Sergey and I started Google because we wanted “to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible” (Founders’ IPO Letter, 2004). We’ve stayed true to that mission, placing long-term bets on new technologies that users truly love—from Search to Gmail, Maps, Chrome, YouTube, and Android. We’ve covered a lot of ground in a short space of time and so people naturally ask, what is Google today, and where are you heading? It’s a good question.
Sergey 和我创立谷歌的初衷是“开发能够显著改善尽可能多人生活的服务”（创始人首次公开募股信, 2004）。我们始终忠于这一使命，在用户真正喜爱的技术上进行长远投资——从搜索到 Gmail、地图、Chrome、YouTube 以及 Android。我们在短时间内取得了巨大进展，因此人们自然会问：今天的谷歌是什么样的，你们将走向何方？这是个好问题。
Search on…
继续搜索……
Information is Google’s core. We’re motivated by a profound belief that access to knowledge will improve humankind. As kids, we were both quite curious. I remember spending a huge amount of time poring over books and magazines, or taking things apart at home to figure out how they worked. Today, it’s much easier to find out about stuff. You just go to Google and start searching. Search is so meaningful because even a little bit of knowledge can make a tremendous difference—whether it’s something seemingly small but important in everyday life, like avoiding traffic, or something bigger, like this farmer in Africa who figured out how to save his potato crop.
信息是谷歌的核心。我们坚信获取知识能够改善整个人类的生活。小时候，我们都异常好奇，我记得曾花大量时间翻阅书籍和杂志，或在家拆解物品以弄清其运作原理。如今，了解事物变得容易得多——你只需上谷歌开始搜索。搜索意义重大，因为哪怕一点点知识也能带来巨大改变——无论是日常生活中看似微小但十分重要的事，如躲避交通拥堵，还是更宏大的事，比如那位非洲农民想出拯救马铃薯作物的办法。
The activity on Google Search is astounding. There are over 100 billion searches a month (a whopping 15 percent of which we’ve never seen before), and we now update our index within seconds to ensure we show the freshest results. To make life easier, we’re increasingly able to provide direct answers to your questions. For example, “what’s the deepest lake in the world?” (It’s Lake Baikal in Siberia at 1,741 meters) or, “when does my flight leave?” or, “how many calories in a pancake?” And, I am excited by the progress we have made with Voice Search, which now works in over 38 languages, including, most recently, Thai and Vietnamese. Speaking is often the quickest, easiest way to ask, especially if you’re using a mobile device.
谷歌搜索的活跃度令人惊叹。每月搜索次数超过 1000 亿次（其中有 15% 是我们以前从未见过的），而我们现在能在几秒钟内更新索引，以确保展示最新的结果。为了让生活更便捷，我们越来越能直接回答你的问题。例如，“世界上最深的湖泊是哪个？”（答案是西伯利亚的贝加尔湖，深达 1,741 米），或“我的航班何时起飞？”、“一张薄煎饼含多少卡路里？”此外，我对语音搜索取得的进展感到兴奋，该功能现已支持 38 多种语言，包括最近新增的泰语和越南语。尤其是当你使用移动设备时，语音提问往往是最快最便捷的方式。
Yet, in many ways, we’re a million miles away from creating the search engine of my dreams, one that gets you just the right information at the exact moment you need it with almost no effort. That’s partly because understanding information in a deep way is a hard problem to solve. Google Now is starting to tackle this challenge. It provides information without you even having to ask, so no more digging around in your inbox to find the tracking number for a much-needed delivery; it’s already there on your screen. And recommendations on Google+, which are based on your interests, have also become a great source of information. I get things that are highly relevant all the time, like this YouTube video about the history of kitesurfing that appeared in my stream recently.
然而，在很多方面，我们离打造出我梦想中的搜索引擎——那种几乎无需你费力便能在恰当时刻提供正确信息的搜索引擎——仍有天壤之别。这部分原因在于，深入理解信息本身就是一个难题。Google Now 正在开始应对这一挑战，它无需你提问便能提供信息，因此你不必再在收件箱中苦苦寻找急需快递的追踪号码；这些信息已经直接呈现在你的屏幕上。另外，基于你兴趣推荐的 Google+ 内容也已成为极佳的信息来源。我总能收到高度相关的内容，比如最近在我的信息流中出现的一段关于风筝冲浪历史的 YouTube 视频。
While it is still early days, we’ve also made significant progress understanding people’s context, which is crucial if we are to improve human-computer interaction. Think about your commute. You need the traffic information very accessible so you can plan for it, or avoid it altogether. If you’re going to another appointment, you want the directions to start from where you are at that moment (rather than having to type in your location on a small screen). Improved context will also help make search more natural, and not a series of keywords you artificially type into a computer. We’re getting closer: ask how tall the Eiffel Tower is, and then when “it” was built. By understanding what “it” means in different contexts, we can make search conversational.
尽管目前还处于初期阶段，但我们在理解用户情境方面也取得了显著进展，而这对改善人机交互至关重要。试想你的通勤情况：你需要便捷获取交通信息，以便规划或完全避开拥堵；若你要赴另一场约会，你希望导航能从你当前所在地开始（而不是在小屏幕上输入位置）。更好地理解情境也将使搜索变得更自然，而非你刻意输入的一串关键词。我们正逐步接近目标：先问埃菲尔铁塔有多高，再问“它”是什么时候建成的。通过理解“它”在不同语境中的含义，我们能使搜索更具对话性。
Living in a multi-screen world
生活在多屏时代
As devices proliferate, it becomes more and more important to ensure that you can navigate effortlessly across them. Our Chrome browser, which has over 750 million users and is super fast and secure, works seamlessly across devices. Open a map on your desktop; when you switch to your mobile device, the same tab will be open so you can pick up right where you left off.
随着设备不断增多，确保你能在它们之间轻松切换变得愈发重要。我们的 Chrome 浏览器拥有超过 7.5 亿用户，既快速又安全，可在各设备间无缝运行。在桌面上打开地图；当你切换到移动设备时，同一标签页依然开启，让你能从中断处继续。
Think about photos: they are a really great use case for how bad things can be in a multi-screen world. We’ve all suffered the frustration of having our photos marooned on different devices, making them hard to find, let alone share. G+ instantly uploads them to the web, so you can view them from any device. Better still, if you lose your phone, your photos don’t get lost, too.
再想想照片：它们是多屏世界中问题突出的一个绝佳例子。我们都曾经历过照片散落在不同设备上，难以查找甚至分享的沮丧。Google+ 可将照片即时上传至网络，让你从任何设备上查看。更妙的是，即便丢了手机，照片也不会随之丢失。
In less than six years, over one billion Android devices have been activated (and growing fast)—creating an amazing platform for the increasing number of app developers globally. It’s super exciting to see this ecosystem take off, with Android developers earning four times more on average in 2013 than they did the year before from user payments. We’re now taking Android to wearables, like watches, and to cars, where we can make it super easy to get directions, make a call or play music.
在不到六年的时间里，激活的 Android 设备已超过十亿台（且增长迅速）——为全球不断增多的应用开发者打造了一个惊人的平台。看到这一生态系统蓬勃发展令人十分兴奋，2013 年 Android 开发者从用户支付中获得的平均收入比前一年高出四倍。我们现正将 Android 拓展到可穿戴设备（如手表）及汽车领域，使获取导航、拨打电话或播放音乐变得极为便捷。
The idea behind Google Play is similar, in that you can get apps, movies, books and music from one place, and play them on any device without the need for endless syncing. Start listening to a song on your tablet and when you switch to your mobile it will be there (as you can see there is a theme emerging here!). And most recently with Chromecast, we’ve made it easy to watch movies from Google Play or Netflix on your TV screen at home or at a friend’s apartment. You can throw away all your remotes and just use your phone or tablet to control your TV in the apps you are already used to—like YouTube. Best of all, it costs just $35.
Google Play 的理念类似：你可以在一个平台上获取应用、电影、书籍和音乐，并在任何设备上播放，无需无休止的同步。你可以在平板上开始听一首歌，切换到手机时，它依然存在（你会发现这里形成了一个统一主题！）。而最近，通过 Chromecast，我们让在家或朋友家中通过电视观看 Google Play 或 Netflix 的电影变得轻而易举。你甚至可以抛弃所有遥控器，仅用手机或平板在你习惯的应用中控制电视——例如 YouTube。最棒的是，这仅需 35 美元。
Now, none of this matters without good design. I remember taking a class at the University of Michigan on usability. Students had to pick a program they knew really well (I chose an email program) and estimate how long it would take experts to perform different tasks. It really helped me understand that building good, efficient interfaces is hard, and a bit more like engineering than you might think. Another tab here, another drop-down menu there. The more choices you throw at people (even if they never use them), the longer it takes them to get stuff done. People still talk about the simplicity of the Google homepage, and that was a huge part of our original success. There’s no reason the same principles can’t apply across our products, especially now, with so many devices and options, and so much opportunity for distraction.
然而，如果没有良好的设计，这一切都毫无意义。我记得在密歇根大学上过一门关于可用性的课程，学生们需要挑选一个他们非常熟悉的程序（我选择了一个电子邮件程序），并估计专家完成不同任务所需的时间。这让我深刻认识到构建优秀、高效的界面非常困难，其复杂程度甚至更接近工程学。这里一个标签页，那边一个下拉菜单。你抛给人们的选项越多（即便他们从未使用），完成任务所需的时间就越长。人们至今仍在谈论谷歌主页的简洁，而这正是我们初期成功的重要因素。没有理由这些原则不能应用到我们所有产品上，尤其是在如今设备、选择众多且干扰机会繁多的时代。
Access is an unsolved problem
接入问题仍未解决
Of course, this all assumes you are one of the two billion people who have access to the Internet. That leaves five billion other people. It’s a tragedy that with so much information available today, two-thirds of the world’s population lack even the most basic Internet connection. That’s why I’m so excited the team has gotten Project Loon off the ground (literally). The idea is to create a network of balloons on the very edge of space (they fly about twice the altitude of commercial airlines) that can provide connectivity in rural and remote areas. Soon there will be a classroom in northeast Brazil we are working to put online for the first time, using Loon. And as the program expands, we hope to bring the power of connection to more and more people—creating opportunities that none of us have yet imagined.
当然，以上一切都建立在你是那二十亿拥有互联网接入的人之一的前提下，而这意味着还有五十亿人没有接入。当今信息如此丰富，却有三分之二的人口甚至无法获得最基本的网络连接，这实在令人悲哀。这正是我对团队启动 Project Loon（字面意义上的“气球计划”）感到如此兴奋的原因。其理念是在太空边缘部署一张气球网络（飞行高度约为商业航班的两倍），以便为农村和偏远地区提供网络连接。不久，我们将在巴西东北部的一间教室首次实现在线化，依托 Loon。随着该项目的扩展，我们希望将连接的力量带给越来越多的人——创造出我们尚未想象的机遇。
Invention and reinvention
发明与再发明
It’s amazing what you can achieve with a small dedicated team when you start from first principles and aren’t encumbered by the established way of doing things. Yet I’ve learned over time that it’s surprisingly difficult to get teams to be super ambitious because most people haven’t been educated in this kind of moonshot thinking. They tend to assume that things are impossible, or get frightened of failure. It’s why we’ve put so much energy into hiring independent thinkers at Google, and setting big goals. Because if you hire the right people and have bold enough dreams, you’ll usually get there. And even if you fail, you’ll probably learn something important.
当你从基本原理出发且不受既定做法束缚时，一个小而专注的团队能取得的成就令人惊叹。然而，我逐渐发现，让团队变得极其雄心勃勃异常困难，因为大多数人没有接受过这种登月式思维的训练。他们往往认为事情不可能，或者害怕失败。这就是为什么我们在谷歌投入大量精力招聘独立思考者并设定宏大目标。因为如果你聘用合适的人才并拥有足够大胆的梦想，通常就能实现目标。即使失败了，你也可能学到一些重要的东西。
It’s also true that over time many companies get comfortable doing what they have always done, with a few incremental changes. This kind of incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time, especially in technology, because change tends to be revolutionary, not evolutionary. It’s why we continue to invest for the long term, in our next generation of big bets. In healthcare we have Calico—a new company led by the former CEO of Genentech, Art Levinson, that’s focused on health, wellbeing and longevity—and Iris, a smart contact lens designed to transform the lives of people with diabetes. We also recently acquired Nest, a company that’s taken unloved household products like thermostats and made them much more useful. And we’re excited about our new Google Shopping Express service, which is a great way to get deliveries the same day you order them, and self-driving cars (no explanation needed!). These seem like pretty crazy ideas today, but if the past is any indicator of our future success, today’s big bets won’t seem so wild in a few years’ time.
同样，随着时间的推移，许多公司会习惯于固守既有做法，仅进行些许渐进式改变。而这种渐进主义终将导致公司变得无关紧要，尤其在科技领域，因为变革往往是革命性的，而非渐进进化的。这也是我们继续进行长期投资，支持下一代重大赌注的原因。在医疗领域，我们有 Calico——一家由前 Genentech 首席执行官 Art Levinson 领导、专注于健康、福祉与长寿的新公司——以及 Iris，一款旨在改变糖尿病患者生活的智能隐形眼镜。我们还最近收购了 Nest，这家公司将那些不受欢迎的家用产品（如恒温器）变得更加实用。我们对全新的 Google Shopping Express 服务也充满期待，这是一种可以在你下单当天就送货上门的绝佳方式，还有自动驾驶汽车（无需多言！）。这些今天看似疯狂的想法，如果过去能预示我们未来的成功，几年后就不会显得那么离奇。
Sixteen years after we started Google, we’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible. Sergey and I come to work each day excited about what lies ahead and the extraordinary people we work with. Googlers make everything possible, and they are our future. And, while the world may have changed over the years, we’re as motivated by the potential to make a difference in people’s lives today as when we first started.
在我们创立谷歌 16 年之后，我们仍只是触及了可能性的表面。Sergey 和我每天都怀着对未来及与那些非凡同事共事的无限期待而上班。谷歌员工使一切成为可能，他们就是我们的未来。而且，尽管多年来世界可能已经改变，我们对于今天能改善人们生活的潜力依然充满热情，就像刚开始那样。