THE VALUES OF ITS FOUNDERS PROPEL GOOGLE TO THE TOP

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Itstarted with a misspelling. According to David Vise, in his book The Google Story, the company's founders had been brainstorming about possible names for days and were out of ideas. Then one sketched the word Googleplex on the whiteboard.

A mathematical term meaning 1 followed by 101 zeroes, it caught the deep technological intent of the company. Shortened to Google, it also struck them as playful and in keeping with the new (at the time) spirit of the internet, no doubt by analogy to Yahoo - a result of the double \"o\" - and the seemingly senseless nature of the word hiding an arcane meaning. It was only the next day that someone passing the whiteboard pointed out that it should have been spelt Googol.

That name, conjured up less than a decade ago, has now become the world's most powerful brand.
Like the company it represents, its sudden rise demonstrates the power of the internet to change old corporate certainties, though at the same time the very newness of the medium leaves a question over its longevity.

If brands can rise so quickly in this new world, what new methods are needed to sustain them, and might they fade again nearly as fast?

Google's entry into everyday language came about remarkably quickly, and required none of the heavy lifting of advertising and promotion on which most consumer products rely.

\"Internet companies in particular are judged by their products,\" says David Lawee, Google's head of marketing. With a demonstrably better search engine, word of mouth (and e-mail) carried the product quickly to millions of users in the \"viral\" way made possible by the internet.

The rise of the brand was not all unaided. Behind the scenes, some heavyweight partnerships were being forged to further its reach. An association with AOL, at the time the biggest power on the internet, ensured the name, and its bright colours, would be placed in front of a massive online audience.

Google does not eschew traditional forms of advertising, though it prefers to act with partners. When first entering a country, it takes a more \"aggressive\" stance on promoting its brand, for instance, its joint advertising with KDDI, the Japanese mobile operator, says Mr Lawee. Also, he does not rule out using television or other mass advertising as the search market matures.

That points to the biggest question of the coming years: can Google's brand maintain its enviable edge over other internet companies, or is it destined to lose its distinctiveness?

\"If they have something to be concerned about, it's the consumer backlash that felled Microsoft,\" says Eliot Phillips, head of the interactive practice at brand management consultancy Lippincott Mercer. With its dominance of the core search market, and its drive into other related businesses, \"it is where Microsoft was 15 years ago, and IBM 30 years ago,\" he says.

Much depends on how successful Google is at sustaining the values and product differentiation that first brought it widespread attention. Mr Lawee points to one quality above all: \"The core attributes are around innovation.\"

Underlying Google's intense engineering-driven culture, he says, is \"aspiration with a healthy degree of humility\" - though that high level of ambition has also laid the company open to charges of arrogance in some quarters.

Linked to that is the idealism, even naiveté, summed up in the company's motto, \"Do no evil.\" As it is only nine years old, its brand is still based on the ambitions of its founders. \"It's about who we are as a group of people,\" says Mr Lawee.

Combined, these qualities have produced a culture that is focused on creating better services, says the Google executive: \"There's a fanatical attention to the user experience.\"

Yet if Google's brand has benefited from the high-minded values and incessant ambition, it risks being tarnished by any perceived failure to live up these same things. Its decision last year to censor the local version of its search engine in China was the clearest example so far of this danger.

\"We have to live up to the incredibly high aspirations we have set for ourselves,\" says Mr Lawee. Of the China decision, he says: \"There's vigorous debate about what the right thing to do is. In the end, just like an individual, you have to interpret it for yourself.\"

Alongside the risk of not living up to its own values is the danger that the distinctive edge that made Google's services noticeably better, and its brand stand out, will fade. \"The technology breakthrough they came to market with has been commoditised,\" says Mr Phillips.

By the reckoning of most experts, competitors such as Yahoo and Microsoft have narrowed the gap with improvements in their own search algorithms and advertising networks.

That, combined with the inevitable loss of novelty that comes as companies grow older and bigger, could lessen the impact of the brand.

\"I don't believe the 'buzz' is there as these companies get bigger,\" says Mr Phillips. \"There's a little bit of an Apple quality to them. It will be hard to maintain that when they get really big.\"

That danger, though, is still for the future. For now, as this year's survey of top corporate brands shows, Google's unique way of doing business has put it on top of the world.



一切始自一个拼写错误。大卫•维塞(David Vise)在其所著的《撬动地球的Google》(The Google Story)一书中称，谷歌(Google)的创始人们曾花费数天，群策群力为公司起名，但始终没想出来。这时候，有人在白色书写板上写下了一个词Googleplex。

这是一个数学术语，意思是1后面跟着101个“0”，它切合了该公司远大的科技意图。将其缩写为“Google”，是因为他们觉得好玩，同时这也迎合（当时的）互联网精神，无疑灵感来自雅虎(Yahoo)——两个“o”的效果——这个看似毫无意义的词汇隐含着神秘的含义。第二天，有人经过白板时才指出，这个词的正确拼写应该是Googol。

而这个不到10年前想出的名字，如今已成为全球最强大的品牌。
如同这个名字所代表的公司那样，它的突然崛起显示出互联网改变旧式企业理念的强大力量。不过同时，这种媒介的新奇，也让人们质疑它能否长期存在下去。

如果在这个新世界里，品牌可以如此迅速地崛起，需要什么新方法能让它们得以保持下去？它们会以几乎同样的速度衰落吗？

谷歌异常迅速地进入了人们的日常语言，根本不需要多数消费品所依赖的大规模广告和促销手段。

谷歌营销主管大卫•拉韦(David Lawee)表示：“人们在评判互联网公司时，尤其以其产品为标准。”凭借明显更为优秀的搜索引擎，口碑（和电子邮件）将这一产品以“病毒”的速度迅速传达给数百万用户。互联网使这种速度成为了可能。

该品牌的崛起并非完全凭借自身。在幕后，谷歌建立了一些重量级合作企业，以扩大其影响力。谷歌与当时最强大的互联网企业美国在线(AOL)的合作，确保这一品牌及其明亮的色彩展现在广大网民眼前。

尽管谷歌更乐意通过合作方式，但它没有舍弃传统的广告形式。拉韦表示，在首次进入一个国家时，谷歌会采取更为“激进”的姿态，推广其品牌，例如，与日本手机运营商KDDI的广告合作。随着搜索引擎市场逐渐成熟，他也不排除利用电视或其它大众广告的可能性。

这指出了未来几年谷歌所面临的最大问题：谷歌的品牌能够保持相对于其它互联网公司令人艳羡的优势吗？抑或，它必定会丧失其独特性？

品牌管理咨询公司Lippincott Mercer互动业务主管埃利奥特•菲利普斯(Eliot Phillips)表示：“如果他们有什么需要担心的事情的话，那么就是击倒微软(Microsoft)的消费者抵触情绪。”他表示，凭借谷歌在核心搜索引擎市场的主宰地位及其进军其它相关业务的努力，“它目前的地位相当于15年前的微软，和30年前的IBM。”

这很大程度上取决于谷歌在保持价值观和产品差异化方面能取得多大进展，这些东西令谷歌获得了最初的广泛关注。拉韦提到了谷歌一个最重要的特点：“核心属性围绕着创新。”

他表示，支撑谷歌强大的工程驱动型文化的是“适度谦虚的抱负”，尽管谷歌远大的理想，也让该公司被某些人指责为傲慢。

与此相关的是理想主义，甚至天真，这都体现在该公司的座右铭上：“永不作恶”(Do no evil)。由于Google品牌的历史只有9年，它仍基于其创始人的理想。拉韦表示：“这是有关我们这个群体是什么人的问题。”

这位谷歌高管表示，上述品质合力造就了一种文化，关注于如何推出更好的服务，“我们狂热地关注用户体验。”

然而，如果谷歌的品牌得益于高尚的价值观和永不止步的雄心，那它可能会因为在这些方面的任何失误而黯然失色。去年，谷歌决定对其中国版搜索引擎进行审查，这是迄今为止有关这种风险最明显的例证。

拉韦表示：“我们必须实现为自己设定的远大理想。”他在谈到中国事件时表示：“人们对于如何正确处理这件事展开了激烈辩论。最后，就像个人一样，你必须为自己进行解释。”

除了不能实现自身价值观的风险之外，谷歌面临的另一个危险在于，令谷歌服务明显优于对手并令其品牌脱颖而出的独特优势，将会逐渐丧失。菲利普斯表示：“它们所带来的科技突破，已经商品化了。”

多数专家估计，雅虎和微软等竞争对手通过完善自己的搜索方法和广告网络，已缩小了与谷歌之间的差距。

加之随着企业的成熟和壮大，会不可避免地丧失新颖性，这可能会削弱该品牌的影响力。

“我认为，随着企业的壮大，它们的风光将会不再，” 菲利普斯表示，“它们有一点苹果(Apple)的性质。如果他们的规模确实大到一定程度，将很难保持这些特色。”

不过，这种危险并非就在眼前。从目前情况看，正如今年顶级企业品牌调查所显示的那样，谷歌经营业务的独特方式，已令其位居全球首位。