It is arguably the greatest success story of the dot com, perhaps the entire modern era. I’m speaking of course about that little project undertaken by two Stanford University post graduate students in a Menlo Park, CA garage in 1998.
In 1996 Internet search was not a new concept, but Larry Page and Sergey Brin set out to build a better mouse trap, to devise a more meaningful method of ranking the importance of a website based on references from other web
sites back to the site in question. At the time the idea was still foreign to established search providers whose algorithms were based upon the number of times a keyword appeared on a page but this did not deter the two visionaries. Little did they know the literal gold mine their “better mouse trap” would produce.
Today Google sits on a pile of cash estimated to be in excess of 15 Billion dollars with a market cap approaching 150 Billion.
The financial success of this giant is mind boggling by any measure, but factor in the reality that this success has been built one nickel and dime at a time and it is difficult for most of us to wrap our heads around just how that could happen.
I had the privilege of experiencing life as a Googler for three great years and I often wonder what the radio business would be like today if radio operators were to adopt many of the basic philosophical and operational values that have made Google what is is today. My intent is not to narrate the history of, nor dissect the entire Google phenomenon, but there are key lessons radio broadcasters can (and should) learn from Google and I will be exploring those observations in a series of posts to follow.
Tags: google, radio, programmingradio | technology
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