuation (Score:2)
As you said, they base the company value on the user count at $xx per user. In this case, the explanation was that $xx per user is how telcos are valued. They believed that the telco model was the closest thing to an ISP (since no/few ISPs have been around long enough to show real long-term returns).
Of course, that wasn't a big enough number for them, so they pumped it up a bit because ISP customers are worth more per user. Their conservative estimate was basically midway between the value per customer of a telco and the value per customer of another ISP that had already gone public.
I am sure that if they IPO soon and catch the wave, their estimate will be about right. It just amuses me that this kind of creative math is used to estimate the value of these companies. It will probably require several years of profit/loss statements to figure out the real equation.
Google doesn't give crap. (Score:1)
Re:Commercialism (Score:1)
Personally I think that money should be scrapped altogether and that we run the world on the favor scheme. In other words in return for goods we do someone a favour instead of handing them cash.
Re:Alta-Vista Advanced is still the best. (Score:1)
Re:Google may have missed a big opportunity. (Score:1)
Re:Google deserves more (Score:1)
Re:Lynx (Score:1)
You have to be joking about Lynx. The WWW is meant to be about multimedia and graphics and stuff like that and Lynx reduces it down to boring plain text. How exciting is that meant to be?
Re:Hello (Score:1)
No I don't shaft sheep!!
No IPO opportunity for new search engines (Score:1)
Micropay me (Score:1)
Authors will no longer need publishers. Musicians will no longer need record companies. Micropay will better allow shareware programmers to quit their dull jobs and pay their bills doing what they love.
Sort of reminds me of a segment I heard on NPR a year ago about an economist's ideas of a modern barter economy, and how computers might be used to manage the complex graph of service providers and people requesting services such that people could potentially do away with money (and income taxes?). I don't think I'll live to see a barter economy, but at least the micropay concept seems to be a step in the right direction that will empower people.
worse results from google... (Score:1)
searches that I have performed many times before now give results that are way worse than they used to be.
does anyone know what happened?
k
Re:Just how big is the web? (Score:1)
Re:Wow, Blocking banner ads, what a great idea! (Score:1)
Spot on. I agree totally.
Re:Google may have missed a big opportunity. (Score:1)
I don't know the guy, and it's certainly an idealistic viewpoint, but is it so unreasonable for a tech firm to have a goal aside from a good IPO?
Re:Oh dear (Score:1)
Google (Score:1)
I just hope they retain their functionality after this announcement
Pay per click revenue model for search engines (Score:1)
The article doesn't mention anything about how these investors expect Google to make money. And they're expanding their staff to 100? I love Google, but they've got me worried.
--
Carl Patten
Corporate poo (Score:1)
Re:Hello (Score:1)
No I don't shaft sheep!!!
Re:Google deserves more (Score:1)
Personally I love the GOOOOOOGLE thing at the bottom of each search page. It's really cool.
Re:Mac Sherlock plugin for Google (Score:2)
Amit
Re:Wow, Blocking banner ads, what a great idea! (Score:1)
I'm already paying for advertising in my time and attention. Personally, I'd rather micropay Rob directly. Maybe US$.10 for each day that I view /. I get at least US$36.50 of information, enjoyment, fulfillment out of /. per year. Why not pay for it?
Ad banners are a poor revenue model. Clickthru rates are falling and will continue to fall -- see Jakob Nielsen's site [useit.com] for more details.
I'm not saying that micropayments are a great answer...but they would make the web more competetive for what's *really* worthwhile - content.
Re:Abject cynicism (Score:1)
Exactly
Re:Abject cynicism (Score:1)
One shred?
Even a smidgen?
Re:Iffy (Score:1)
No they dont NEED more cash, but now they sure as hell better start producing some revenue.
Remember that they didn't hit the lotto, that $25 million is an investment. Now Google needs to find some way of producing good returns for its investors. Most of the time, when someone pours that kind of money into a business, arguments like "We dont like banner ads" and "We dont sell search keywords" start to fall short. They had better have some great new ideas and some compelling reasons not to (IE they can make more money another way) or else they will have two choices: Start with the whole banner-ad gig and other traditional ways of web portaldom, or be replaced with someone who will. Now all they need is to put together a good looking revenue stream, do the IPO, and hope to some-day become profitable. Sadly this will probably kill the functionality of the engine itself.
-bw
Re:I bet your a puff (Score:1)
Peatsa face
wahhh wahhh wahh cry a lil more why don't you (Score:1)
I bet most of the people bitching here have banner adds on there own website or are thinking of ways to setup there own mini portals or what not. It has to be paid for somehow, so why don't you quit whining and say congrats for someone making it in an already flooded market, and use what you want. Speed/quickneess/reliability - yahoo works great. so does google, but they all havea niche and they all fit in somewhere.. Google may just use the funding to sell there engines/software products too.. WHO KNOWS? and who cares. use what you want. if you dont' like it, no reason to whine about it.
Mac Sherlock plugin for Google (Score:1)
Metasearching rules!
Enjoy.
Re:Wow, Blocking banner ads, what a great idea! (Score:1)
Using clickthrough rates is a poor evaluator anyways. A company doesnt measure the effectiveness of its radio campaign by how many calls they get immediately after each ad, they measure by how much they sell overall.
Re:Maybe.... (Score:1)
Just consider, however, that Amazon has yet to show a profit.
Fuck off, I'm sick of this question (Score:1)
No I don't shaft sheep!
Please don't ask any more
Re:Google mentioned in SciAm (Score:1)
Unfortunately, google doesn't have a good review system to further improve the signal to noise ratio. But then, it's hard to get someone to review the whole web. In this case,
Re:Wow, Blocking banner ads, what a great idea! (Score:1)
I wwatch tv while surfing the internet and I'm sure many others do too. So why don't they just advertise on TV and we'd all be happy.
I'm used to the tv ads you see.
Lycos? (Score:1)
Wasn't Lycos talking up this method of winnowing a while back? Come to think of it, don't they claim a patent on the idea? I think it was a /. story [slashdot.org], come to think of it...
And /. does use the ideas of "authorities and hubs", in an organic way: "Some dude and about a bajillion other sent in this really lame starwars story..."
Re:Iffy (Score:1)
Re:Why is google "cool"? Why the fascination? (Score:1)
www.redhat.com is one of the top Linux sites?
Don't you mean one of the top joke sites?
Portals (Score:1)
I can understand the desire of investors to want in on an expanding market, but how can anyone in their right mind value a "portal" in the hundreds of millions of dollars? How can this value be sustained for any period of time?
Google's usefulness lost under a banner ad? (Score:1)
----------------------------------------
-If a search engine works and is quick, I'll keep coming back to it.
-If there is only one ad on the page I am more likely to click it.
-They could charge their advertisers more $$$ with a higher click through rate (w/one ad only)
--------------------------------------------
Wow, Blocking banner ads, what a great idea! (Score:1)
Seriously, are you really enough of a dumbass that you think these sites don't have to pay thier employees? Someone has to pay the piper, and if its not advertisers, it YOU!
Commercialism? (Score:1)
p.s.: the department of this article misses the alliterative affect of the original 'fifty-thousand french franks in my fridge'
--
SG:Who is your arch enemy?
Bobcat: John Tesh.
SG:The compser?
Google deserves more (Score:1)
Buzzwordism (Score:2)
These stories are great sources of inspiration, but they tend to gloss over the technical side of things. This is understandable if your audience is not technical, but sometimes understanding the nuts and bolts helps explain WHY the company succeeded.
Of course, to many managers and execs, the technical side is irrelevent. (sarcasm) Obviously, these companies succeeded because they have great management. Engineers and techies are just laborers who help the fulfill the executive "vision".
Sorry to sound bitter, I'm just dealing with a situation right now where a certain CEO keeps repeating the word "portal" like some kind of mantra. He doesn't really know what a portal is, he just wants one ("What color would you like that portal to be?" "I think mauve has the most RAM.").
Portals and their (over?)valuation (Score:1)
I think this investment philosophy includes very little _revenue model_ and very much _grab it and its user base now and figure out how to make money later_.
Re:Hello (Score:1)
No I don't shaft sheep!..
Re:Why is google "cool"? Why the fascination? (Score:1)
Basically, their brainwave was to use the fact that hypertext documents contain links to other hypertext documents - seems obvious doesn't it?
So instead of just looking for instances of a word or phrase in various webpages they rank webpages by popularity and the popularity of each webpage is determined by how many other webpages with a high popularity ranking link to it in a kind of smart crypto-recursive-algorithm sort of way.
It's elegant. It's smart. It's running on Linux.
What's not to love?
It's clever algorithm produces very accurate search results try it for yourself. Type in Linux and the top hits in Google are stuff like: www.linux.org
www.redhat.com
www.li.org
www.linuxtoday.com
i.e. the top linux websites
*None*, ***None***, of those sites will appear in your first page or results at altavista or excite...
Give it a try... it's not the "less mainstream", it's the "works better"
Re:Shirley ewe jest! (Score:1)
Well, had you bothered to take a few seconds to look at my personal web page [sinasohn.com], you would have seen this picture [sinasohn.com] of my wife, and possibly even found this page [sinasohn.com], all of which would have shown the falsity of your statement.
Members of the gay community are not especially known for their grammatical expertise -- some may be very skilled, linguistically, others less so. Sexual orientation has little to do with knowledge of the English language.
As for taking on a personal crusade to stand up for those less skilled than others, I am well known for loudly voicing my opinions [sinasohn.com], and I do love to write [sinasohn.com].
You, on the other hand, seem barely able to communicate, despite being, apparently from the UK where the language was popularized, and are too cowardly to post other than as an AC.
When you decide to come out of the closet, let me know and we can discuss this further.
Re:wahhh wahhh wahh cry a lil more why don't you (Score:1)
Re:I bet your a puff (Score:1)
shaadup
Re:Hello you shithead (Score:1)
No I don't shaft sheep!
So fuck off
Re:Google is Great (Score:1)
Re:Pay per click revenue model for search engines (Score:1)
It's a fact of life that people don't like paying for anything
How is Google going to make money? (Score:1)
Besides AskJeeves kicks ass over Google.
Moderators : Mark him up (Score:1)
Mark him up a few points. He is right.
Re:No IPO opportunity for new search engines (Score:1)
People will still use search engines like google. And those engines will be valuable, because they provide relevant, useful results.
Re:Wow, Blocking banner ads, what a great idea! (Score:1)
And I do realize that all the web services I use would need 30-100 $/month from me to make up for the lost ad revenue.
I think I'm in the minority here: most prefer zero-cost services.
Maybe.... (Score:1)
John Doerr - Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Michael Moritz - Sequoia Capital
Ram Shriram - Amazon VP of business development
and
Andy Bechtolsheim of Sun Microsystems invested privately.
With names and companies backing them like this they can go after some strong talent and put together something huge before going public.
then again... who knows...
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Resume [iren.net]
Abject cynicism (Score:2)
Where's the money coming from (Score:1)
Google mentioned in SciAm (Score:1)
Re:Google deserves more (Score:1)
I boycott what the fuck I want not what you say.
BTW US TV is a heap of shite. It's better in Europe