from Hacker News

What would you do if you were CEO of Google?

by mrduncan on 11/18/10, 9:24 PM with 73 comments

• by nostromo on 11/18/10, 11:32 PM

  There are a lot of interesting advanced projects (AI, automated driving, etc.), but I would be worried about the search core right now as CEO.

  The proliferation of content-mills and SEO companies is really starting to take a toll on search results. I find myself avoiding Google and going to niche sources directly now (like Wikipedia or StackOverflow) just to avoid the Demand Media trash that is everywhere now.

  I think Google should really invest in a new approach to rank -- one that could maybe focus on the content itself using AI and NLP instead of link juice.

• by cryptoz on 11/18/10, 9:43 PM

  Seeing as Peter Norvig is already Director of Research, Schmidt is probably already doing exactly what I'd go for as CEO of Google:

  Push hard in developing AI.

  Seriously. Focus on ML and NLP, use their vast resources of data and computing power and really smart engineers. It'll take years, maybe decades but of course this goal is worth it.

• by amichail on 11/18/10, 10:18 PM

  Show who just searched for something similar to what you just searched for. This might lead to real-time collaboration and sharing of search results.

  Making your searches and profile public in this way would be optional obviously.

• by Jun8 on 11/18/10, 10:02 PM

  First, I'd emphasize that Google absolutely has to win the TV battle with Apple and other would be contenders. To do this, I'd force my way out of the TV content logjam by buying a content provider, much like Comcast's buying of NBC. Otherwise, any effort in changing the game in the TV domain can easily be dynamited by cable operators.

• by codypo on 11/18/10, 11:44 PM

  If I were Google's CEO, I'd build a transparent, Internet-driven political election infrastructure. Why? First, having regular, fair, accountable elections is a problem that all countries in the world face. Second, the problem I just described has a technical solution. Third, only a company with tremendous resources like Google could successfully battle the entrenched, questionable powers that control many of these elections and the vote counting therein.

  What's in this for Google? Users. Data. Brand awareness with every dang voter in the world. Incredible PR. Continued support of that whole 'do no evil' thing.

  Of course, there are some catches here. The system has be to completely open. As a citizen, I should be able to audit every part of this whenever I want. Second, you'd have to abstain from all political contributions. People counting the votes can't have a preference or a vested interest in one part over the other. I'm sure there are more that I haven't thought of.

  It'd be a tremendous investment on Google's part, but it has the potential for some truly world-changing technology.

• by maxharris on 11/18/10, 10:06 PM

  I would do my best to find someone capable of becoming Google's CEO, hire him or her, and quit.

  Contrary to popular myth, being a successful CEO is extremely difficult, and it requires skills that most people (myself included) don't possess.

• by citizenkeys on 11/19/10, 12:11 AM

  If I were Google's CEO, I would quit hiring a bunch of pretensious blow-hard phd's. Seriously. The problem with Google is that Google doesn't attract creative talent. Google attracts stuck-up phd's that don't want to be told that their ideas are goofy and un-cool.

  The vibe around Google, with its goofy pretensious phd's is one major reason why all the real creative talent is leaving the googleplex.

  On a related note, the thing about Mark Zuckerberg, whether you like Facebook or not, is that he's the exact type of person that if he went to Google looking for a job, Google would tell him "you're not a fancy phd" and tell him to go online and fill out a request to be an intern. Think about it.

• by silverlake on 11/18/10, 10:56 PM

  Make search easier for my mom. God bless her, but she's a moron. One idea is to take the related search terms and turn them into natural questions: "Did you mean baseball bats or flying bats?"

  Does Google have a Search for Dummies group? I'd start one.

• by kenjackson on 11/18/10, 11:27 PM

  I'd like see Google do something to make me smarter.

  For example, I'd love to be able to do something Matrix style, "Learn Complex Analysis" and then Google creates a curriculum and feeds it to my brain. Ideally this would happen during downtime (such as sleeping or on the train).

  Brain science seems pretty far from injecting material into the brain, but what about finding ways to increase my comprehension when I read stuff. Reading content is so slow and generally requires my undivided attention. Unfortunately its the only way I know to learn anything non-trivial.

• by ujjwalg on 11/18/10, 11:11 PM

  I would put a focus group around improving add-ons for gmail, one at a time. Though I use multiple project management tools, I still use email the most. Having a direct project/todo management tool in gmail would make the life so much easier and no one will have to go and get different accounts for different clients. They can just add a project within gmail. But it has to be at least at par with the current best. This will completely disrupt the project management tool provider industry.

• by toddh on 11/18/10, 9:58 PM

  Space colonization. It's the big item on the advanced civilization checklist that we haven't even got a good start on yet. If you want more information, use your AI guided self-driving spaceships to wardrive around and slurp it all up.

• by underdown on 11/18/10, 11:03 PM

  Start developing a customer service mindset.

  have you tried getting support from Google? /mashes keyboard

• by BvS on 11/18/10, 10:55 PM

  Buy, integrate or compete with dropbox.com and bring this service to the masses through Google-Apps and maybe Gmail.

• by marze on 11/19/10, 12:04 AM

  Interesting question.

  I would try do diversify more aggressively than Google seems to be doing presently. Even though Google has a excellent grip on the search market, market share in the internet arena has been demonstratedly ephemeral in some cases, so diversifying more aggressively is a hedging strategy. Specifically:

  Continue to concentrate on making search better, more useful, faster, etc., as number one priority.

  Start two new independent clean-slate next-gen mobile OS efforts, in case they are needed, that are closed, in case that is an important advantage.

  Acquire wind turbine generator technology firms

  Buy up many transportation efficiency startups, i.e., new electric motors, improved internal combustion motors, new transmission, new battery, system integrators, etc.

  Invest in hydraulic hybrid technology; buy patents, startups, etc.

  As other have mentioned, leverage the massive amounts of data Google has to advance NLP and related, and try to figure out a way to make money from it

  Fund three startups the goal of creating a hybrid drive conversion that would turn an existing car into a hybrid car in a cost effective manner

  Fund a few internet education startups, look for opportunities in education area generally.

• by db42 on 11/19/10, 5:31 AM

  Well, no one has talked about technologies related to distributed computing i.e. Mapreduce/Hadoop, BigTable/HBase/Cassandra etc. Google deserves the credit for developing these technologies in the first place. But Yahoo did the trick by providing open source implementations of these technologies. By providing them as open-source(may be first open-source product from yahoo),hadoop has quickly grown to what it is now in a very short span of time. Currently, almost all the big players in the web market are adopting these technologies for their use and, at the same time, contributing to these technologies. Facebook and twitter, both are now dependent on these tools. I know that internally Google may be far too ahead than the current distributed computing technologies available in the market. But google is just using them internally, they are not using them either to offer them directly or by offering some other service depending on these technologies. I think, google need to think in this direction.

• by balakk on 11/19/10, 12:45 AM

  I'd like Google to be more aggressive on chasing Enterprise customers. Make something compelling/disruptive enough for the enterprise space - things like CRM, ERP etc. Aggressively price/promote your cloud product.

  I'd set a target like getting 40% enterprise marketshare in desktop/server OS, apps in the next 5 years. Make IBM sweat for their mainframe share.

  Compared to the consumer market, enterprise software is still largely bloatware and legacyware. It is ripe for disruption.

• by anamax on 11/19/10, 1:24 AM

  All of: * Implicit search. (Yes, initiating a search is too much work, especially if I don't know that I should be searching.) * It should be possible to search the ad databases. * adkeeper (I've been ranting about that for years). * Actionable search results

• by seanmcq on 11/18/10, 10:29 PM

  Wonder exactly how insane the world was for letting me have such an important job.

• by arethuza on 11/18/10, 11:45 PM

  Build the augmented reality technology from Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End.

• by jason_slack on 11/18/10, 11:37 PM

  Drive without a license plate like other high powered CEO's

  First thing I would do....Hire someone better than myself and spend my time getting deeply involved in the details that make the company unique....

• by lowglow on 11/19/10, 1:28 AM

  Start a private internet in the name of free speech to capture all the fallout when the government shuts down the one we're on now.

• by gojomo on 11/18/10, 11:21 PM

  Implement an 'advanced search operator' that allows filtering AdSense sites from search results.

• by maximilianburke on 11/18/10, 10:33 PM

  I'm pretty sure I'd inadvertently run the company into the ground, but it'd be one hell of a learning experience.

• by VladRussian on 11/19/10, 12:03 AM

  may be spend a bit of money toward making human species to look ... err ... more humane. Several millions of dogs and cats are euthanized annually in the US alone.

  http://www.aspca.org/about-us/faq/pet-statistics.html

• by db42 on 11/19/10, 5:17 AM

  Wow, ideas here are much better and relevant to google compared to ideas on parent site.

• by aresant on 11/19/10, 1:21 AM

  If I were King of Google for a day, I would fix the completely broken lead generation industry.

  I'm talking mortgage, debt consolidation, payday loans, auto warranty, elective surgery, retirement homes, car quotes, etc.

  I know senior managers @ Google Sales that say internal policy for many "dirty" categories of lead generation is "ignorance is bliss".

  This is irresponsible to your "Do no evil" tagline, but I’m sure it’s imperative to maintaining shareholder value.

  Shutting down the tens-of-thousands of FTC non-compliant, half-baked, lead-gen shysters that resell user data like so many grains of sand might be a costly dent to sales and profits in the short term.

  But man is there opportunity here - build a great, trusted system on the back of Google’s brand that balances transparency to consumers with advertiser’s need to profit and you could hit a home run.

  I can only imagine what a sticky subject this is internally - competing with our customers? That would be insane!

  But as the lead gen arbitrage continues to heat up you're only going to be selling more and more of your users down the very black hole of the lead generation industry.

  And hey - you kind of stuck your toes in the water with the mortgage comparison product right?

  I've spent a decade in and around lead generation, founded, built and sold a large lead-gen business, and manage lead gen & conversion rate optimization for many of the big players in the space.

  I’m tooting my horn in case you’d like to drop me an email (via my profile) so I can help you guys build a great product!

• by meatsock on 11/19/10, 12:18 AM

  if i was CEO of google i'd take the day off and try to spend my paycheck in the same amount of time it took to earn, because i like grand challenges.

• by dj_axl on 11/18/10, 11:39 PM

  Start a new company called Page Brin Consulting and offer outrageously priced (aka highly profitable) business consulting services, similar to what Microsoft and IBM do.

• by jfb on 11/18/10, 10:09 PM

  Where's my goddamned space elevator?

• by jhrobert on 11/18/10, 10:35 PM

  buy twitter

• by prakash on 11/18/10, 9:54 PM

  Redirect google users to DuckDuckGo.