Google Toolbar, every mention
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every year anyone Ben Gilbert 15David Rosenthal 9
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Google Toolbar comes up
Google Part II: Alphabet (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 36:49 David Rosenthal I think is my favorite part of our first Google episode earlier this year, that the whole thing ended up just being a Trojan horse downloader to get Google toolbar installed on Internet Explorer on people's systems.
- ▶ 37:02 Ben Gilbert They're organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful, but also it comes with Google toolbar.
- ▶ 1:59:04 Ben Gilbert Actually, traffic acquisition costs originated before Mozilla because it's effectively the same thing that they were doing with software vendors to include Google Toolbar.
Google Part I: Origins of Search. How the Best Business in Human History Happened (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:40:44 Ben Gilbert Google toolbar, baby.
- ▶ 2:40:46 David Rosenthal Google toolbar.
- ▶ 2:41:39 Ben Gilbert So once toolbar is installed by a user,
- ▶ 2:41:46 David Rosenthal What Google toolbar is.
- ▶ 2:42:16 Ben Gilbert There was a URL bar, and first that's all there was, and then eventually they put in a search field inspired by the Google toolbar.
- ▶ 2:42:27 Ben Gilbert Once Google toolbar was installed, a user averaged seven times the number of searches.
- ▶ 2:42:44 David Rosenthal Yes, so how did they pay money to get users to install the Google Toolbar?
- ▶ 2:42:55 Ben Gilbert But with Toolbar, it was 10 plus dollars.
- ▶ 2:43:09 Ben Gilbert For a Google toolbar install, but you can understand the amount of lift that they get from a Google toolbar when you understand, wow, it's worth eight dollars more per user in this year.
- ▶ 2:43:37 Ben Gilbert To bundle Google Toolbar with their installer of an application.
- ▶ 2:43:45 Ben Gilbert Hey, congratulations, you have Google Toolbar.
- ▶ 2:43:59 David Rosenthal When users are downloading programs, what apps used to be called, to run on their computers, Google is paying the maker of that program to include a Trojan horse payload of the Google toolbar, which will then become a Trojan horse that…
- ▶ 2:44:30 David Rosenthal I love the Google toolbar.
- ▶ 2:44:37 David Rosenthal Oh, well, so as they were building the toolbar and thinking about like, okay, A, users are going to love this because users love Google and being able to access search, you know, that's value prop in and of itself for this thing.
- ▶ 2:44:49 David Rosenthal But pop-up ads were a problem on the internet at this point in time, and one of the most popular plugins for web browsers were pop-up blockers, and so Google decided, well, hell, why don't we make the Google toolbar also a pop-up blocker?
- ▶ 2:45:10 Ben Gilbert They even did a deal with Dell directly to make sure that when new PCs shipped with Windows, they shipped with Google toolbar pre-installed
- ▶ 2:46:14 Ben Gilbert They just bundled Google Toolbar with the installs of Google Earth, and then it more than paid for itself.
- ▶ 2:46:27 Ben Gilbert In the mid-two thousands, ARPU would eventually grow 10 dollars, 20 dollars, 30 dollars, and always a Google Toolbar user was stickier than a non-Toolbar user, and so they just had more and more and more budget to play with in acquiring…
- ▶ 2:47:44 Ben Gilbert And it's funny, Toolbar happened to be the one that worked, but it wasn't the only thing they tried.
- ▶ 2:48:18 Ben Gilbert They come in and they take over this application's client team that includes Google toolbar.
- ▶ 2:48:36 David Rosenthal How important Google toolbar was and how secretive the company was about this really being like the strategic linchpin of what they were doing.