2005年NPR美国国家公共电台三月-Google's Continued Expansion, Success

On Mondays, our business report focuses on technology.

Google has transformed itself from the little search engine that could into a major information hub, email service, software developer and more. It's already the place where most people go to find something on the Internet. But Google is morphing into a diversified 1 tech-company. New York Times columnist 2 David Pogue spoke 3 to Morning Edition's Steve Ensteen about Google's success.

It's hard to identify on the surface what makes it so attractive to consumers. You go to their website, type in a couple of words, you search.

Indeed, and that was its initial attraction. It was the one search engine that didn't have blinky ads and color. And also it's really important to understand the corporate 4 philosophy which is "Don't be evil". They actually tell you this, don't be evil. And originally what they meant by that was when you search for French dolls, don't slip ads for French doll companies in among the search results, so that you can tell which are genuine information sites and which are paid ads. Google was the first to segregate 5 the ads of the site and clearly mark them.

As someone has used Google, it's not entirely 6 clear to me from the outside how they really do make money, how they make money off me?

Ah, man, they make money hand over fist from that web page search engine. They make money by selling the ads that are off to the side. See, what happens is, let's say, you have a small company that makes good-luck charms out of rabbit's feet, so you pay Google to bring up your ad off to the side. Every time someone search for a rabbit's foot, and every time I, the searcher click your ad, you pay Google 29 cents or 50 cents or however much they've charged it depending on the capacity.

As the company has grown and gotten bigger, how is it going to manage to avoid being ,as you put it, evil, if they ever were to step into or try to divert the course of the flow of information that goes through this site. Millions of searchers over the course in any given year. There is a lot of potential evil that could be done.

Well, that's a brilliant point. Google has become Microsoft. Google has become so huge and so important that little movements cause big ripples 7. For example, Google recently changed in a tiny subtle way the algorithm it uses to bring up certain searches, trying to make it better all the time. Unfortunately, this caused thousands of small businesses to have their profits cut in half, their responses cut in half or go away entirely because their ads no longer appeared at the same priority level they used to. So there goes their businesses just from a tiny little rule change by the Google computers. And as they grow bigger and more powerful, every little step they take, like an elephant in the garden ,is gonna wind up trampling 8 somebody.

Is this a company that is also powerful in the sense of being influential 9?

Absolutely, there are now a whole raft of Google imitators, one of which is Microsoft, who recently tried it out MSN search which could not look more like Google if you ran it through a Xerox 10 machine. Google came out with this desktop 11 searching product that can actually find words inside all the files in your hard drive. And now, everyone else has one of those too.

What is the software that Google is now developing and giving away?

The latest one is the thing called Picasa 2. It's a photo editing and cataloging program along lines of iPhoto for the Macintosh or Photoshop elements. Except it's free, but it is really pretty amazing.It just scans your hard drive for every picture you've got, lets you neatly 12 organize, edit. It's beautiful and it's really easy to use.

We've brought this up on the computer in front of me here and there is a photograph of...well , it is a photograph of a hard-hitting interview we recently did here in NPR with Elmo, the pleasant mystery character. Elmo is a little dark in the photograph and we are gonna just see how quickly I can correct it. This is a thing called "fill light" and I can just move this light to the side and, well, brightens the photograph.

It's, yeah, simulates a fill flash that you had. But try this you use that same editing screen. You notice ,there is a button that says:"I am feeling lucky"

Oh yes...
hahaha....

Inherited ,of course from the Google website words, it says:" I am feeling lucky." In this case..

That's rather than, You do the searching rather than getting a thousand responses back, hey, I am feeling lucky. And it just picks one that might be your best choice.

It picks the first result ,the most likely one to answer your question.That's right.

Well, you know what? I am feeling lucky so ,I will click it, and, gradual lightening of this very dark photograph, it looks a little clearer now, I can see Elmo a little better than I could before.

And if you started with a worse photo, you would have seen colors brightening up ,detail sharpening up too.It just does an overall balancing of the whole photo without making you worry about the technical parameters 13.

So how are they making money off giving away this software?

They are not. They are losing money hand over fist on that, baby. They promise they are not going to take away anything they put in it now and they promise they won't start charging for it. I suspect what they 'll do is things like letting you order prints or letting you post your own art gallery website and charging you small amount by adding those features to the program.

The problem with almost every website that has come up over the last decade or so is that it becomes very hard to make money and keep making money because there can be a thousand other people who can do the same thing. Do you think that in the long term, Google has some quality that other competitors, like Microsoft, who you mentioned, will not be able to replicate 14.

I think Google's chances are very good in keeping a step ahead of the competition, although, Microsoft ,truly , is breathing down their neck. And the answer, the reason is that Google hires geniuses. They get 1,500 resumes a day. They hire the best of the best and the brightest. And they already have such a massive power position in terms of ,you know, eyeballs on the webs ,so, in the short term, I don't expect to see Google going away any time soon.

David Pogue,the New York Times, thanks very much.

My pleasure.