Friday 7 September 2007

A couple of Stanford University students thought they had a pretty neat idea about a new fangled thing called the internet. They were doing their doctorates and thought that the method used by the then prevalent search engines, like Altavista, could be bettered. Rather than ranking results according to the number of times the item being searched appeared on a page, they reckoned that a ranking system based on the relationships between websites would produce better results. So the search engine called Backrub was born.

Fortunately Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to rename their creation otherwise we'd be telling our kids to research their school projects by "Backrubbing". Instead we have Google which was incorporated as a company nine years ago today.

Mr Page and Mr Brin's simple concept has evolved into a corporation with a stock market value of US$162B. Yup one hundred and sixty-two billion US dollars. Now how many US$162B ideas have you had? It's not enough to have a genius idea. The key is actually making things happen in the way that was intended. This statement of the obvious seems less obvious when you see reports of companies like the Royal Mail. Their premium postage service called "Recorded Delivery" may not be what it seems. An official intriguingly advises that "It is operationally impossible to keep records of items sent by recorded delivery".

Google's genius was not the original idea. It was following through, supported by a company philosophy that provides a meaningful and clear framework for action. The famous Google Ten Things are:

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There's always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn't good enough.

The mission/vision/values industry in companies chews up hundreds of hours in their creation, communication and, most of the time, in water cooler derision by those whose behaviour they're meant to drive. The Google way, albeit not perfect, shows that genuine simplicity can enable extraordinary results. I intend applying this approach to the following business concepts (all rights reserved):

* Fizzy Chicken - burpilicious low fat fast food
* Pimp My Pimple - the TV makeover show for teenagers
* My FaceSpace - a social network integrator utility

So Happy Birthday Google and what's three times US$162B?