Memoria De Google 2011

2012 Update from the CEO

VELOCITY, EXECUTION AND FOCUS Sergey and I founded Google because we believed that building a great search experience would improve people’s lives and, hopefully, the world. And in the decade-plus that’s followed, we’ve been constantly delighted by the ways in which people have used our technology—such as making an artificial limb using old designs discovered online.But we’re always impatient to do better for our users. Excellence matters, and technology advances so fast that the potential for improvement is tremendous. So, since becoming CEO again, I’ve pushed hard to increase our velocity, improve our execution, and focus on the big bets that will make a difference in the world. Google is a large company now, but we will achieve more, and do it faster, ifwe approach life with the passion and soul of a start-up. In April 2011, I began by reorganizing the management team around our core products to improve responsibility and accountability across Google. I also kicked off a big clean-up. Google has so many opportunities that, unless we make some hard choices, we end up spreading ourselves too thin and don’t have the impact we want. So we have closedor combined over 30 products, including projects like Knol and Sidewiki. In addition, we gave many of our products, such as Google Search, a visual refresh, and they now have a cleaner, more consistent, and beautiful look.

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A BEAUTIFULLY SIMPLE EXPERIENCE ACROSS GOOGLE Creating a simpler, more intuitive experience across Google has been another important focus. I have always believed thattechnology should do the hard work—discovery, organization, communication—so users can do what makes them happiest: living and loving, not messing with annoying computers! That means making our products work together seamlessly. People shouldn’t have to navigate Google to get stuff done. It should just happen. As Sergey said in the memorable way only he can, “We’ve let a thousand flowers bloom; nowwe want to put together a coherent bouquet.” Think about basic actions like sharing or recommendations. When you find a great article, you want to share that knowledge with people who will find it interesting, too. If you see a great movie, you want to recommend it to friends. Google+ makes sharing super easy by creating a social layer across all our products so users connect with the people whomatter to them. When you sign up for Google+, you can use Circles to group people into different categories, such as “Friends,” “Family,” or “Rocket Scientists,” and then engage with them just like in real life. You can recommend great news articles, websites, and videos to specific Circles, or share photos with “Family” straight from your Android device. And the photos are even uploaded for youautomatically! To follow people with shared interests, such as photography, just add them to your Circles.

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And you can share your own ideas with the world, or a smaller group, via the Google+ Stream and have others respond. It’s still early days, and we have a long way to go. But these are tremendously important changes, and with over 120 Google+ integrations to date (including GoogleSearch, YouTube and Android), we are on the right track. Well over 100 million users are active on Google+, and we’re seeing a positive impact across the web, with Google users being able to recommend search results and videos they like—a goal we’ve had ever since we started the company. Activity on the Google+ Stream itself is increasing too. We’re excited about the tremendous speed with which somepeople have amassed over one million followers, as well as the depth of the discussions taking place among happy, passionate users— all evidence that we’re generating genuine engagement. When I post publicly I get a ton of high quality comments, which makes me happy and encourages me to keep posting. I strongly encourage all of you to follow me on Google+—I love having this new way to communicate...