What hooked Google's 12th recruit

Paul Durman

MAY 22, 2007

WHEN Omid Kordestani first met Larry Page and Sergey Brin, he was a successful business development executive at Netscape Communications, the browser company that opened the world's eyes to the power of the internet, and they were 25-year-old dropouts from Stanford University in the US.

Albeit dropouts with a promising search engine called Google.

At the time, in early 1999, Google employed four or five engineers in a garage in California's Palo Alto and had no clear idea how it was going to make money.

Kordestani was introduced to them because he thought Netscape might be able to make some use of search, but it didn't turn out quite as he expected.

Sitting at a pingpong table, he was soon embroiled in a six-hour interview with the inexperienced Brin, who called in his engineers to help in the cross-examination.

At the end, Kordestani took them all out and bought them dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

"The sparkle in their eyes, this real idealistic view that they could change the world, was clear from day one," Kordestani said earlier this month.

"That simplicity was really what attracted me - that innovation was so clear. I was convinced that even if they decided to build furniture it was going to be the most innovative furniture you'd ever seen."

So, two months before the birth of his second child, Kordestani took the "very risky and scary move" of becoming Google's 12th employee.

As the world knows, it turned out well for Google and for Kordestani. The Google advertising business Kordestani built is today worth almost $US150 billion ($182 billion), and he has an estimated fortune of $US2 billion.

Kordestani was given the task of globalising the newly profitable Google when Eric Schmidt, a Silicon Valley veteran, took over from Page as chief executive in mid-2001.

"Eric told me to get on a plane and not come back until we had international revenues reflecting our international usage," Kordestani said.

When he arrived in Britain, Kordestani had to hold meetings in hotel lobbies.

Google was already Britain's most popular search engine, but it didn't have offices here.

Google now employs more than 12,000 people, although it continues to take painstaking care over new recruits.

Page personally signs off on all new hirings every Wednesday.

Britain has been a big part of Google's success.

With strong growth in Germany, France and Spain, the company has just promoted its London-based head of European operations, Nikesh Arora, to the new role of president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

"Nikesh is doing a tremendous job," says Kordestani, who is global sales and business development senior vice-president.

Google had always seen itself as a global phenomenon, not just a US business, he says.
From having only 400 staff when Arora was recruited from the board of T-Mobile in November 2004, Google Europe now has 2000. Its European partners include the BBC and German publishing group Axel Springer.

Like Brin, Kordestani is an immigrant to the US, having been born and raised in Iran, where he attended an Italian Catholic school in Tehran that emphasised education and language skills. As a boy, he spent a lot of time in London with his parents, but the death of his father prompted his family to move to California in 1978 when he was 14.

Along with Schmidt, Kordestani was to be back in Britain yesterday to attend Zeitgeist, the company's annual gathering to discuss technology trends with industry leaders.

This year's participants include WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell, BSkyB's James Murdoch, the BBC's Mark Thompson and Sanjiv Ahuja of Orange. When Kordestani joined Google, the fledgling firm was still experimenting with ideas for generating revenue, including licensing its search engine to other websites and large companies.

Contrary to the suggestion in John Battelle's book The Search on the company, Kordestani says Google's founders were never opposed to advertising per se, only to intrusive banner ads that detracted from the all-important user experience.

"Our founders were very savvy," he says.

Despite the dotcom euphoria, Page and Brin were keenly aware that Google could not become successful without customers, and that revenue "is not a bad word".

Kordestani says it was interesting that everything Google tried had made money.

"Our enterprise business has grown into a very successful business by itself," he says.

Google Apps, as it is called, charges companies a fee for a suite of Google's software, including email, instant messaging, word-processing and spreadsheets.

However, this business is dwarfed by the colossal success of search-based advertising, which generated the bulk of Google's $US10.6 billion revenue last year.

The great advantage of keyword advertising is that advertisers can quickly see what works and what does not.

Kordestani says this is only the start, and the company plans to apply the same data-driven approach to other forms of advertising: television, print, radio and emerging formats such as mobile phones.

"Our vision is very simple," he says. "The effectiveness and accountability of search can extend to all these new areas.

"There's not only a lot of spending in other segments, but there is a great desire among customers to have the same view of the performance of this advertising, and be able to understand how best to allocate budgets between the different formats.

"It's about efficiency and accountability. The ultimate vision is to create a dashboard that helps chief marketing officers to have real visibility of how best to spend money and allocate their budgets. There's a lot of power in that."

Google's broadening ambitions recently prompted it to spend $US3 billion to acquire Double Click, a firm that serves as an intermediary between web publishers and online advertisers.
Last week, the growing potential of digital advertising prompted Microsoft to spend $US6 billion on Aquantive, the owner of the leading agency, Razorfish.

WPP, one of the world's biggest marketing groups, bought 24/7 Real Media of New York for $US649 million.

Every Monday, Kordestani reviews Google's most important partnerships, with input from Schmidt, Page and Brin.

The involvement of the founders is one indication of their determination to remain much more than figureheads.

The power balance within the triumvirate is a source of considerable fascination in Silicon Valley.

It is widely assumed that Brin and Page, who are still large shareholders, ultimately call the shots, irrespective of Schmidt's position as chief executive.

"They have their own areas of passion where they spend their time," Kordestani says.
"Eric and Larry spend a lot of time with our engineering teams, reviewing the priorities and doing rapid reviews of the products.

"Given the phenomenon and given how fast Google has grown and how ambitious our vision is, it's great to have three great brains at the top of the company sharing that responsibility."