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 46 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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
Google offered $100 million more than Salesforce to acquire Buddy Media
“We had, I don't, I've never told this story publicly, but we had a term sheet from Google There was a hundred million dollars more than Salesforce.”
Hoffman: Winning in AI requires more than training large models
“People say, well, it's all about the size of the model you're training. So it'll be open AI, Google, Microsoft, you know, and that's it. And you're like, well, no, actually, in fact, there's going to be a lot more than just the size of the model you're trainin…”
Hoffman: AI will benefit both tech giants and startups, not disrupt incumbents
“Like it isn't going to be the David and Goliath where David invents his new thing, AI, and it kind of resets the apple carts of the Goliaths that are appropriately bought into AI, which, you know, is intensely Microsoft and Google and, you know, some Amazon an…”
Gelsinger: Intel wants to manufacture chips for Nvidia, AMD, Google, and Amazon
“And frankly, I want to manufacture for NVIDIA, for AMD, for Google, for Amazon. We want to be that supply chain provider because the world needs a Western supply chain at scale.”
Suleyman: Google avoided launching LaMDA to protect its core search business
“We tried really hard to get that launched at the time, but there just wasn't the appetite for taking the kind of risk. It was pretty clear to a lot of people at Google That this was potentially going to unseat Google's existing search business. It's super hard…”
Suleyman: Google Bard Uses LaMDA's Search-Grounded Model Architecture
“And actually that's what you now see in Bard, you know, Google's new AI. It's pretty much exactly the same model.”
Schmidt: Cross-functional 'glue people' add little value and are unnecessary
“And glue people are very nice people who sit between functions and help either side, but don't themselves add a lot of value. And I thought, these are nice people, but we don't really need them. We can have these groups talking directly.”
Hoffman: Silicon Valley startup networks can take root anywhere with pay-it-forward founders
“Every successful founding team at Google, Facebook, wherever, spawns its own little network, and there's nothing magical about the networks in Silicon Valley. They can take root just about anywhere that you have a few successful entrepreneurs willing to pay it…”
Mayer bet she could train new grads faster than hiring senior PMs
“I want to bet that I can hire new people right out of school and train them to be great product managers at Google faster than you can hire the people you prefer who are more experienced and senior.”
Kern Schireson argues Google search captures demand rather than actually creating it.
“A lot of people put a lot of money into Google search for a long time, believing that's how they were acquiring customers. But the question that they were typing into the search box in the first place got created somewhere else.”
Schmidt feared AdWords auction would bankrupt Google, imposing Friday cash limits
“I was absolutely convinced that this would bankrupt the company. And I was so convinced that I ordered a cash restriction period Where the only thing that you could do was spend money on Friday mornings at 10. You had to come to my office and you had to convin…”
Schmidt: Google 20% time served as a check on engineering managers' power
“What it really served as Was a check and balance on the power of the engineering management over the subject. So if an employee is under pressure, the manager says, you've got to work harder. You've got to give me everything you have. That employee can legitim…”
Hoffman: Insubordination is the secret ingredient to Google's success
“I would argue that a dash of insubordination is the secret ingredient to Google's success.”
Wilson: AI search disruption forces brands toward fragmented social content distribution
“With AI being having a huge disruptive effect in, in search, we're really trying to make sure that we are
Playing and meeting audiences where they're at, publishing a lot of authoritative, educational, and entertaining content, whether it's distributed through…”
Allison Ellsworth: Poppi never ran a Google ad in first four years
“We never ever have ran a Google ad. And our number one KPI was brand awareness. For the first four years of business was brand awareness.”
Eidelman: Google search eroded the veterinarian's exclusive influence with pet owners
“The veterinarian used to always be the most trusted resource if you're a pet owner. And this was around the time where we're starting to now Google everything. Right. And in parallel, the veterinarian sort of losing that sway and that role of influence.”
Kagan: Marketplace platforms exist because creators cannot market effectively themselves
“If Google was cheaper or Facebook was more efficient or people could do marketing themselves, like there wouldn't be AppSumo. There wouldn't be Airbnb if you could just promote your home yourself.”
Gavet: Google Ads built features based on Booking.com feedback
“That relationship was so important that there is a certain number of things that the Google ad team built. They built it based on On booking.com feedback.”
Kawasaki: Claiming no competitors exist is a foolish startup attitude
“Because I don't know about you, but I've met many entrepreneurs and they always say that, you know, No one else is doing what we're doing, and no one else is capable of doing what we're doing. And I'll tell you that my initial reaction to anyone who says that …”
Maher: Google and Amazon publicly withdrew before she became CEO
“Yeah, when I stepped in, we'd already heard from some of the larger partners, such as Amazon and Google, that they weren't going to be coming. They were public about that.”
Luan: Single piece of human feedback boosts LLM coding solve rates 20-30%
“In the process of solving a particular task, if a human gives the language model one piece of feedback, like you're writing code and you forgot to import the Python OS library, then the solve rate for these problems would jump up like 20, 30%.”
Schmidt: Persistence and curiosity are the top predictors of knowledge worker success
“Persistence is the single biggest predictor of future success, and so we would look for persistence. And the second thing was curiosity. What do you care about? The combination of persistence and curiosity is a very good predictor of employee success in a know…”
Schmidt: Google made the decision to acquire YouTube in about 10 days
“We made the decision to purchase YouTube in about 10 days, right? Incredibly historic decision because we were ready.”
Hoffman: Google product leaders can recruit unlimited engineers if they convince them
“For instance, product leaders can draw in as many engineers as they'd like on any given project, so long as they can convince engineers to join their team.”
Hoffman: Common spaces are as vital to Silicon Valley as big tech HQs
“I'd argue these common spaces are just as vital to Silicon Valley as the headquarters of Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn.”
Hoffman: Mayer assigned 22-year-old first APM hire Brian Rakowski to lead Gmail
“Marissa found her first APM hire, twenty-two-year-old Brian Rakowski, fresh out of college. What project did Marissa choose to ease him in on? She gave him the whole of Gmail.”
Hoffman: Google's APM program sits at root of its success
“You may not have heard of the Associate Product Manager program, but it's one of Google's crown jewels alongside Search and Gmail, and I would argue that it sits at the root of Google's success.”
Mayer: Internal PM rotations offer multi-company breadth without switching employers
“Google's a really unique place because you can try three or four different formats of product management in one place. You can do nascent products, you can do mature products, you can do, you know, mobile, right? There were all these different types of product…”
Mayer: In 1999, Google struggled to recruit against more promising startups
“We actually had the job description for four months, and we failed to find anyone. Interviewed a bunch of people, but, you know, frankly, at that point, like, everyone else's startup was more promising than Google. Like, it was very hard to extract people from…”
Sandberg told Brown-Philpot to lead Google's Black employee network herself
“And she said, no, because I'm not Black, and you are the person that needs to do it. And she says, Stacy, at one point, you have to realize that you're the person that we've been waiting for to make these things happen.”
Hoffman: AdWords revenue provided capital funding nearly all Google innovations
“In fact, it became the lifeblood, the capital that funds nearly all of Google's innovations. In essence, Cheryl and her team were building the infrastructure for global online advertising.”
Sandberg: Leaders must make it safe for teams to call out managerial mistakes
“If they didn't tell me that was on me, and I realized I have to make it safe for y'all to speak up when I'm messing up.”
Salguero: CustomMade raised from Google and First Round in 2011
“So in 2011, we went out and we raised money from Google and first round capital and a few other top shelf VCs and they bought into the marketplace concept.”
Schmidt: Shared CEO office with Google engineer until IPO
“So with the engineering story is that we stayed, we actually liked each other so much that he stayed as my office mate until we were a public company where I couldn't violate the various SEC laws.”
Bret Taylor: AI hallucinations violate 30 years of deterministic computing expectations
“Because we have been trained for the past 30 years to think of Computers as these extremely powerful rules engines. A correctly running computer was entirely deterministic, right? A correctly running computer could look up facts. When you search something in G…”
Google engagement plummeted when displaying over ten search results per page
“So we looked at, like, first page search results. Requested per user, and basically it fell off dramatically between 10 and 20. 25 was even worse. 30 was worst of all. The results were really dramatic.”
Users strongly prioritize speed and latency over seeing more search results
“Latency and time matters a lot more to people than they can usually articulate. Part of it was that people just didn't want to wait that extra split second, and one of the big advantages of Google is it just was that fast, but waiting longer for more results w…”
Google awarded Charity: Water $5M to develop remote water sensors
“But finally, I got a meeting to pitch this idea to Google, and they awarded us a five million dollar cash grant to try to go build a water sensor for the developing world.”
Schmidt: Many Google AI, search, and maps initiatives came from 20% time
“Many, many initiatives in the company have come out of 20% time ideas. Much of the mapping work, many of the search ideas, many of the advertising Many of now the AI work have come from people working and practicing in new areas.”
Hoffman: Google's Amit Singhal built tool predicting revenue down to the second
“Amit eventually built a tool that accurately predicts how much revenue the company had at any given time down to the second.”
Mayer: Larry Page identified early Google product managers before role existed
“He was like, all these companies, they kind of look like we do, except they all have this thing called product management, which we don't really have. But what we do have is we have Salar, Susan, and Marissa. Who all tend to do things kind of all across the co…”
Hoffman: Around 500 APMs have graduated from Google's program
“In the program's first year, 2002, Marissa hired eight APMs. By 2008, she was hiring 20 a year. To date, around 500 APMs have gone through the program.”
Mayer: Effective job rotations require a clear "Mad Libs" learning rationale
“I would basically say a rotation is anything that can suffice the Mad Lib. I used to do X, and now I'm going to do Y, and by making this change, I'm going to learn Z, right?”
Google India manually approved all ads before machine learning took over
“The India team used to approve all the ads that showed up on Google. And there's literally a person that had to go yes, no, yes, no, and finally we were teaching the machine to do yes, no, yes, no.”