The Hindu Business Line : Keen to retain the lead

BY whatever name you call it, Google is in a league of its own when it comes to searching the Internet for information. Itsfounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, a native of Moscow, met at Stanford while working on the project that later became Google.

Larry and Sergey have been in the news, touring India in their own inimitable style, hopping around in auto-rickshaws as they did in Hyderabad. So how do they ensure that Google stays ahead of competition while remaining different? Here's an interaction eWorld had with them.

Brin says "we employ the best technologists and researchers in the world who constantly innovate to keep us ahead. Therefore, we have opened an R&D centre in Bangalore. However, it is not easy to predict how business takes shape over a longer period."

What powers Google?

Google's quest has been to develop a perfect search engine, defined by Larry Page as something that understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want. Refusing to accept limitations of technology, they have been constantly innovating to develop Page Rank Technology that has changed the way searches are made. While opting to adopt linked PCs to quickly find answers, as opposed to a few servers which could choke during peak loads, the Google software combs the Web and extracts the relevant information.

The Page Rank Technology performs an objective measurement of the importance of Web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results. This technology fits aptly into Google's mission to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, they say. In this quest, the search is now available in over 100 languages, with a 41-language interface, many of them Indian local languages too.

Brin's research interests include search engines, information extraction from unstructured sources, and data mining of large text collections and scientific data.

Has life changed after the IPO?

Brin says while life continues to be the same, they were hurt by the adverse write-ups during the run-up to the IPO. "But it is all fine, we have emerged stronger. Here we are now, moving out of the US and hopping to Ireland and India. I am personally interested in setting up office in Russia. Though nothing has as yet been worked out, we could also possibly look at other centres in the region, including China and Japan."

The two are extremely articulate and passionate about the technology powering Google, and in fact when one begins the statement, the other at times interrupts to complete it. Almost thinking in sync!

"For the magnitude of its reach, Google is relatively a small company having about 2,200 people. International expansion has been fairly recent, though we expect these places to be fairly large business potential areas. While Google researchers have helped land in Bangalore, keen to handle high-end technology research, the Hyderabad centre in India is aimed at supporting the requirement of AdWords, its advertisement support division," Larry says.

Will there be consolidation in the search engines?

Sergey says already there have been developments on this front. "We don't foresee too many more happening, there could be a couple of others. But it would certainly not be like the M&A activity in the banking, financial services, or other sectors."

The expansion in India with two centres is not outsourcing, they say. "We already have services out of here and this is part of the company's expansion aimed at tapping the large talent pool here. We also see value in creating jobs in other parts of the world. Therefore, we have a centre in Dublin, Ireland." The Indian operations based at Hyderabad will support, in particular, the Google AdWords programme that promotes products and services on the Web with targeted advertising. Apart from this, people take advantage of the Google Adsense programme that delivers ads relevant to their content on their sites, improving their ability to generate revenues and enhancing the experience for their users.

Asked about the commercial launch of Gmail, one of the most ambitious projects of Google that actually makes it a lot more feature-rich providing 1000 MB space, they say they are still trying it out, with improvements.

vrishi@thehindu.co.in

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