Dear Google Friends!
Welcome to Vol. I Issue 2 of the Google Friends newsletter--news about the
Google search engine. This is a monthly newsletter. You shouldn't be on this
list unless you subscribed. Thank you for using Google!
Introduction
This was an exciting month for us as we secured funding so that we can continue
to improve Google in new and exciting ways. This month we issued our first
press release which announced our financing of $25 million and introduced the
new the members joining our board, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital and John
Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. We also came out with a specialized
government search that searches just the .gov and .mil domains. We have also
been busy growing the company in employees and computers. Our plans are to
keep improving Google in every way possible!
Google gets $$
This month Google secured $25 million in venture funding and will add two
prominent venture capitalists to its board: Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital
and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Google plans to use the
funding to continue to further its search technology research and grow the
company's human and computer resources.
You can read our press release and articles published about our funding on our
website at:
http://www.google.com/funding.html
The Red Herring reported the following on our funding and new board members:
On Thursday morning, Google, a search-technology startup founded by two
Stanford graduate students, announced it had secured $25 million in funding
from Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, as well as a range of high-profile
angel investors. While that number may seem staggering for a company's first
round, what caused more jaws to drop was the company's newly named board
members: yes, Mr. Doerr, but also Sequoia's Michael Moritz. The Red Herring
article can be read found at:
http://www.redherring.com/insider/1999/0603/vc-google.html
The Wall Street Journal also commented on the investment saying, "Even by
Internet standards, Google has attracted an unusually large amount of money for
a company still in its infancy."
In the Google press release, Michael Moritz, a new board member states "Google
should become the gold standard for search on the Internet. Larry and
Sergey's company has the power to turn Internet users everywhere into devoted
and life-long Googlers."
We are thankful to all the current Googlers out there. We will use the funding
to continue to improve Google and provide the best search results possible.
Changes with our results page
You may have noticed some changes in our results pages. We made some key
changes that we think will make your search experience with Google even
better. We no longer use the "phase match" or "partial phrase match"
indicator since our users found this information to be redundant of the
contextual, bolded search query results. We also eliminated the Page Rank
percentage given since the red bar next to it shows the Page Rank graphically.
(TIP: if you click on the red bar, you can see all the pages that link to the
returned page).
Google government search
This month you probably noticed that we had our "Uncle Sam" search off of our
home page (It's the next best thing to the CIA) that is now housed on the
"more Google" page under the title of "special searches." This search covers
all the .mil and .gov domains. So if you are looking for something published
by the government, this is the best place to start.
Google expansion
Our capacity is still going up (thanks to you!), and we've been expanding to
meet the demand. This month we've put in even more servers to ensure a faster
user experience (we've started ordering our computers in 80 packs, up from our
previous increment of 21 packs). We have also been working to make sure there
the duplicates are removed from search results and we are working on some new
features (sshhh!) that we hope will improve our users search experience.
We have also hired our first business development and marketing employees. If
you want to do any "deals" with Google, please contact us at bizdev@g...
If you have any marketing plans for your company that you would like to include
Google in, please contact us at marketing@g...
Want a job?
Looking for a start-up adventure? Google is the leading designer of the next
generation search engine. We are rapidly hiring talented people to bring the
latest and greatest technology to the web. We have lots of openings. Check out
our jobs page at http://www.google.com/jobs.html! Or send us a resume to
jobs@g...
Reasons to work for Google:
1. Hot technology
2. Cool technology
3. Intelligent, fun, talented, hardworking, high-energy teammates
4. Location, location, location! University Ave in downtown Palo Alto
5. Excellent benefits
6. Stock options
7. Casual dress atmosphere
8. Free snacks and drinks
9. An exciting place to work! Your ideas can make a difference
10. Millions of people will use and appreciate your software
Feedback
We always love hearing from our users! Please let us know if you have comments
or features that you would like to see at Google. We read every email and
always do our best to respond as quickly as possible. You can reach us at:
comments@g...
Thanks for using Google!
Sincerely,
Larry Page, CEO and co-founder
Sergey Brin, President and co-founder
