2005 Founders’s Letters to Alphabet Shareholders
Refer To：《2005 Founders' Letter》。
Sitting here today, I cannot believe that a year has passed since Sergey last wrote to you. Our pace of change and growth has been remarkable. All of us at Google feel fortunate to be part of a phenomenon that continues to rapidly expand throughout the world. We work hard to use this amazing expansion and attention to do good and expand our business as best we can.
坐在这里，我无法相信距离谢尔盖上次写信给你们已过去整整一年。我们成长与变化的速度令人惊叹。谷歌所有人都为能够参与这个持续迅速扩张到全球的现象感到幸运。我们努力利用这种非凡的扩展和关注做好事，并尽可能地扩展我们的业务。
We remain an unconventional company. We are dedicated to serving our users with the best possible experience. And launching products early - involving users with “Labs” or “beta” versions - keeps us efficient at innovating.
我们仍是一家不寻常的公司。我们致力于为用户提供最佳的体验。通过尽早推出产品——使用“实验室”或“beta”版本让用户参与其中——使我们保持高效创新。
We manage Google with a long-term focus. We’re convinced that this is the best way to run our business. We’ve been consistent in this approach.
我们以长期视野管理谷歌。我们坚信这是经营企业的最佳方式，并一直坚持这样的做法。
We devote extraordinary resources to finding the smartest, most creative people we can and offering them the tools they need to change the world. Googlers know they are expected to invest time and energy on risky projects that create new opportunities to serve users and build new markets. Our mission remains central to our culture. We believe more than ever that by organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful, we can make the world a better place.
我们投入了非凡的资源，寻找最聪明、最具创造力的人才，并为他们提供改变世界所需的工具。谷歌员工清楚，我们期待他们花费时间和精力去开展有风险的项目，以创造服务用户和开拓市场的新机遇。我们的使命依然是文化的核心。我们比以往更相信，通过整合全球的信息，并使之普遍可用且有用，我们可以让世界变得更加美好。
As Google grows, we touch more parts of society. This visibility means we have a responsibility to be transparent about what we do, to work in partnership with existing industries, and to explain how our moral compass - “Don’t be evil” - guides us in making hard choices.
随着谷歌的发展，我们触及了社会更多的层面。这种可见性意味着我们有责任对我们的所作所为保持透明，与现有产业合作，并解释我们的道德准则“不要作恶”如何在我们做出艰难决策时指引我们。
In this letter, I’ll give you my perspective on our progress, the issues we face, and where we’re headed.
在这封信中，我会告诉你们我对我们进展、面临的问题，以及未来发展方向的看法。
Products
产品
Search
搜索
Web search and advertising are our main products, and we continue to target 70 percent of our resources in these areas. We work very hard on web search. In Q3 of 2005 we expanded our coverage to reach about three times as much information as any other search engine, or more than 1,000 times our original coverage. What does that mean to you? You can find a lot more information on Google than anywhere else. That kind of expansion takes hard engineering work, as well as lots of computers.
网络搜索和广告是我们的主要产品，我们持续投入70%的资源在这些领域。我们在网络搜索方面付出了巨大的努力。2005年第三季度，我们扩展了索引覆盖，所能提供的信息量约是其他搜索引擎的三倍，或我们原始规模的一千倍以上。这意味着什么？在谷歌上，你可以找到比任何其他地方更多的信息。这样的扩展需要大量的工程工作和众多计算机支持。
We’ve also added new ways for users to add content that other users can find. Google Sitemaps makes it easier for webmasters to ensure that Google searches find the content they create, and Google Base aims to get the world’s structured information organized and searchable through Google search. Now anyone can submit information on things with lots of attributes, such as cars, which you can search for by price, location, model, and so on. The same goes for finding recipes by their main ingredient, events by date and location, and countless other types of content. If you have any kind of information, our goal is to get it organized in Base and make it seamlessly available to all Google users.
我们还增加了新方式让用户贡献其他用户可搜索的内容。Google Sitemaps帮助网站管理员确保谷歌搜索能够发现他们创建的内容，而Google Base则旨在通过谷歌搜索整理和检索全球的结构化信息。现在任何人都可以提交带有多个属性的信息，例如汽车，用户可以按照价格、位置、型号等进行搜索。同样，用户也可以按照主料搜索食谱，或按日期和地点查找活动，还有无数其他类型的内容。如果你拥有任何信息，我们的目标就是在Base中整理这些信息，并使其无缝提供给所有谷歌用户。
Our search team also works very hard on relevancy - getting you exactly what you want, even when you aren’t sure what you need. For example, when Google believes you really want images, it returns them, even if you didn’t ask (try a query on sunsets).
我们的搜索团队也非常努力地提高搜索的相关性——即使你不完全确定需要什么，谷歌也能准确提供你想要的内容。例如，当谷歌认为你真正想要的是图片时，即使你没有明确请求，它也会返回图片（试一下搜索“日落”）。
An important aspect of relevancy is personalization. Last year, we launched personalized search, which gathers information about your interests in order to customize your search results. If you’d like personalized search results, which offer improved relevancy, all you have to do is sign in to your Google Account. Look for the link on the upper right side of the main Google homepage. You can also now personalize Google News and the Google homepage.
相关性的一个重要方面是个性化。去年，我们推出了个性化搜索，根据你的兴趣收集信息，从而定制你的搜索结果。如果你想要提供更相关的个性化搜索结果，只需登录你的谷歌账户即可。链接就在谷歌首页的右上角。你现在还可以个性化谷歌新闻和谷歌主页。
Currently we have at least 20 significant projects going on in web search, but I won’t be able to cover even a small fraction of them here. Search will remain a huge focus for us until Google can always tell exactly what you want and understands everything - a task that will certainly take our engineers a while. In fact, we’re excited that our list of things to do in core search seems to get longer as we learn more.
目前我们在网络搜索领域至少有20个重要项目进行中，但我无法在此一一介绍。搜索仍将是我们的重要关注点，直到谷歌能够精确理解你的意图以及所有的信息——这项任务显然还需要工程师们继续努力。事实上，我们很高兴，随着我们学到更多，我们的搜索核心任务列表似乎变得越来越长。
Advertising
广告
Advertising is our other huge area of focus. Every year we’re seeing how businesses increase their advertising spending with Google because of the greater and more measurable return on their investment. This fundamental shift in the advertising industry has a powerful influence on our growth.
广告是我们另一个重要的关注领域。每年我们都看到企业在谷歌上的广告投入不断增加，因为这些投入带来了更高、更可衡量的投资回报。广告行业这种根本性的转变对我们的增长产生了强大的推动力。
One area of focus for us is serving very large companies and very small companies with advertising solutions. Right now our sweet spot is more in the middle.
我们重点关注的一个领域是为非常大的公司和非常小的公司提供广告解决方案。目前，我们的最佳市场定位处于中间。
We have always been bullish on opportunities to improve our products and innovate in our ads solutions. In 2005 we rolled out several innovations:
我们一直看好改进产品和广告解决方案的创新机会。2005年，我们推出了若干项创新：
Site targeting - A new product that enables brand advertisers to bid for specific sites by impression, with a variety of text and image ad formats.
网站定位投放——一种新产品，让品牌广告商能够针对特定网站按展示次数出价，提供多种文本和图片广告格式。
On-site advertiser signup - A program that helps sites easily add advertisers.
网站广告客户注册——一种帮助网站方便引入广告客户的项目。
Improved AdWords API - A computer-to-computer interface into the ads system that helps drive efficiency and scale for large customers.
改进的AdWords API——广告系统的计算机对计算机接口，帮助大客户提升效率和扩大规模。
Link units - A set of topical advertising links.
链接单元——一组主题广告链接。
Referrals - A new program that enables publishers to make money by introducing products such as AdSense or Firefox to their users.
推荐计划——一个新项目，使内容发布商能通过向用户推荐AdSense或Firefox等产品来赚钱。
Quality-based bidding - A feature that helps advertisers keep keywords running while aligning incentives for high-quality ads.
基于质量的竞价——一项帮助广告客户保持关键词持续运行，同时激励高质量广告的功能。
Over the last year, we substantially improved quality and monetization per page of our advertising. Not bad - but we think there’s room for more improvement. Just try typing 10 commercial queries into Google and see if the ads are perfect. In my experience, we still have a ways to go - just like with search.
过去一年，我们大幅提升了广告的质量和每页收入。不差——但我们认为仍有很大的改进空间。试着在谷歌上搜索10个商业关键词，看看广告是否完美。就我的经验来看，我们还有很长的路要走——就像搜索一样。
Google Meets the Real World
谷歌走进现实世界
A lot of you tell me you want Google to find your keys. We’re not quite ready to announce that, but we are now able to find local businesses, and many other things in the real world, with our strong products, Google Local, Google Maps, Google Earth, and local advertising.
很多人告诉我希望谷歌能找到他们的钥匙。虽然我们还做不到这一点，但我们已能通过Google Local、Google Maps、Google Earth及本地广告等强大产品，找到本地商家和现实世界中许多其他东西。
We added satellite photos to Maps last year, and we have tremendous and improving coverage of the whole globe, not to mention the Moon and Mars. We can even serve really nice maps, directions, and satellite photos to your cell phone using Google Local for Mobile. This product has saved me many times. The value of these products is amazing - we were able to integrate “before” and “after” aerial pictures of Hurricane Katrina into Google Earth, which the Coast Guard used to help find and rescue people.
去年我们在地图中增加了卫星图片，现在我们对全球的覆盖范围已非常广泛并不断改进，甚至包括月球和火星。我们还能通过Google Local移动版在你的手机上提供地图、导航和卫星图片，这项产品多次帮到了我。这些产品的价值令人惊叹——我们能将飓风卡特里娜前后的航拍图片整合进Google Earth中，帮助海岸警卫队搜救灾民。
Mobile
移动
Speaking of mobile, we’ve also had a bunch of activity in this area. We signed a huge deal with T-Mobile for placement of Google on their phones. We’ve also released many products for mobile, including web search, Blogger, Gmail, and various SMS services.
说到移动领域，我们也有大量的活动。我们与T-Mobile签署了一项重大协议，在他们的手机上预装谷歌服务。我们还发布了多款移动端产品，包括网络搜索、Blogger、Gmail以及多种短信服务。
Communications
通信服务
Gmail has made tremendous progress in this area. The team has continually made a ton of enhancements, and recently integrated instant messaging right into your web browser. Our competitors haven’t been able to match Gmail’s clean interface and huge power - we currently offer about 2.7GB of searchable storage for free. We also made it easier to sign up for Gmail by using your mobile phone, while making it hard for spammers to get accounts.
Gmail在这一领域取得了巨大进步。团队持续进行了大量的改进，最近还直接在网页浏览器中集成了即时通讯功能。竞争对手一直未能赶上Gmail干净的界面和强大功能——目前我们免费提供约2.7GB的可搜索存储空间。我们也简化了通过手机注册Gmail账户的流程，同时增加了垃圾邮件发送者获得账号的难度。
Last year we also released Google Talk, which you can use to instant message or make high-quality voice calls. Talk uses open standards, and we pledged to interoperate with other providers to enable users to talk to anyone on any network, just like you can email anyone, no matter which service you use.
去年，我们还推出了Google Talk，你可以用它进行即时通讯或高品质语音通话。Talk采用开放标准，我们承诺与其他提供商互操作，让用户可以和任何网络上的人交流，就像电子邮件一样，无论使用何种服务。
Other 2005 Products
2005年的其他产品
I’m amazed at the quality and diversity of the video available on Google Video, with more being added every day. You can buy first-run programs, such as “Survivor” from CBS, with high picture quality, and watch them on your computer anytime. Or you can submit your own videos and let anyone in the world watch them for free.
我对Google Video上视频的质量和多样性感到惊叹，并且每天都有新内容加入。你可以购买高画质的首播节目，比如CBS的《幸存者》，随时在电脑上观看。或者，你也可以上传自己的视频，让全世界任何人免费观看。
You can even embed a video from Google Video on one of your own web pages and let us do the work of actually serving it. To view some of my favorites, search for “russian climbing” for acrobatics on tall buildings, “bsb” for amazing lip synchers, or “airbus 7” to watch an Airbus being built in seven minutes.
你甚至可以把Google Video上的视频嵌入到你自己的网页中，由我们来完成实际的视频托管工作。如果你想看看我的一些最爱视频，可以搜索“russian climbing”，观看高楼上的杂技表演；搜索“bsb”，欣赏精彩的对口型表演；或者搜索“airbus 7”，看看空客飞机在7分钟内组装完成。
For companies, we released the bright blue Google Mini, which does a great job of finding all your corporate information. It’s easy to set up, and doesn’t break the bank at $1,995 with a year of support. You can also get special corporate versions of many of our software products.
针对企业，我们推出了亮蓝色的Google Mini，它能出色地帮助你搜索所有企业内部信息。安装简便，一年的服务支持价格为1,995美元，并不会造成太大的经济负担。你也可以获得许多软件产品的企业专用版本。
For your computer, we also launched a bunch of products. The easiest way to get them all is with our new Google Pack, which automatically installs essential software from Google and third parties in a simple, painless way. Pack currently includes Earth, Picasa photo management, Desktop, Toolbar, Firefox, Norton Antivirus, Ad-Aware, Adobe Reader, and a nice screensaver. Many of these products were released or updated in the last year, including Earth, Picasa, and Desktop, which now has a sidebar that shows mail, weather, photos, related information, and other cool stuff. These products have surpassed our expectations, and I highly recommend installing them using Pack - the simplest and fastest installation process you’ve ever tried.
我们也推出了许多面向个人电脑的产品。获取所有这些产品最简单的方法是通过我们的Google Pack，它能自动以简单、轻松的方式安装谷歌和第三方的必要软件。Google Pack目前包括地球（Earth）、Picasa图片管理、桌面搜索（Desktop）、工具栏（Toolbar）、Firefox、诺顿杀毒软件（Norton Antivirus）、Ad-Aware、Adobe Reader，以及一个漂亮的屏幕保护程序。其中许多产品去年都进行了发布或更新，例如Earth、Picasa和Desktop，现在Desktop还新增了一个侧边栏，可以显示邮件、天气、照片、相关信息及其他有趣内容。这些产品超出了我们的期望，我强烈推荐你使用Google Pack安装它们——这是你所体验过最简单、最快速的安装过程。
Continuous Innovation, Not Instant Perfection
持续创新，而非一蹴而就
I’m delighted that so many people expect every new product from Google to astonish them as soon as it’s released. We try hard to do brilliant things, but that isn’t really how we operate our business. We try a lot of innovative things, and many of them won’t be successful. At first it can be hard to tell the difference. Many products I thought were initially so-so have become huge successes - our ads system, for instance, took quite a while and many improvements before its achievements became clear.
我很高兴看到有这么多人期待谷歌的每一款新产品一经发布就能令他们惊艳。我们确实非常努力地创造出色的东西，但我们的业务其实并非如此运作。我们尝试许多创新的事物，但其中很多并不会成功。一开始很难区分哪些能成功。我最初认为一般般的许多产品最终却取得了巨大成功——例如我们的广告系统，经历了很长一段时间和许多改进后才显现出其价值。
风险投资的基因。
An important part of our development process is our willingness to experiment publicly. Our teams are more productive once they get real users and feedback. We have learned that the best way to make something great is to actually launch it to the public. That’s why we have the Google Labs and “beta” labels - these are our experiments.
我们开发流程中一个重要部分就是愿意公开进行实验。一旦我们的团队获得了真实用户和反馈，他们的工作效率就会提高。我们发现，让一件东西变得伟大的最好办法，就是实际推出它，让公众使用。这就是我们为什么有Google Labs和“测试版”标签的原因——这些都是我们的实验。
Deep Engineering Projects
深度工程项目
I mentioned earlier how we are striving to make Google really understand your query and all the information in the world. To do that, we will have to make Google smart, and that requires artificial intelligence. We are particular believers in large-scale AI that involves both a lot of computation and a lot of data. We’re looking to build the best center for this kind of work in the world.
我之前提到过，我们正在努力让谷歌真正理解你的搜索请求以及世界上所有的信息。要做到这一点，我们必须让谷歌变得更加智能，这需要人工智能的支持。我们尤其相信涉及大量计算和数据的大规模人工智能技术。我们的目标是打造全球最好的相关技术中心。
We have many deep infrastructure and systems projects in engineering, involving both hardware and software layers. Issues of machine allocation and sharing, data storage, access, and search and networking are all hot areas of work for us. I also believe that even our programming languages and development environments could be significantly improved. We believe our productivity can be significantly enhanced with the right investments in these areas.
我们在工程领域拥有许多深层次的基础设施和系统项目，涉及硬件和软件层面。机器分配与共享、数据存储与访问、搜索与网络都是我们的热门工作领域。我也相信，我们的编程语言和开发环境都还有很大的提升空间。我们相信，只要在这些方面做出适当的投资，我们的生产力就可以得到显著提升。
Acquisitions
收购
We have been busy buying companies opportunistically. In 2005 we purchased 15 different companies for $85 million. That number will increase to $130 million if they meet certain milestones. One of our more notable acquisitions was Urchin, a maker of web analytics that help websites understand where their visitors came from and what they are doing. We really want our customers to track conversions and the performance of their advertising, because when they do, they make more informed bids in our ads auction. So we made Urchin - renamed Google Analytics - free. There is a lot more demand for Analytics than we expected, and we’re working hard to meet it. That’s the kind of problem we like.
我们一直在抓住机会积极收购公司。2005年，我们以8500万美元收购了15家公司。如果这些公司达到特定的里程碑，该金额将提高到1.3亿美元。其中较引人注目的是Urchin公司，这是一家网络分析公司，帮助网站了解访客的来源和行为。我们非常希望客户能够追踪转化情况和广告效果，因为当客户做到这一点时，他们会在广告竞价中做出更明智的决策。因此，我们将Urchin（更名为Google Analytics）免费提供给用户。Analytics的需求远超我们的预期，我们正努力满足这种需求——这正是我们喜欢解决的问题。
Already this year we have purchased the company that makes SketchUp, a very cool intuitive 3D drawing system used by architects and casual users alike. We also purchased the company that makes Writely, a very exciting web-based collaborative word processor.
今年我们已收购了开发SketchUp的软件公司，这是一款极具吸引力且直观的3D绘图系统，适合建筑师和普通用户使用。此外，我们还收购了开发Writely的公司，这是一款令人振奋的基于网络的协作文字处理工具。
We also bought dMarc, an automated advertising system for the radio industry. The initial payment totaled $102 million, with possible additional contingent payments of up to $1.136 billion over the next three years. The very substantial contingent payments are based on product, net revenue, and advertising inventory milestones that we believe will add huge value to our business if they are met. The business was started and is headed by two experienced brothers, Chad and Ryan Steelberg, who also founded AdForce, an Internet advertising company that went public and was later acquired. We’re very excited about helping our advertisers easily purchase radio ads.
我们还收购了dMarc，一家面向广播行业的自动化广告公司。初始付款为1.02亿美元，根据未来三年的产品表现、净收入和广告库存等里程碑，还可能额外支付最高达11.36亿美元的费用。如果这些里程碑得以实现，将给我们的业务带来巨大价值。该公司由经验丰富的兄弟俩Chad和Ryan Steelberg创立并管理，他们曾创立了互联网广告公司AdForce，这家公司后来上市并被收购。我们非常兴奋能够帮助广告客户轻松购买广播广告。
Partnerships
合作伙伴
One of the great untold stories of Google is our ability and desire to be a strong partner to many companies. We take our partnerships very seriously. The seriousness with which we meet these commitments is surpassed only by our desire to be an even stronger and more supportive partner. Early on, we actually briefly shut down the main Google web search in order to serve traffic from Netscape, a new partner that had underestimated their demand for our search service.
谷歌一个不为人所熟知的伟大故事，是我们有能力也渴望成为众多公司的强大合作伙伴。我们非常认真地对待合作关系。履行这些承诺的严肃程度，仅次于我们想要成为更加强大、更有支持力的合作伙伴的渴望。在公司早期，我们甚至曾短暂关闭谷歌的主搜索服务，以满足新合作伙伴网景公司（Netscape）的流量需求，因为他们低估了对我们搜索服务的需求量。
We have signed a deal with Time Warner and AOL to renew our partnership, through which we provide search and advertising solutions for AOL, and also agreed to invest $1 billion for 5 percent of AOL. This deal includes many valuable aspects - for example, Google and AOL’s AIM instant messaging users should soon be able to communicate directly. We’re pleased that we’ve been able to build this relationship and hope our two companies will do more together.
我们已与时代华纳和AOL签署了协议，延续双方的合作关系，我们将继续为AOL提供搜索和广告解决方案，并同意投资10亿美元获得AOL 5%的股份。这项协议包含许多重要的内容——例如，谷歌和AOL的AIM即时通讯用户将很快能直接互相沟通。我们非常高兴能建立起这种合作关系，并希望双方公司未来能够进一步深入合作。
Ask.com has remained an important partner, with Google providing advertising solutions for them. We signed a significant partnership with Sun, which will provide an intriguing distribution channel for our products. We now have Google search boxes in a number of browsers through ongoing partnerships with Apple and Mozilla. And we even have a partnership with NASA involving scientific research and space, but in this case, unfortunately, “space” refers to the kind on the ground, and involves future expansion of our headquarters.
Ask.com一直是我们的重要合作伙伴，谷歌为其提供广告解决方案。我们与Sun签署了一项重要合作协议，这将为我们的产品提供一个有吸引力的分销渠道。通过与苹果和Mozilla持续合作，我们已在许多浏览器中内置了谷歌搜索框。我们甚至与NASA建立了合作关系，涉及科学研究和空间，但遗憾的是，这里的“空间”指的是地面空间，即未来我们总部的扩建项目。
We have a tremendous number of relationships with publishers of books, videos, or websites to provide advertisements and revenue, or distribution and access to customers interested in their products. To help enhance communication with our partners, we held a very successful conference, Zeitgeist 2005, which brought everyone together at our headquarters. Partnerships - strategic and tactical, technical and marketing - are a huge priority for our company, and we expect to develop and cultivate more of these relationships.
我们与图书、视频或网站出版商建立了大量合作关系，为他们提供广告和收入，或帮助他们接触对其产品感兴趣的客户。为了加强与合作伙伴之间的沟通，我们在总部成功举办了Zeitgeist 2005大会，让大家聚集在一起。战略性与战术性合作、技术合作与市场合作都是我们公司的重要优先事项，我们期待发展并培育更多这样的合作关系。
Google And Our Impact On The World
谷歌及我们对世界的影响
Last year Google was very much in the news for our involvement in a variety of important and controversial issues. My opinion is that this is unavoidable; our business touches an enormous number of people on matters they care about deeply. We feel a tremendous responsibility to make the right decisions on behalf of our company, our users, and the world.
去年谷歌频繁出现在新闻报道中，因为我们参与了诸多重要且富有争议的问题。在我看来，这是不可避免的；我们的业务涉及大量人群，他们十分关心这些问题。我们感到肩负着巨大的责任，必须代表公司、用户以及整个世界做出正确的决定。
Privacy
隐私
This topic is particularly important at a time when technologies that can impact privacy are changing rapidly and people’s expectations of privacy are shifting and vary widely. Our users always come first, and so while we strive to offer really useful, innovative products, we also know that there might be trade-offs between privacy and functionality. But great products manage to capture a perfect balance, and that’s what we’re striving for at Google.
在当下这一阶段，影响隐私的技术正快速变化，人们对隐私的期望也在发生显著转变，这使隐私成为了尤为重要的话题。用户始终是第一位的，因此尽管我们努力提供真正实用且富有创新性的产品，我们也清楚隐私与功能之间可能存在权衡。但优秀的产品能够达到完美的平衡，这正是谷歌努力实现的目标。
The good news is that the interests of our company and those of our users are well aligned. If anything bad happens to you with respect to privacy, we could lose your trust, and that would hurt our business. Recently we received a subpoena from the U.S. government that was a broad request for URLs and user queries. We resisted the request in court and ultimately were asked to return only a small number of random URLs and no user queries. We will continue to work hard to protect our users’ privacy, and think this ruling was a positive sign - a U.S. court siding with us in resisting overly broad requests for information.
好消息是，我们公司的利益与用户的利益高度一致。如果你的隐私受到损害，我们将失去你的信任，这也会伤害我们的业务。最近，我们收到美国政府发出的传票，广泛要求提供网址和用户搜索查询。我们在法庭上对此予以抵制，最终法院仅要求我们提交少量随机网址，而不必提供任何用户查询数据。我们将继续努力保护用户隐私，并认为这一裁决是一个积极的信号——美国法院在反对过于宽泛的信息索取请求方面站在了我们一边。
Book Search
图书搜索
We believe one of the greatest services we can provide to users around the world is to increase people’s access to human knowledge. There has been tremendous confusion over our book scanning efforts. Part of the problem has been that we have several products, some of which are only partially launched. The product available in force is the Google Book Search Partner Program. A great variety of publishers have signed contracts legally authorizing us to show full pages of their books online in response to searches. These are most of the books you’ll see now on Google. This service is really useful, and many users follow the links to buy the books, which is good for the publishers, of course.
我们相信，为全球用户提供的最伟大服务之一，就是增加人们获取人类知识的机会。然而，我们的图书扫描计划曾引起了极大的误解。部分原因在于我们有多个相关产品，其中一些仅部分推出。目前完全上线的是谷歌图书搜索合作伙伴计划。许多出版商签署了合法授权合同，允许我们在搜索时在线展示书籍的完整页面。这些书籍就是你目前在谷歌上能看到的大部分内容。这项服务非常实用，许多用户通过链接购买图书，这对出版商当然也是好事。
We also announced a groundbreaking effort to digitize several humongous university libraries. Many people falsely assume we offer the full text of library books online, like the ones you see now on books.google.com. Actually, we don’t. We don’t have permission to do all of that, and we respect copyright, of course. If a library book is in copyright, then users just get basic bibliographic information (such as the book’s title and the author’s name), usually quotations from the book, and information about which library it’s in or where it can be bought. Even just this “virtual card catalog” view will still be an amazing tool for serious research because, unlike a traditional card catalog, you’ll be able to search the full text of a book. But you won’t be able to look at full pages unless legal agreements are in place or the book is out of copyright. If publishers or authors don’t want to have their books digitized, they just have to say so, and we will exclude them. We’ll even work hard with other providers to make this process easy.
我们还宣布了一项突破性的举措，将一些规模庞大的大学图书馆藏书数字化。许多人误以为我们在线提供这些图书馆书籍的完整文本，就像你现在在books.google.com看到的一样。事实上，我们并没有这样做。我们没有获得全部内容的许可，我们当然也尊重版权。如果一本图书馆藏书仍在版权保护期内，用户只能看到基本的书目信息（如书名和作者），通常还有书中的片段，以及在哪家图书馆能找到这本书或购买渠道的信息。即便只是这种“虚拟图书目录”视图，也能为严肃的研究工作带来巨大便利，因为与传统目录不同，你能搜索书籍全文内容。但除非我们签订了法律协议或者该书版权已经到期，否则你无法查看完整页面。如果出版商或作者不希望自己的书籍被数字化，他们只需告知我们，我们就会将之排除在外。我们甚至会积极与其他提供商合作，让这一流程变得更简单。
For some publishers and authors, the transition to the online world is a huge change, and one they understandably view with some trepidation. We believe this transition will help the economics of publishers and authors because the information contained in books will be more useful and accessible to the world. Books that were previously hard to access could be sold as a traditional book or as an online book, or even monetized through advertising - at the copyright holder’s choice. We will continue to talk and work with our partners in the publishing world to make Google Book Search a big win for all concerned.
对某些出版商和作者来说，向网络世界的转型是一项巨大的变革，他们的谨慎心情是可以理解的。我们相信这种转型将改善出版商和作者的经济效益，因为书籍中的信息将更加有用并更易于被全球用户获取。以往难以获取的图书，可以作为传统图书销售，也可以作为在线图书提供，甚至可通过广告盈利——具体由版权持有者决定。我们会继续与出版界的合作伙伴沟通合作，让谷歌图书搜索实现各方共赢。
China
中国
Since our inception, Google.com has been available and popular in China. We had avoided the difficult issue of Chinese governmental restrictions on content by keeping our operations outside the country. Our competitors, including large, well-known Internet companies, chose to enter the country and comply with restrictions.
自谷歌创立以来，Google.com一直在中国可用并广受欢迎。我们此前通过将业务置于境外，避免了中国政府对内容限制的复杂问题。而我们的竞争对手，包括一些知名的大型互联网公司，则选择进入中国并遵守了相关限制。
Unfortunately, access for Chinese users to the Google service outside of China was slow and unreliable, and some content was restricted by complex filtering within each Chinese ISP. Ironically, we were unable to get much public or governmental attention paid to the issue. Although we dislike altering our search results in any way, we ultimately decided that staying out of China simply meant diminishing service and influence there.
不幸的是，中国用户访问境外的谷歌服务时速度缓慢且不稳定，一些内容也会被中国各互联网服务提供商的复杂过滤机制屏蔽。讽刺的是，我们并未能引起公众或政府对此问题的关注。尽管我们并不愿意以任何方式更改搜索结果，但我们最终认为，完全不进入中国市场只会降低我们在当地的服务质量与影响力。
Building a real operation in China should increase our influence on market practices, and certainly will enhance our service to the Chinese people. We will continue to offer our international, and thus unfiltered, google.com. But we also built safeguards into our new google.cn offering. While we now offer search inside China, we will continue to host other, more privacy-sensitive services, such as Blogger or Gmail, from outside the country. Also, as we pioneered in other countries, whenever we are forced to restrict information by local law, regulation, or policy, we’ll disclose that fact with a message to users to make sure they understand that something is missing. To my knowledge, that disclosure is a first for China. Finally, we continue to offer the main google.com site, and we have also said we would terminate our google.cn offering if local conditions ultimately prove unacceptable for the quality of service we wish to provide.
在中国建立真正的业务将提升我们在市场实践中的影响力，并显著改善我们对中国用户的服务。我们将继续提供国际版、未经过滤的google.com。但同时，我们也在新的google.cn服务中加入了保护措施。尽管我们现在在中国境内提供搜索服务，但我们仍将继续从境外提供其他更为隐私敏感的服务，比如Blogger或Gmail。此外，正如我们在其他国家所开创的一样，当我们因当地法律、法规或政策不得不限制某些信息时，我们将向用户明确说明这一情况，以确保用户理解有些内容被屏蔽了。据我所知，这种透明度的做法在中国尚属首次。最后，我们依然继续提供主站google.com，并已明确表示，如果当地情况最终证明无法提供我们期望的高质量服务，我们会终止google.cn服务。
In the end, we believe that improving access to Google through google.cn, even with some restrictions that we would not prefer, benefits Chinese users. At the same time, we have begun to work with governments and other Internet companies to develop global standards of conduct for countries that restrict access to content. We remain hopeful that these efforts will ultimately advance online users’ interests worldwide.
最终，我们相信通过google.cn改善中国用户对谷歌的访问，尽管存在一些我们并不情愿的限制，仍然对中国用户是有益的。同时，我们已开始与各国政府和其他互联网公司合作，制定适用于内容受限国家的全球行为标准。我们依然期待这些努力最终将推动全球互联网用户利益的进步。
Net Neutrality
网络中立性
The Internet has been an amazing force in the world. It was designed by university scientists to move information around as efficiently as possible, with no thought of commercial gain. The openness that resulted has changed the world. For example, communication across country borders has flourished (no need for dialing long country codes and paying a lot for telephone service).
互联网是世界上惊人的力量。它最初由大学科学家设计，旨在尽可能高效地传递信息，并未考虑商业利益。这种由此产生的开放性改变了世界。例如，跨国交流迅速发展（无需拨打漫长的国家区号或支付昂贵的电话费）。
Now, however, there is a movement among companies that carry Internet traffic to shatter those freedoms and discriminate between the bits they carry. In the future, for example, they might want to exercise control over which VOIP phone provider you use. Perhaps they’ll prevent Google from serving you video, so they can have an advantage for their own service - or for anyone who pays them more.
然而，现在一些传输互联网流量的公司正在试图破坏这种自由，并对他们所传输的数据进行区别对待。比如将来，他们可能想控制你所使用的网络电话服务供应商（VOIP）。他们可能会阻止谷歌向你提供视频服务，以使自己的服务更具优势，或只向支付更多费用的公司提供服务。
Google will likely weather whatever happens with this issue because we have a lot of resources. But I do think there is a huge risk that consumers will not be able to access everything freely on the Internet, and that future innovation will be harmed if these changes are adopted. We are working hard to protect the open Internet and keep it from being balkanized solely for the financial benefit of a few companies that are already collecting very substantial revenue from consumers.
无论此事如何发展，谷歌很可能能够安然度过，因为我们拥有充足的资源。但我认为，如果这种情况得以实现，消费者将面临无法自由访问互联网内容的巨大风险，并且未来的创新也将受到阻碍。我们正在积极努力保护互联网的开放性，防止互联网仅为了少数几家已经从消费者手中获得大量收入的公司的经济利益而被割裂。
Google自己已成为垄断信息的主体。
Workforce
员工队伍
Huge Growth and We’re Still Behind
快速增长，但仍需追赶
From the beginning, we’ve tried to grow headcount fast enough to meet opportunities. We nearly doubled our headcount in 2005, and in fact have grown at roughly that rate on a percentage basis throughout our history. Surprisingly, in many areas we still feel like a startup - many employees stretched thin and trying to keep up. I also believe that we have plenty of good business opportunities for all these new people.
从一开始，我们就努力快速增加人员，以满足出现的各种机会。2005年，我们的员工人数几乎翻了一倍，事实上，自公司创立以来，我们一直保持着大致相同的增长速度。令人意外的是，在许多领域，我们仍然感觉像一家初创公司——许多员工的工作依旧很吃紧，努力追赶进度。我也相信，这些新增员工能够获得很多不错的业务机会。
Google is perceived as a large company, but we are still a medium-size one in headcount, with only 7,000 employees to deal with all the global responsibilities and opportunities of a large multinational corporation. Wal-Mart, for example, has 1.7 million employees (we probably have more computers, though). We have substantially fewer employees than our main competitors. We are not even quite at startup stage in many countries, with few or no employees and many people using our services.
谷歌被视为一家大公司，但从员工人数看，我们实际上还是一家中型企业，仅有7000名员工来应对全球化大企业所需承担的所有责任与机会。相比之下，沃尔玛拥有170万名员工（当然，我们可能拥有更多的计算机）。我们员工人数远少于主要竞争对手。在许多国家，我们甚至还没达到初创阶段，几乎没有或完全没有员工，但却有大量用户使用我们的服务。
So hiring remains one of our most important priorities. I normally take the time to review every offer we make.
因此，招聘依然是我们最重要的优先事项之一。我通常会抽出时间审阅我们发出的每一封聘用函。
The quality of the new Googlers we are able to attract is amazing (Sergey and I are certain we would not meet the quality bar to be hired as engineers at Google today, as our programming skills are kind of weak by current standards). We see many areas and opportunities that would benefit from more employees, and we’re working hard to get the best people hired and organized.
新加入谷歌员工的素质之高令人惊叹（谢尔盖和我都确定，以现在的标准，我们的编程技能肯定无法达到谷歌工程师的招聘标准）。我们看到许多领域和机会，如果增加更多员工将非常受益，因此我们正努力聘用和安排最优秀的人才。
Nurturing Startup Culture within a Bigger Google
在更大的谷歌内部培养创业文化
One of the amazing things about Google is the number of innovative startup-like projects that have been developed inside the company. We love it when we get a Gmail or an AdSense business, or save an unexpected few million dollars as a result of the hard work and dedication of employees who have really gone far beyond the call of duty. As shareholders, you love it, too, because these projects add to the company’s value. We think it is important that employees get rewarded fairly and are encouraged to achieve amazing results within Google.
谷歌一个令人赞叹之处，就是公司内部产生了大量类似初创企业的创新项目。当我们获得Gmail或AdSense这样成功的业务，或者因员工超常的努力和奉献意外节省数百万美元时，我们感到非常高兴。作为股东，你们同样也会欣喜，因为这些项目为公司创造了价值。我们认为，公平奖励员工，并鼓励他们在谷歌内部取得非凡的成绩至关重要。
Last year Sergey wrote about our Founders’ Awards program. In 2005, we awarded approximately $45 million in restricted stock to 11 different projects after an extensive nomination and review process. We believe the people who received these awards have created tremendous value for the company.
去年谢尔盖提到了我们的创始人奖计划。2005年，在经过广泛的提名与审核程序后，我们向11个不同的项目发放了约4500万美元的限制性股票奖励。我们相信，获得这些奖励的员工为公司创造了巨大的价值。
Of course, not all outstanding contributions will result in Founders’ Awards, so we have implemented compensation programs to provide similar rewards for high performers anywhere in the company. With careful consideration of tax and other complexities, we award options, restricted stock, and cash as appropriate for every Googler. We have had many outstanding achievements, and we hope to have many more.
当然，并非所有杰出贡献都会获得创始人奖，因此我们设立了一套薪酬体系，为公司内任何表现突出的员工提供类似的奖励。在充分考虑税务和其他复杂因素的基础上，我们向谷歌员工适当发放期权、限制性股票和现金奖励。我们已取得许多杰出成就，并期待未来取得更多成就。
Globetrotting
走向全球
Google is available in 116 languages, and lots of people use our services in places Sergey or I haven’t been to yet. We have Googlers all over the world working hard on setting up new facilities. We now have a total of 62 offices, 19 of which have opened outside the United States since the beginning of 2005. Every time we travel to a new Google office we see amazing, smart, excited people and lava lamps. Twenty-five percent of our employees now work outside the United States, compared with 15 percent at the end of 2004. This distribution makes good business sense, since 39 percent of our revenue and much more of our traffic comes from outside the United States. For example, Nikesh Arora runs our amazing European operations, and with his team has grown UK revenues to 14 percent of our total revenue. Google is a global company, and we are becoming more so.
谷歌支持116种语言，世界各地有许多人使用我们的服务，甚至一些地方谢尔盖或我本人还没去过。我们的员工遍布全球，努力建设新的办公地点。目前，我们在全球共有62个办公室，其中19个是自2005年以来在美国以外地区开设的。每次我们到访新的谷歌办公室时，总会看到充满活力、聪明而兴奋的员工，以及随处可见的熔岩灯。现在，我们25%的员工在美国境外工作，而在2004年底，这一比例仅为15%。这种人员分布对我们的业务非常有利，因为我们有39%的收入，以及更多的流量来自美国境外。例如，Nikesh Arora领导着我们卓越的欧洲业务，他和他的团队将英国收入占公司总收入的比例提升到了14%。谷歌是一家全球化的公司，而且这种趋势还将进一步加强。
Growing Our Leadership
壮大我们的领导团队
Our existing managers are on fire. Over the last year, our executives have done a tremendous job growing the business, working together well and keeping their cool with a lot going on. Sergey, Eric and I have also been working well together, and sharing responsibilities just as the original Founders’ Letter specified.
我们的现任管理者表现非常出色。在过去一年中，我们的高管团队为公司的业务成长做出了巨大贡献。他们彼此之间良好合作，在应对繁杂事务时始终保持冷静。谢尔盖、埃里克和我之间的合作也十分融洽，并且按照最初的创始人信函中所规定的那样分担职责。
We doubled the size of our senior leadership team over the last year and are delighted that about half of our new leaders have come from internal promotions. We are counting on Google to grow more leadership that will take us to the next level.
去年，我们高管团队的规模增加了一倍，我们也非常高兴地看到，其中大约一半新领导者是通过内部晋升的。我们期待谷歌继续培养更多领导人才，带领公司迈向新的高度。
We added two new amazing board members. Besides keeping all of us on good behavior, they have tremendous insight and backgrounds for our business. Shirley Tilghman is the president of Princeton University and an accomplished professor of molecular biology. She taught secondary school for two years in Sierra Leone, and is also renowned for her leadership on behalf of women in science, an area of particular interest to Google. Ann Mather also joined our board as chairperson of the Audit Committee. She was previously chief financial officer of Pixar, and before that a senior executive at Disney. I can’t imagine two directors more qualified or a better fit for us.
我们新增了两位卓越的董事会成员。除了帮助我们保持良好的企业行为之外，他们对我们的业务有着极具价值的洞察力和丰富的经验背景。Shirley Tilghman是普林斯顿大学校长，同时也是一位杰出的分子生物学教授。她曾在塞拉利昂担任过两年中学教师，并因在促进女性从事科学事业方面的领导力而广受赞誉，这一领域对谷歌尤为重要。Ann Mather也加入了董事会，担任审计委员会主席。她曾是皮克斯公司的首席财务官，此前也曾担任迪士尼公司的高级管理职务。我很难想象还有比她们二人更适合我们的董事。
We’ve been hard at work adding a number of superstar executives to help us do the heavy lifting of running such a fast-growing business. Vint Cerf, our new vice president and chief Internet evangelist, is widely known as the “father of the Internet” for co-authoring the TCP/IP protocol, which enables all the computers on the Internet to talk to one another. He published this work in 1974, when Sergey was not even two years old. The recipient of the Turing Award (the Nobel Prize of computing), Vint has worked tirelessly to make the Internet what it is today.
我们还一直努力引进一些明星级高管，帮助我们管理这样一家快速成长的公司。新加入我们的副总裁兼首席互联网推广官Vint Cerf因共同开发TCP/IP协议而被广泛誉为“互联网之父”，这一协议使互联网上的所有计算机可以相互通信。这项工作最初发表于1974年，当时谢尔盖还不到两岁。作为图灵奖（计算机界的诺贝尔奖）得主，Vint一直不遗余力地推动互联网发展至今日之规模。
Udi Manber, vice president of engineering, is a former computer science professor who has been working on search much longer than we have; we got to know him well as he negotiated on the other side of the table on the first major deal we did with Yahoo. After a stint running Amazon’s A9 search operation, Udi is finally joining us, and we’re delighted.
工程副总裁Udi Manber曾是一名计算机科学教授，他从事搜索技术研究的时间远比我们要长；我们与他相识于谷歌与雅虎首次重大合作谈判的谈判桌对面。当时他代表的是雅虎。在此之后，他负责过亚马逊的A9搜索业务。现在，Udi终于加入了我们，这让我们感到非常高兴。
In China, we have the dual leadership team of Kai-Fu Lee as president of engineering, product, and public affairs, and Johnny Chou as president of sales and business development. Kai-Fu is an accomplished computer scientist and has been an executive at Microsoft, Apple, and SGI. Johnny is an operating executive experienced at running large organizations, most recently as president of UT Starcom China.
在中国，我们采用双重领导团队模式，由李开复担任工程、产品与公共事务总裁，周韶宁担任销售与业务发展总裁。李开复是一位杰出的计算机科学家，曾在微软、苹果和SGI担任过高管职位。周韶宁则是一位经验丰富的运营型高管，擅长管理大型组织，他最近担任过UT斯达康中国区总裁。
You might have noticed Google in the news a lot recently. Elliot Schrage, our new vice president of global communications and public affairs, is a man worthy of the task. He comes to us with extensive public policy experience and was a senior executive at Gap, Inc.
你可能注意到，谷歌近期频繁出现在新闻中。我们的新任全球传播与公共事务副总裁Elliot Schrage完全能够胜任这项任务。他拥有丰富的公共政策经验，此前曾是盖璞（Gap, Inc.）公司的高级管理人员。
Google.org
谷歌慈善机构（Google.org）
In previous Founders’ Letters, we’ve spoken about our commitment to developing Google’s philanthropic efforts, known as Google.org, which we hope will eventually eclipse even Google in changing the world for the better. We want Google.org to think big, to tackle the gravest and the greatest of the world’s problems.
在以往的创始人信函中，我们曾提到过对发展谷歌慈善事业——Google.org的承诺。我们希望Google.org未来能够在改善世界方面发挥的作用甚至超过谷歌本身。我们希望Google.org树立远大的目标，致力于解决全球最严峻、最重大的问题。
We searched far and wide for the unique leader who we thought embodies this goal in spirit and accomplishments, and we’ve found that person in Dr. Larry Brilliant. Larry was one of the key leaders in the global eradication of smallpox, living in India for many years. He was also chief executive officer of two public companies, was a professor at the University of Michigan, is a medical doctor, and cofounded both the early legendary online community the Well and the Seva Foundation for global development and health.
我们四处寻找能够在精神和成就上体现这一目标的独特领导者，并最终找到了Larry Brilliant博士。Larry是全球消灭天花行动的主要领导者之一，他在印度生活多年。他曾任两家上市公司的首席执行官，是密歇根大学教授，也是一名医学博士。此外，他还是早期著名网络社区The Well和致力于全球发展与健康的Seva基金会的共同创始人。
While we were searching for Larry, we set up and funded the Google Foundation and refined its focus areas to providing sustainable development for the world’s poorest citizens and harnessing people, money, and scientific resources to combat climate change. We have already provided funding of $7 million to Acumen Fund and TechnoServe, organizations that are taking unique approaches to solving these tough issues.
在我们寻找Larry期间，我们建立并资助了谷歌基金会（Google Foundation），并明确了其关注领域：为全球最贫困的人口提供可持续发展支持，并调动人力、资金与科学资源来应对气候变化。我们已向致力于以创新方式解决这些困难问题的Acumen Fund和TechnoServe组织提供了700万美元的资助。
Conclusion
结语
After writing all this down, I’m amazed by all we accomplished last year and excited by all we still have to do. The trust that you - our users and investors - place in us every day is something we take very seriously. We wouldn’t be here without our users, shareholders, partners, employees, advertisers, publishers, authors, families, and everybody else I forgot to mention. Thank you all for joining us on this amazing journey.
在写下所有这些内容之后，我为去年我们所取得的成绩感到惊叹，也对未来要完成的工作感到兴奋。你们——我们的用户和投资者——每天给予我们的信任，是我们极为重视的。没有用户、股东、合作伙伴、员工、广告客户、出版商、作者、家人以及所有其他未能提及的人的支持，我们就不可能走到今天。感谢你们所有人，与我们共同踏上这一非凡的旅程。
Larry Page Signature
Larry Page
Sergei B signature
Sergey Brin
热门主题
Related Articles
2015 Founders’s Letters to Alphabet Shareholders
Refer To：《2015 Founders' Letter》。 Larry Page, CEO, Alphabet: Larry Page，Alphabet 首席执行官： In August, I announced Alphabet and our new structure and shared my thoughts on how we were thinking about the future of our business. (It is reprinted here in ...2011 Founders’s Letters to Alphabet Shareholders
Refer To：《2011 Founders' Letter》。 Introduction 介绍 Throughout our evolution, from privately held start-up to large, publicly listed company, we have managed Google for the long term—enjoying tremendous success as a result, especially since our IPO in ...2012 Founders’s Letters to Alphabet Shareholders
Refer To：《2012 Founders' Letter》。 Imagine you are catching up with an old friend 15 years from now. She wants to go out for a coffee. So you hit a button and within seconds a self-driving car pulls up outside your apartment. You both get in, say your ...2007 Founders’s Letters to Alphabet Shareholders
Refer To：《2007 Founders' Letter》。 Introduction It is amazing to me that it has been nearly ten years since Sergey and I founded Google. When we went public, we promised to write a yearly founders’ letter in a frank style to keep all of you updated on ...2004 Founders’s Letters to Alphabet Shareholders
Refer To：《2004 Founders' Letter》。 Google was born in 1998. If it were a person, it would have started elementary school late last summer (around August 19), and today it would have just about finished the first grade. ...