Web 2.0 Conference - Omid Kordestani

John - Omid Kordistani figured out the business model for Google.

John - when you started in May of 1999 how was adwords?

Omid - It was non existant.

John - So what did you do?

Omid - I was first guy with a suit. Culture of hiring great people. How do we get the first folks in the door.

John - did you have a sense of what that was going to be?

Omid - I could tell when I met the founders that they were passionate about innovating. They would make the best of anything that they tried.

John - These ideas that Google is throwing up seems to be all targetted at a foe... What's your view of the fact that you're from Netscape and got eviscerated by Microsoft.

Omid - This area is very powerful. It's going to attract a lot of competition. We obsess about our users. We want to try new ideas. We only fail if we fail our users.

John - So are you saying you're not thinking about Microsoft?

Omid - We watch them but I think we'll fail if we focus on them.

John - Wallstreet, when you first read the S1 it was unusual. Seemed like a finger to wallstreet. A year and a half later do you feel pressure to meet the quarter's nubmers?

Omid - Absolutely but we felt this all along. I remembered worrying about making the quarter with Enterprise sales and how crazy that was. Yes the pressure is there.

John - Adwords, did people use adsense as their revenue stream? 3/4 search innovators use adwords as revenue stream.

What inning are we in? What % of the adwords potential market has been played out.

Omid - Larry says he counts when a query comes back. He says that it's not as good as they can and should be. Adwords can and will be improved.

John - Google is starting be compared to Microsoft in the 90s. Startups now need to answer the question - what are you going to do when Google does this? Is there a way to understand what business you're really in? You're doing so many different things.

Omid - This is something that we talk about. We don't want to be viewed as the Gorilla in the valley. We do have that sense of responsibility.

The VCs are saying that there's a lot of innovation in the valley.

Google is an innovation company. We are trying to be nimble.

John - I rean into Eric Schmidt and I asked how are you holding together. You're hiring more than 10 people today. How do you do this without blowing up.

Omid - We are trying to make it a science. We're in a mad rush to catch up with teh phenomena. Executive team looks at every hire.

John - What's next for Media and what's Google's role?

Omid - We don't have a choice. It's all changing. Podcasting changed everything for me. Google needs to make the information available.

John - Will google play a lead role like in Everybody hates Chris? Will that replace the upfront like television.

Omid - The ad models we have today won't keep wroking. Experimentation is good. Access to content is core to the mission.

John - Media companies, magazine companies fear you. They don't know that they  should trust Google.

Omid - Google doesn't sit around saying lets go crush a market. We say do what's best for the end user.

Question - As an publisher I want to get paid a percentage when a sale is closed. Is this a better way to fight click fraud?

Omid - We've made moves in that direction. If we think it's the best place to go we will move there. We are watching it now. We don't think click fraud is a big problem today. Click fraud exists but we're handling it.

Question - you've portrayed Google as a technology company. There's no sharing of information about what Google is working on. Why take that direction and when is that going to change?

Omid - The founders are academic and there is a lot of thinking about how to be a good citizen. [cop out answer but what could he say?]

Question - I have a question around the statement don't be evil. Google was saying don't sell your link status, but the people that were buying seemd like it was a double standard. Seems like a slippery slope.

Omid - When you have large networks. There is behavior that Google wouldn't stand for. We go after these things when we find them. It's not worth it to have a business that does not scale.

Question - Google Maps, license around data providers. You became an intermediary - how does it work with Navteq.

Omid - We do lots of contracts. I'm not sure about the specifics.

Question - All of a sudden we need to change the contracts because Google has become the distribution point.

Omid - Glad to talk about it offline. [Heh - tough question]

Chris

Comments

[vladimir]

Do you know where to find Omid Kordistani's contactadress? Do you know where he is from?