What happened this year?
January
Google has had an excellent year. At the beginning of the year, Bill Gates famously said, “They kicked out butts” about Google’s domination of and enormous profits on search, but promised a MSN Search engine within a year. Google began the process of going public. Yahoo freaked out and announced its new search engine and plan to dump Google as its results provider the next day. Google released Orkut, which everyone was convinced was the next big thing is social interaction.
February
In February, Bill Gates vowed, “We will catch them”. Google won “Brand of the Year” from BrandChannel, and I think everyone agreed they had a powerful brand. They were also named fifth best internet property by Media Metrix. Google’s overall index (web search, images, groups, print) reached a milestone with 6 billion items indexed and searchable.
March
March brought Froogle Wireless and the beginning of an issue that would dog Google all year, (and still does) sensitive information available on Google). Google Local launched, a model that would be eventually emulated by every major search engine. A man sued Google because his vanity search said terrible things about himself. MSN announced Newsbot. At the end of the month, Google got a facelift.
April
Gmail was the big news for April, and everyone thought it was an April Fools joke. It’s combination of unprecedented free storage and invite-driven exclusivity made it the hot thing through the summer. It also brought a new trend: privacy advocates vs. Google. Gmail’s scanning the text of messages for ads presented the first of many battles Google would have with privacy hawks. Google began scanning academic papers, a project that would eventually become Google Scholar. Amazon launched A9 in beta, putting itself in competition with Google at the same time it was using Google search results. Google announced it would allow the selling of trademarked terms in ads. At the end of the month, Google did the one thing that could be bigger news than Gmail: it filed for its initial public offering.
May
Google’s IPO dominated the conversation well into May, as the odd dutch auction style was debated among analysts and armchair stockbrokers all over the net. Google “joined the conversation” and launched the Google blog. Google brought out Google Groups 2 Beta, an attempt to expand Google’s Usenet archive to be like Yahoo Groups. Geico sued Google for selling its name as an ad keyword. Google topped the Wired 40.
June
June saw Hotmail announced increased email storage, something Yahoo unveiled the month before, as a response to Gmail. Google had such a slow month, it actually published a recipe for Buttermilk Fried Chicken Elvis Loved on the Google blog, the pre-IPO quiet period taking its toll. AOL bought Advertising.com.
July
Google shut down Gmail account sales in July, while adding address book importing. Google choose the NASDAQ for its IPO, which seemed so imminent that it could be any day. Google bought Picasa, then gave away its software for free, but is still developing its big plan for the software. MSN released Newsbot. Google announced its price range for the IPO, an astounding $108-135, and opened the dutch auction registration process as the month closed.
August
All through the beginning of August, speculation mounted, as everyone wanted to know if Google was worth its high asking price. As the IPO neared, Google settled its patent dispute with Yahoo/Overture, giving Yahoo 2.7 million shares of their stock. There was also a major flap when an interview with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s interview with Playboy was printed during the quiet period. Google submitted its IPO for final approval, and wound up with a much lower price target of $85-95, and with a smaller number of shares. Google opened at $101, and has never dropped to double digits. Yahoo started its own blog. Yahoo sold its Google shares at $82.62, losing, at current prices, just under $300 million. Microsoft announced WinFS, its searchable file system, wasn’t going to make it to Longhorn, something it had hidden for months as it developed MSN Desktop Search.
September
September began with a return to business as usual as Google decided it would be fun if its ads started saying ‘Ads by Goooooogle’ for no particular reason, a dumb idea which continues to this day. It also allowed up to 3 AdSense ads per page. MSN began girding for battle, as Steve Ballmer said Microsoft was “hell-bent and determined” to beat Google. Google celebrated its sixth birthday. Google Alerts came out of beta, with a neat interface for Web and News alerts. Google Local got a major interface upgrade, while Yahoo bought MusicMatch and A9 finally went live, but the biggest move was Jeeves, which upgraded a lot of services, adding MyJeeves.
October
October was Google’s last big month. Before “it” happened, MSN held its Search Champs, flying in search experts to test out the new engine months before it launched. Clusty launched, Yahoo Local went live, I finally got noticed when I posted about Gmail Atom feeds, the MSN Search Preview went online, My Yahoo launched, Bill Gross launched Snap, Google Print got bigger, Evan Williams said nice things about me, Yahoo uncluttered (somewhat), Yahoo revenues increased 212%, Larry and Sergey went to India, Howard Dean shilled for Yahoo. But on October 14, I attended Digital Life and saw firsthand the release of Google Desktop Search, which everyone treated like the second coming, and got a lot of notice for my post on Hello, Google’s instant messenger in Picasa. For the next several weeks, it seemed like Google was rocketing upwards, with a 105% increase in revenues, boosting Google stock to $175, a number it has stayed near for most of the time since, even though it approached $200. Google bought Keyhole, added merchant ratings to Froogle, Page and Brin hit the Forbes 400. Jeeves reported very good earnings. In a snapshot of things to come, MSN accidentally leaked its new search interface.
November
Google stayed back for the election (wisely, since their guy lost), but it did get embroiled in problems as its Desktop Search’s web history was declared a major privacy and security risk. Companies started bragging about their great PageRanks, Amazon started selling sex toys, and AskJeeves Local launched. I speculated on Google TV Search (and was proved prophetic by C|Net). Apple started promoting Spotlight, which shone a spotlight on how inadequate Google Desktop Search truly was. Gmail offered POP3 access, and Google doubled its official index count to eight billion (the actual number is higher than ten billion). That night, MSN Search Beta launched, too much acclaim for its technical wizardry. Google Images was revealed to be inadequate. InsideMicrosoft launched. Google stock plummeted after a lockup expiry. Google Scholar launched. Google opened a Kirkland office. The L.A. Times quoted me, and Target sold drugs.
December
December was all about MSN. Besides a “good enough as Google” search engine, MSN launched Spaces, a more mainstream blogging service, and later, the superior MSN Toolbar Suite. Overture settled its suit with Geico, not willing to take the risk Google would. Google Groups 2 got top billing, but it didn’t go over well. Yahoo announced its desktop search, and Jeeves delivered its. Google unveiled Google Suggest, which, because of its open architecture, has become more popular than some other, larger Google services. Google beat Geico. Yahoo launched video search, while Blinkx launched TV search. Cindy McAffrey left.
Next: A look at what Google needs to think about to succeed in the coming year.
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