Jonathan Rosenberg, VP Product Management:
My favorite Google philosophy, as stated by Rosenberg: "We build first and monetize later." Indeed, when I met a few months ago with Lars Perkins, who built Picassa, he told me that he kept going to his new bosses at Google (which acquired Picasa) and tried to engage them in discussions about making money, and they just told him, "Don't worry about it."
Wouldn’t you love to build products that way?
Regarding all the new, incredibly cool sites being built on top of Google Maps, Google says they are trying to figure out a way to make it work for everyone. They don't want to shut anybody down. I have a hunch they'll figure a way to embed ads in the mapstream…
Jeff Huber, VP Engineering on innovation in advertising technology:
Ads=Content. When a user has commercial intent, an ad can be the best result.
My take: Granted, Google serves very well-targeted ads, but if Google really believes this, why is Froogle so bad? See my column on Dulance: Better than Google.
Question from Harry McCracken, editor-in-chief of PC World: Did you learn any lessons from the Web Accelerator brouhaha?
Rosenberg: “There were some misrepresentation of the dangers…” But yes, he said, there was a lesson about the aggressiveness of testing needed. They’re back in testing again.