The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 138 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Yahoo CEO Terry Semel offered $1B to buy Google in 2001
“As recently as late 2001, just months before, there's a dinner with Terry Semel, who's the CEO of Yahoo.
Kind of big media executive guy, comes in, takes over, is the big media CEO.
And he sits down with the founders and he says, so guys, I think we're your bi…”
Gilbert: Google traffic doubled to 14M daily searchers on Yahoo deal day one
“So traffic doubled to fourteen million searchers per day on day one of this deal.”
Rosenthal: No company has done a Dutch auction IPO since Google
“Dutch auction IPO. Not a great idea. Nobody has done it since.”
Gilbert: Paul Buchheit originally coined Google's 'Don't be evil' motto
“Paul Buchheit is awesome, and recently launched a new venture fund, and actually the original coiner of the term, don't be evil, at Google.”
Jeff Dean built Google's first ad test using Amazon affiliate links
“Jeff Dean codes it up so that dynamically, as users are searching, if there's a query that is related at all to Any book in the Amazon library catalog, Google will dynamically generate a text ad saying, go buy this book at Amazon, insert an Amazon affiliate li…”
Jeff Dean built AdWords, AdSense, MapReduce, and Gemini
“He also implemented the first version of AdWords, built AdSense, rewrote the core search pipeline five times, co-invented and implemented Bigtable MapReduce, TensorFlow, and Gemini.”
Google AdSense originated from the prototyping process of Gmail
“And so the thing that led to AdSense Was actually part of the prototyping process of Gmail.”
Top VCs gave Google a $100M Series A valuation pre-revenue
“They just...
Paid a hundred million dollar post for a Series A company with no revenue.”
Facebook Surpassed Google in Daily Page Views in November 2005
“By November of 2005, they were getting two hundred and thirty million page views daily, which means that they had passed Google in page views.”
Gilbert: Pre-Facebook VCs routinely replaced founder CEOs with professional managers
“There wasn't Founders Fund yet. There wasn't A-sixteen Z yet. There wasn't like the notion of founder friendliness. What venture capitalists did is they invested in founders companies and then brought in management to take them to the next level. It's what hap…”
Google Sheets Users Are in the Global Minority Compared to Excel
“Excel is still the main way that spreadsheets are done around the world. I bet a lot of listeners use Google Sheets. We do, too. We love it. Also use Excel, but if you do use Google Sheets, you are in the minority.”
Gilbert: Apple makes around $20 billion annually from Google default search
“The rumors are that Apple makes something on the order of twenty billion dollars a year today in 2024 from Google as being the front door to Google, sending all of the iPhone search traffic to Google.”
Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos invested $250,000 into Google at seed terms
“So Rahm goes to bath for him, and he convinces Larry and Sergey to take another 250,000 dollars of Jeff and Mackenzie's personal money at the seed price.”
Yakovenko: A Solana transaction uses the energy of two Google searches
“The other thing about Solana is it's very, very energy efficient. So single Solana transaction is about like two or three Google searches. So if you think of it as using a web service, this is a network that, you know, takes as much energy as a regular web ser…”
Rosenthal: AWS market share exceeds Google Cloud and Azure combined
“AWS is growing at 37% annually on a seventy five billion dollar base. Google and Microsoft are growing at 45%, but their market share combined is still significantly less than Amazon.”
Google Announced a 40% Reduction in Data Center Cooling Energy in 2016
“Very quickly, July of 20 16, Google announces a 40% reduction in the energy required to cool data centers.”
Waymo Raised $3.2B in March 2020 with Alphabet Majority Ownership
“March of twenty-twenty, they raise 3.2 billion dollars from folks like Silver Lake Canada Pension and Investment Board Mubadala, Andreessen Horowitz, and of course, the biggest check, I think, Alphabet, and I think they're always the biggest check, because Alp…”
Sergey Brin Returned to Google as an Employee for Gemini
“Not to mention, apparently, Sergey Brin is, like, now back as an employee working on Gemini.”
Google Translate Was Google's First Production Language Model
“So this is the first large, I'm using large in quotes here, language model used in production in a product at Google.”
Noam Shazeer and Jeff Dean Are Co-Technical Leads for Gemini
“Once they get Noam back, when they do the deal with Character AI, bring him back into the fold, Noam joins the Gemini team, and Jeff and Noam are the two co-technical leads for Gemini now”
Google Designed and Deployed First TPU in 15 Months
“So, the TPU was designed, verified, built, and deployed into data centers in 15 months.”
Google's Core Business Has Grown 5x Since 2015/2016
“Google's core business has continued to grow five X since the end of our Alphabet episode in 2015, 20 16.”
Noam Shazeer Created Google's 'Did You Mean' Spelling Correction
“So the first thing that they do with this work is they create the did you mean spelling correction in Google search. ... Gnome created this.”
Geoffrey Hinton Was a Google Summer Intern in His 60s
“He was a summer intern in somewhere around twenty-eleven, twenty-twelve. And mind you, at this point, he's like 60 years old.”
Google's Self-Driving Team Completed the 'Larry 1000' Within 18 Months
“So, they start the project in 2009. Within 18 months, this tiny team, I think they hired, I don't know, it's like a dozen people or something. They've driven thousands of miles autonomously, and they managed to succeed in the full Larry 1000 within 18 months.”
Pichai Decreed Brain-DeepMind Merger and Gemini Standardization in Mid-2023
“Sundar makes these Two decrees mid-twenty-twenty-three. One, we're merging Brain and DeepMind into one team for AI within Google, and two, we're gonna standardize on one model, the future Gemini, and DeepMind slash Brain team. You go build it, and then everybo…”
Google One Has Over 150 Million Paying Subscribers
“What we do know is there are over a hundred and fifty million paying subscribers to the Google One bundle.”
Google Launched Gemini 1.5 with Market-Leading 1M Token Context Window
“February, twenty-twenty-four, they launched Gemini 1.5 with a one million token context window. Much, much larger context window than any other model on the market.”
Google Nerfed LaMDA in AI Test Kitchen to Five-Turn Conversations
“For the version of Lambda chat that is in AI test kitchen, they stop all conversations after five turns. So you can only have five turns of conversation with the chat bot, and then it's just, and we're done for today.”
Google Stock Dropped 8% After Flubbed Bard Keynote
“After the Bard launch and this keynote, Google stock drops eight percent on that day.”
Google Suffered a Nearly 50% Drawdown After November 2021
“The high watermark was November, 19th of 20 21. Google was right at two trillion dollars of market cap. About a year after that slide began, they were worth a trillion dollars. Nearly a 50% drawdown.”
There Are Currently Over Three Billion Active Android Devices Globally
“Over three billion active Android devices now.”
Google Invented and Published the Revolutionary Transformer Architecture in June 2017
“Google invented the Transformer and published the paper in June of 2017.”
Google Seeded Gmail's 2004 Launch With Just 1,000 Invites
“When they launch it on April first, 2004, they send out 1000 seed invites to Gmail.”
Google's Orkut Peaked at 300 Million Users, Dominating Brazil and India
“Launches a social network within Google called Orkut, and it didn't become that big in America, but it got at its peak, I think, three hundred million users. It was the biggest social network in Brazil, the biggest social network in India.”
Global Digital Advertising Spend Did Not Eclipse Television Until 2018
“For listeners, digital advertising, you know, Google's universe would not eclipse TV. Until 2017, 20 18.”
Larry Page Eliminated All Google Engineering Managers in 2001
“In 2001, famously pre-IPO at Google, Larry Page feels like Google is moving a little bit too slow and gets rid of all engineering managers.”
The Original iPhone Relied on Built-In Google Maps and YouTube Apps
“There are two apps that launch in the very first version of the iPhone. Remember, it didn't have an app store. It was not open to third-party developers. There is a YouTube app and a Maps app, both of which are Google services. Now, the apps are written by App…”
Sundar Pichai Never Worked in Search or Advertising Before Becoming Google CEO
“Interestingly, he had never worked in search or ads.”
Google Has Seven Products with Over Two Billion Users
“Astonishingly, today, Google has 15 products with over half a billion users. Seven of those have over two billion users.”
Google's initial AdWords launch had self-serve and ad quality without CPC auctions
“The first version they launch includes self-serve and includes ad quality.
But it doesn't yet include CPC or the auction, which is funny.”
Rosenthal: Urs Hölzle ran Google's infrastructure from 1999 until 2023
“Urs is now a fellow, but he ran all of Google's infrastructure from 1999 until 2023.”
Google generated $10M profit on $86M revenue in 2001
“Google for the year ultimately did eighty six million dollars in revenue that year, and ten million dollars in profit. So, turned profitable in 2001, like, great numbers by any metric for a startup, and especially in the middle of the dot com winter.”
Rosenthal: Google grew revenue over 5x from 2001 to 2002
“Yep, they more than five X revenue from 2001 to 2002, from the eighty six million to four hundred and forty million in revenue.”
Gilbert: Google's international revenue expanded from 18% initially to half of business
“Year one, because Omid spent the whole year on the plane, 18% of revenue is now international. 2002, it grew to 22%. 2003, it grew to 29%. Today, it's half of Google's business”
Gilbert: Most Google AdSense click revenue goes to website publishers
“Most of the revenue on a click in Google AdSense actually goes to the website publisher, and Google takes the smaller part as their SPF.”