2025-08-26 Acquired.Alphabet Inc.
Refer To：《2025-08-26 Acquired.Alphabet Inc.》。
David: Are you intentionally wearing a black turtleneck for this one?
David：你是特意穿黑色高领毛衣来录这期节目的吗？
Ben: No. It is actually going to be one of my carve outs, though.
Ben：不是。不过这其实会是我今天要特别提到的一个点。
David: Amazing.
David：太棒了。
Ben: Why, you think I dress up like Steve Jobs for a Google episode?
Ben：怎么，你觉得我专门打扮成 Steve Jobs 来录 Google 的节目吗？
David: Well, I thought because of the war between Android and…
David：嗯，我是觉得可能因为 Android 和……之间的大战。
Ben: I walk in and there’s this smirk on your face. All right, let’s do it.
Ben：我一走进来就看到你脸上的坏笑。好了，我们开始吧。
Ben: Welcome to the summer 2025 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I’m Ben Gilbert.
Ben：欢迎来到《Acquired》2025 年夏季篇，这是一个关于伟大公司及其背后故事与战略的播客。我是 Ben Gilbert。
David: I’m David Rosenthal.
David：我是 David Rosenthal。
Ben: And we are your hosts. In the late 1990s, Google built the best search engine for the rapidly growing internet. With a breakthrough search algorithm, low cost servers based on commodity hardware, and the best business model of all time—search ads—they turned that search engine into a cash gushing business and took it public in 2004.
Ben：我们是你们的主持人。在 1990 年代末，Google 打造了当时互联网上最好的搜索引擎。它依靠突破性的搜索算法、基于廉价硬件的低成本服务器，以及有史以来最棒的商业模式——搜索广告，把搜索引擎变成了一台现金机器，并在 2004 年上市。
Ben: But then curiously, they started doing some things that weren’t related to search. They launched a breakthrough email service in your browser with Gmail, Maps that were far superior to the current state-of-the-art, Docs and Spreadsheets with real-time collaboration for the first time. Of course, YouTube, then Android in their own web browser with Chrome.
Ben：但奇怪的是，他们之后开始做一些和搜索并不直接相关的事情。他们推出了突破性的网页邮箱 Gmail；推出了远超当时水平的地图服务；推出了首次支持实时协作的文档与表格；当然还有 YouTube，接着是 Android 操作系统，以及自家的网页浏览器 Chrome。
Ben: Astonishingly, today Google has 15 products with over half a billion users, 7 of those have over 2 billion users. David, that is over 25% of humans use 7 of Google’s products.
Ben：令人震惊的是，今天 Google 有 15 款产品用户超过 5 亿，其中 7 款的用户超过 20 亿。David，这意味着全球超过四分之一的人类都在使用 Google 的 7 款产品。
David: Just unreal. Can’t wait to tell all of these stories today.
David：太不可思议了。我已经迫不及待要把这些故事讲给大家听了。
Ben: And they’ve also launched some colossal failures—Google+ to try to compete with Facebook, Google Wave, Buzz, and about half a dozen messaging apps, I don’t know, maybe a dozen messaging apps over the years. Hot air balloons to provide wireless internet. And of course…
Ben：当然，他们也推出过一些巨大的失败项目——比如试图挑战 Facebook 的 Google+，还有 Google Wave、Buzz，以及大概六七款甚至十几款不同的即时通讯应用。还有靠热气球提供无线网络的计划。当然，还有……
David: Oh man, I forgot about the hot air balloons.
David：天啊，我都忘了还有热气球那回事。
Ben: Google Glass.
Ben：Google Glass。
David: Can’t forget about that one, unfortunately.
David：很遗憾，那可真忘不了。
Ben: Why did they do all this? And as a business, Google was and still is the company that makes the vast majority of their money from ads on search results on the web. Today, we tell the story of Google as the innovation factory of the 2000s, their reorganization into the parent company, Alphabet, and how all these different products cleverly serve different business purposes. And also, how it feeds into Google’s original core mission to organize the world’s information. We’ll end this episode story right at the dawn of the AI era.
Ben：他们为什么要做这一切呢？从商业角度看，Google 过去和现在都是靠网页搜索广告赚取绝大部分收入的公司。今天我们要讲的故事，是 2000 年代的 Google 作为创新工厂的角色，他们如何重组为母公司 Alphabet，以及这些不同的产品如何巧妙地服务于不同的商业目的。同时，还要讲这些如何反过来支持 Google 最初的使命——整合全球信息。本期节目我们会把故事停在 AI 时代的黎明。
David: Woo hoo hoo. Oh, you’re giving away the end.
David：哇哈哈，你这不直接把结局都说出来了吗。
Ben: Oh spoilers, sorry. Is Google a search engine? Is it the platform company of the web era? Or is it an incubator that just happens to have struck gold with search and perhaps AI? Today we dive in.
Ben：哎呀，剧透了，不好意思。Google 到底是一个搜索引擎？还是网络时代的平台公司？又或者说，它只是一个孵化器，碰巧在搜索甚至 AI 上挖到了金矿？今天我们就深入探讨。
Ben: Well listeners, if you want to know every time an episode drops or get early hints at what the next episode will be, check out our email list. That’s also where we share corrections and updates about previous episodes. And we are adding a new bonus. You get to help us vote on future episode topics. The first poll is going out soon. Sign up now at acquired.fm/email.
Ben：听众朋友们，如果你想在节目上线时第一时间收到通知，或者提前获得下一期节目的线索，可以订阅我们的邮件列表。我们也会在那里面分享前几期节目的更正和更新。此外，我们还新增了一个福利：你可以帮我们投票选择未来的节目主题。第一次投票马上就要发布了，现在就去 acquired.fm/email 注册吧。
Ben: Join the Slack if you want to come talk about this with us and the whole Acquired community, acquired.fm/slack. Before we dive in, we want to briefly thank our presenting partner, J.P. Morgan Payments.
Ben：如果你想和我们以及整个 Acquired 社区一起讨论，欢迎加入我们的 Slack 群，地址是 acquired.fm/slack。在开始之前，我们要特别感谢本节目的合作伙伴——摩根大通支付（J.P. Morgan Payments）。
David: Just like how we say every company has a story, every company story is powered by payments, and J.P. Morgan Payments is a part of so many of their journeys, from seed to IPO and beyond.
David：就像我们常说的，每家公司都有它的故事，而每一个企业故事的背后都有支付环节。摩根大通支付参与了无数企业的成长历程，从初创到 IPO 甚至更远。
Ben: With that, this show is not investment advice. David and I may have investments in the companies we discuss, and this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. David, where are we starting this Alphabet story?
Ben：说到这儿，我们要提醒大家，本节目不构成投资建议。我和 David 可能会投资我们讨论的公司，本节目仅供信息分享和娱乐。David，我们从哪里开始讲 Alphabet 的故事？
David: I have a very, very fun beginning for you, Ben. I want to start with a quote from Russ Hanneman.
David：Ben，我准备了一个非常有趣的开头。我想先引用一句 Russ Hanneman 的话。
Ben: The fictional character?
Ben：那个虚构人物？
David: From Silicon Valley, HBO show. Oh yeah, from the TV show.
David：对，来自 HBO 的电视剧《硅谷》。
Ben: Awesome.
Ben：太棒了。
David: And the quote is, “If you show revenue, people will ask how much? And it will never be enough. The company that was the hundred-Xer, the thousand-Xer is suddenly the 2x dog. But if you have no revenue, you can say you’re pre-revenue, you’re a potential pure play. It’s not about how much you earn, it’s about what you’re worth. And who’s worth the most? Companies that lose money.”
David：他说的那句话是这样的：“如果你展示了收入，人们就会问有多少？而且永远都嫌不够。昨天还被吹捧成百倍、千倍增长的公司，今天可能就变成了只能翻一倍的废柴。但如果你没有收入，你就可以说自己还在前收入阶段，是一个潜在的纯粹故事。关键不在于你赚了多少钱，而在于你值多少钱。那谁最值钱？那些亏钱的公司。”
David: Immortal words of wisdom for the technology world. God, that show was so good. Why do I bring this up? Why do I start here?
David：这真是科技圈不朽的至理名言啊。天哪，那部剧真是太精彩了。我为什么要提这个？为什么要从这里开始？
Ben: Why are you talking about this? Google is a cash gushing machine.
Ben：你怎么会讲这个呢？Google 可是一台源源不断的现金机器啊。
David: Revenue is obviously not the problem for Google. But what was the problem in 2004, 2005, 2006 was being viewed as, in Russ’s terms, pure play.
David：对 Google 来说，收入显然不是问题。但在 2004、2005、2006 年，他们的问题是——用 Russ 的话说——被视为一个“纯粹故事”。
David: When Google went public in fall of 2004, the stock shot up, basically doubled in two months. Wall Street loved Google. AdWords, the search business model, everybody had to own shares. Google had cracked the code on monetizing the Internet. The more people use the Internet, the more they searched. The more they searched, the more money Google makes. Simple, easy, pure play, you might say.
David：Google 在 2004 年秋天上市后，股价飙升，基本上两个月就翻了一倍。华尔街爱死了 Google。AdWords，这个搜索商业模式，让所有人都必须买进。Google 破解了互联网变现的密码。人们上网越多，就会搜索更多；搜索越多，Google 就赚得越多。简单、直接，你甚至可以称它为“纯粹故事”。
David: That is until Google announced fourth quarter, 2005 earnings. Full year 2005 revenue, $6.1 billion. That’s almost double the $3.1 billion that it was in 2004, the first year it went public. But earnings are flat. Profitability is down. Google’s now investing in all these new products and services. Gmail, Maps, the forthcoming Google Docs. Later this year in 2006, they would buy YouTube for $1.6 billion. Wall Street hates this, hates it.
David：但情况一直持续到 2005 年第四季度财报发布。2005 全年营收是 61 亿美元，几乎是 2004 年上市首年的 31 亿美元的两倍。但盈利却停滞了，利润率下降。Google 开始把钱砸进一堆新产品和服务——Gmail、地图、即将推出的 Google Docs。再到 2006 年，他们还要花 16 亿美元收购 YouTube。华尔街讨厌这一切，极度讨厌。
Ben: It this is a huge amount of their cash they’re putting back on the table and betting for the future.
Ben：这可是他们把巨额现金重新摆上赌桌，为未来下注啊。
David: So this is January, 2006, the stock falls 27%. Wall Street’s like God, these guys, what are they doing? They’re messing it up.
David：于是到了 2006 年 1 月，股价暴跌了 27%。华尔街一片哀嚎：天啊，这帮人到底在干什么？他们在把一切搞砸。
David: Steven Levy writes in In the Plex that the perception of Google’s ventures beyond search at the time was that the company was tossing balls into the air like a drunken juggler. They were a pure play in investors’ eyes, and now they’re messing it up. They’re adding all these other stuff. They don’t want the other stuff.
David：Steven Levy 在《In the Plex》里写道，当时外界对 Google 搜索以外业务的看法是：这家公司就像一个醉醺醺的杂耍演员，往天上乱抛球。在投资者眼中，他们本来是个“纯粹故事”，现在却在把事情搅乱。他们加了那么多别的东西，而投资者根本不想要那些东西。
David: Then Ben, as you teed up in the intro, the question is why did they do all this? And I think the way to answer it is to start and just tell the stories of all the individual products.
David：所以 Ben，就像你在开头铺垫的那样，问题是他们为什么要做这一切？我觉得要回答这个问题，就得从头讲讲每一个具体产品的故事。
Ben: Let’s do it. Strap in. I will say, David, doing the research took me way back to early Acquired grading acquisitions. This is the cornucopia of hits of iconic product launches in tech history.
Ben：好，开始吧，系好安全带。我得说啊 David，做这次研究把我带回了《Acquired》早期做收购打分的日子。这完全是一部科技史上经典产品发布的“丰收集”。
David: The first and probably the most important here because it sets the stage for everything else, the first major non-search product was on April 1st, April Fool’s Day 2004, Gmail. The most famous infamous non-joke April Fool’s Day announcement of all time.
David：第一个产品，也是可能最重要的一个，因为它为后面的一切奠定了基础。Google 第一个重要的非搜索产品是在 2004 年 4 月 1 日愚人节发布的——Gmail。有史以来最著名、也最“臭名昭著”的不是玩笑的愚人节公告。
David: But it sure sounded like a joke. Here’s the announcement in 2004. “Entirely web-based email in your browser. You can log in and access it anywhere, on any device. Google search is built-in. You don’t need to spend all this time sorting your mail into folders anymore, and one gigabyte of storage free. No need to delete your mail, no need to clean up your inbox, no need to do anything, ever.” And the whole thing is free.
David：但它听上去简直像个笑话。2004 年的发布公告是这样的：“完全基于网页的邮箱，在浏览器里使用。你可以随时随地、用任何设备登录访问。内置 Google 搜索。你不再需要花时间把邮件整理进文件夹。提供 1GB 的免费存储空间。再也不用删邮件，再也不用清理收件箱，什么都不用做。”而且整个服务完全免费。
David: Of course, this sounds like a joke. This is too good to be true.
David：当然，这听起来像个笑话，简直好得令人难以置信。
Ben: The universe at the time is Microsoft sells enterprise-grade mail for a lot of money, or there are all these free web-based services popping up like Hotmail that Microsoft would end up buying, Yahoo Mail, and AOL. You get five megabytes of storage.
Ben：当时的背景是：Microsoft 卖企业级邮箱，要价很高；另一边是各种免费的网页邮箱服务开始冒头，比如后来被微软收购的 Hotmail，还有 Yahoo Mail、AOL。它们给用户的存储空间只有 5MB。
David: Not even at the time, Hotmail, which as you said Microsoft owns, had two megabytes of free storage, and Yahoo Mail had four megabytes.
David：就算在当时，Hotmail（正如你说的已被微软收购）只有 2MB 免费存储，而 Yahoo Mail 也只有 4MB。
David: There’s another great story from In the Plex that Steven Levy has. He’s interviewing Bill Gates at the Newsweek headquarters office in New York shortly after Gmail comes out. They started talking about Gmail and Bill can’t believe it. He’s offended by Gmail because he thinks that giving people all this storage is just wasteful. You’re doing email wrong. It’s morally repugnant to leave all of this email sitting on the servers.
David：Steven Levy 在《In the Plex》里还写了一个很棒的故事。Gmail 发布后不久，他在纽约《新闻周刊》的总部采访了 Bill Gates。他们聊到 Gmail 时，Bill 根本不敢相信。他甚至被 Gmail 冒犯了，因为他觉得给用户这么大的存储空间简直是浪费。他认为你们用错了方式做电子邮件，把这些邮件都堆在服务器上是道德上令人厌恶的。
David: I was thinking about it. Until Gmail, the paradigm for email, people treated it like regular physical mail. You sort it, you file away the important stuff, you throw out the pieces you don’t need anymore. Even freaking Bill Gates operates this way.
David：我仔细想过。在 Gmail 出现之前，人们对电子邮件的处理方式完全像对待传统纸质邮件。你要分类，把重要的存档，不需要的就扔掉。连 Bill Gates 本人都是这样操作的。
David: Gmail is radical. This is a radical notion of how email should work. It was also correct. If you sat and you thought about it in (say) 2001 or so when Gmail starts getting worked on within Google, and you thought about the combination of the growth of the Internet, which obviously Google has a front row seat to, and Moore’s Law, you would logically come to this conclusion that the cost of sending, storing, and searching email would as methodically go to zero. Thus, as that happened, a whole lot more email was going to be sent in the world.
David：Gmail 是激进的。这是一个对电子邮件运作方式完全激进的设想。而且它是正确的。如果你在 2001 年左右 Gmail 在 Google 内部启动研发时，去思考互联网的增长（Google 显然是第一排的见证者）和摩尔定律的结合，你就会很自然地得出结论：发送、存储和搜索邮件的成本会逐步趋近于零。因此，随着这一趋势，全球发送的电子邮件数量会爆炸式增长。
Ben: Can I tell you my understanding of where this story starts in 1996?
Ben：我能不能说说我理解的，这个故事其实始于 1996 年？
David: Oh, I was going to go back to 1999, but yeah, go for it.
David：哦，我本来是打算回到 1999 年，但行啊，你先说。
Ben: I know you’re about to bring up the name Paul Buchheit, is that right?
Ben：我知道你马上要提到一个名字——Paul Buchheit，对吧？
David: Of course, yeah.
David：当然。没错。
Ben: Paul was kind enough to speak with me before recording this episode, Paul famously the inventor of Gmail. In 1996, Paul was a student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, which, you may also know this, David, famously was one of the—
Ben：Paul 在我们录这期节目之前很友好地和我聊过。他就是 Gmail 的发明人。1996 年时，Paul 还是克利夫兰凯斯西储大学的学生。David，你可能也知道，那所学校有个特别有名的地方——
David: Ohio Strong.
David：俄亥俄威武。
Ben: Yes, the first campuses in the nation to have broadband internet in the dorms and all over campus.
Ben：对的，全国第一个在宿舍和整个校园都铺设宽带互联网的大学。
David: Okay. I do about the Paul fascination with Webmail starting in college. But I didn’t realize that Case Western had broadband.
David：好吧，我知道 Paul 对 Webmail 的痴迷是从大学开始的。但我还真不知道凯斯西储大学当时就有宽带。
Ben: This is why, when you’re living in the universe of broadband everywhere, he was living like 15 years in the future, temporarily, for four years in college.
Ben：这就是关键。因为当你生活在宽带无处不在的环境里时，他等于暂时提前了 15 年，生活在未来世界里，整整四年大学生涯。
David: 1996.
David：1996 年。
Ben: Yes. He realizes email is a bummer if it’s a thing that you download and lives on your computer. The information should just exist at my fingertips all the time. Bits are becoming free to move around.
Ben：没错。他意识到，如果电子邮件只是下载下来，存在你电脑里，那实在太糟糕了。信息应该随时在你手边，触手可及。比特正在变得可以自由流动。
Ben: He gets obsessed with this idea in college that email should exist on the web, in a browser, without ever having to download it. He builds a prototype for Webmail when he’s in college.
Ben：他在大学里就痴迷于这样一个想法：电子邮件应该存在于网络上，通过浏览器访问，而不需要下载。他在大学里就做出了 Webmail 的原型。
Ben: 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. Larry and Wayne Rosing, who is leading engineering, go and meet with each engineer individually to talk about ideas that they could work on.
Ben：2001 年，在 Google 上市前，Larry Page 觉得 Google 的节奏有点太慢，于是干脆撤掉了所有工程经理。Larry 和时任工程负责人 Wayne Rosing 亲自逐一和每位工程师见面，聊他们可以去做的想法。
Ben: This tells you so much about Googleyness, but it also tells you a lot about the caliber of the engineers they were hiring at the time, where they would just approach them and say, what ideas are you thinking about? Here’s some ideas we have. Can you just full stack own this product entirely yourself?
Ben：这充分体现了所谓的“Google 气质”，也说明了当时 Google 招的工程师水准之高。他们会直接走到工程师面前问：“你最近在想什么点子？我们也有一些想法。你能不能全栈式地完全自己负责一个产品？”
Ben: So in Paul’s meeting, they knew about his previous interest in email and web-based mail. They float this amorphous idea to him, and that’s where it comes from.
Ben：于是，在 Paul 的那次会面中，他们知道他之前对电子邮件和 Webmail 的兴趣，就把一个模糊的想法抛给了他。Gmail 的起点就是这样来的。
David: Ah, so Larry and Wayne suggested it to him. Interesting.
David：啊，原来是 Larry 和 Wayne 建议他做的。有意思。
Ben: Here’s some other stuff that Paul said. Part of the motivation was that they were looking to make something that would make Google stickier. You’d have this ongoing relationship for, if there was a next Google after Google, there was some reason why you would still have a relationship.
Ben：Paul 还说了些别的。动机的一部分是，他们想做一些能让 Google 更有“粘性”的东西。这样你会和 Google 保持持续的关系，就算未来出现了“下一个 Google”，你也会有理由继续和 Google 保持联系。
David: Which obviously Yahoo would have for many, many years, even though there was a next Yahoo after Yahoo and Google.
David：这显然就是 Yahoo 多年来拥有的优势，尽管 Yahoo 之后又出现了“下一个 Yahoo”和 Google。
Ben: We still get emails from people with Yahoo Mail.
Ben：我们现在还能收到别人用 Yahoo Mail 发来的邮件呢。
David: Do you know how Paul found out about Google in 1999?
David：你知道 Paul 在 1999 年是怎么知道 Google 的吗？
Ben: Oh, no
Ben：哦，不知道。
David: Slashdot.
David：是 Slashdot。
Ben: Really? That’s awesome.
Ben：真的？太酷了。
David: Then he sends an email to jobs@google.com.
David：然后他给 jobs@google.com 发了一封邮件。
Ben: Unbelievable.
Ben：难以置信。
David: Fitting that he gets hired with an email. So 2001, Paul gets to work with encouragement from Larry and Wayne.
David：很契合啊，他居然是靠一封邮件被录用的。于是到了 2001 年，Paul 在 Larry 和 Wayne 的鼓励下开始了这项工作。
Ben: Do you know what the original seed of the code is?
Ben：你知道 Gmail 最初的代码种子是什么吗？
David: Oh, no. Go for it.
David：不知道，说来听听。
Ben: Google had just bought a company called Deja News, their first acquisition. It was the corpus of all the old Usenet posts.
Ben：当时 Google 刚收购了一家公司，叫 Deja News，这是他们的第一次收购。那家公司拥有所有旧 Usenet 帖子的语料库。
David: Oh, yeah. Then this becomes Google Groups, right?
David：哦，对。后来就变成了 Google Groups，对吧？
Ben: That’s exactly right.
Ben：完全正确。
David: And Paul’s working on that.
David：而 Paul 当时就在做这个项目。
Ben: And part of that was a feature to do realtime indexing of all the posts that would allow you to search the whole corpus. Paul just applies that to his own personal inbox. The first instantiation of this is just a search box to search his personal Unix mail directory as if it is the old Usenet posts that they had just bought. That’s the first version of Gmail.
Ben：其中有一个功能是对所有帖子做实时索引，让你可以搜索整个语料库。Paul 就把这个想法应用到他自己的邮箱上。最初的实现只是一个搜索框，可以像搜索他们刚收购的 Usenet 帖子那样，搜索他个人 Unix 邮件目录里的内容。这就是 Gmail 的第一个版本。
David: Amazing. As he’s building on that, though, obviously the first thing he needs is a web front or an interface. Okay, Hotmail’s out there, Yahoo Mail’s out there, web mail’s out there. It sucks for a lot of reasons. There’s got to be a way to make it better, make it more performance, and better to use as a webpage. He’s playing around with JavaScript and what he can do with JavaScript to make this web application of email better.
David：太神奇了。不过在这个基础上，他显然首先需要一个网页端的界面。那时已经有 Hotmail、Yahoo Mail 等 Webmail，但它们在很多方面都很糟糕。一定得有办法让它更好、更高效，更适合作为网页应用来使用。他就开始琢磨 JavaScript，看看能用它做些什么，让这个基于网页的邮件应用更好用。
David: The history of JavaScript is fascinating. Brendan Eich created it at Netscape back in 1995. We did a whole episode with Brendan years ago about this. The idea behind JavaScript was to include a programming language as part of web browsers so that people could make dynamic web pages instead of just static HTML documents.
David：JavaScript 的历史本身就很有意思。Brendan Eich 在 1995 年 Netscape 工作时创造了它。几年前我们还专门做过一期节目请 Brendan 聊过这个。JavaScript 背后的想法，是在浏览器中内置一门编程语言，让人们能做动态网页，而不是只能写静态 HTML 文档。
David: The problem was, it was this casualty of the browser wars with Microsoft and Internet Explorer and everything that killed Netscape. So up until this time, 2001, JavaScript existed but it wasn’t super popular.
David：问题是，它成了浏览器大战的牺牲品，微软的 Internet Explorer 和其他因素一起干掉了 Netscape。所以一直到 2001 年，JavaScript 虽然存在，但并没有特别流行。
Ben: It wasn’t very powerful. You could do weird stuff like animate something on the page, but I would describe it as toy-like and not a real programming language for sure.
Ben：它当时并不强大。你可以做一些奇怪的事情，比如让页面上的元素动起来，但我会形容它更像是个玩具，绝对算不上真正的编程语言。
David: And for what the web was up until that point in time, you didn’t really need it. Static webpages are fine for most of what’s happening. Even google.com was static. You type a search into the search box, Google servers process the query, and they send you a whole new static webpage with the results.
David：而且在那之前的互联网环境下，你其实也不需要它。静态网页足以应对大部分场景。甚至 google.com 本身也是静态的。你在搜索框里输入查询，Google 的服务器处理后，就返回一个全新的静态页面，上面有结果。
David: But you’d imagine, for doing something like email on the web or any application on the web, you don’t want the site to reload every time you open a new email or you create a draft or you move something around in folders.
David：但你可以想象，如果要在网页上做邮件或其他应用，你肯定不希望每次打开新邮件、写草稿或者在文件夹里移动邮件时，整个页面都要重新加载。
Ben: You might want to move from a website to a world of web applications.
Ben：你会希望从“网页”迈向“网络应用”的世界。
David: Yeah, but this is how Hotmail and Yahoo Mail worked. Every time you took an action, it reloaded the page. So they were super slow. Paul’s like, maybe I can use JavaScript to make this better.
David：是啊，但 Hotmail 和 Yahoo Mail 的工作方式就是这样。你每做一个操作，页面就重新加载一次，所以特别慢。Paul 当时就想：也许我能用 JavaScript 把它做得更好。
David: He’s working on it, and he discovers a little known feature of JavaScript called the XMLHttpRequest, which lets a webpage fetch automatically new XML data from a server without reloading the page. Paul’s like, oh my God. This is gold. This is the birth of AJAX—Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.
David：他在研究时发现了一个鲜为人知的 JavaScript 特性，叫 XMLHttpRequest。它能让网页在不重新加载页面的情况下，从服务器自动获取新的 XML 数据。Paul 当时的反应是：“天啊，这太棒了。”这就是 AJAX 的诞生——异步 JavaScript 与 XML。
Ben: So David, I assumed you were going to go here. I thought that you’d get it all laid up.
Ben：所以 David，我早就猜到你会讲到这里。我以为你会一口气铺垫到这一点。
David: You’ve been letting me go. You’ve just been feeding me a rope the whole time.
David：原来你一直放我自由发挥啊，就像给我递了一根绳子让我自己爬一样。
Ben: Are you trying to tell me that Gmail is the first AJAX application?
Ben：你是想告诉我 Gmail 是第一个 AJAX 应用吗？
David: Well, the first widely-adopted around the world.
David：嗯，可以说是第一个被全球广泛采用的 AJAX 应用。
Ben: That’s fair to say.
Ben：这么说很合理。
David: It’s set the bar for what Dynamic Web 2.0 you might say websites could be.
David：它为“动态 Web 2.0”设立了标杆，让人们看到网站可以变成什么样。
Ben: The origin of the XMLHttpRequest is a part of Internet Explorer, first implemented by Microsoft, and used in this part of Outlook called Outlook Web Access.
Ben：而 XMLHttpRequest 的起源其实是 Internet Explorer 的一部分，最初由微软实现，并用于 Outlook 的一个功能——Outlook Web Access。
David: I think I did know this.
David：我记得我确实听说过。
Ben: When I worked for my high school, I could log in on any computer into my Outlook through their web access. That thing used AJAX, and I think it only worked in Internet Explorer. That is the origin of why this API exists in the first place, ironically for another mail client.
Ben：我当时在高中打工时，可以在任何电脑上通过 Outlook Web Access 登录我的 Outlook 邮箱。那个功能用的就是 AJAX，而且我记得它只在 Internet Explorer 上能用。讽刺的是，这个 API 最初存在的原因，居然是为了另一个邮件客户端。
David: Not just for another mail client. It’s so deeply ironic that this originated for a Microsoft mail client. We’re going to get deep into that in just a minute here.
David：不光是另一个邮件客户端，更讽刺的是，它最早居然是为微软的邮件客户端开发的。我们一会儿会深入聊这个。
David: When Paul discovers this, this is almost like Google search all over again. When people realize what you can do to create something that looks and feels and has all the functionality of an application, that heretofore would’ve been a program that you installed on your personal computer.
David：当 Paul 发现这一点时，那感觉几乎就像当年 Google 搜索的诞生。当人们意识到你可以用它来打造一个看起来、用起来、功能上都像是应用程序的东西，而这类东西此前还必须作为软件安装在个人电脑上时，整个格局就变了。
Ben: A .EXE or a .APP on your Mac.
Ben：一个 Windows 上的 .EXE 文件，或者 Mac 上的 .APP 文件。
David: That maybe you downloaded from the Internet, but more likely you went to a retail shop like CompUSA or something, installed on your computer, that you can now just do this in a web browser? This is incredible.
David：这些程序可能是你从网上下载的，但更常见的是你去 CompUSA 这样的零售店买软件，安装在你的电脑上。而现在，你居然只需要一个浏览器就能做到？这太不可思议了。
Ben: The web is the platform of the future.
Ben：Web 才是未来的平台。
David: Yup. So Paul builds the prototype, shows it to Larry and Sergey. They’re super jazz. Supposedly, Larry and Sergey become the first beta users of Gmail. They are the seed Gmail users, and they start using it exclusively as their mail service within Google.
David：没错。所以 Paul 把原型做出来后，展示给 Larry 和 Sergey。他们兴奋极了。据说 Larry 和 Sergey 成为了 Gmail 的首批测试用户。他们就是种子用户，并开始在 Google 内部专门使用 Gmail 作为邮件服务。
David: By the time it launches publicly, all of Google is on Gmail, using it, addicted to it, and it wasn’t called this at the time, but it’s in the cloud. You don’t have to have your mail stored on your machine or a specific server. You can log in, access it anywhere, on any network, any device.
David：等到 Gmail 公测时，整个 Google 公司的人都已经在用 Gmail，而且用得上瘾。虽然当时没人这么称呼，但这已经是“云端”了。你不需要把邮件存放在本地电脑或者某台特定的服务器上，你可以随时随地、在任何网络、任何设备上登录访问。
Ben: All this stuff sounds so boring, but it was completely breakthrough.
Ben：这些听起来现在好像挺无聊，但当时完全是突破性的创新。
David: Obviously, Larry and Sergey are jazzed, first because of just the incredible nature of this product. Larry especially, he is a product person, his view is if we can build a better product and it’s on the web, then it’s good for Google and we should do it. That is a huge part of the motivation underlying Gmail and everything we’re going to talk about.
David：显然，Larry 和 Sergey 激动不已，首先是因为这个产品本身太惊艳了。尤其是 Larry，他是个彻头彻尾的产品人。他的看法是：如果我们能打造一个更好的产品，并把它放到 Web 上，那对 Google 就是好事，我们就应该去做。这是 Gmail 以及我们接下来要讲的一切的重要动机。
David: But there’s also another reason, and that’s Microsoft. Google was doing great printing money—ad words, search—greatest product, greatest business of all time. But they’ve got a big risk, which is that everything about Google, everything about the web right now flows through Microsoft, flows through Internet Explorer.
David：但还有另一个原因，那就是微软。Google 当时靠 AdWords、靠搜索赚得盆满钵满——这是史上最伟大的产品与商业模式。但他们面临一个巨大风险：Google 的一切，以及当时整个 Web 的一切，都是通过微软的 Internet Explorer 流动的。
Ben: Yeah. Google’s entire money printing machine was built on top of Microsoft’s and at two layers. To this point, over 90% of Google search queries were done on Windows PCs, and 90% were done in Internet Explorer running on those PCs. Google’s got the killer app for the web in search. The thing under them is a browser owned by Microsoft, and the thing under that is an operating system owned by Microsoft. They exist at the pleasure of Microsoft at this point in history.
Ben：是的。Google 整个“印钞机”其实是建在微软的两层堆栈之上。当时超过 90% 的 Google 搜索查询发生在 Windows 电脑上，其中又有 90% 是通过 IE 完成的。Google 拥有 Web 上的杀手级应用——搜索。但它的下面是一层由微软掌控的浏览器，再下面是一层由微软掌控的操作系统。在那个历史阶段，Google 的存在几乎完全取决于微软是否愿意放行。
David: And Microsoft has a different business model. Google’s business model, the greatest of all time, is people use Google search, they discover more of the web, they spend more time online on these new sites and services that they’re discovering. As they’re spending more time online, they search more. Searching more leads them to discover even more new sites and services. The cycle repeats itself and Google just monetizes the whole thing.
David：而微软的商业模式完全不同。Google 的商业模式——史上最伟大的模式——是：人们用 Google 搜索，发现更多网站，花更多时间上网，接触新的服务。在这过程中，他们搜索得更多，发现更多新的网站和服务。如此循环往复，Google 就能把这一切变现。
Ben: Web usage isn’t bad for Microsoft, but if the platform of the next generation becomes the web and people are writing web applications instead of Windows applications, that makes Microsoft’s platform a lot less valuable versus other operating systems like (say) Mac or (say) a future where we change away from desktop computers altogether.
Ben：网络使用的增加对微软不是坏事，但如果下一代的平台变成 Web，人们写的是 Web 应用而不是 Windows 应用，那微软的平台价值就会大幅下降。相比之下，Mac 这样的操作系统，或者未来如果我们彻底离开桌面电脑，都会让微软的地位变得不那么重要。
David: At a minimum, Microsoft doesn’t business model–wise care about the web because they don’t monetize the web. Microsoft makes money by OEMs selling PCs that have Windows on them. Then Microsoft sells software that goes on those PCs. At a minimum, they don’t care. At a maximum, like you’re saying, web apps are at an existential risk to Microsoft.
David：至少从商业模式上来说，微软根本不关心 Web，因为他们无法从 Web 上赚钱。微软的赚钱方式是 OEM 厂商卖预装 Windows 的 PC，然后微软再卖跑在这些 PC 上的软件。至少，他们“不在乎”。但在极端情况下，正如你说的，Web 应用对微软而言是一种生存威胁。
Ben: Oh my God. There’s a future application platform that just doesn’t really require our participation, other than the fact that we control IE. At least for now, that’s really important.
Ben：天啊，居然可能出现一个未来的应用平台，几乎不需要我们的参与，唯一的支点就是我们还掌控着 IE。至少在当时，这一点非常重要。
David: And most of Microsoft hasn’t realized this yet. Thank God for Google. Microsoft’s distracted with the albatross that was Longhorn that would become Windows Vista. A few people in Microsoft realize this, but Google for sure realizes this though. Eric Schmidt for double sure realizes it because he was the CEO of Novell before coming to Google. And who is Novell’s competitor? Microsoft. And Microsoft crushed them.
David：而且微软的大部分人当时还没意识到这一点。谢天谢地有 Google。微软正被“长角牛”（Longhorn，后来变成了 Windows Vista）这个包袱分散注意力。微软内部有少数人意识到了，但 Google 是完全明白的。Eric Schmidt 更是清清楚楚，因为他在加入 Google 之前是 Novell 的 CEO。而 Novell 的竞争对手是谁？微软。结果微软把他们碾压了。
David: So, why Google’s so jazzed about Gmail? They need to build up leverage with consumers, with users, that they’re going to demand rich web applications so that if Microsoft ever tries to disadvantage Google or disadvantage web apps and things moving to the web, really the only defense against that is if consumers have already adopted this stuff and love it and would revolt. This is what Gmail is.
David：所以，为什么 Google 对 Gmail 如此兴奋？他们需要在消费者、用户那里建立起筹码，让用户主动去要求丰富的 Web 应用。这样一来，如果微软有一天试图打压 Google 或者打压 Web 应用、阻止互联网迁移，那么唯一的防御就是消费者已经用上了这些产品，并且喜欢它们，以至于会反抗。这就是 Gmail 的意义。
David: Gmail development’s trucking along through 2001, 2002, 2003. This is hard to remember now. It took three years to develop Gmail.
David：Gmail 的开发在 2001、2002、2003 年持续推进。现在很难想象，它花了三年才开发出来。
Ben: Long development cycle, yeah.
Ben：开发周期很长啊。
David: To be ready to release publicly. Then it was in beta for 10 years. But I think the reason it took so long was this was all new. There wasn’t a lot of depth and knowledge out there about JavaScript, certainly not about AJAX and XML dynamic refreshing.
David：才好不容易准备好公开发布。然后它又在测试版里待了整整 10 年。但我觉得之所以花那么久，是因为这些东西当时全都是全新的。外界对 JavaScript 的理解还不深，更别提 AJAX 和 XML 的动态刷新了。
Ben: It was really hard to program. Today you’ve got all these nice abstraction layers, these frameworks that people have built to do web development that really didn’t exist to make AJAX applications.
Ben：那时候编程真的很难。今天我们有各种很好的抽象层和框架，方便开发 Web 应用，但在当时，这些东西根本不存在，更别说专门支持 AJAX 的框架了。
David: Okay, so Google’s finally getting ready to launch it; we’re in 2004. There are a couple of questions. One, the service. For all the reasons we just described, Google, Larry, Sergey, Eric, they want it to be so compelling that consumers demand it. It takes off like wildfire, it builds this strategic mode against Microsoft, but it will cost money.
David：好，终于到了 Google 要准备发布的时候了，时间是 2004 年。有几个问题。第一是服务。基于我们刚才说的所有原因，Google、Larry、Sergey、Eric 都希望 Gmail 足够有吸引力，让消费者主动去追捧。这样它就能像野火般传播，建立起对抗微软的战略护城河。但这会花钱。
Ben: There’s a reason other people don’t do this.
Ben：别人不这么做是有原因的。
David: There’s a reason that a gigabyte of free storage seems a little crazy. Even if you assume, and I think this is probably directionally correct, that because of Google’s commodity infrastructure advantage, they could launch Gmail at 1/10th of the cost that anybody else could. Also, remember there’s no public cloud at this point in time.
David：免费提供 1GB 存储听起来确实有点疯狂。即便你假设——我觉得这个假设大体是对的——Google 因为在通用硬件和基础设施上有优势，他们的成本可能只有其他公司的 1/10。但别忘了，那时候还没有公有云。
Ben: You’d have to go build your own data center to do this.
Ben：你必须自己建数据中心才能做。
David: You can’t just launch on AWS; there is no AWS. But even assume that Google has a 90% cost advantage on the infrastructure side, the state of the art is other competitors are offering four megabytes of free storage. Google’s going to offer a gig. Sure, knock that down by 90%, but the effective cost is still 100 megabytes.
David：你没法直接上线到 AWS 上——当时根本没有 AWS。就算假设 Google 在基础设施上有 90% 的成本优势，但当时的行业标准是竞争对手只提供 4MB 的免费存储。Google 却要提供 1GB。好吧，把 1GB 按 90% 折算，成本相当于 100MB。
David: How do you get around being flooded with cost and infrastructure demand when you launch it? They come up with the invite system. This is so brilliant. I actually don’t know if it was designed as this prestigious growth strategy thing that it became.
David：那要怎么避免在上线时被巨大的成本和基础设施需求压垮呢？他们想出了“邀请制”。这简直太聪明了。我甚至不确定他们当时是不是刻意把它设计成后来那种带有声望效应的增长策略。
Ben: Anyone got any Gmail invites? Please, I’ll do anything.
Ben：谁有 Gmail 邀请码？求你了，什么条件我都答应！
David: Yeah, please, please, please. Or if it was truly because of the infrastructure cost, either way, it’s just brilliant. When they launch it on April 1st, 2004, they send out a thousand seed invites to Gmail. It’s a private invite-only internet service. They send them out to influencers. The term didn’t exist back in the day, but influential people and journalists. Then each user has a set number of invites that they can give to other users to invite their friends.
David：是啊，拜托，拜托。不管当初是不是出于基础设施成本的原因，这招都太聪明了。2004 年 4 月 1 日上线时，他们只发出了一千个 Gmail 种子邀请。那是一个纯粹靠邀请制才能进入的网络服务。他们把邀请发给有影响力的人士和记者——虽然当时还没有“influencer”这个词。然后，每个用户会得到一定数量的邀请码，可以发给朋友来注册。
Ben: And it was low. It was like five or something. Then it wasn’t clear when they would top back up, but you’d give out your five, and then at some point you’d come in and you’d have five more, you’d have three more. It was super dynamic and very clearly whatever Google felt like they could give away from their servers at the moment.
Ben：而且数量很少，好像只有五个左右。而且不清楚什么时候会再补充，你先把五个用掉，过一阵子可能又有五个，或者三个。整个过程非常动态，完全取决于当时 Google 觉得他们的服务器还能承受多少。
David: But it was so brilliant. It made it feel like you’re in this special world of people in the know, that it super incentivized viral word-of-mouth growth because I’m telling you, it’s a gigabyte of free storage. It’s this incredible service. They’re selling on eBay for $150. There was a monetary value to these things.
David：这招太聪明了。它让人感觉自己仿佛进入了某个特别的小圈子，从而极大地激励了口碑式的病毒传播。因为我告诉你，这可是 1GB 的免费存储，是一个不可思议的服务。人们甚至在 eBay 上把邀请码卖到 150 美元。这东西是有货币价值的。
Ben: Really?
Ben：真的？
David: Yes. They were trading on eBay for average price of $150 in the early days. So I’m giving you this gift. Incredible.
David：没错。在早期，Gmail 邀请码在 eBay 上的平均售价就是 150 美元。所以当我送你邀请码的时候，那就是送你一份大礼。不可思议吧。
Ben: And look, everybody wants this, but you need to have the product quality that cashes the check.
Ben：而且你看，所有人都想要这个，但前提是产品本身得足够好，能兑现这种价值。
David: It needs to be a real gift.
David：它必须是真正的礼物。
Ben: And it was. It was just better. It wasn’t just something I’d sign up for and then churn, and be like, cool, I locked in my username or whatever. It was something that you actually used every day, or in the words of Larry Page, passed the toothbrush test. It was a part of your daily habit, something you do once or twice a day.
Ben：而 Gmail 确实是。它就是更好。它不是那种你注册完就放在那儿不再用的东西，不只是为了抢个酷炫的用户名。它是你每天真正会用的产品。用 Larry Page 的话说，它通过了“牙刷测试”——它成了你日常习惯的一部分，就像每天刷牙一两次那样。
David: I wish I could only refresh Gmail once or twice a day.
David：要是我真能一天只刷新 Gmail 一两次就好了。
Ben: So David, was this the first software that used a wait list like this? Because obviously it’s become very popular since.
Ben：所以 David，这是不是第一个用候补名单机制的软件？因为显然这后来变得非常流行。
David: I think so. That’s how they take care of the cost side of the equation, is not running out of control is the invite strategy.
David：我觉得是的。这就是他们控制成本的办法——通过邀请制来避免资源失控。
Ben: Well still not making any money though.
Ben：可问题是，它还是没赚钱啊。
David: That’s question number two. How are we going to make money from this thing? Because yeah, okay. There are all these strategic reasons to do it. It’ll increase more traffic on the web, time spent, people will search more, we’ll make more money indirectly. But they still don’t really know that. They think, okay, we need a monetization strategy baked into the product itself. Well how do you make money from anything at Google?
David：对，这就是第二个问题：我们怎么从 Gmail 上赚钱？当然，可以说有很多战略理由去做它——它能增加互联网流量、增加用户在线时长，人们搜索更多，我们间接就能赚更多钱。但这些都是假设，不是确切的。他们觉得，OK，我们需要在产品本身嵌入一个变现策略。那在 Google，所有东西的赚钱方式是什么？
Ben: This actually came up during development. Even in the prototyping phase, Paul logs into the database of ads, which is just funny that at that point in time, Google’s got this big database of ads.
Ben：这个问题其实在开发阶段就出现了。甚至在原型期，Paul 就登录过 Google 的广告数据库。想想都挺有意思，那时候 Google 已经有了一个庞大的广告数据库。
David: Yeah, I’m just going to access the ads database. All of them.
David：是啊，他就直接接入广告数据库，把里面所有广告都能调出来。
Ben: These are the ads that would run when you searched and landed on a search results page. He decided to do content matching against your inbox and just show those ads on the page next to your email. Even though they weren’t meant for that, it actually turned out that these search ads were pretty relevant. It actually was a decent ad to be showing you while you’re looking at your inbox about similar topics.
Ben：这些广告原本是当你搜索并进入搜索结果页面时会显示的。Paul 决定把它们用来和你的收件箱内容做匹配，然后就把这些广告显示在邮件旁边。虽然这些广告一开始并不是为此设计的，但结果证明它们和邮件内容挺相关的。你在看收件箱时，看到一些相关主题的广告，其实效果不错。
Ben: So he just rolls this out. Even though all these people in Google are actually using it as their mail client at the time, people were pissed. People were like, are you looking at my emails? All the things that would then come later in the public actually happened inside Google first. But Larry and Sergey loved it. They were like, oh, this is so obviously the answer.
Ben：于是他就直接上线了。尽管当时 Google 内部的人都已经在用 Gmail 作为邮件客户端，但很多人气炸了。他们说：“你是不是在偷看我的邮件？”后来公众会提出的所有隐私质疑，其实先在 Google 内部发生了。但 Larry 和 Sergey 却爱死了，他们觉得：“这显然就是答案。”
Ben: Interestingly, this experiment predates AdSense. Google has the display ad offering for website publishers that’s called AdSense. That’s different than AdWords, which is the keyword advertisements on a search results page. AdSense hasn’t launched yet.
Ben：有趣的是，这个实验甚至早于 AdSense 的诞生。Google 后来为网站发布商提供的展示广告服务叫 AdSense，它和 AdWords（搜索结果页面上的关键词广告）不同。当时 AdSense 还没推出。
Ben: There are multiple versions of history here. How much credit for AdSense does Gmail get in discovering this? But it is safe to say that the idea of display ads that are content-matched against your Gmail did contribute to the idea for the first version of AdSense, which are essentially the same thing. Content-matched ads just on a publisher website instead of the content of your inbox.
Ben：关于历史版本有不同说法，AdSense 的发现有多少要归功于 Gmail？但可以肯定的是，在 Gmail 中根据内容匹配展示广告的想法，确实启发了 AdSense 第一版的思路——本质上是一样的。只是一个针对你收件箱的内容，另一个针对网站上的内容。
David: So the product launches publicly, April 2004. As you would expect, people go nuts. It is truly a revolutionary product. Gmail grows over the next 20 years from that thousand initial public beta user seed base to over 2 billion today. It’s still by far the best email service. Even if you use another front end for your email for your Gmail, like Superhuman or whatnot today, you still want Gmail on the backend at least as a consumer.
David：于是 Gmail 在 2004 年 4 月正式对外发布。果不其然，人们彻底疯了。这真的是一款革命性的产品。在随后的 20 年里，Gmail 从最初的 1000 名公测种子用户增长到如今超过 20 亿用户。它仍然是最好的邮箱服务。即便你今天用别的客户端（比如 Superhuman）来处理 Gmail 邮件，作为消费者你至少还是希望 Gmail 在后台支持。
David: Once Gmail starts to take off, Larry, Sergey, and Eric see this and they’re like, wow, we should do this a lot. Let’s build as many web applications as we possibly can imagine.
David：当 Gmail 开始火起来时，Larry、Sergey 和 Eric 看着这一切，说：“哇，我们应该多搞这种东西。让我们尽可能多地去构建 Web 应用。”
Ben: What else can go into the browser that we didn’t think was possible before?
Ben：还有哪些东西可以搬进浏览器里？以前我们根本没想过的。
David: This fires on every single cylinder for us, most importantly, grow the web.
David：这简直点燃了我们所有的引擎，最重要的是——推动整个 Web 的发展。
Ben: Grow usage.
Ben：提升使用量。
David: You grow the web, you grow time that people spend in web browsers, they will search more, we will make more money. And beyond that, with some of these products like Gmail, we can monetize the products themselves. Great.
David：当 Web 发展了，人们在浏览器里的时间增加，他们会搜索更多，我们就能赚更多钱。而且，像 Gmail 这样的产品，我们甚至可以直接在产品本身变现。完美。
David: Two, we are building our strategic moat against Microsoft. The faster that we get the Internet-using public to fall in love with and use web applications, the less and less leverage Microsoft has over us.
David：其次，我们也在对微软建立战略护城河。我们越快让大众爱上 Web 应用并习惯使用，微软对我们的控制力就会越弱。
Ben: To use Ben Thompson–speak, Google realizes the web can become the point of integration. Maybe the OS isn’t what the whole universe has to target—the hardware makers, the OEMs, the application makers, the users. If applications start living in the browser, then the web can become the point of integration. Users just need a browser and OEMs just need an operating system that can access the browser.
Ben：用 Ben Thompson 的话说，Google 意识到 Web 可以成为“集成点”。也许操作系统不再是整个生态必须围绕的核心——硬件厂商、OEM、应用开发者、用户。如果应用都在浏览器里运行，那么 Web 就能成为集成点。用户只需要一个浏览器，OEM 只需要一个能跑浏览器的操作系统。
David: And what’s so great for Google because of their business model, sure. It’s great when they build, own, operate, run, and monetize web applications themselves like they do with Gmail, like they’ll do with maps, like they’ll do with Docs, like they’ll do with YouTube that we’re about to talk about. But if they don’t, it doesn’t matter. As long as anybody does it.
David：而且这对 Google 来说更妙的地方在于他们的商业模式。没错，当他们自己去开发、拥有、运营、管理并变现 Web 应用时，像 Gmail、地图、Docs，还有我们马上要讲的 YouTube，那当然很棒。但即便不是他们来做，也没关系。只要有人去做，Google 一样受益。
Ben: They just need to be wind at the back of web adoption.
Ben：他们只需要成为推动 Web 普及的顺风之力。
David: That leads to a whole flood of Google web products and services to come. But before we tell that story…
David：这就引发了随后一大波 Google 的 Web 产品和服务。但在讲这些故事之前……
Ben: Now is the perfect time to talk about our presenting partner, J.P. Morgan Payments. They’re investing billions every year into technology and product development. In fact, Jamie Dimon even referenced it on stage in our interview last month. This investment has led to them becoming a powerful engine for marketplaces, FinTech companies and platforms to deliver growth, stability, and scale for their customers.
Ben：现在正是感谢我们节目合作伙伴——摩根大通支付（J.P. Morgan Payments）的好时机。他们每年在技术和产品开发上投资数十亿美元。事实上，Jamie Dimon 上个月在我们访谈时还特别提到过。这些投入让他们成为市场平台、金融科技公司和各类平台的重要引擎，帮助客户实现增长、稳定和规模化。
David: And these days, the best companies have made payments infrastructure invisible to their users. If you’re booking a ride, buying something from a marketplace, or managing a subscription, the magic happens when payments feel seamless and integrated.
David：如今，最好的公司都已经把支付基础设施做到对用户“隐形”。当你叫车、在平台上买东西、或是管理订阅时，真正的魔力就是支付过程无缝衔接、自然融入体验中。
David: This is what J.P. Morgan Payments brings with their embedded finance solutions. Rather than bolting on payments as an afterthought, you can embed the payments infrastructure directly into your platform without customers having to leave to complete a transaction. This makes your products more seamless, and as we’ve seen from Google, the best products with the stickiest user bases are often the simplest for users.
David：这正是摩根大通支付通过其嵌入式金融解决方案所带来的体验。与其把支付作为事后的外挂功能，不如直接把支付基础设施嵌入平台中，让用户不必跳转就能完成交易。这让产品更加无缝。而正如我们在 Google 身上看到的，最好的产品、最能留住用户的产品，往往就是对用户最简单的产品。
Ben: So embedded payments are all about integrating payments directly into your platform rather than sending users to a separate payment page or third party processor. J.P. Morgan has the technology and capabilities for this with powerful APIs.
Ben：所以嵌入式支付的核心，就是把支付直接整合进你的平台，而不是把用户跳转到单独的支付页面或第三方处理器。摩根大通通过强大的 API 提供了实现这一切的技术与能力。
David: But behind this simplicity, there’s an incredible complexity that J.P. Morgan takes on so you don’t have to. You can get sellers up and running quickly, offering flexible payment options, provide efficient funds management, and secure money movement at scale. Plus, they have advanced analytics, marketplaces and platforms can provide payment acceptance, funds management and payouts, insecure and compliant infrastructure, all without users ever leaving their ecosystem.
David：但在这种表面上的简单背后，是摩根大通承担的巨大复杂性。你可以让卖家快速启动业务，提供灵活的支付选项，实现高效的资金管理，并在大规模下保证资金流动的安全。他们还提供高级分析工具，让市场平台可以在安全合规的基础设施上完成收款、资金管理和付款，而用户全程不需要离开你的生态系统。
Ben: And this reflects J.P. Morgan’s broader vision. They’re not just a bank anymore. They’re infrastructure with the scale resilience and security of a global leader for trust and safety. They were even recognized as the best overall embedded finance platform in Tearsheets’ Big Bank Theory Awards 2024.
Ben：这也体现了摩根大通更宏大的愿景。他们不再只是银行，而是具备全球领导者的规模、韧性和安全性的金融基础设施。在 2024 年 Tearsheets 的“大银行理论奖”评选中，他们甚至被评为最佳嵌入式金融平台。
David: So whether you’re building the next great marketplace or just need reliable payment infrastructure that scales with your business, no matter how large you scale, J.P. Morgan Payments is there so you can focus on what you do best. To learn more about their embedded finance solutions and how they’re powering growth for businesses small and large, head on over to jpmorgan.com/acquired and just tell them that Ben and David sent you.
David：所以，无论你是要打造下一个伟大的市场平台，还是只是需要一个能随着业务扩张而扩展的可靠支付基础设施，不论你规模多大，摩根大通支付都在这里，让你能专注于自己最擅长的事。想了解更多关于他们的嵌入式金融解决方案，以及他们如何助力大小企业增长，可以访问 jpmorgan.com/acquired，并告诉他们是 Ben 和 David 推荐的。
Ben: All right, David, Gmail. We’ve got our existence proof of an AJAX-based web app. It’s going viral. People love it. We can really build web applications. Now, let’s go nuts.
Ben：好了，David，说回 Gmail。我们现在已经有了 AJAX 网页应用的成功案例。它正在病毒式传播，人们喜欢它。我们真的可以做 Web 应用。那么，接下来让我们疯狂一把吧。
David: The next big web apps following Gmail were Maps, Docs, and Spreadsheets, all absolutely incredible.
David：继 Gmail 之后，Google 的下一个重量级 Web 应用是地图、文档和电子表格，它们同样令人惊叹。
Ben: And it was not clear that these things were possible with web technologies.
Ben：而当时还不确定这些东西是否真的能用 Web 技术实现。
David: These required incredible technical and product vision. First Maps. We actually did a whole Acquired episode back in the day just about Google Maps.
David：这些需要极强的技术能力和产品远见。先说 Maps。我们当年其实专门做过一期 Acquired 节目，主题就是 Google Maps。
Ben: The three companies they acquired.
Ben：对，就是他们收购的那三家公司。
David: Yeah. It starts in 2003. Even before the Gmail launch, when a young associate product manager (APM) at Google named Bret Taylor, that Bret Taylor.
David：没错。这一切要从 2003 年说起，甚至在 Gmail 发布之前。当时 Google 有一个年轻的助理产品经理（APM），叫 Bret Taylor。没错，就是那个 Bret Taylor。
Ben: Course, of ACQ2 fame Bret Taylor.
Ben：对，就是 ACQ2 出名的 Bret Taylor。
David: Yes, recent ACQ2 guest, Bret Taylor. Oh yeah, also FriendFeed founder, Facebook CTO, co-CEO of Salesforce, chairman of OpenAI.
David：没错，就是最近上过 ACQ2 的那位嘉宾 Bret Taylor。他还是 FriendFeed 创始人、Facebook CTO、Salesforce 联合 CEO、OpenAI 董事长。
Ben: Former chairman of Twitter.
Ben：还有 Twitter 前董事长。
David: Yeah, that Bret Taylor. Starts his career out of Stanford in 2003 as an associate product manager at Google. He ends up going to Larry and is like, we’re missing out here. AOL has MapQuest, which they’ve just bought for a billion dollars. And I’m hearing through the grapevine that Yahoo is about to make a big push and launch Yahoo Maps. As you would expect, Larry’s like, oh yeah. Well, okay. Is this a web product? Yes, of course. Go do this.
David：对，就是那个 Bret Taylor。他 2003 年从斯坦福毕业后进入 Google，做助理产品经理。他跑去找 Larry，说：“我们在这方面落后了。AOL 已经用 10 亿美元收购了 MapQuest。我还听说 Yahoo 很快就要大举进军，推出 Yahoo Maps。”正如你能想象的那样，Larry 回答：“哦，是吗？好吧，这是个 Web 产品吗？当然是。那就去做吧。”
Ben: For all these things that we’re studying here, there’s a business rationale, which might be extremely indirect, but it’s there. This idea of increasing web use increases Google search, which increases the money printer. But then there’s also an abstract rationale, which is our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Maps is squarely in the middle of that.
Ben：我们现在研究的所有这些产品，背后都有商业逻辑，可能非常间接，但确实存在。就是通过增加 Web 使用量来增加 Google 搜索，从而推动这台“印钞机”。但还有一个更抽象的理由，那就是 Google 的使命——整合全球信息，让信息普遍可得且有用。地图正好是使命的核心。
David: Now the thing was, as big as MapQuest and Yahoo Maps were about to become at the time—and they were big. I remember using them. My parents used them. Everybody on the Internet used these services—they weren’t what you think of as Google Maps today. They were static webpages, they didn’t use AJAX, and the whole point was to get driving directions.
David：不过，当时的 MapQuest 和 Yahoo Maps 的确要火起来了——而且规模很大。我记得我自己用过，我的父母也用过，整个互联网的人都在用。但它们和我们今天印象中的 Google Maps 完全不同。它们只是静态网页，不支持 AJAX，核心功能就是获取驾车路线。
Ben: That you could print out.
Ben：你还得把路线打印出来。
David: Exactly. The business model for these services was on the printed piece of paper that people would print out, you would put ads on there. It is like a Trojan Horse newspaper business.
David：没错。这些服务的商业模式就是：人们把路线打印出来，然后纸张上会印广告。这简直就像一个“特洛伊木马”式的报纸生意。
David: Bret, Larry, and Marissa are looking at this like, I think we can do better than this. They go out and they buy a little company in Australia called Where2 Technologies, which was started by these two brothers, Lars and Jens Rasmussen, who were incredible engineers. They had built a real-time, interactive maps application, except it was an installed desktop app.
David：Bret、Larry 和 Marissa 看着这一切，心想：“我们肯定能做得更好。”于是他们收购了一家澳大利亚的小公司，叫 Where2 Technologies，由两兄弟 Lars 和 Jens Rasmussen 创办。他们是极其出色的工程师，开发了一款实时交互式地图应用，但那是一个需要安装的桌面软件。
David: They’re meeting with them and Larry’s like, okay, this is what we want, but we need it on the web. I think actually the quote was, ‘We like the web at Google.’ This is how good of engineers the Rasmussens were. They go off and in (I think) three weeks, they rewrite and re-architect the entire application to run as a web app. They basically independently discover and implement a lot of the JavaScript and AJAX features that Google was working on internally for Gmail. Gmail still hadn’t launched yet.
David：他们和 Rasmussens 兄弟见面时，Larry 说：“好，这就是我们想要的，但我们需要它在 Web 上运行。我记得他的原话是：‘在 Google，我们喜欢 Web。’”而这对 Rasmussens 兄弟的工程水平有多高呢？他们回去后，大概三周时间就把整个应用重写并改造成 Web 应用。他们几乎是独立地重新发现并实现了 Google 当时在 Gmail 内部研发的许多 JavaScript 和 AJAX 功能。那时候 Gmail 还没发布呢。
Ben: Amazing.
Ben：太惊人了。
David: So Google ends up buying Where2 that becomes the core of Google Maps. Around the same time, they also acquired two other companies, ZipDash that did traffic data, and Keyhole which would become Google Earth. Now, Google Earth was an installed desktop application. Ultimately, everything that Google Earth was building would get folded back into Maps later.
David：所以 Google 最终收购了 Where2，这成了 Google Maps 的核心。差不多同时，他们还收购了另外两家公司：做交通数据的 ZipDash，以及 Keyhole——后来变成了 Google Earth。Google Earth 当时是一个桌面安装软件。最终，Google Earth 的所有功能都被整合回 Maps 里。
Ben: It’s actually not true. I thought that, and just last night I realized you can still go to earth.google.com and get a completely different 3D experience than Google Maps.
Ben：其实不完全是这样。我之前也这么以为，但就在昨晚我发现你现在仍然可以去 earth.google.com，得到和 Google Maps 完全不同的 3D 体验。
David: Oh, no way.
David：哦，不会吧。
Ben: It’s all in the web now. It’s unbelievably powerful.
Ben：现在一切都在 Web 上了，功能强得不可思议。
David: So it is a web app, but it’s separate from Maps?
David：所以它是一个 Web 应用，但和 Maps 是分开的？
Ben: Yes.
Ben：对。
David: I didn’t know that. I got to check that out.
David：我还真不知道，我得去试试看。
Ben: It’s amazing.
Ben：真的很棒。
David: That’s awesome. Yes, Keyhole and Google Earth (I think) is my favorite part of our first Google episode earlier this year. That the whole thing ended up just being a Trojan Horse downloader to get Google toolbar installed on Internet Explorer on people’s systems.
David：太酷了。是的，Keyhole 和 Google Earth 是我今年早些时候我们做的第一期 Google 节目里最喜欢的部分。我记得整个 Google Earth 最终其实成了一个“特洛伊木马”下载器，用来把 Google 工具栏安装到用户的 Internet Explorer 浏览器上。
Ben: They’re organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful. But also it comes with Google Toolbar.
Ben：他们在整合世界的信息，让信息普遍可得且有用。但顺带还送你一个 Google 工具栏。
David: The greatest distribution hack for Google search of all time. Anyway, back to Google Maps and Where2. February, 2005, Google Maps launches. People go nuts. Live mapping dynamic web application.
David：这是 Google 搜索史上最厉害的分发黑科技。好了，说回 Google Maps 和 Where2。2005 年 2 月，Google Maps 发布。人们疯了——一个实时交互的动态地图 Web 应用。
Ben: So you want to know my favorite Easter egg for the first day launch of Google Maps? I don’t know if you know this. When you loaded up maps.google.com, do you know what visually you saw?
Ben：你想知道我最喜欢的 Google Maps 上线首日的彩蛋吗？我不知道你知不知道。当你打开 maps.google.com 时，你会看到什么画面？
David: I have no recollection.
David：我完全没印象了。
Ben: You saw a great big ocean and North America, and then floating in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, you see the UK, and then there is nothing past it.
Ben：你会看到一片巨大的海洋和北美大陆，然后在大西洋中间漂着一个英国岛。再往后什么都没有。
David: They hadn’t built it yet?
David：他们还没建好吗？
Ben: They hadn’t built it yet. Europe, Asia, Africa, not included. It’s not even like it’s off limits. It looks like there’s an ocean where Europe should be.
Ben：没错，他们还没建出来。欧洲、亚洲、非洲统统没有。甚至不是说“暂时不可用”，而是整个看起来就像欧洲的位置是一片大海。
David: How do you decide what the MVP is, the minimum viable product to ship on the map? That’s amazing. All right. There’s one more really important piece of Maps, which is the next year in 2006, they released the API. This is what really kicks off the Web 2.0 era.
David：你要怎么决定地图的 MVP（最小可行产品）是什么？这太神奇了。好了，还有一个关于 Maps 特别重要的点，就是第二年 2006 年他们发布了 API。这才是真正开启 Web 2.0 时代的标志。
David: Gmail, JavaScript, and AJAX had inspired developers out there for sure, to make rich web apps, and people were doing that. When Google releases the Maps API, this thing called mashups starts happening. Do you remember this?
David：Gmail、JavaScript 和 AJAX 已经启发了无数开发者去做丰富的 Web 应用，大家的确也在这么做。但当 Google 发布 Maps API 后，一种叫“混搭（mashups）”的东西出现了。你还记得吗？
Ben: Absolutely.
Ben：当然记得。
David: It’s now super easy to grab Google Maps and build stuff on top of it, and it’s really hot. This enables startups like Zillow, Uber, eventually DoorDash, Airbnb. Think about all the companies that just couldn’t exist without the Google Maps API.
David：突然之间，你可以轻松调用 Google Maps 并在上面构建应用，这简直火爆极了。这直接催生了 Zillow、Uber，后来还有 DoorDash、Airbnb。想想看，没有 Google Maps API，这些公司根本不可能存在。
Ben: There was that whole web of geo-related companies too. Remember that era of mobile, social, local, most solo.
Ben：还有整个一批与地理相关的公司。记得那个“移动、社交、本地化”的时代吗？
David: Oh yeah, Foursquare and Gowalla, all those.
David：对啊，还有 Foursquare、Gowalla，那一批公司。
Ben: All this existed because Google Maps existed.
Ben：而这一切都因为 Google Maps 的存在才成为可能。
David: So back to Google’s overall strategy here and adoption of web apps and building this moat and defense against Microsoft. This is just incredible. Here’s Maps itself as a first class rich web application that tens, eventually hundreds, today billions, two billion-plus users use and love every day. Now here’s this API that’s making it really easy to help other startups and other companies go build great web apps too. The lock-in just keeps getting deeper and deeper and deeper for the web.
David：说回 Google 的总体战略——推动 Web 应用的普及，构建护城河，抵御微软的威胁。这真的太不可思议了。Maps 本身是一个顶级的富 Web 应用，数以千万、上亿、如今超过 20 亿用户每天都在使用并喜爱它。与此同时，API 又让其他创业公司和企业更容易构建出色的 Web 应用。Web 的“锁定效应”就这样越来越深、越来越牢。
Ben: At first, the API was notoriously free or very inexpensive at very high limits for a long time. That’s different now, but for the longest time this is a part of the mission, so we’re doing it and we’ll figure out the business later. It’s a very founder-driven thing.
Ben：最初，API 在很长一段时间里几乎是免费的，或者即使收费也非常便宜，而且调用额度极高。现在当然不一样了。但在最开始，这就是 Google 的使命的一部分：“先做出来，先推动发展，商业模式以后再说。”这非常符合创始人的思维方式。
Ben: Now it’s popular to create maps. Apple at some point flipped into doing it. There are these other third-party companies, and there’s the OpenStreetMap and all this stuff. For the first five to maybe eight years, Google was the only one that had a passion for this and a willing to spend into the giant hole that you need to create maps of the whole world. It is an incredibly hard data and engineering problem.
Ben：如今，做地图已经很普遍了。Apple 后来也转型去做，还有其他一些第三方公司，以及 OpenStreetMap 等项目。但在前五到八年里，只有 Google 真正有热情，也愿意砸钱去填这个巨大的坑，把全世界的地图做出来。这是一个极其困难的数据和工程问题。
得有经济实力。
Ben: They had to go draw all their own maps from scratch, acquire the data, figure out how to get fresh data all the time, create a crowdsourced, crazy thing among Google, Google Maps explorers or something like that. All the people that would update these things. This is an extremely Googly problem and a founder bet to be like, nope, we’re going to go spend hundreds of billions of dollars, billions of dollars on this.
Ben：他们必须从零开始绘制自己的地图，收集数据，还要想办法持续不断获取最新数据。甚至搞出了类似“Google Maps 探险者”这样的众包机制，让人们去更新这些东西。这就是一个极具 Google 风格的问题，也是创始人式的豪赌：没错，我们要在这上面花数十亿、甚至数百亿美元。
Ben: Drive cars around, taking pictures of everything. Figure out how to not overshare personal information on this. Do it dynamically because you’re capturing a huge amount of… It’s just a wacky, wacky engineering problem that is daunting, and they took it on.
Ben：开着车到处跑，把一切都拍下来；还要解决如何避免过度泄露个人信息的问题；而且必须动态地去做，因为你要捕捉的数据量庞大到惊人……这是一个疯狂到可怕的工程难题，但他们就真去干了。
David: We’re not going to talk about this today, but put a pin in for the next episode, is one of the most incredibly strategically valuable data assets for the AI era, and specifically for self-driving cars.
David：今天我们先不展开，但记下来，留到下一期节目：Google Maps 数据是 AI 时代最具战略价值的资产之一，尤其是对自动驾驶来说。
Ben: Yes. But today, Maps has over two billion active users this year. They don’t break out revenue, but estimates are that maps does well over $5 billion in revenue, maybe even $10 billion in revenue.
Ben：没错。不过今天的情况是，Google Maps 今年的活跃用户超过 20 亿。虽然公司没单独披露收入，但估算它的收入至少超过 50 亿美元，甚至可能接近 100 亿。
Ben: The larger part of that is ads. You see recommended places to go around you all the time whenever you open Google Maps now that are sponsored ads, just like on Google search. Then the smaller part of that is from the API licensing, David, that you were talking about. But this is a real business for Google today.
Ben：其中大部分收入来自广告。你现在打开 Google Maps，总会看到推荐的餐馆、地点，这些都是赞助广告，就像 Google 搜索一样。收入较小的一部分来自 API 授权，正如你刚才提到的。但无论如何，这已经是 Google 今天的一个真正大生意了。
David: All right. Next ones that we got to talk about, Docs and Spreadsheets. These aren’t the biggest Google apps out there today. I think if you lumped them all together into Workspace and add Drive, it is over a billion users.
David：好，接下来我们要谈的是 Docs 和 Spreadsheets。它们不是 Google 今天最大的应用，但如果把它们和 Drive 一起算作 Workspace 套件，那用户数超过 10 亿。
Ben: That whole suite is among their most used products.
Ben：整个套件是他们使用率最高的产品之一。
David: That whole we call it Office Suite, is that what you would call it?
David：我们是不是可以叫它“Office 套件”？
Ben: That sounds like an Office-type Suite. It’s a good idea. Someone should do that.
Ben：听起来就像一个 Office 类型的套件。这主意不错。应该有人去做。
David: So Docs and Spreadsheets hit Microsoft right where it hurts—Office. people have tried both before Google and after Google to compete with Microsoft in productivity forever.
David：Docs 和 Spreadsheets 正好打在微软的命门——Office。在 Google 之前和之后，都有人试图在生产力软件上挑战微软。
Ben: WordPerfect. Lotus Notes, Lotus 1-2-3.
Ben：WordPerfect，Lotus Notes，Lotus 1-2-3。
David: We talked all about that on our Microsoft episode. By the way, WordPerfect acquired and run by Novell. Who is the CEO of Novell? Eric Schmidt. Eric knows all about this.
David：这些我们在微软那期节目里都讲过。顺便说一下，WordPerfect 被 Novell 收购并运营过。而 Novell 的 CEO 是谁？Eric Schmidt。所以 Eric 对这些事再熟悉不过。
Ben: But here’s what I will say, David. If you were starting on the foot of competing with Microsoft, or trying to build a word processor, or trying to build a spreadsheet, you would be doomed for failure. What Google was doing was saying there is something that is uniquely possible with web applications and AJAX in this Web 2.0 era for the first time. That thing is real-time collaboration.
Ben：但我要说的是，David，如果你一开始的目标就是和微软竞争，去做一个文字处理器或者电子表格，那注定是失败的。Google 真正做的，是抓住了 Web 2.0 时代第一次出现的、Web 应用和 AJAX 独有的机会。那个机会就是——实时协作。
David: Real-time multi-user collaboration. These were the first I’ve tried to wrack my brain. I talked to Sam Schillace, the founder of Writely, which Google acquired, which became Google Docs. He believes these were the first real-time multi-user collaborative pieces of software in history. It just wasn’t possible before the web.
David：实时多用户协作。我仔细回想过，还和 Sam Schillace 谈过——他是 Writely 的创始人，后来被 Google 收购，成了 Google Docs。他认为这是历史上第一个实时多用户协作的软件。在 Web 出现之前，这是根本不可能实现的。
Ben: Jonathan Rochelle, the founder of the company that would be acquired, that would become Google Spreadsheets, basically said the same thing. His comment was, we actually didn’t know if it was possible to do this in the web. Google said, based on the success we’re seeing with Gmail, I bet we could do actual spreadsheets in the browser with real-time collaboration. When the Sheets team came in, it was truly an open question of, can we make it so you and another person can party on the same very basic spreadsheet at the same time?
Ben：后来被收购、并成为 Google Spreadsheets 的公司创始人 Jonathan Rochelle 说过几乎一样的话。他当时的感慨是：我们根本不知道在 Web 上能不能做到这件事。Google 说：基于 Gmail 的成功，我们打赌能在浏览器里实现真正的电子表格，并且支持实时协作。当 Sheets 团队加入时，问题仍然是开放的：我们能不能做到让你和别人同时在一张最基础的表格里实时操作？
David: Interesting. The Docs team, so Docs was an acquisition. It was a company called Writely that was founded by Sam and his two co-founders who were great programmers. They’ve worked together for many years.
David：很有意思。Docs 团队其实是收购来的。那家公司叫 Writely，由 Sam 和他的两位联合创始人创立，他们都是优秀的程序员，合作了很多年。
Ben: I used Writely before it became a Google product.
Ben：我在 Writely 还没被 Google 收购之前就用过。
David: No way. You were one of very few people who did that, because it was not an independent company for long. Product launched August, 2005. Google bought the company in March, 2006. You had about a six-month window. They built real-time collaborative word processing as a web app inspired by Gmail and everything that was going on at Google.
David：不会吧。那你真是少数用户之一，因为它独立存在的时间很短。产品在 2005 年 8 月上线，2006 年 3 月 Google 就收购了这家公司。你只有大约 6 个月的时间能用。他们打造的是一个实时协作的网页端文字处理器，灵感来自 Gmail 和当时 Google 内部正在发生的一切。
David: The whole company started as, oh, for our next project, let’s explore what we can do with JavaScript and AJAX. Oh, what would it be like if we put a word processor on the web? They weren’t actually even thinking about collaboration at first, but then as they were working on it together, they naturally started collaborating about, oh, this is the killer feature.
David：整个公司最初的想法是：“我们的下一个项目，来探索一下 JavaScript 和 AJAX 能做到什么。哦，如果我们把文字处理器搬到 Web 上会怎么样？”他们一开始甚至没想到协作功能，但当他们一起工作时，自然而然地发现协作才是杀手级功能。
Ben: That’s funny. That’s different from the Spreadsheets team. Their whole thing at first was we’re not going to make a better spreadsheet than Excel. If we put it in the web, it has to be about sharing/collaboration.
Ben：这很有趣，和 Spreadsheets 团队不一样。他们一开始的想法就是：我们不可能做出比 Excel 更好的表格。如果要把它放到 Web 上，就必须突出分享/协作。
David: And to your earlier point, nobody can compete with Microsoft and productivity software. One, because they’d been doing it so long, they had this feature wall of so many features that people needed.
David：而且就像你之前说的，没有人能在生产力软件上和微软竞争。第一，他们做得太久了，已经建立起一堵“功能墙”，很多功能是人们确实需要的。
Ben: Two, proprietary file formats.
Ben：第二，专有文件格式。
David: They had a network effect of the file format.
David：他们的文件格式本身就形成了网络效应。
Ben: You built your big model in Excel. Good luck.
Ben：你在 Excel 里建了个庞大的模型？那祝你好运吧。
David: Other people need to be able to run it on their installed desktop applications. Good luck getting somebody to try downloading or buying a new piece of software and installing it on their machine. But three, the biggest by far, the enterprise agreement. This is Microsoft’s whole entire business model.
David：别人也必须能在自己安装的桌面应用里运行它。你要说服他们去下载或购买一款新软件并安装到电脑上？祝你好运吧。但第三点，也是最重要的一点——企业级协议。这就是微软整个商业模式的核心。
Ben: You don’t have to be best in breed in any specific thing. You just have to be a platform with everything.
Ben：你不需要在某个具体功能上做到最好。你只需要是一个应有尽有的平台。
David: Yup. IT departments will buy it. Especially for productivity software, really all the money is in B2B and work applications. If IT departments are buying the Microsoft Enterprise agreement, they’re getting everything. Good luck unseating Microsoft Office.
David：没错。IT 部门会买单。特别是生产力软件，真正的市场在 B2B 和工作应用。如果 IT 部门签了微软的企业协议，那他们就能获得全套产品。想要撼动 Microsoft Office？几乎不可能。
Ben: I’m not sure you could do this as an independent business, because think about how long Google went with these things before they were adopted by bigger companies. For the longest time it was, oh, a Google Doc. Either you use that for your personal life or maybe a startup would use it, but even a medium-sized company, you can’t be serious. Get out of here with that. Google was basically able to subsidize it because they had a giant existing business.
Ben：我不确定这种事作为独立公司能不能做到。想想 Google 推出这些东西后，大公司用了多久才真正采用。很长一段时间里，人们对 Google Doc 的态度就是：要么拿来处理个人生活，要么小型创业公司用一用。但中型公司？你开玩笑吧。走开吧。Google 基本上能让这事存活下来，是因为它背后有庞大的核心业务，可以补贴这些产品。
David: You are so right. Nobody except Google could do this for a whole bunch of reasons. One, you talk about subsidizing. Imagine trying to build this software as an independent company, or really even as any other company. It would require a lot of infrastructure, real-time, multi-user collaboration in a web app. Gosh, that seems like really complicated server and backend infrastructure for Google.
David：你说得太对了。除了 Google，没有任何公司能做到这件事，原因很多。首先就是你提到的补贴。试想一下，作为一家独立公司——甚至是其他任何公司——要去构建这样的软件，意味着你需要庞大的基础设施。在 Web 应用里支持实时多用户协作，这需要非常复杂的服务器和后台架构，即便对 Google 来说都不简单。
Ben: It’s what they do.
Ben：但这正是 Google 擅长的事。
David: Running Docs and Sheets, the incremental load to Google’s infrastructure was trivial compared to Search. They already had it built out. It was super cheap.
David：运行 Docs 和 Sheets，相比于搜索业务，给 Google 基础设施带来的额外负担微不足道。他们的架构早就建好了，运行成本非常低。
David: Two, they don’t need to make money from it. This is the big reason why nobody else could compete. Microsoft has all the dollars completely on lockdown because of the enterprise agreement.
David：其次，Google 不需要从中赚钱。这就是为什么没人能和他们竞争的最大原因。微软靠企业级协议牢牢把持住了所有的利润。
Ben: Big dollars. These small and medium businesses would of course pay for something, but those dollars don’t add up to be nearly as big.
Ben：而且是大笔的利润。中小企业当然会付一些钱，但那点钱加起来根本比不上微软拿到的。
David: Exactly. Google, though, that’s fine. Microsoft can keep all the dollars. All we care about is people use the web. In this instance, particularly with Office and productivity, really this is about putting the screws to Microsoft a little bit and distracting them.
David：没错。但对 Google 来说，这没问题。钱都让微软赚去好了，我们只关心人们是否使用 Web。在这个案例里，特别是涉及 Office 和生产力软件时，Google 的目的其实是给微软“添堵”，分散它的注意力。
David: From Google’s point of view, this is a cheap distraction. If this gets Microsoft all spun up, Microsoft is now all of a sudden getting asked all the time, what’s your web strategy for office? When are you going to add collaboration to Word and Excel, et cetera, et cetera? They don’t have any answers.
David：在 Google 看来，这就是一种廉价的“干扰”。如果这让微软乱了阵脚，那微软就会被不断追问：“你们 Office 的 Web 战略是什么？什么时候在 Word 和 Excel 里加上协作功能？”等等。而微软根本没准备好答案。
Ben: I literally worked on this. My internship was at Microsoft and I worked on adding headers and footers to the Microsoft Word web app. We were porting the Windows code to have perfect document fidelity to the web, so when you looked on the web and then print it from the web, the document would be laid out, pixel for pixel, character for character, exactly how it would look on the printed page. When you have that requirement, that is a hard, hard engineering task. It’s still not as good as Google Docs.
Ben：我真的参与过这个。当时我在微软实习，做的工作就是给 Microsoft Word 网页版加页眉页脚。我们在移植 Windows 端的代码，为的是让文档在网页上显示和打印时能做到完全一致——像素级、字符级的对齐，和打印出来的页面完全一样。有这种要求的话，工程难度极大。但即便如此，体验还是比不上 Google Docs。
David: I love it that this launched your technology career. Amazing. But yeah, from Google’s perspective, this is amazing. Microsoft is now forced to bring their crown jewels to the web, which they don’t want to do. Ben, to your point, because they have to make it look and feel and function exactly like the installed desktop apps, this is going to take them a long time and be a big investment. Fantastic.
David：我真喜欢这是你技术职业的起点，太有趣了。但从 Google 的角度看，这一切都很棒。微软被迫把自己的“皇冠上的明珠”搬到 Web 上，而他们其实不想这么做。就像你说的，因为他们必须保证外观、体验和功能与桌面应用完全一致，所以这会耗费大量时间和巨额投入。对 Google 来说简直太完美了。
Ben: And no matter what, it’s going to be more complicated because with Google, since it’s all free, there’s no licensing. Someone just shares a Google Doc with you. If you have permission to view it, you view it.
Ben：而且不管怎么说，微软都会更复杂。因为 Google 这边完全免费，没有任何授权问题。别人只要给你分享一个 Google Doc，只要你有查看权限，就能直接打开。
Ben: With Microsoft, I remember at first it was antithetical. It was like, but what if I haven’t bought Word? Can I just use Word for free in the web then? Is Microsoft okay with that? Am I going to hit some weird usage tier? It’s confusing for users. It forces the company to think about pricing and packaging. It was a master stroke by Google.
Ben：而微软这边，我记得一开始逻辑是相反的。比如，如果我没买 Word，那我是不是就能在 Web 上免费用 Word？微软能接受吗？会不会碰到什么奇怪的使用限制？这让用户很困惑，也迫使公司必须考虑定价和打包问题。这正是 Google 的妙招。
David: Fast forward to today, it’s hard to get real actual apples-to-apples data on Google Workspace versus Microsoft Office users. But basically, the way to think about the market is that Google has the vast majority of users and usage of productivity software, and Microsoft still has the vast majority of dollars. And that’s fine. Google’s super happy about that.
David：快进到今天，很难得到 Google Workspace 和 Microsoft Office 用户的真正可比数据。但基本可以这么看：Google 占据了生产力软件的绝大多数用户和使用量，而微软仍然掌握着绝大多数的营收。这样很好，Google 对此非常满意。
Ben: Is that true that there are more active users of Google Workspace than there is of Office?
Ben：真的有比 Office 更多的活跃用户在用 Google Workspace 吗？
David: Yeah. I think if you look at users of Docs, Sheets, or Slides, it’s in the billion-ish, 500 million billion range for each of those. Office (I think) has a couple of hundred million users worldwide.
David：对的。如果你看 Docs、Sheets 或 Slides，每一个的用户数大概都是 5 亿到 10 亿之间。Office（我记得）在全球大概也就几亿用户。
Ben: That’s crazy. I didn’t realize that.
Ben：太疯狂了。我之前完全没意识到。
David: Pretty wild. But to my point about the dollars, so Microsoft’s productivity and business process segment, which is mostly Office—I think LinkedIn is now part of this too—last year generated over $120 billion in revenue. Google reports Workspace as part of the cloud segment, so all of cloud, inclusive of their Infrastructure as a Service, all the AI infrastructure, all that, the whole cloud segment for Google last year did about $50 billion in revenue, less than $50 billion. Microsoft’s productivity segment, $120 billion. Office is the big piece.
David：确实惊人。但说到营收，微软的生产力和业务流程部门（主要就是 Office，我想现在也包括 LinkedIn），去年创造了超过 1200 亿美元的收入。Google 则把 Workspace 作为云业务的一部分来披露，所以云包括了 IaaS、AI 基础设施等所有东西。整个云业务去年收入不到 500 亿美元。而微软的生产力部门 1200 亿，Office 是其中的绝对核心。
Ben: And that’s high margin revenue.
Ben：而且还是高毛利收入。
David: High margin revenue. Google’s office products are some small portion of a $50 billion revenue segment. So yeah, Microsoft’s still got all the money, Google’s got all the users, and everybody’s happy.
David：对，高毛利。Google 的办公产品只是 500 亿美元云业务里的一小部分。所以微软拿走了钱，Google 拿走了用户，大家都挺开心。
Ben: You’re so right. Everyone is happy. That’s exactly what Google wants.
Ben：你说得太对了。大家都开心。这正是 Google 想要的结果。
David: Ultimately today, Microsoft is fine with this arrangement too. The ultimate fun coda though is Sam Schillace, founder of Writely, he would go on to manage all of Docs and Sheets. I think he actually managed Maps at some point too. He is now the deputy CTO of Microsoft.
David：到今天，微软其实也接受了这种格局。最后有个有趣的尾声：Writely 的创始人 Sam Schillace，后来负责了 Docs 和 Sheets，我记得他好像还管过 Maps。如今，他是微软的副 CTO。
Ben: Careers are long.
Ben：职业生涯很漫长啊。
David: Amazing.
David：真是奇妙。
Ben: The interesting thing, reflecting on Google’s actual business here and comparing it against all the things that we’re talking about, Google essentially won search by the mid- late-2000s. I know Bing hasn’t even launched yet, and we’ll get to that, but Search was going to continue becoming a more and more giant market.
Ben：有趣的是，如果回顾 Google 的实际业务，把它和我们刚才聊的所有事情放在一起对比，你会发现 Google 在 2000 年代中后期已经基本赢下了搜索。我知道 Bing 当时还没上线，我们之后会讲到，但搜索本来就注定会越来越大，成为一个巨大的市场。
Ben: All this stuff they’re doing, it’s like, oh, we’ve won and this market is naturally going to become large. I guess let’s just fuel it getting larger and try to do a bunch of stuff under the umbrella of our mission. But what do we really need to do?
Ben：所以他们做的所有这些事，其实是基于这样的想法：“哦，我们已经赢了，这个市场会自然变大。那我们不如让它更快变大，同时在我们使命的伞下多尝试一些东西。但我们真正需要做的是什么？”
Ben: The slightly more altruistic answer, I suspect if Larry Page was sitting next to us, he would say, what is the goal of a company? The goal of a company isn’t build the largest business necessarily. It’s to fulfill its mission. Yeah, we got a money printing machine from Search, and we’re investing a lot of money still in Search and making that better, but all these things fulfill our mission too.
Ben：如果换一个更理想主义的答案，我怀疑要是 Larry Page 坐在我们旁边，他会说：一家公司的目标是什么？目标不一定是建成最大的企业，而是实现它的使命。是的，我们靠搜索拥有了一台“印钞机”，而且我们还在不断投入让搜索更好，但这些其它项目同样也是在履行我们的使命。
David: I think these things are all true.
David：我认为这些说法都成立。
David: So on the back of the success of Maps, Docs, Spreadsheets, really starts to inform Google’s strategy here. Specifically they’ve seen, hey, we can acquire these web app, Web 2.0 companies, bring them into Google, turbocharge them, offer these magical experiences to consumers. We get all this strategic value out of them, both on the offensive and defensive front. We can operate these things at a fraction of the expense that it would cost anyone else to do so, standalone company or part of other big companies.
David：所以在 Maps、Docs 和 Spreadsheets 成功的基础上，Google 的战略逐渐清晰了。具体来说，他们发现：嘿，我们可以收购这些 Web 应用、Web 2.0 公司，把它们带进 Google，加速发展，为消费者提供神奇的体验。我们能从中获得巨大的战略价值，既有进攻性，也有防御性。而且我们运营这些产品的成本只是别人（无论是独立公司还是大公司的一部分）的一小部分。
Ben: And some of the things we could buy actually fit into our core ads business quite well.
Ben：而且有些我们能收购的东西，其实能很好地融入我们核心的广告业务。
David: Yeah. What if we went big with this, like really big?
David：是啊。如果我们在这件事上放手一搏，来一次超级大的呢？
Ben: Like something super expensive to run, that requires storage of massive videos, and bandwidth for streaming these massive videos, and lawsuit protection.
Ben：比如一个运营成本极高的东西，需要存储海量视频，还要提供流式播放的带宽，还要有应对诉讼的保护。
David: Probably also costs a lot to buy it because it’s well-funded from Sequoia. That leads us to YouTube.
David：而且买下来可能还要花大价钱，因为它背后有红杉资本的强力支持。这就把我们带到了 YouTube。
Ben: But before we do that, now is a great time to thank friend of the show, Anthropic and their AI assistant, Claude.
Ben：但在讲 YouTube 之前，现在是个好时机来感谢我们节目的朋友——Anthropic 以及他们的 AI 助手 Claude。
David: As we were researching Google’s expansion here from just Search into being a real platform company here in the 2000s with Gmail and Chrome, Android, Workspace, everything we’re going to get to later in the episode, the complexity just skyrocketed with all these interconnected systems that needed to scale to billions of users and keep information flowing between all the various products and services that Google was launching.
David：在我们研究 Google 从单纯搜索扩展成 2000 年代真正的平台型公司的过程中——包括 Gmail、Chrome、Android、Workspace，以及我们稍后会谈到的其他产品——复杂度简直直线上升。因为所有这些互相关联的系统都必须扩展到数十亿用户，并确保信息在 Google 推出的各种产品和服务之间顺畅流动。
David: The funny thing is how quaint that problem seems today compared to the scale, speed, and interconnectedness that you need in the AI era. If you’re an enterprise building today in AI, you need to deal with all of this times 10.
David：有趣的是，与今天 AI 时代所需的规模、速度和互联互通相比，当年的问题显得几乎有点“可爱”。如果你现在是一家构建 AI 的企业，你要面对的复杂度是当年的十倍。
Ben: Enter Claude. What makes Claude different for the enterprise is sustained performance on complex tasks. We’re talking about the work that would typically take your senior engineers weeks, like refactoring entire code bases or synthesizing thousands of regulatory documents. I wouldn’t know anything about that.
Ben：这就是 Claude 的用武之地。Claude 的独特之处在于它能在企业环境中长时间稳定地处理复杂任务。比如通常需要高级工程师花上数周的工作——重构整个代码库，或者整合上千份监管文件。我个人当然对这些不太熟（笑）。
Ben: Claude can handle these multi-hour projects while maintaining context and fewer hallucinations throughout. Claude is actually the most adopted AI within enterprises when it comes to their API.
Ben：Claude 能够在保持上下文一致的情况下完成这些长达数小时的项目，而且产生的幻觉更少。实际上，在企业 API 的使用上，Claude 是采用率最高的 AI。
David: That’s because Claude integrates seamlessly with existing workflows through their MCP connector system. They have prebuilt integrations with tools like Jira, GitHub, HubSpot, and Square, plus custom integrations for any internal system making Claude your central knowledge resource.
David：原因在于 Claude 能通过 MCP 连接器系统无缝集成到现有工作流程中。他们已经和 Jira、GitHub、HubSpot、Square 等工具实现了预构建集成，还能为任何内部系统做定制化对接，从而让 Claude 成为你的核心知识资源。
Ben: So companies like GitLab are already using Claude for coding, and research teams use it to process documents that would normally take weeks to analyze manually.
Ben：像 GitLab 这样的公司已经在用 Claude 来做代码工作，研究团队则用它来处理那些原本需要几周才能人工分析的文档。
David: If you’re building the next generation of intelligent applications, check out Anthropic’s enterprise offerings to see how teams are transforming their workflows with Claude.
David：如果你正在构建下一代智能应用，不妨看看 Anthropic 的企业级产品，了解团队是如何借助 Claude 改造工作流的。
Ben: And we’ve got a special offer for Acquired listeners to try out Claude before making the enterprise commitment. Half-price Claude Pro for three months. Go to claude.ai/acquired to get started.
Ben：另外我们还为 Acquired 听众准备了特别优惠，可以在企业正式使用之前先试用 Claude：Claude Pro 半价三个月。访问 claude.ai/acquired 即可开始。
David: And just tell them that Ben and David sent you.
David：记得告诉他们，是 Ben 和 David 推荐的。
Ben: All right, David, the YouTube story.
Ben：好了，David，接下来讲讲 YouTube 的故事。
David: The big kahuna.
David：大人物登场。
Ben: The big kahuna.
Ben：没错，大人物。
David: The most embarrassing thing in Acquired history was our early episode on YouTube.
David：Acquired 历史上最尴尬的事情，就是我们早期那期关于 YouTube 的节目。
Ben: All right. I have got a proposal for you.
Ben：好吧，我有个提议。
David: Okay, I’m ready for it. You want to take it out of the feed? Delete it?
David：行，我准备好了。你是想把它从节目里删掉？直接删除？
Ben: Today we’re setting the record straight. When we finish this section, we are regrading YouTube. We are updating the Acquired cannon. It’s happening.
Ben：今天我们要把记录纠正过来。等讲完这一部分，我们要重新给 YouTube 打分，更新 Acquired 的“正典”。这就要发生了。
David: Oh, let’s do it. We’re bringing grading back, baby.
David：好啊，来吧。我们要把打分带回来了，伙计。
Ben: Great. I’m glad you’re into it.
Ben：太好了，很高兴你同意。
David: I love it.
David：我太喜欢了。
Ben: Awesome.
Ben：太棒了。
David: All right. YouTube, 2003. Same timeframe as everything we’re talking about here. Gmail hasn’t even launched yet. Google starts working on Google video. The idea is that there’s a lot of information in video. and thus it fits Google’s mission, Ben, as you were saying earlier.
David：好，回到 YouTube。2003 年，和我们刚才聊的那些事差不多是同一时期。Gmail 还没上线呢，Google 就已经开始做 Google Video 了。背后的逻辑是：视频里包含大量信息，所以它符合 Google 的使命，正如 Ben 你刚才说的。
David: Also, well, there are just so much more advertising dollars in TV than anywhere else in the global economy.
David：而且，当时电视广告的规模远远超过全球经济里任何其他广告渠道。
Ben: To this point in time, TV was the bulk of ad spend.
Ben：在那个时间点，电视占据了广告支出的绝大部分。
David: If you go look at some of the old Mary Meeker internet trends decks, remember from this time period, and you look at the share of global ad dollars spent on TV versus any other category, it’s just so much bigger than anything else.
David：如果你回去看当年 Mary Meeker 的互联网趋势报告，会发现全球广告花费里，电视的份额比任何其他类别都大得多。
Ben: David, I am so glad you did this. We are brothers. I did the exact same thing to try to tee this up.
Ben：David，我真高兴你做了这个调研。我们真是兄弟啊。我也做了完全一样的准备来引出这个话题。
David: Amazing.
David：太神奇了。
Ben: I have the stats in front of me. For listeners, digital advertising. Google’s universe, would not eclipse TV until 2017–2018.
Ben：我这儿正好有数据。告诉听众朋友们，数字广告——也就是 Google 所处的领域——直到 2017 到 2018 年才超过电视广告。
David: Wow. So almost 15 years in the future from when we’re talking about here in 2003.
David：哇，也就是说，从我们现在讲的 2003 年算起，要等差不多 15 年以后才发生。
Ben: Yes. That is the wildest thing that TV was bigger than digital for that long. Mary Meeker famously had this point that she made every single year that the attention was all in the digital economy, but there was this gap, and the ad monetization hadn’t caught up yet. It took all the way till 2018 for the flip to finally happen where digital overtook television.
Ben：没错。最夸张的就是，电视比数字广告大了那么长时间。Mary Meeker 每年都反复强调一个观点：注意力都在数字经济里，但广告变现没跟上。这中间存在一个巨大的缺口。一直到 2018 年，数字广告才最终反超电视。
David: Thanks to YouTube and Facebook and Meta and TikTok, et cetera.
David：这多亏了 YouTube、Facebook（Meta）、TikTok 等平台。
Ben: And the rest of Google too.
Ben：整个 Google 也是。
David: I know. This Google video project actually came out of the ads org. It didn’t come out of engineering and the rest of the Google product org.
David：我知道。Google Video 这个项目其实是从广告部门出来的，不是出自工程团队或者 Google 其他产品部门。
Ben: Oh, really?
Ben：哦，真的吗？
David: Yeah. It was motivated by, hey, there’s a lot of money in TV. Of course, this fits the mission. There’s a lot of information in video. We should totally do this.
David：对。当时的动机就是：电视里有巨额广告收入。当然，这也符合 Google 的使命——视频里有大量信息。我们完全应该去做。
Ben: Here’s how Lowry describes it. Google video was first launched in 2005 as a search service for television content, because TV closed captioning made search possible and user-generated video had yet to take off. But it subsequently evolved into a site where individuals and corporations alike could post their own videos.
Ben：Lowry 是这样描述的。Google Video 最早在 2005 年推出，定位是电视内容的搜索服务，因为电视的字幕（closed captioning）让搜索成为可能，而用户生成视频当时还没普及。但后来它逐渐演变成一个个人和企业都能上传自己视频的网站。
Ben: They were digitizing TV because the transcription wasn’t as good as it is today, so they needed the closed captioning data to make it searchable. They were almost like meta searching. They were looking for other websites that allowed people to upload video and including that in the search results also.
Ben：他们当时在做电视的数字化，因为转录技术远没有今天这么好，所以必须依赖字幕数据来实现可搜索。某种程度上，这有点像“元搜索”：他们会去抓取其他允许用户上传视频的网站，并把结果也纳入搜索结果里。
David: Sure, you can see how this conceivably could be a product vision you could have at the time. But Google video was the wrong product. The problem was, one, you couldn’t actually watch the video. It was just search that then directed you, just like Google’s main search business model, off of Google video to then go consume it somewhere else. In the beginning it didn’t even have a player.
David：没错，你可以理解在当时这看起来是个合理的产品愿景。但 Google Video 却是个错误的产品。问题是，第一，你根本看不了视频。它只是个搜索，然后把你导向别的地方去消费内容，就像 Google 的主搜索业务模式一样。一开始它甚至连播放器都没有。
Ben: Whoa, I didn’t realize that.
Ben：哇，我之前都没意识到。
David: Crazy. Well, that’s a pretty big problem. Another big problem, shall we say, was that the focus was on traditionally-produced head content. Not long tail, not user-generated content.
David：是啊，太疯狂了。这是个很严重的问题。另一个大问题是，它的重点放在传统制作的“头部内容”，而不是长尾内容，也不是用户生成内容。
Ben: It was really tied to TV. There was a press release that said that they could search the content of TV programs, find programs containing the content they’re looking for, and discover when and where the program will next air.
Ben：它实际上是和电视深度绑定的。曾经有一份新闻稿说，他们可以搜索电视节目的内容，找到包含目标信息的节目，还能发现这个节目下次什么时候、在哪个频道播出。
David: Meanwhile, obviously here we are in 2004, 2005, 2006. Consumer-generated digital video is becoming a thing, either via standalone new devices, like the Flip cam that’s coming out from, Flip was a startup, right? And then Cisco bought it?
David：与此同时，2004、2005、2006 年，消费者生成的数字视频开始兴起。要么通过新兴的独立设备，比如 Flip 摄像机——Flip 是一家创业公司，对吧？后来被思科收购了？
Ben: Yeah. My other internship employer bought Flip while I was there.
Ben：没错。我在另一份实习的时候，我所在的公司就收购了 Flip。
David: This is Ben Gilbert personal history. But more commonly, there were dedicated devices like the Flip cam, but digital point-and-shoot cameras had gotten so good by this point in time. This is going to come back up later in the episode.
David：这简直是 Ben Gilbert 的个人史（笑）。但更普遍的是，除了 Flip 这样的专用设备，当时数码傻瓜相机已经非常强大、普及了。这一点我们在节目后面还会提到。
David: People thought this was the big consumer electronic device vector before smartphones. People were really, really excited about how good and how universally-adopted digital cameras were. All of a sudden in the mid-2000s for the first time, anybody could make a video at any time.
David：在智能手机出现之前，人们认为这就是消费电子产品的下一个大方向。大家对数码相机的普及和性能提升无比兴奋。于是 2000 年代中期，普通人第一次可以随时随地拍摄视频。
Ben: And iMovie was just becoming a thing. You could shoot it on your point-and-shoot and you can edit on your computer.
Ben：而且 iMovie 当时刚刚出现。你可以用傻瓜相机拍视频，然后在电脑上编辑。
David: That’s right. So YouTube. In early 2005, three PayPal employees, from the PayPal Mafia, actually fairly junior employees at PayPal—Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chen—leave PayPal and create YouTube.
David：没错，说到 YouTube。2005 年初，三位来自 PayPal 黑帮的员工，其实在 PayPal 都只是比较初级的员工——Chad Hurley、Jawed Karim 和 Steve Chen——离开 PayPal 创办了 YouTube。
David: Okay, Ben, I have two deep-cut YouTube corporate history trivia items for you. Number one, do you know what YouTube’s original tagline was? The name of the company was YouTube. What was the tagline and the value prop?
David：好，Ben，我这有两个关于 YouTube 公司历史的冷知识问答。第一，你知道 YouTube 最早的宣传语是什么吗？公司名字叫 YouTube，那么它的口号和价值主张是什么？
Ben: I have no idea.
Ben：我完全不知道。
David: Tune in, Hook up.
David：是“上线，约会”（Tune in, Hook up）。
Ben: Really?
Ben：真的？
David: It was a video dating service.
David：它最初是个视频约会服务。
Ben: I didn’t know that.
Ben：我之前完全不知道。
David: They actually posted Craigslist ads in the Bay Area for attractive women to make videos to post as profiles on the site.
David：他们真的在湾区的 Craigslist 上发广告，招募有吸引力的女性拍摄视频，作为个人资料上传到网站上。
Ben: Unbelievable.
Ben：难以置信。
David: And they got no responses as you would expect. Thank goodness for them in Google though, because then they pivoted into a general-purpose video uploading site that anybody could upload anything that they made YouTube.
David：结果正如你想的那样，完全没人响应。谢天谢地，他们后来转型，把 YouTube 做成一个通用的视频上传网站，任何人都能上传任何视频。
David: Okay, so that’s trivia question number one. Trivia question number two. Do you know who Chad Hurley’s—Chad was the CEO—father-in-law at the time was?
David：好，这就是冷知识问题一。问题二：你知道当时 YouTube CEO Chad Hurley 的岳父是谁吗？
Ben: Oh no, I have no idea.
Ben：哦，天啊，我完全不知道。
David: Jim Clark.
David：是 Jim Clark。
Ben: Of SGI and Netscape?
Ben：SGI 和 Netscape 的那个 Jim Clark？
David: Of Silicon Graphics and Netscape. Jim Clark. That Jim Clark.
David：没错，Silicon Graphics 和 Netscape 的 Jim Clark。就是他。
Ben: Wow. Didn’t know that.
Ben：哇，这我真没听说过。
David: Not only were they part of the PayPal team and PayPal Mafia, they had the best advisor of all time to navigate the Silicon Valley ecosystem and the Internet ecosystem in Jim Clark.
David：他们不仅是 PayPal 团队、PayPal 黑帮的一员，还拥有有史以来最好的顾问来帮助他们在硅谷和互联网生态里摸索前行——Jim Clark。
David: The brilliance of YouTube and it really was absolutely brilliant, was threefold. One, it was super easy for anyone to upload a video. They had a killer content acquisition model. Anybody, anytime, anything.
David：YouTube 的高明之处，真的非常高明，有三点。第一，任何人都能超级轻松地上传视频。他们有一个致命的内容获取模式：任何人、任何时间、任何内容。
Ben: And as soon as the servers process it, we’ll put it live. No copyright checks. Unlike Google video, which would take one to two days.
Ben：只要服务器处理完，就能马上上线。没有版权审核。不像 Google Video，要等上一两天。
David: It’s all about copyright checks.
David：对，问题就在版权审核上。
Ben: For humans to pour over it, make sure that it was all good, and bless it, and then put it live, which of course won’t scale in the UGC era. YouTube’s just like, whatever. Upload it.
Ben：Google 要靠人工来逐条审核，确保一切没问题，然后批准上线。这在 UGC（用户生成内容）时代根本无法扩展。YouTube 的态度就是：随便啦，直接上传。
David: Two, super easy for anyone to watch a video. You need a really good viewer in the web app to view the videos. Google Video didn’t have it at the beginning. So killer content consumption model. Go to youtube.com, find something or find a link.
David：第二，任何人都能超级方便地看视频。你需要在 Web 应用里有一个很好的播放器来观看。Google Video 一开始就没有。所以 YouTube 有一个致命的内容消费模式：上 youtube.com，随便找点东西看，或者点别人分享的链接。
David: Or number three, brilliant thing about YouTube, see a YouTube video embedded on another website. Boom, you’re watching the video. Killer growth and distribution model.
David：第三点，也是 YouTube 最精彩的地方：你在其他网站上看到一个嵌入的 YouTube 视频，咔哒一下，你就能直接看。这是致命的增长与分发模式。
David: Also, YouTube pretty much from the beginning had great search. You can search YouTube and find videos that you’re looking for pretty quickly. YouTube became and still is—Google talks about this all the time—the second largest search engine on Earth behind Google.
David：此外，YouTube 几乎从一开始就有非常强大的搜索功能。你可以在 YouTube 上快速找到你想看的视频。YouTube 很快就成为了、而且至今仍然是——Google 经常提到的——全球第二大搜索引擎，仅次于 Google 自身。
Ben: It’s amazing.
Ben：太厉害了。
David: Its searches’ happening on YouTube.
David：很多搜索直接发生在 YouTube 上。
Ben: That happened quickly. I always thought that was a more recent, last 10 years’ phenomenon.
Ben：这来得太快了。我一直以为那是最近 10 年才出现的现象。
David: I think that happened very quickly. YouTube traffic scaled so fast and so big. You can see how YouTube here, not only are they the correct video platform for the web and just doing it much better than Google’s doing it with Google video. There’s actually some version of the world where they might become a real competitor to Google’s core business. If all these searches are happening. They could add search for other things on YouTube too.
David：我认为这几乎是一夜之间发生的。YouTube 的流量增长太快、规模太大了。你可以看到，YouTube 不仅是 Web 的正确视频平台，而且做得远比 Google Video 好。甚至在某种可能的世界里，它可能会成为 Google 核心业务的真正竞争对手。因为所有这些搜索都发生在 YouTube 上，他们完全可以在 YouTube 里加上对其他内容的搜索功能。
Ben: I don’t think they had any plans to do that, but it’s the same rationale of Mark Zuckerberg saying uh-oh, everyone’s using WhatsApp for messaging. Whether or not they put in a social media feed stream, they always could. So it’s really dangerous to me for them to be out there aggregating all the users and attention and habits when they always could do something like that.
Ben：我不认为他们当时有计划这么做，但这逻辑跟 Mark Zuckerberg 说“哎呀，所有人都在用 WhatsApp 发消息”是一样的。无论他们有没有加社交媒体动态流，他们随时都可以加。所以在我看来，这特别危险：他们聚拢了所有的用户、注意力和习惯，而他们随时都可能在上面做点什么。
David: Exactly. Same dynamic. Whereas in the previous categories of apps that we talked about, Google had the advantage of uniquely being able to do it as Google in a way that startups couldn’t. Here, it’s a little bit the opposite. YouTube as a small startup has the advantage of, oh, copyright, rules, laws. I don’t know. We’re just a platform. We’re just a startup. Anybody upload anything. Google, by this point in time is a public company. No way they could behave like this.
David：没错，逻辑完全一样。但和我们之前讲的应用不同，那些地方是 Google 有优势，初创公司没法做到。而这里恰好相反。YouTube 作为一家小型创业公司，反而有优势。版权？规则？法律？我不知道啊，我们只是个平台，我们只是个创业公司，任何人都能上传任何东西。而 Google 当时已经是上市公司了，绝对不可能这么干。
Ben: Well, it’s funny. They could but they wouldn’t. They actually could do it and stay in business. Whereas YouTube can say, eh, whatever, but then they’re going to go out of business because they’re going to get sued out of business. It’s this really interesting catch-22 of this is the way to start and get all the users because this is the best user experience. At the same time, it will not work as a resource-constrained small company.
Ben：有意思的是，Google 是能做的，但他们不会。实际上他们做了也能继续运营下去。反倒是 YouTube 可以说“随便啦”，但他们迟早会因为被告到破产而出局。这就是一个非常有意思的“左右为难”：这是最好的用户体验，是获得用户的最佳方式，但对于一家资源受限的小公司来说，这条路走不通。
David: Once it is started, it needs to be part of Google. Obviously we’re going to get to that. But in the beginning, though, oh my gosh. the embeds were a beautiful distribution growth mechanic for YouTube, but people were just uploading copyrighted video that people could watch for free.
David：一旦起势，它就必须成为 Google 的一部分。我们很快会讲到。但在最初，天哪，嵌入功能是 YouTube 美妙的分发和增长机制，可问题是人们上传的都是有版权的视频，而且大家可以免费收看。
David: It’s almost like Gmail. It is so unbelievably compelling to a consumer. When your friend tells you about YouTube or just sends you a link or you see an embed page of, whoa, I can go watch Lazy Sunday from Lonely Island and Saturday Night Live in my web browser anytime I want for free with no commercials? Yes, I want that.
David：这几乎就像 Gmail 一样，对消费者来说有着难以置信的吸引力。当你的朋友告诉你 YouTube，或者直接给你发一个链接，或者你在网页上看到嵌入的内容时，心里会想：“哇，我可以随时在浏览器里免费看《周六夜现场》里的 Lonely Island 小品《Lazy Sunday》，而且没有广告？我当然要！”
David: In fact, when users started uploading Lazy Sunday, the Lonely Islands skit from Saturday Night Live to YouTube—this is in that brief phase where YouTube was an ascendant startup and not yet part of Google—that one skit increased YouTube traffic by 83%. Unbelievable.
David：事实上，当用户把《Lazy Sunday》这个《周六夜现场》小品上传到 YouTube 时——那还是 YouTube 作为一家新兴创业公司、尚未被 Google 收购的短暂阶段——光是这个小品，就让 YouTube 的流量提升了 83%。难以置信。
Ben: So they very quickly raised money from Sequoia, is that right?
Ben：所以他们很快就从红杉资本融资了，对吧？
David: Yup. It was basically incubated at Sequoia. When the three founders left PayPal, Sequoia invested right away. I think it was Rulof Botha’s first investment when he joined.
David：对，基本上可以说是红杉孵化的。当三位创始人离开 PayPal 时，红杉立刻投资了。我记得这还是 Rulof Botha 加入红杉后的第一笔投资。
Ben: Because Rulof knew them from PayPal. He’s also part of the PayPal Mafia.
Ben：因为 Rulof 早就认识他们，大家都是 PayPal 黑帮的一员。
David: Exactly. And then Sequoia led another round pretty quickly thereafter because the infrastructure costs started as you would imagine scaling astronomically here.
David：没错。之后红杉很快又主导了一轮融资，因为基础设施的成本开始如你想象般天文数字地增长。
Ben: So three things that are very expensive, two of which are ongoing. One is a one-time cost. The one-time cost, but still expensive is encoding the video. This might eventually play on multiple types of devices and multiple browsers, so there’s a lot of encoding that has to happen.
Ben：所以三项成本特别高，其中两项是持续性的。一项是一次性成本，但依然昂贵，就是视频编码。因为视频最终要能在多种设备和不同浏览器上播放，所以需要做大量编码。
Ben: Two then are just big ongoing variable costs. You have to store all this video and the biggest of all the networking, the bandwidth becomes extremely expensive and costs you every single time someone plays the video. Your biggest cost driver scales with minutes watched. That is eventually going to kill you unless you have an aligned business model.
Ben：接下来两项是巨大的持续性成本。第一是存储所有视频，第二、也是最大的一项，就是带宽。带宽的费用极其昂贵，而且每次有人播放视频你都要付钱。你最大的成本驱动因素就是“观看分钟数”。如果没有匹配的商业模式，这最终会把你拖垮。
David: By the way, it would also be really nice if whoever owns and operates this had its own really good, really cheap infrastructure where all of these things built into it.
David：顺便说一句，如果运营这家公司的主体本身就拥有非常好、非常便宜的基础设施，并且所有这些东西都能直接内建进去，那就太好了。
David: So yeah, pretty quickly within a little over a year of launching, YouTube is in way over its head. The content issues, the copyright issues, the infrastructure scaling issues.
David：所以在上线仅一年多的时间里，YouTube 就彻底陷进麻烦里了：内容问题、版权问题、基础设施扩展问题。
Ben: It’s all exactly what they wanted. It’s going as well as they could have hoped. And it isn’t way over its head.
Ben：但这其实正是他们想要的，发展正如他们预期的那样顺利，并不是什么“超出控制”。
David: If this had happened today, you could probably raise enough capital from the private markets to address this and scale up as a company fast enough, especially with public cloud that you could probably build this as a standalone company.
David：如果这件事发生在今天，你大概能从私募市场筹到足够的资本来解决这些问题，并快速扩展公司规模。尤其有了公有云，你完全可以把它作为一家独立公司做起来。
Ben: Today you can go raise billions of dollars as a Series A startup, if you’re in the right space doing the most interesting things with the big market.
Ben：对啊，现在如果你在一个合适的领域、做的事又足够有趣并且面向大市场，作为一家 A 轮创业公司就能融到几十亿美元。
David: 2005–2006, not the same private capital available. Of course there’s no way the company could go public with all these issues or anything.
David：但在 2005 到 2006 年，根本没有这样的私募资本环境。当然，公司带着这些问题也不可能去上市。
Ben: In particular, there was a giant suit from Viacom.
Ben：尤其是，当时还有 Viacom 提起的巨额诉讼。
David: Because of these things, YouTube ends up basically putting itself up for sale. They have no leverage in content negotiations, with rights holders, and infrastructure is killing them. So in November 2006, which is less than 18 months after the product launched, Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.
David：正是因为这些原因，YouTube 最终基本上是把自己“挂牌出售”了。他们在与版权方的谈判中毫无筹码，而且基础设施成本正在吞噬他们。所以在 2006 年 11 月，也就是产品上线不到 18 个月后，Google 用 16.5 亿美元的股票收购了 YouTube。
这一版的分析比上一次好多了，YouTube的模式决定了只能卖给Google。
Ben: In stock. I’m glad you caught that too.
Ben：是股票收购。我很高兴你也注意到这一点。
David: All Google stock. We heard in the research that after this deal, Patrick Pichette (I think) was the CFO of Google at the time.
David：全是 Google 股票。我们在调研时看到，在这笔交易之后，当时的 Google CFO Patrick Pichette（我记得是他）说过——
Ben: He said never again. This was our biggest mistake.
Ben：他说“绝不再犯”。这是我们犯过的最大错误。
David: Said never again. This is the last stock deal that we ever do.
David：对，他说过“绝不再来”。这是我们最后一次用股票做并购。
Ben: Google’s market cap has 20x’d since the day that this deal closed. If they had paid in cash, they would’ve made an extra 20 times multiple on whatever you already think the multiple is on their purchase of YouTube.
Ben：自从这笔交易完成以来，Google 的市值已经增长了 20 倍。如果当时他们是用现金支付，那不管你怎么评价收购 YouTube 的倍数，他们都会在此基础上再多赚 20 倍。
David: The thing is though—we will correct the Acquired record at the end of this section—either way, even if Google paid 20 times $1.6 billion for this, they got a screaming deal. YouTube is so valuable.
David：但问题在于——我们会在这一节最后修正 Acquired 的记录——无论如何，即便 Google 当时付的是 16.5 亿美元的 20 倍，他们也还是捡了个大便宜。YouTube 实在太有价值了。
Ben: I have some of the numbers from the first few years that I was able to cobble together. Then I want to talk about some of the product evolution over the years.
Ben：我整理到了一些 YouTube 前几年的数据。接下来我想聊一聊这些年它的产品演进。
David: Great.
David：好啊。
Ben: Google buys it for $1.65 billion. Interestingly, Shishir Mehrotra this week went on the Grit podcast, the Kleiner Perkins podcast, and laid out a bunch of data on this. I actually didn’t have a chance to reach out to Shishir yet because it just came out. But a lot of this is from that conversation.
Ben：Google 以 16.5 亿美元收购了 YouTube。有趣的是，本周 Shishir Mehrotra 上了 Kleiner Perkins 的 Grit 播客，披露了很多相关数据。我还没来得及联系 Shishir，因为节目刚上线。但我今天说的很多内容来自那次对话。
Ben: After the acquisition, he said, and Shishir was the head of product and basically the CPO/CTO at YouTube, not right after the acquisition, but within a year came in for four or five years. After the acquisition, he said it was doing about $30 million in revenue.
Ben：他说，在收购之后（Shishir 当时是 YouTube 的产品负责人，基本上相当于 CPO/CTO，他不是立刻加入，但一年内加入，并在那待了四五年），YouTube 的营收大约只有 3000 万美元。
Ben: So they did have revenue. I believe, just to foreshadow our next chapter, that was in the form of programmatic advertising that was on the Doubleclick ad exchange that they were using to make money. They were losing about a billion dollars a year run rate on $30 million in revenue. The amount of money they lost was almost exactly equal to a penny per view.
Ben：所以他们的确有收入。我认为（提前剧透下一部分）那主要是通过 Doubleclick 广告交易所做的程序化广告来变现的。但问题是，他们在 3000 万收入的基础上，每年的亏损运行率大约是 10 亿美元。换句话说，每播放一次视频，Google 就相当于烧掉一分钱。
Ben: Just imagine every time you loaded YouTube in those years, Google would just flush a penny down the drain. They got to figure out something to do about this. For the first couple of years, the CFO at the time was terrified of it scaling. like please don’t scale in its current state. But of course there’s nothing they can do. The cat’s out of the bag, it’s scaling. The CFO was exploring, hey, can we sell this to one of the other companies who was bidding on it?
Ben：想象一下，那几年里你每次打开 YouTube，Google 都是在往下水道里扔一分钱。他们必须想办法解决这个问题。收购后的头几年，当时的 CFO 特别害怕 YouTube 继续扩大规模，心里想：“千万别再扩大了，按现在的状态扩下去会毁掉我们。”但当然他们什么也做不了，事情已经发生了，增长挡不住。于是 CFO 开始考虑：“我们能不能把它卖给当初参与竞标的其他公司？”
David: That’s right because Yahoo and the media companies also wanted to buy YouTube.
David：没错，因为当时 Yahoo 和一些媒体公司也想收购 YouTube。
Ben: Shishir says, we were broadly known as Google’s first mistake.
Ben：Shishir 说，当时大家普遍认为 YouTube 是 Google 的第一个错误收购。
David: Well, back to my tee-up in the intro being a pure play, investors didn’t like this. For a long time, this was a huge knock. Geez, when we did our episode 10 years ago about YouTube, we said it was a terrible acquisition.
David：回到我开头提到的“纯粹故事”，投资者当时并不喜欢这个收购。很长一段时间，这都是个巨大的负面评价。天哪，我们 10 年前做 YouTube 那期节目时，还说这是个糟糕的收购。
Ben: The thing we haven’t talked about, music licensing was really expensive. They were one of the top revenue sources for the music industry for a long time. Maybe even still one of the top few to the music industry.
Ben：有一点我们还没谈到——音乐版权授权特别贵。YouTube 很长一段时间都是音乐产业最主要的收入来源之一，甚至可能到今天仍然是。
David: Right up there with Spotify.
David：和 Spotify 并列的地位。
Ben: On the product side of things, early on, as you were saying, the way that you found YouTube is you would see it embedded on a different site. You would click through and then you may stick around to watch something after. But then you’d leave and your entry point to YouTube again was another embed.
Ben：在产品层面，早期你发现 YouTube 的方式，正如你说的，是通过嵌入在别的网站上的视频。你点进去，也许会顺便多看点别的，但之后就离开了。你下一次进入 YouTube 的入口，还是另一个嵌入视频。
Ben: Most sessions did not start on youtube.com, so you weren’t going to YouTube with the idea of they’ll recommend something to me. Then even the people who did go to youtube.com in this 4–5 year period after the acquisition, 90% of that traffic was there to search. They just ignored anything that you recommended to them. It takes a long time (a) to build habits, and (b) to build out the technology to make any recommendation or browse or anything good.
Ben：大多数会话都不是从 youtube.com 开始的，所以用户不是抱着“让我看看 YouTube 推荐什么”的心态去的。甚至在被 Google 收购后的四五年里，即便用户直接访问 youtube.com，其中 90% 的流量也只是去搜索，他们完全忽略了任何推荐内容。要建立用户习惯需要很长时间，（a）要培养习惯，（b）要构建出真正有效的推荐和浏览技术。
David: For first with related videos and then ultimately the feed. Just for a sense of scale, there was a report that estimated that YouTube that year in 2007 consumed as much bandwidth as the entire internet did in the year 2000, so just seven years before.
David：一开始是“相关视频”，最后发展成信息流。为了给大家一个规模感，2007 年有一份报告估计，当年 YouTube 消耗的带宽，和整个互联网在 2000 年时的带宽消耗量相当，也就是仅仅七年前的总量。
Ben: I have an extremely similar stat from Shishir, which is to later period. It’s 2014, but it’s apples-to-apples, rather than comparing that 2007 to 2000. He said in 2014, YouTube was 20% of the bits on the Internet.
Ben：我这有一条来自 Shishir 的非常类似的数据，不过时间点更靠后，是 2014 年，而且是更可比的数据。他说 2014 年，YouTube 占据了整个互联网数据流量的 20%。
David: Wow.
David：哇。
Ben: This stat, but especially your stat illustrates just how much this thing took off, and also just how much more bandwidth video took up than any other media type on the Internet.
Ben：不论是这个数据，还是你刚才的那个数据，都说明 YouTube 的爆发有多快，同时也说明视频相对于互联网上其他媒介类型，占用带宽的规模要大得多。
David: But the long-term play here obviously is the Mary Meeker slide of, the reason that video gets consumed so much is this is what humans want, and you can advertise against it.
David：但从长远来看，这完全印证了 Mary Meeker 报告上的观点：视频之所以被大量消费，是因为这正是人类所渴望的内容，而且你可以在视频上投放广告。
Ben: And Google realized this. I think they were very smart to, rather than trying to continue investing in Google video to basically say they got the lightning in the bottle, they have the consumer brand, they have the attention. Let’s just go buy that thing, on a expected value basis, if you’re making a bet, sure you could build it on your own cheaper, but your chance of succeeding is so unlikely relative to buying that thing that it’s actually a deal to get it for 1.65 billion plus the billion that we’ll need to invest every year for a few years to run it in the red.
Ben：Google 也很快意识到了这一点。我觉得他们特别聪明的地方在于，并没有选择继续砸钱搞 Google Video，而是承认：YouTube 已经抓住了机会，它拥有消费者品牌、用户注意力。那就直接去收购。按期望值来算，这是笔很聪明的赌注。是的，你自己做可能更便宜，但成功的几率远低于直接收购。所以，花 16.5 亿美元买下它，再加上头几年每年亏个十亿美元来运营，这笔买卖反而是划算的。
Ben: 2009 is the year where the business really starts working. Google actually discloses nothing about profitability, but that the ad revenue tripled in one year. In 2009, 2010, 2011, they turned profitable. There was a report that in 2012 they were estimated to make about $4 billion in revenue, but roughly break even than the 2012, 13, 14. I think they were small, profitable, but profitable.
Ben：2009 年是业务真正起飞的一年。Google 虽然没有公开披露盈利情况，但广告收入在一年里增长了三倍。2009、2010、2011 年，YouTube 开始转亏为盈。有报道称 2012 年他们大约实现了 40 亿美元收入，但基本上是盈亏平衡。2012、2013、2014 年，大概是小幅盈利，但确实已经进入盈利状态。
Ben: Then in 2013 to 2015, that time period on the product side, that’s when things really changed. The North Star really became, users should go to YouTube to be entertained for 15 minutes. It’s our job to do whatever we need to do to make that true.
Ben：然后在 2013 到 2015 年这段时间，产品层面真正发生了变化。他们的北极星指标变成了：用户应该能来 YouTube，获得 15 分钟的娱乐体验。我们的任务就是无论如何都要让这件事成为现实。
Ben: A few things really helped with this, one was the shift to mobile. In mobile, remember they were a launch partner on the iPhone.
Ben：有几件事推动了这一点，其中最重要的就是移动端的崛起。别忘了，YouTube 是 iPhone 的首发合作伙伴。
David: We’re going to get into it.
David：我们一会儿会具体聊。
Ben: There were a lot more low intent sessions. people who opened the app, rather than clicking through from an embed page.
Ben：移动端带来了更多“低意图”的使用场景。用户直接打开 App，而不是点开嵌入视频页面才进入。
David: Low intent being, low intent of watching a specific thing.
David：所谓“低意图”，就是说用户并不是奔着某个特定视频去看的。
Ben: Yes. It’s a beautiful thing on mobile that you can say, I’ve got something to recommend to you. obviously short form, vertical video like TikTok and YouTube shorts and all that these days, is that on steroids, mobile also made it the case that any given user was more likely to be logged in that way. All the personalization, all the algorithm stuff works well.
Ben：没错。这是移动端的美妙之处：你可以说“我有点东西推荐给你”。显然，今天的短视频、竖屏视频（比如 TikTok 和 YouTube Shorts）就是这种体验的超级强化版。移动端还让用户更可能保持登录状态，从而让所有个性化和推荐算法真正发挥作用。
Ben: They also adjusted their core metric internally away from views and to watch time. YouTube was very early to the concept of creator monetization. For a long time, it was the only place on the Internet where creators could make money.
Ben：他们还调整了内部的核心指标，从“播放次数”转向“观看时长”。YouTube 也很早就提出了创作者变现的概念。很长一段时间，它是互联网上唯一一个创作者能真正赚到钱的平台。
David: Share revenue with creators.
David：与创作者分成。
Ben: In our old episode we knocked them. We said, look, this business has to give its first 50% off the top of any revenue it makes to the creator of the video. It’s a way worse business than say, Google search ads or Facebook who Facebook has influencers on their platforms too. All the meta platforms, Instagram and their rev share, if it’s anything sure isn’t 50%, it’s probably closer to zero. YouTube, right early on said, you’re a 50 ish percent partner, which takes you a decade longer to get profitable, but helps you build that base.
Ben：在我们早期的那期节目里，我们批评过 YouTube。我们说，这个业务必须把任何收入的前 50% 分给视频创作者。和 Google 搜索广告比起来，这是一个糟糕得多的生意；和 Facebook 比起来也一样，Facebook 平台上也有 influencer，但无论是 Facebook 还是 Instagram，他们的分成比例绝对不是 50%，可能接近于零。而 YouTube 从一开始就说：“你是 50% 左右的合作伙伴。”这让它盈利的时间足足推迟了十年，但也帮助它建立起了用户和创作者的基础。
David: It just creates amazing incentives for people to build businesses and careers on this. YouTube is the ultimate instantiation of the Internet to me. The power that it can provide to individuals to make a living. It abstracts the need at all to create or run a business. It really just simplifies it down to make content that people watch. You will get money for it. You don’t have to do anything else in between.
David：这为人们创造了惊人的激励，让他们在平台上建立事业，甚至创业。对我来说，YouTube 是互联网的终极体现。它赋予个人通过互联网谋生的能力。它彻底抽象掉了创建和运营一家公司所需的所有复杂性，把一切简化为一个命题：制作人们愿意看的内容，你就能赚钱，其他都不用管。
Ben: There’s a little slide of hand that you did there, David, which is that people watch.
Ben：不过 David，你刚才其实有点偷换概念——“人们愿意看”。
David: Well, yes.
David：嗯，是的。
Ben: YouTube internally went back and forth for years on this. I think we’re in this no man’s land that we’ve landed today. Camp one is, hey, the way to make people most engaged is by getting them to follow creators and they curate the information sources they want. Camp two is in algorithms we trust. It turns out camp two is actually correct, which is unfortunate. It’s a messed up incentive. Most of the time if you show someone something that they’re subscribed to or you show someone something that the very smart computers have figured out, you will watch and then watch another video after that. Usually the algorithmic approach is right. There is this internal conflict there where they say, yeah, of course you should subscribe, but your views are only loosely related to how many subscribers you have.
Ben：YouTube 内部为这个问题争论了好多年。我觉得他们现在落在了一个“无人区”。第一派认为，让用户最投入的方式是让他们关注创作者，由创作者来策划他们想要的信息源。第二派则认为，“我们相信算法”。事实证明第二派是对的，但这很不幸，因为这导致激励机制扭曲。大多数时候，如果你给用户看他们订阅的内容，或者给他们看算法推出来的内容，他们会继续看下一个视频。通常算法的方法是更正确的。但内部矛盾在于，他们嘴上说“当然你应该订阅”，可实际上你的播放量和订阅数只有很弱的关系。
David: Yep. This is the dark side to the YouTube economy.
David：没错。这就是 YouTube 经济的黑暗面。
Ben: Yes.
Ben：是的。
David: But putting that aside, just this sheer concept of anybody and everybody in the world has a video camera today can create something and if it’s good and people watch it and the definition of good being, the algorithm likes it, you will make money. With no other steps in between. That can only happen on the Internet.
David：但撇开这些不谈，单就这个概念本身而言：今天全世界任何人都有摄像头，人人都能创作视频，如果内容足够好、算法喜欢、观众愿意看，那你就能赚钱，完全不需要额外的步骤。这只有在互联网才能发生。
Ben: It’s pretty interesting because it has these two business models in core Google Land. They have the AdWords business model where they’re the first party media site, each search result page as a form of media and they run ads on that and then they keep approximately 100% of the revenue generated from that ad. The advertiser pays them and they share some in the form of traffic acquisition costs that we’ll talk about later. But it’s a largely a first party ad. Then they have this other form AdSense and the Google content network when they show display ads on other people’s websites where they share like 70% of the revenue or most of the revenue out to the publisher.
Ben：有趣的是，Google 的核心业务里其实有两种模式。一种是 AdWords 模式，也就是 Google 自己就是媒体方，每个搜索结果页都是一个媒体载体，上面投放广告，而这部分广告收入基本 100% 归 Google 所有。广告主付钱给他们，他们会拿出一部分作为流量获取成本（我们之后会聊），但大体上这是 Google 自营广告。另一种是 AdSense 以及 Google 内容网络，他们在别人的网站上展示展示类广告，而这时他们会把大约 70% 的收入，甚至大部分收入分给网站发布者。
David: Publisher, the content owner.
David：发布者，也就是内容所有者。
Ben: Who actually is the reason why there’s an ad there in the first place. YouTube was a interesting mix between the two. They were comfortable and familiar with the idea that we can manage a platform where we actually share a lot of the revenue with those producing the content, which is interesting. Like if they had never gone into the AdSense world and they were purely a search engine, I think it would’ve probably been more of a fight to try to do this 50% split with creators.
Ben：而广告能存在的根本原因，其实就是内容创作者。YouTube 在这方面是两种模式的混合体。他们很自然地接受了“我们管理一个平台，并且和内容创作者分享大量收入”这个思路。这很有趣。如果他们从未进入过 AdSense 这个世界，只是一个纯粹的搜索引擎，那么要说服他们接受和创作者 50% 分成，恐怕会难得多。
Ben: All right, there’s a thing that I mentioned earlier. This notion of people on mobile are more likely to be logged in than people who just hit a webpage on desktop. Logged inness is essential for YouTube’s success. That is actually new to Google. Logged inness is not essential to the effectiveness of a search engine or even the monetization of a search engine. We’ve flirted with this idea, you can hear it through our episode of things like Gmail are good because then you’re logged into Google but there’s not a giant lift.
Ben：好，回到我之前提到的一点。移动端用户比桌面端访问网页的用户更容易保持登录状态。而“保持登录”对 YouTube 的成功至关重要。这对 Google 来说是个新事物。对搜索引擎而言，是否登录对其效果或变现能力并不重要。我们以前也聊过这个想法，比如 Gmail 的好处之一是让你保持登录 Google，但那并不是一个决定性的提升。
David: It’s like a nice to have.
David：那只是一个“锦上添花”。
Ben: Yes. Search, especially on the advertising side is already so bottom of funnel,
Ben：没错。搜索，尤其在广告层面，本身已经处在销售漏斗的最底部了。
David: Right? The intent is right there. I don’t need to know what your demographics are, I know what your intent is.
David：对吧？搜索的意图就在那儿。我不需要知道你的用户画像，只要知道你的搜索意图就够了。
Ben: You search for a shovel, I’m going to sell you a shovel.
Ben：你搜铲子，我就给你卖铲子。
David: Yeah.
David：没错。
Ben: That’s a stark contrast to YouTube where the whole YouTube flywheel really only works with logged in users.
Ben：但这和 YouTube 完全不同，YouTube 的整个飞轮几乎完全依赖用户保持登录才能运转。
David: Not just for serving videos and content for you to watch, but also for advertising. This is how the television advertising ecosystem works. It’s about targeting, why does Chevrolet advertise on football games? You need demographic data.
David：不仅仅是为了给你推荐视频和内容，更是为了广告。这和电视广告生态的逻辑一样，核心就是定向投放。为什么雪佛兰会选择在橄榄球比赛里打广告？因为需要人口统计数据。
Ben: Right. All right, so David, are you ready to regrade the acquisition of YouTube by Google?
Ben：没错。好，David，你准备好重新给 Google 收购 YouTube 打分了吗？
David: Yes. We got to set the context of how big it is today.
David：准备好了。但我们得先铺垫一下 YouTube 今天到底有多大。
Ben: Alright, back in 2016 we had two knocks on YouTube. One is that it wasn’t a destination site. Narrative number two was they only get to keep 50% of their total gross revenue and then they’ve got these crazy infrastructure costs and they’ll never be able to outrun them. Well they sure have solved both of these issues. Clearly a destination site, actually more than anything, a destination app, you open YouTube and an algorithm we trust.
Ben：好的。回到 2016 年时，我们对 YouTube 有两点批评。第一，它不是一个“目的地”网站。第二，他们只能保留总营收的 50%，再加上疯狂的基础设施成本，永远跑不赢这些负担。但如今这两个问题都解决了。YouTube 显然已经是一个“目的地”，甚至说比网站更重要的是，它是一个“目的地应用”。你打开 YouTube，背后就是我们信赖的算法。
David: It’s what I do every night before I go to bed.
David：这是我每天睡前都会做的事。
Ben: Yes, it’s some mix of things you’re subscribed to and things you’re not, but things YouTube believes will grip your attention at that moment on the infrastructure costs. Let’s just start by unpacking their financials. Last year in 2024, YouTube ads alone did $36 billion in revenue, half goes to creators, they have 18 billion left to play with and they’ve had two decades to figure out how to get their variable costs down for video hosting, bandwidth compute for encoding, music, licensing, all that stuff. They now do insane feats of engineering, including doing their own custom silicon to do video encoding. They also have a whole bunch of crazy things that they do like change the video encoding that is used depending on how many views the episode has.
Ben：对，你看到的内容既有你订阅的，也有你没订阅的，但都是 YouTube 认为能在那一刻抓住你注意力的东西。好，我们先从财务拆解说起。去年 2024 年，YouTube 单广告收入就达到 360 亿美元，其中一半分给创作者，剩下 180 亿自己留用。过去 20 年里，他们一直在想方设法降低可变成本，包括视频托管、带宽、编码计算、音乐授权等等。现在他们甚至能做疯狂的工程壮举，比如设计自研芯片来做视频编码。他们还会做一些很“神奇”的事情，比如根据视频观看次数动态调整视频编码格式。
David: Interesting.
David：有意思。
Ben: They do like vanilla H264 when you first upload it and then when it hits some number of views it switches to a more computationally expensive to encode, but then smaller to distribute format. then when you hit another one, when you have like 5 million views or something, then they do it yet again. They re-encode the video and make the file size even smaller. They’ve figured out all these little optimizations to make any given stream as inexpensive as possible on the variable cost basis.
Ben：比如说，视频刚上传时，他们用最普通的 H.264 格式；当播放量到达某个门槛时，就会转成一种编码计算更昂贵、但分发文件更小的格式；当播放量再到一个更高的级别，比如 500 万次观看时，他们会再次重新编码，把文件体积压得更小。他们通过这些细微的优化，把每一条视频流的可变成本压到最低。
David: Brilliant.
David：太聪明了。
Ben: On the revenue side, they have gotten much better at selling ads and most estimates is that YouTube is actually quite profitable now on top of the 36 billion in advertising revenue, Google reported that if you include subscription revenue, so this is things like YouTube premium, YouTube music, NFL Sunday ticket, they’re now doing over 50 billion in revenue.
Ben：在收入端，他们卖广告的能力也提升了很多。大多数估计都认为 YouTube 现在已经相当赚钱了。在 360 亿美元广告收入之外，如果再加上订阅收入，比如 YouTube Premium、YouTube Music、NFL Sunday Ticket 等，Google 披露 YouTube 现在的收入超过 500 亿美元。
David: Wow.
David：哇。
Ben: David, this now makes YouTube the second largest media company by revenue after only Disney.
Ben：David，这让 YouTube 成为了全球营收第二大的媒体公司，仅次于 Disney。
David: And Disney has so many other things contributing to that revenue theme, parks, cruise ships, merchandise, et cetera.
David：而且 Disney 的收入还包括很多其他业务：主题公园、游轮、周边商品等等。
Ben: Yes. YouTube is already bigger than Disney’s media business and this year will likely become bigger than Disney’s entire business.
Ben：没错。YouTube 的规模已经超过了 Disney 的媒体业务，今年很可能会超过 Disney 的整个业务。
David: The question is how does that revenue figure compare to Netflix?
David：问题是，这个收入和 Netflix 相比如何？
Ben: I’m glad you asked. Netflix annual revenue for 2024 was 39 billion. They’ve already eclipsed Netflix.
Ben：你问得好。Netflix 在 2024 年的全年收入是 390 亿美元，而 YouTube 已经超过了它。
David: Wow. there you go. Google doesn’t release usage data for YouTube, but I’m pretty sure that YouTube is the biggest single property on the Internet in terms of minutes spent by humans on it. It’s not, I believe that the biggest number of users on the Internet, both Facebook Blue App and WhatsApp are bigger in terms of total number of users. But I think YouTube probably dwarfs them in terms of time spent by users on the app. I think it is the biggest,
David：哇，这就对了。Google 没有披露 YouTube 的使用时长数据，但我敢肯定，以用户花费的分钟数来算，YouTube 是互联网上最大的单一平台。用户总数上可能 Facebook 的蓝色大应用和 WhatsApp 更大，但从用户在应用上花的时间来看，我认为 YouTube 可能远远超过它们，是最大的。
Ben: I could see that.
Ben：我明白你的意思。
David: Human attention, time sink known to man.
David：这是人类注意力的终极黑洞，最强的时间吞噬器。
Ben: Then the question becomes how profitable is the 50 billion in revenue? And officially we don’t know, but there are these great things called research firms out there that make our jobs that Acquired here much easier. Storied firm, Moffett Nathanson published a report earlier this year that they think YouTube does about $8 billion in operating income, 8 billion a year. I’d want to diff that against their total investment into.
Ben：接下来的问题就是：500 亿美元的营收有多大的盈利能力？官方并没有披露，但有一些研究机构让我们在 Acquired 做分析轻松了很多。今年早些时候，知名机构 Moffett Nathanson 发布了一份报告，他们认为 YouTube 每年的营业利润大约是 80 亿美元。我想把这个数字和 Google 在 YouTube 上的总投资对比一下。
David: Oh yeah. Okay, great. This is the way to grade it. Okay, here we go.
David：哦对，这就是正确的打分方式。好，我们开始吧。
Ben: Yes. Now we are getting into grading here. We’re landing the YouTube plane,
Ben：没错。现在我们要正式打分了，把 YouTube 这架飞机降落。
David: The definitive Acquired regrading of YouTube.
David：这是 Acquired 对 YouTube 收购案的最终重新评级。
Ben: As mentioned earlier, I don’t think they ever lost much more than a billion a year, and I think they got break even within conservatively five years. After the $1.7 billion purchase price and the $5 billion in additional costs, Google paid $6.7 billion. I bet it’s closer to five and a half, six to own something that spits off $8 billion a year in profit today. Revenues are growing 10% to 15% every year.
Ben：就像我之前说的，我不认为他们一年亏过超过 10 亿美元。我觉得在保守估计五年之内，他们就实现了盈亏平衡。收购价 17 亿美元，加上额外 50 亿的成本，Google 总共花了 67 亿美元。我估计实际更接近 55 到 60 亿美元，结果今天拥有了一个每年能带来 80 亿美元利润的业务，而且营收还在每年 10% 到 15% 的速度增长。
David: By the way, also since I think the theme of this whole episode is like the dual bottom line to Google of everything they’re doing of both revenue and profits and strategic installation versus other large tech companies.
David：顺便说一句，我觉得这整期节目的主题就是：Google 做的所有事情，都有双重底线。一方面是收入和利润，另一方面是战略部署，与其他大型科技公司的竞争格局。
Ben: Oh, but David, you’re forgetting the third of organizing the world’s information and making it.
Ben：哦，但 David，你忘了第三条——整合全球信息并让其有用。
David: Okay. The triple bottom line, there we go. The triple bottom line. Google itself, not including YouTube, pretty much whiffed on social, really, really strategically good for them that they own YouTube, isn’t it? Now that meta and TikTok exist.
David：好吧，那就是“三重底线”。三重底线。Google 本身（撇开 YouTube）几乎在社交上全盘失败。但他们拥有 YouTube，这对战略来说实在是太重要了，不是吗？尤其是在如今 Meta 和 TikTok 存在的情况下。
Ben: Here’s the crazy thing. They whiffed on social and then what ended up happening
Ben：最疯狂的是，他们在社交上失败了，但结果发生的却是——
David: Was social became YouTube.
David：社交媒体反而变成了 YouTube。
Ben: Yes, it’s the craziest thing. We don’t open apps anymore to look at what our friends are posting. A place where Google has no presence, but you open Meta’s most important property with Instagram and you look at Instagram’s most used thing reels, or you look at TikTok and what do you see? You see videos from people you don’t know. It’s crazy that the rest of social media or almost like user generated media pivoted into Google space.
Ben：是的，这才是最疯狂的地方。我们现在打开应用，不再是为了看朋友发了什么。在那种场景下 Google 完全没有存在感。但你打开 Meta 的核心产品 Instagram，看到的最多的是 Reels；或者打开 TikTok，你看到的是什么？是那些你根本不认识的人发的视频。社交媒体，或者说几乎所有的用户生成内容，最后都转向了 Google 所擅长的领域。这太不可思议了。
David: This was the big Dan Mon to our meta episode last fall was, hey, social networking, such as the conception of it existed in the mid two thousands and 2010s is dead. It’s gone. It bifurcated into private messaging and public media.
David：这正是我们去年秋天那期 Meta 节目的大结论：社交网络，按 2000 年代中期和 2010 年代的那种概念，已经死了。它已经分化成了私密消息和公共媒体。
Ben: Yes. The middle ground of, wide group of people you know is effectively dead. It’s close friends and it’s, I don’t really care where it came from, but it’s entertaining.
Ben：没错。那个“你认识的一大群人”的中间地带，实际上已经死了。要么是和亲密朋友，要么就是“不管谁发的，只要有趣就行”。
David: Yep.
David：对。
Ben: You could do a discounted cash flow on this thing that I just gave you this call it 6 billion of investment and now 8 billion growing at 10 to 15% every year. But there’s additional strategic value too, in addition to this thing you just said, this becoming the winner in the short form era, they have the largest corporates of video to train on for the AI era.
Ben：你完全可以对这笔投资做一个贴现现金流分析。总投入大概 60 亿美元，如今每年能带来 80 亿美元利润，还以每年 10% 到 15% 的速度增长。但除了财务回报，还有巨大的战略价值。除了你刚才提到的——YouTube 已经成为短视频时代的赢家——他们还拥有全球最大的视频语料库，可以用来训练 AI。
David: Let’s go.
David：没错，太关键了。
Ben: Moffett Nathanson estimated that if this was publicly traded, it would be worth about $500 billion as a standalone company. Even conservatively, if you take media company comps and do a revenue multiple and you discount all the strategic future value, it’s still like $200 billion. This is officially one of the best acquisitions of all time. I am raising my grade from a C to an A plus.
Ben：Moffett Nathanson 估计，如果 YouTube 是一家独立上市公司，它的市值大约在 5000 亿美元。即便保守一点，用传统媒体公司的估值倍数来算，把战略上的未来价值全部打折，至少也值 2000 亿美元。这无疑是史上最伟大的收购之一。我正式把我的评级从 C 提高到 A+。
David: I am obviously right there with you. This is an A plus, plus, plus.
David：我当然完全同意。这是 A+++。
Ben: Now it’s not really fair to say that it’s like turning 6 billion into 500. That initial 1.7 was largely Google stock that they traded. That had real opportunity cost, but it’s still ridiculous.
Ben：当然，说“60 亿变 5000 亿”其实不太公平。最初的 17 亿收购价主要是用 Google 股票支付的，那是有机会成本的。但即便如此，这个回报还是荒谬地巨大。
David: Like I said earlier, a screaming deal either way.
David：就像我之前说的，无论怎么看，这都是一笔超级划算的交易。
Ben: Yes.
Ben：没错。
David: All right. There we go. We have revised history. Corrected the record.
David：好了，这就是最终结论。我们修正了历史，纠正了记录。
Ben: Yes. All right, well for our next chapter, I motion that we go back closer to Google’s core business of advertising on the web.
Ben：对。那么接下来的章节，我建议我们回到 Google 的核心业务——网络广告。
David: Maybe also, stay closer to Acquired its original raison d’etre of discussing the greatest acquisitions of all time.
David：也许同时也更贴近 Acquired 的初心——讨论史上最伟大的收购案。
Ben: We may as well follow up YouTube with double click, but before we do that, it is time to talk about one of our favorite companies, Statsig. On our first Google episode earlier this year, we talked about how great the search business model is and how once a company takes a lead, it’s just hard for anybody else to catch up. But Google did something that kept them in the lead using data to relentlessly improve the search experience.
Ben：我们可以顺理成章地在 YouTube 之后讲 DoubleClick。但在那之前，先来聊聊我们最喜欢的公司之一——Statsig。在今年早些时候的 Google 首期节目里，我们谈到搜索这种商业模式有多么伟大，一旦公司领先，别人几乎不可能追上。但 Google 做了一件让它保持领先的事：用数据不断改进搜索体验。
David: Yep. Google really was a pioneer in the idea of a data-driven product culture. They took this to the extreme with a famous example where they tested 50 different shades of blue for their links on Google search result pages to find the optimal one. They also famously leveraged user data when people correct their queries to Bootstrap, did you mean Autocorrect feature? More recently, they even opted people into AI search via an AB test.
David：没错。Google 真正是数据驱动产品文化的先行者。他们把这件事做到了极致，最著名的例子是测试了 50 种不同深浅的蓝色，来确定搜索结果页面上链接的最佳颜色。他们还利用用户在更正搜索词时的数据，催生了“您是不是想找…”的自动纠错功能。最近，他们甚至通过 AB 测试把用户直接加入到 AI 搜索中。
Ben: This obsession with testing helped Google find a thousand small product and business wins. It also helped Google scale its unique culture where its employees can quickly test and ship new products and features because they all have access to great tools.
Ben：这种对测试的痴迷让 Google 找到了成千上万个小的产品和业务胜利点。同时，这也帮助 Google 扩展了独特的文化：员工能快速测试并上线新产品和新功能，因为他们都能使用优秀的工具。
David: But for a long time, smaller companies didn’t have access to the same quality of tools that were available at places like Google. Now that’s changed thanks to Statsig.
David：但在很长一段时间里，小公司根本没法用上像 Google 那样的高质量工具。而现在情况不同了，这要感谢 Statsig。
Ben: The smartest new companies like OpenAI, Figma, Atlassian, Brex, Notion, and Anthropic plus hundreds of startups that you see and use every day are using Statsig to build a bottoms up data-driven product culture. Statsig provides all the tools you need to make data-driven product decisions in one place. Advanced experimentation, feature flags, product analytics, session replays and more, all backed by a single set of product data.
Ben：当下最聪明的新公司，比如 OpenAI、Figma、Atlassian、Brex、Notion 和 Anthropic，再加上你每天看到和使用的数百家初创公司，都在用 Statsig 来自下而上地打造数据驱动的产品文化。Statsig 在一个平台上提供了所有你需要的工具：高级实验、功能开关、产品分析、会话回放等等，全部基于同一套产品数据。
David: And using Statsig isn’t just about saving engineering time, it’s about bringing that Google level continuous improvement culture into your company. Rather than arguing about metric definitions or troubleshooting broken tools, your team can focus on shipping improvements.
David：使用 Statsig 不只是节省工程时间，更是把 Google 级别的持续改进文化带入你的公司。与其争论指标定义、排查坏掉的工具，不如让你的团队专注于发布改进。
Ben: If you already have your own product data, Statsig is warehouse native. They can plug directly into your existing data in Snowflake or BigQuery, whatever.
Ben：如果你已经有自己的产品数据，Statsig 是原生兼容数据仓库的。它可以直接对接你现有的 Snowflake 或 BigQuery 数据，毫无障碍。
David: If you’re interested in giving your product team the same continuous improvement capabilities that keep Google search ahead, go to statsig.com/acquired. That’s statsig.com/acquired. They’ve got a generous free tier of $50,000 startup program and affordable enterprise plans. Just tell them that Ben and David sent you.
David：如果你想让你的产品团队也拥有让 Google 搜索长期保持领先的那种持续改进能力，可以访问 statsig.com/acquired，就是 statsig.com/acquired。他们提供 5 万美元额度的初创企业免费计划，还有实惠的企业套餐。记得告诉他们，是 Ben 和 David 推荐的。
David: DoubleClick. Well, if buying YouTube in October, 2006 for $1.65 billion was a lot, Google decided to basically double that a few months later in April of 2007 when they bought DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash. This time not stock.
David：好，说到 DoubleClick。如果说 2006 年 10 月以 16.5 亿美元收购 YouTube 已经是个大手笔，那么仅仅几个月后的 2007 年 4 月，Google 又几乎翻倍，用 31 亿美元现金收购了 DoubleClick。这一次不是股票交易。
Ben: And this is on the display ads side of the house. Google’s got two advertising businesses at this point. There’s AdWords when you search and you get the blue links that show up above the blue links. Then there’s the off property or the Google Network ads at this point in time, Google just is operating something called AdSense, which is this ad network that they’ve started. DoubleClick actually has a fascinating company history before Google that I did not know.
Ben：而这笔收购是在展示广告业务这边。当时 Google 有两块广告业务。一块是 AdWords——当你搜索时，蓝色链接上方出现的赞助蓝色链接。另一块是站外广告，也就是 Google Network 广告，当时 Google 运营的是一个叫 AdSense 的广告网络。DoubleClick 在被 Google 收购之前，其实有一段非常精彩的公司历史，这是我之前都不知道的。
David: Not a hot rising startup like YouTube that they bought for a couple of billion dollars
David：DoubleClick 可不是像 YouTube 那样的热门新兴创业公司，用十几亿美元买下。
Ben: Though it once was.
Ben：不过它曾经是。
David: Yes.
David：是的。
Ben: Here’s the DoubleClick story and huge thank you. There’s a new book that actually just came out by Ari Paparo, the book is called Yield. DoubleClick was originally founded in 1995.
Ben：下面是 DoubleClick 的故事，顺便感谢一下。Ari Paparo 最近刚出版了一本新书，叫《Yield》。DoubleClick 最初成立于 1995 年。
David: So before Google,
David：所以它比 Google 还早。
Ben: Before Google, the founders were Kevin O’Connor and Dwight Merriman and their headquarters were in New York City. The original idea was twofold. One build software that could let advertisers serve ads across websites. This is called an ad server. The network of websites and media, the advertisements, when people talk about paid media, it’s the advertisements themselves that would run over the next five years. They end up building and acquiring their way to being the leading display ad network and ad server.
Ben：没错，比 Google 早。创始人是 Kevin O’Connor 和 Dwight Merriman，总部设在纽约。他们的初始想法有两点：第一，开发一套软件，让广告商可以跨网站投放广告，这就是所谓的广告服务器（ad server）。第二，搭建一个网站和媒体网络，承载广告。也就是当人们谈论付费媒体时，广告本身要有渠道能跑起来。在接下来的五年里，他们通过自建和收购，逐渐发展成领先的展示广告网络和广告服务器。
David: And they went public during this time.
David：而且他们在这期间上市了。
Ben: Yep, 1998, shining success of the .com industry. However, .com crash happens, 70% of double clicks customers not only churn, but go out of business. A huge amount of DoubleClick’s advertisers were actually VC-backed startups. Brand dollars hadn’t really spread to the web yet. We talked about the digital advertising was so early and so nascent.
Ben：对，1998 年，他们是 .com 行业的明星成功案例。但随着互联网泡沫破裂，DoubleClick 70% 的客户不仅流失了，还直接破产。DoubleClick 的广告主里有大量其实是风投支持的初创公司。当时品牌广告的钱还没大规模进入互联网。我们之前说过，数字广告在那时还是非常早期、非常稚嫩的阶段。
David: It was pets.com that was advertising on other .com properties.
David：当时是 pets.com 在其他 .com 网站上投广告。
Ben: Exactly. They’re almost levered on the bubble is probably the right way to think about it. easy come, easy go. In 2002, after they’re limping along for a while, they sell that ad network division off for under $15 million with an M. Now all they’ve got left is the software, the ad server part of the business. Flash forward to 2004, they’re this sleepy, slow growth company with a shrinking market cap. The ad server, their software was still widely used, but digital marketing on the web just wasn’t actually having that much spend flow through it. They decided to put themselves up for sale. Google actually took a meeting to look at it to see if they wanted to buy it. They decided not to, eventually they sold it to private equity. Two different firms, Helman and Friedman and JMI management bought it in 2005 for about a billion dollars. IPO day was double this final price tag that they would sell it to private equity for. In many stories, this is the end of the story. This is the start.
Ben：没错。你可以把他们理解为几乎是把自己杠杆在泡沫上。来得快，去得也快。2002 年，他们苦撑了一阵子后，把广告网络部门以不到 1500 万美元的价格卖掉了。剩下的只有软件，也就是广告服务器这部分业务。快进到 2004 年，他们成了一家昏昏欲睡、增长缓慢、市值不断缩水的公司。广告服务器软件仍然被广泛使用，但线上数字营销的花费并不大。他们决定挂牌出售。Google 当时甚至还约过一次会，考虑要不要收购，后来决定放弃。最终，他们被私募收购。Helman & Friedman 和 JMI Management 两家私募公司在 2005 年以大约 10 亿美元买下。要知道 IPO 当天的市值是这个数字的两倍。很多故事讲到这里就是结尾，但实际上这才是开端。
David: It’s crazy given the fact pattern that you just told us that two years later Google’s going to buy this thing for $3 billion.
David：太疯狂了。听了你刚才的描述，再想到两年后 Google 居然要花 30 亿美元买下它。
Ben: Yes. David Rosenblatt becomes CEO and he has a very familiar name that all of you will probably recognize who becomes Neal
Ben：对。David Rosenblatt 成为 CEO，他手下有一个大家非常熟悉的名字，那就是 Neal——
David: Mohan.
David：Mohan。
Ben: Yes. The head of product and strategy at the company, Neal Mohan. Neal of course is the CEO of YouTube today. Yep, from DoubleClick originally,
Ben：没错。当时公司负责产品和战略的主管就是 Neal Mohan。而现在，Neal 已经是 YouTube 的 CEO。是的，他最初来自 DoubleClick。
David: Many would argue the best thing that Google got in the DoubleClick acquisition.
David：很多人会说，Google 从收购 DoubleClick 中得到的最有价值的东西，其实就是 Neal Mohan。
Ben: You could argue that. Now here’s the amazing thing. What happens under the private equity ownership is that they launch a completely different product, this new thing called an ad exchange. When the concept of an ad exchange is first invented, remember it was very straightforward before this, there was just an ad network and some software called an ad server.
Ben：可以这么说。但神奇的地方在于：DoubleClick 被私募收购之后，他们推出了一个完全不同的新产品，叫做广告交易所（ad exchange）。在广告交易所的概念被首次提出之前，事情非常简单：只有广告网络（ad network）和一套叫做广告服务器（ad server）的软件。
Ben: The ad exchange is this brilliant idea that we can cross route demand between ad networks. At first what this is used for is like the remnant or unsold inventory. We’ve got some page loads. We don’t currently have a buyer in our ad network forum, throw them up on this exchange and see if programmatically some people will bid on it. We will get more dollars this month for the same number of page views.
Ben：广告交易所的高明之处在于，它能在广告网络之间交叉路由需求。最初的用途是处理剩余或未售出的库存。比如我们有一些页面展示量，但广告网络里暂时没有买家，那就把它们放到交易所里，看是否有人会通过程序化竞价买走。这样，在页面浏览量不变的情况下，我们这个月就能多赚一些钱。
Ben: But technically what was going on is it was really sophisticated and it allowed for some crazy stuff to get done. You could bid in real time, including against the publisher’s direct sold ads. Let’s say the New York Times has done a specific deal with Ford then in a real time basis.
Ben：但在技术层面，这背后其实非常复杂，甚至允许做一些颠覆性的事情。你可以实时竞价，甚至和出版商直接售出的广告竞争。比如，《纽约时报》和福特签了一份广告协议，而在实时拍卖中——
David: If somebody else is willing to top Ford, then you can displace them.
David：如果有其他广告主愿意出比福特更高的价，那你就能把福特的广告顶替掉。
Ben: Yep, exactly.
Ben：没错，正是如此。
David: This sounds a lot like Google, doesn’t it?
David：这听起来是不是很像 Google？
Ben: It really created the modern programmatic display advertising for better or for worse. That’s basically what happened here.
Ben：对，广告交易所实际上创造了现代的程序化展示广告，不论好坏，事实就是如此。
Ben: As a publisher, when you start working with an ad exchange, you can incorporate multiple different networks, agency trading desks. This became a big thing, an ad agencies, you can stand up these complex rules engines. Effectively what happened is you jumped in front of the ad networks, you almost disintermediated them. You’re the lowest level building block that everything else has to integrate with.
Ben：作为出版商，当你开始使用广告交易所时，你就可以同时接入多个不同的广告网络和代理商的交易平台。这在广告代理行业成了一件大事，因为你能设定复杂的规则引擎。本质上，广告交易所跑到了广告网络的前面，几乎把它们“去中介化”了。它成了最底层的基础模块，所有其他环节都必须和它打交道。
Ben: Eventually what started as this ad exchange that just became used for remnant and unsold ultimately becomes the primary way that digital media is bought on the biggest advertisers with the biggest publishers and all of course bought and sold through these big agencies.
Ben：最终，广告交易所从最初处理剩余库存的工具，演变成数字媒体广告的主要购买渠道，连接起最大的广告主和最大的出版商，而交易则主要通过大型广告代理机构完成。
Ben: Google is running this little thing called AdSense. It’s for smaller publishers and it’s very DIY self-serve. It’s almost like a techie utopian version of how do you run ads on websites. Whereas this ad exchange is let’s acknowledge all the complex realities that exist in all these business relationships, all these purchasing decisions, the way Madison Avenue has evolved from the Mad Men era to this moment in time in the early 2000s.
Ben：而与此同时，Google 运营的是一个叫 AdSense 的“小东西”，主要服务小型出版商，完全是 DIY、自助式的。它几乎就是一个“技术乌托邦”版本的广告投放方式：如何在网站上跑广告。而广告交易所的逻辑是：正视现实，承认广告行业里的复杂关系、各种采购决策，以及麦迪逊大道从《广告狂人》时代演变到 2000 年代初的实际情况。
David: Let’s essentially construct fat pipes for money to flow.
David：换句话说，就是要修建一条条粗管子，让钱流动起来。
Ben: Yes.
Ben：没错。
David: Through all this. That is direct integrations into ad agency’s financial systems and the ad agencies control the budgets for all the big brands and all the big dollars that are flowing.
David：而这一切的关键就是和广告代理机构的财务系统直接打通。广告代理掌控着所有大品牌、大预算的资金流。
Ben: That’s exactly right. If only Google had a way of unlocking and now participating in these deeply integrated money flows, Google had a few other problems. The way DoubleClick worked and performed a lot of really fancy stuff like frequency capping to make sure you don’t see the same ad 46 times is third party cookies. Google was philosophically opposed to using third party cookies. They couldn’t do stuff like that, but DoubleClick could. Google didn’t have a lot of these big sales relationships since at the time, again, they’re very obsessed with self-serve webpages. Advertisers just log in and upload and transact. Google ends up locked out of the best ad inventory advertisers on Google could really only be placed on the long tail of websites, which advertisers were willing to pay less to appear on those websites. Again,
Ben：完全正确。如果 Google 有办法解锁并参与这些深度整合的资金流，那情况就不同了。但当时 Google 面临几个问题。DoubleClick 的很多强大功能——比如频次控制（frequency capping，确保你不会被同一个广告轰炸 46 次）——依赖第三方 Cookie。而 Google 在理念上是反对用第三方 Cookie 的，所以他们做不了这些，但 DoubleClick 可以。另外，Google 当时并没有太多大型广告主的关系网络，因为他们太痴迷于自助网页模式：广告主自己登录、上传、交易。结果就是，Google 被挡在最优质广告库存之外，Google 的广告只能投放在那些“长尾”网站上，而广告主愿意为这些网站支付的费用更低。
David: We’re all in the AdSense part of the world, not search ads.
David：我们这里讨论的都是 AdSense 相关的，而不是搜索广告。
Ben: Yes. There are all sorts of things that make them not enterprise grade here. Google decided they’d like to buy double click.
Ben：对。在很多方面，AdSense 都不是企业级的。于是 Google 决定要收购 DoubleClick。
David: Yes. Well that’s the story out there. The reality is, think back to how you started when I interjected and I said, gosh, a lot of what DoubleClick is doing, it really sounds a lot like what Google is doing. Well we were talking to Tim Armstrong for research for this episode. Tim of course was head of sales at Google for many years and we were asking Tim about DoubleClick and he was like, well , I was close with the DoubleClick guys and I wanted to meet with them here in late 2006, early 2007. Just so happened I was going to be in Seattle for some stuff and I was emailing with them and they were like oh, you’re in Seattle, actually we’re in Seattle too right now. We can get together here. Tim immediately sounds the alarm inside Google to Eric and Larry.
David：对，这是外界的故事。但真实情况是这样的：回想一下我们一开始说过的，当时我插话提到，DoubleClick 做的很多事情其实和 Google 很像。为了准备这期节目，我们去采访了 Tim Armstrong，他在 Google 担任销售主管多年。我们问他关于 DoubleClick 的事，他说：“我和 DoubleClick 的人关系很近，2006 年底、2007 年初时我想和他们见一见。刚好我要去西雅图办事，就给他们发邮件，他们回说：哦，你也在西雅图？我们现在也在这儿，可以见面。”Tim 立刻警觉起来，马上给 Eric 和 Larry 发出警报。
David: This is a New York based company. There is only one reason why the double click guys are going to be in Seattle. That would be if Microsoft is going to buy the company. Now back to everything we’ve been talking about all episode, what is Google absolutely not want to have happen here? Well, one is Microsoft to kneecap them by making changes to Internet Explorer or Windows or whatnot. They basically neutralize that through the whole web app, web 2.0 strategy. Now the threat is, oh, Microsoft is finally going to wake up and do what they should have done 10 years ago and compete with us, build their own search engine,
David：要知道，DoubleClick 是一家纽约公司，他们出现在西雅图只有一个可能的原因：微软要收购他们。结合我们这一整期节目讨论的脉络，Google 最不想发生的事情是什么？第一，微软通过修改 IE 或 Windows 来“卡脖子”Google。但 Google 基本上已经用整个 Web 应用、Web 2.0 战略化解了这个威胁。现在新的威胁是：微软终于要醒过来了，准备去做他们十年前就该做的事——和 Google 竞争，建立自己的搜索引擎。
Ben: Right? Be willing to be an ad-based business. Their DNA was. Yeah, we’ll do some ad stuff and MSN has to because it’s a media business, but.
Ben：对吧？而且愿意转向广告驱动的商业模式。他们的基因里虽然有点广告业务，比如 MSN 因为是媒体业务不得不做广告，但本质上……
David: We sell software.
David：我们的核心是卖软件。
Ben: We sell software. That’s what we do primarily, we would never trade our ability to sell software to make money on dirty Ads.
Ben：我们卖软件，这是我们主要的业务。我们绝不会牺牲卖软件的能力，去靠“脏兮兮的广告”赚钱。
David: Yep.
David：没错。
Ben: Microsoft is realizing that for some set of users, Google’s actually making more money on any given PC user than Microsoft is. They’re not happy with this. to say, fine, we at least just need to be in that game too.
Ben：微软逐渐意识到，对于某些用户群体，Google 从每个 PC 用户身上赚到的钱实际上比微软还多。他们对此很不爽，于是决定：“好吧，至少我们也得进入这个领域。”
David: Yeah.
David：对。
Ben: The negotiations are happening with Microsoft and DoubleClick. Tim told us this great anecdote where he’s invited to present and he still thinks it’s like a early stage conversation in the negotiations, and somehow he gets sent to the wrong floor. The person who is escorting him into the DoubleClick building sent them to a floor and they freak out when the door opens and they’re like, try to close the door, like, please go to the other floor. Tim is like, what’s going on here? He steps out, he runs down the hall and he sees a conference room full of all the Microsoft people and their accountants and their lawyers, and he’s like, oh my God, oh my God, you guys, you’re, you’re about to sign this deal with Microsoft. He gets them to hold off so he can kick the tires, do his diligence, submit a counterbid. This is a crazy process that goes back and forth, Yahoo gets involved. There’s a whole presentation series that happens where Yahoo, Microsoft, a AOL and Google are basically all getting the pitch and DoubleClick is now showing,
Ben：微软和 DoubleClick 的谈判已经在进行。Tim 给我们讲了一个很精彩的故事：他当时受邀去做一个介绍，他还以为只是谈判的早期阶段。结果他不小心被带到了错误的楼层。带他的人把他带到了一层楼，电梯门一开，那边的人立刻慌了，赶紧想把门关上，说：“请去别的楼层。”Tim 心里嘀咕：“怎么回事？”他走出去，跑到走廊尽头，看到一个会议室里全是微软的人——他们的会计师和律师都在。他心里想：“天哪，你们这是要和微软签协议啊！”于是他劝 DoubleClick 先别签，让他有机会做尽职调查，递交反报价。接下来是一场疯狂的拉锯战，Yahoo 也卷进来了。然后出现了一系列路演，Yahoo、微软、AOL 和 Google 基本上都在听 DoubleClick 的推介，而 DoubleClick 也在展示自己。
David: I’m imagining they’re all like in an auditorium and DoubleClick is presenting on stage.
David：我可以想象他们就像在礼堂里，DoubleClick 在台上做演示。
Ben: Dude, there was a spreadsheet called YMAG.xls, and the reason they’ve created it is they’re effectively trying to show in each of these presentations, here’s how much incremental money you’ll make if you own DoubleClick and you tie it into your existing ad system and they’re tweaking the numbers slightly for each one.
Ben：伙计，当时有一个表格叫 YMAG.xls。他们做这个表格的原因是：在每一场演示里，他们都试图展示——如果你收购 DoubleClick 并把它整合进现有广告系统，你能多赚多少钱。他们还会针对每个潜在买家稍微调整一下数据。
Ben: Google then submits their LOI for $3.1 billion and it includes a clause where they can’t shop the deal around during this diligence period. The whole Google team goes to New York, they rent out this big room at a hotel near DoubleClick’s offices.
Ben：Google 随后提交了 31 亿美元的意向书（LOI），其中包含一项条款：在尽调期间 DoubleClick 不得另寻买家。整个 Google 团队飞到纽约，在 DoubleClick 办公室附近的一家酒店租了个大房间驻扎。
Ben: I’m going to read an excerpt from the book Yield the company’s council. This is DoubleClick, checked her Blackberry and held it up for David Rosenblatt to see. There was an incoming message from Microsoft’s corporate development team. They were willing to match the offer for DoubleClick,.
Ben：我来读一段出自《Yield》一书的原文。当时 DoubleClick 的公司律师看了眼 Blackberry，把屏幕递给 CEO David Rosenblatt：一条来自微软企业发展团队的信息进来了。他们愿意匹配 Google 的报价。
Ben: And the message included an email from Steve Ballmer saying that he opened the door for a much higher offer. Ballmer wrote that if the offer match was not acceptable, DoubleClick should simply mark up the paper to meet its needs and then sign it. Microsoft would review and rapidly countersign to close the deal with minimal negotiation required without saying, so Ballmer was communicating, here’s a blank check, tell me what closes the deal.
Ben：信息里还包括一封 Steve Ballmer 的邮件，说他愿意开出更高的报价。Ballmer 写道，如果单纯的匹配报价不够，DoubleClick 只需在文件上写下他们想要的条件，然后签字，微软会迅速复核并签署，几乎不需要任何谈判。换句话说，Ballmer 传达的意思就是：“这是一张空白支票，你们来填，告诉我怎样才能成交。”
Ben: Ultimately a week goes by and they’re in this period where they can’t really respond and they’re supposed to just proceed with Google. A day before the LOI is set to expire, the DoubleClick team gets an updated term sheet from Google. The financial terms of the deal are unchanged, that 3.1 billion. But now the deal includes what they call a hell or high water clause, which means that Google was committed to closing the deal without any substantive diligence or any other conditions. It’s just money in the bank. No more diligence. DoubleClick just signs it.
Ben：最终，一个星期过去了。在这段期间内他们不能对微软回应，只能按协议推进 Google 的交易。就在意向书到期前一天，DoubleClick 团队收到了 Google 更新的条款清单。交易金额依旧是 31 亿美元，但这次加入了一个所谓的“无论如何都必须完成交易”条款（hell or high water clause），意思是 Google 承诺无条件完成收购，不再进行任何实质性尽调或附加条件。这就是到账的钱，别的不用管。于是 DoubleClick 直接签了。
Ben: 3.1 billion and the private equity firm turns that 1 billion, which was levered. It was something like 300 million of equity and 700 million of debt into a $3.1 billion sale to Google. Then it’s over.
Ben：31 亿美元，私募公司把当初的 10 亿投资——其中大概 3 亿是股权、7 亿是债务——变成了卖给 Google 的 31 亿美元。故事就此结束。
David: Not bad work if you can get it.
David：要是能做到，这可真是好买卖。
Ben: Nope.
Ben：确实。
David: This was huge for Google. DoubleClick, bringing it into Google did really help with those fat money pipes, as I was saying, of dollar flows from ad agencies. But the biggest thing was DoubleClick was the number one player in the space. There was another company, public company called AQuantive that was the number two player.
David：对 Google 来说，这是巨大的收获。把 DoubleClick 收进来，真的帮 Google 接通了那条我之前说过的“粗管子”——广告代理机构掌控的资金流。但更重要的是，DoubleClick 当时是这个领域的第一名。还有另一家公司，叫 AQuantive，是上市公司，排在第二。
Ben: Microsoft then bought for twice as much. They were like, we really wish we had gotten DoubleClick then within months
Ben：微软后来花了两倍的价格把它买下了。他们当时心里肯定在想：“我们真希望当初拿下的是 DoubleClick。”
David: It was the next month. Right away Microsoft turned around and bought AQuantive for $6 billion. Twice the price, but Microsoft getting the number two player versus the number one player slowed them down. We’re heading right into Microsoft search efforts with Yahoo and then ultimately Bing and getting into the advertising business worth every penny to Google, even for the sole reason of keeping the premier number one player in the display ad space out of Microsoft’s hands.
David：没错，就在下一个月。微软立刻转身，以 60 亿美元收购了 AQuantive，价格是 Google 的两倍。但微软拿到的是第二名，而不是第一名，这大大拖慢了他们。接下来微软要投入搜索，与 Yahoo 合作，最后发展出 Bing，进入广告业务。对 Google 来说，这笔收购值回票价，哪怕只是为了把展示广告领域的头号玩家挡在微软手里之外。
Ben: Yep. The one thing I will say here, David, is unlike all those other Google products, maps, Gmail, YouTube, the organizing the world’s information, this is not organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible. We’re running an ad business and we want to expand the ad business, and so we’re going to expand and protect our business interests by buying this.
Ben：对，这里我要说的一点是，David，不同于 Google 的其他产品，比如 Maps、Gmail、YouTube——那些都和“整合全球信息，让其普遍可得”直接相关。而 DoubleClick 不是。我们就是在运营一个广告业务，我们要扩展广告业务，所以通过收购来扩展和保护我们的商业利益。
David: It’s a chess piece on the table that it being in our hands versus other people’s hands is better.
David：这就是棋盘上的一枚棋子。握在我们手里，比落在别人手里要好。
Ben: That’s exactly right. There are ways that it like systematically advantages you to own the exchange when you also own the network. This is only checking the box of strengthening our business without checking any of the other boxes and you basically never heard Google executives get up on a stage where they’re inspiring people about the future of the company and talk about basically anything DoubleClick is doing.
Ben：没错。当你既拥有广告网络，又拥有广告交易所时，它确实会在系统层面给你带来优势。但这笔收购仅仅是“勾选”了“强化业务”这一项，没有勾选其他任何项。你几乎从未听到 Google 高管在台上谈论公司未来、发表鼓舞人心的演讲时会提到 DoubleClick 的事情。
David: Yes, correct, even fast forward today, unlike YouTube, it’s not like this has become a world dominating thing.
David：是的，没错。即使快进到今天，不像 YouTube，DoubleClick 也没有成为一个称霸全球的存在。
Ben: Right? If you’re in the display ads world, or you’re a publisher, or this feels like a huge deal if you’re Google, let’s just look at the numbers today. Google in total in 2024 made $350 billion of revenue. About 200 billion of that is from Google search. About 30 billion of that is from Google Network. This falls under Google Network.
Ben：对吧？如果你在展示广告领域，或者你是出版商，又或者你是 Google，这笔收购当然很重要。但让我们看看当下的数据：2024 年，Google 总营收 3500 亿美元。其中大约 2000 亿来自搜索，大约 300 亿来自 Google Network，而 DoubleClick 就归在 Google Network。
David: Plenty of which existed before and would’ve existed anyway in AdSense, regardless.
David：而且其中相当一部分其实在 AdSense 时代就已经存在，未来也会存在。
Ben: I don’t know about that. I don’t know that Google would’ve become the dominant player in display ads.
Ben：我不太确定。我觉得如果没有 DoubleClick，Google 可能不会成为展示广告的主导者。
David: Absent DoubleClick
David：如果没有收购 DoubleClick。
Ben: Without buying DoubleClick. Yeah. I don’t think.
Ben：是的，没有收购 DoubleClick 的话，我不认为他们能做到。
David: Yeah. But AdSense was probably doing a billion plus in revenue at the time, would’ve kept scaling. All that to say like in the context of Google, this isn’t a YouTube,
David：没错。但 AdSense 当时的收入可能已经超过 10 亿美元了，而且还会继续增长。总的来说，在 Google 的整体背景下，这个收购的意义远不如 YouTube。
Ben: It just doesn’t matter that much, 200 billion in revenue they make from search where they get to keep 90 ish percent of that, after paying out traffic acquisition costs, Google Network, they pay out 70% and they only made 30 billion. If you start thinking about like gross profit, it’s comparing $9 billion to $175 ish billion. It’s just not that consequential to the story.
Ben：没错，差别就在于：搜索带来 2000 亿美元收入，扣掉流量获取成本，他们能留住大约 90% 的收入。而 Google Network 方面，他们要付出去 70%，最后只剩 300 亿。如果你从毛利的角度来看，就是 90 亿对比 1750 亿。这在 Google 整体故事里根本算不上关键。
David: Speaking of search, catch us up on how the search business is doing during these years and why Microsoft finally said like, okay, enough, we got to enter this business ourselves.
David：既然说到搜索，那给我们讲讲这几年搜索业务的情况，以及为什么微软最后说：“好吧，够了，我们必须自己进入这个领域。”
Ben: We’ve been talking about the sideshows, like trying to add wind to the sales of the web and search is cranking on improvements to the core product and revenue is growing up right along with it. Here’s a little timeline to catch us up. Oh three to oh eight, they start updating the index more often. The index starts to feel not quite real time, but it used to be that when you would search, you would be getting results that were indexed three months ago. Now the web is feeling a little bit more
Ben：我们刚才聊了很多“配角”，比如给 Web 加点顺风，而搜索业务本身在不断改进核心产品，同时收入也在增长。这里给大家梳理一个小时间线。2003 到 2008 年，他们开始更频繁地更新索引。虽然还不能说是实时，但相比过去——那时候你搜索到的结果可能是三个月前就被索引的内容——现在已经感觉更“即时”了。
David: Real timey
David：更实时化了。
Ben: Recent when you’re searching it. They launched Google Images, Google News, Google Books, Google Scholar. They launched Google Suggest, which is when it starts auto completing your searches. Later they would launch something called Google Instant, which was very cool at the time it’s actually gone away now, where it would run a completely new search based on every character you typed and show you the results page updated in real time with each next keystroke, which was pretty amazing.
Ben：对，更接近实时。他们还推出了 Google 图片、Google 新闻、Google 图书、Google 学术。他们推出了 Google Suggest，就是自动补全搜索。后来他们又推出了一个叫 Google Instant 的功能，当时特别酷，虽然现在已经没了。它会在你每输入一个字符时都重新运行一次完整的搜索，并实时更新结果页面。那时真是让人惊叹。
David: I remember that being so cool when it launched.
David：我还记得它刚上线时有多酷。
Ben: Yeah. In 2005, they incorporate your search history into your results. This is when they start doing some personalization stuff with logged in users. They go from, in 2004 they had 3 billion in revenue, 2005 they have 6 billion in revenue doubled even at that scale. In 2007, they launched universal search across web images, video whatever maps they try to deconstruct your query and understand which of these things are you looking for, rather than, they used to basically build a completely separate search engine for each media type and then leave it up to you to decide which thing to go search.
Ben：是的。2005 年，他们把用户的搜索历史纳入搜索结果，这就是他们开始对登录用户做个性化推荐的起点。收入方面，从 2004 年的 30 亿美元，到 2005 年的 60 亿美元，直接翻倍，而且是在这么大规模的情况下。2007 年，他们推出了“通用搜索”（Universal Search），把网页、图片、视频、地图等全部整合在一起，尝试解构用户的查询，理解你究竟在找哪类东西。而在这之前，他们基本是为每种媒介单独构建一个搜索引擎，然后让用户自己选择去哪一个。
Ben: That year when they launched Universal Search, they do 16.5 billion in revenue. This 2007 year, this is when they become the largest seller of advertisements in the world, not just digital ads. Ads and digital ads would not overtake traditional media until 2018, as we talked about earlier.
Ben：在推出通用搜索的那一年，他们实现了 165 亿美元的收入。2007 年，他们成为全球最大的广告销售商，不仅仅是数字广告。在我们之前提到过的，数字广告直到 2018 年才超过传统媒体。
David: Yeah, I was trying to square this. I guess that means that the market share that Google has of digital ads is so high, is massive, that it’s bigger than even in the traditional space of the TV space, what any one player has.
David：是啊，我一直在琢磨这点。我猜这意味着 Google 在数字广告中的市场份额高到惊人，甚至超过了电视广告里任何一家公司的份额。
Ben: Yes. Every year for the last 18 years, Google has been the number one seller of advertising of any kind in the world.
Ben：没错。在过去的 18 年里，Google 每年都是全球范围内所有广告类别的第一大销售商。
David: Wow.
David：哇。
Ben: This I think, helps you understand a little bit what’s at stake in the era of AI. This is literally the trillion or five or $10 trillion question is, can Google keep being the number one seller of advertising in the world, even through this sea change? We should do a whole episode on that, probably maybe we’ll for next time.
Ben：我觉得这能帮助大家理解，在 AI 时代赌注有多大。问题直截了当地说就是：这是一道“一万亿美元、五万亿美元、甚至十万亿美元”的问题——Google 能否在这样的大变革中继续保持全球广告销售第一？我们可能应该专门做一期节目来聊这个，也许就留到下次。
David: Maybe next time
David：也许下次吧。
Ben: Yeah. But actually there are some great corollaries with the mobile wave that we’re about to talk about. Then just to pull forward a few more search improvements that they would do later in 2009, that’s when they really do some real time indexing of the web. 2012, they launched the knowledge graph,when you search about a, basically a thing with a Wikipedia page, you always get the snapshot view on the right hand side of that entity. All along the way they’re tweaking the algorithm and an attempt to reduce spam. That’s effectively the product changes on the people side of things.
Ben：是的。实际上这和我们即将谈到的移动浪潮有很强的对应关系。再往前提几项搜索改进：2009 年，他们开始真正对整个 Web 做实时索引。2012 年，他们推出了知识图谱（Knowledge Graph）。当你搜索一个基本上有维基百科条目的事物时，你会在搜索结果右侧看到一个关于该实体的快照视图。在这期间，他们也不断调整算法，努力减少垃圾信息。这些基本上就是产品层面的变化。
Ben: They really had solidified themselves as the preeminent computer science research company at this point. If you were to refer in 2008 to a really smart programmer, you probably said, oh, they’re like a Google type engineer. They took the mantle from Microsoft and had not yet relinquished it to Facebook or later to the Stripe or Open AI or Anthropic or any of the companies we would talk about in the future as this like dense concentration of the best engineers.
Ben：在这一点上，Google 已经牢固确立了自己作为顶尖计算机科学研究公司的地位。如果在 2008 年你提到一个非常聪明的程序员，人们大概会说：“哦，他就像是 Google 类型的工程师。”他们从微软手中接过了这面大旗，当时还没交给 Facebook，更没有交给后来的 Stripe、OpenAI、Anthropic 或我们今天会谈到的其他公司——那些后来聚集了顶尖工程师的地方。
Ben: They had pulled in a lot of the people from the big research labs that had been collapsing, you had Jeff Dean and Sanjay Gemma Watt coming from Deck. David, we did Sanjay a total disservice on the last episode. A lot of the stuff that Jeff did, and of course he became a Google executive, Jeff and Sanjay Pure program together.
Ben：他们吸纳了许多从逐渐衰落的大型研究实验室出来的人才，比如 Jeff Dean 和 Sanjay Ghemawat（来自 DEC）。David，在上一期节目里我们对 Sanjay 的贡献讲得不够到位。很多归功于 Jeff 的工作，其实是 Jeff 和 Sanjay 一起完成的。Jeff 后来成了 Google 高管，但他们很多成果都是两人纯粹合作的结晶。
David: Yes, there’s an amazing New Yorker article that was published long ago about their friendship and career partnership and everything that they accomplished together.
David：是的，《纽约客》曾发表过一篇精彩的文章，讲述他们的友谊、职业合作以及他们一起完成的一切成就。
Ben: Yeah, we’ll link to it in the show notes. Basically, if you look at any big research paper about giant Google infrastructure stuff that was launched from, I don’t know, 2002 ish, maybe even earlier through the 20 teens, Jeff and Sanjay are either the two authors or two of the five authors. It’s amazing how much stuff these two guys invented. They also got Bill Corin and Rob Pike from Bell Labs. You had Xerox PARC and IBM’s labs were losing prominence. Google’s just sucking in all this generational heavy hitter computer science architecture systems programmers from all of those. I think that’s how I would describe where a lot of the technical breakthroughs are really coming from, or at least the culture of technical breakthroughs.
Ben：对，我们会在节目备注里附上链接。基本上，如果你去看 2002 年（甚至更早）到 2010 年代 Google 推出的任何关于大型基础设施的研究论文，作者名单里几乎都会有 Jeff 和 Sanjay，要么就是他们俩，要么就是五个作者中的两个。他们发明的东西多到惊人。除此之外，Google 还吸纳了来自贝尔实验室的 Bill Corin 和 Rob Pike。当时 Xerox PARC 和 IBM 的实验室都在走下坡路，而 Google 正在疯狂吸收这一代最强的计算机科学架构和系统编程人才。我觉得这就是很多技术突破的源头，或者至少是形成技术突破文化的原因。
David: We talked about these incredible products, incredible innovations, development of the whole concept of a web application. But that was coming from these people that were coming into the company who were just, like you say, generational talents. Speaking of that was very convenient for a couple of things that they needed to start doing in 2008, namely launching their own web browser and then shortly thereafter launching their own mobile operating system.
David：我们之前聊过那些令人惊叹的产品和创新，包括整个 Web 应用概念的发展。但这些其实都源于这些进入公司的天才人物，正如你说的，他们是“一代人难得的人才”。说到这儿，就引出了 2008 年 Google 需要做的两件大事：推出自己的网页浏览器，以及不久之后推出自己的移动操作系统。
Ben: It’s astonishing that they did both of these things
Ben：令人震惊的是，他们居然在同一年做了这两件事。
David: In the same year.
David：就在同一年。
Ben: And this isn’t like, oh, I’m going to start a browser the way that you can start a browser today. All these AI companies are launching browsers.
Ben：而且这不像今天这样——你可以轻松启动一个浏览器项目。现在很多 AI 公司都在发布自己的浏览器。
David: They’re using chromium.
David：对，因为他们都直接用 Chromium。
Ben: Right. This is a giant engineering undertaking. You need amazing architects. This is equivalent to Dave Cutler doing Windows NT. It was earth shattering when Google launched Chrome.
Ben：没错。但在当时，这是一项巨大的工程任务，你需要顶尖的架构师。这就相当于 Dave Cutler 开发 Windows NT。当 Google 推出 Chrome 时，真的是一件震撼业界的大事。
David: Or everything Jeff Dean and Sanjay did in their early days of Google.
David：或者就像 Jeff Dean 和 Sanjay 在 Google 早期所做的一切一样。
Ben: Yes.
Ben：是的。
David: And when I say people launching web browsers today are using Chromium, Chromium, of course, is the open source version of Chrome. That Google just gives away for free to anybody that didn’t exist, they had to build it. In February of 2008, the shoe that Google had been fearing would drop for many, many years, finally does drop, which is Microsoft is officially going to enter the search business. They make a bid, Microsoft does to buy Yahoo for $44 billion. The giant has finally woken up. Fortunately for Google, they get a little bit of a reprieve because Jerry Yang turns it down.
David：当我说今天大家做浏览器都在用 Chromium 时，要知道 Chromium 是 Chrome 的开源版本，Google 免费提供给所有人使用。而在当时，它根本不存在，Google 必须自己从零开始做。2008 年 2 月，Google 担心多年的那只“靴子”终于落下——微软正式要进入搜索业务。他们提出以 440 亿美元收购 Yahoo。巨人终于醒了。但幸运的是，对 Google 来说，他们得到了一点喘息机会，因为杨致远拒绝了。
Ben: So dumb.
Ben：太蠢了。
David: In one of the worst corporate decisions of all time, because just two years later, Bing, after Microsoft would launch Bing the next year in June of 2009, Bing would take over powering Yahoo search for a deal that paid Yahoo, $1 billion, versus the 44 that two years earlier, Microsoft was willing to pay for the whole company.
David：这是史上最糟糕的企业决策之一。因为就在两年后，微软在 2009 年 6 月推出 Bing，并通过协议接管了 Yahoo 的搜索业务，代价是支付 Yahoo 10 亿美元。而就在两年前，微软还愿意花 440 亿美元买下整个 Yahoo。
Ben: And then Yahoo would sell itself to Verizon for..
Ben：然后 Yahoo 把自己卖给了 Verizon，价格是……
David: Like three, I think. Something like that.
David：大概 30 亿吧。我记得差不多是这个数。
Ben: Something like that. Yeah. Single digit billions.
Ben：差不多吧，反正就是个位数十亿美元。
David: Yes. Google though, knew this day was going to come eventually. Unfortunately, by this time in 2008, Google had its competitive response all ready, ready to go, which was Chrome.
David：是的。不过 Google 早就知道这一天迟早会来。幸运的是，到 2008 年时，Google 已经准备好了竞争应对，那就是 Chrome。
Ben: And they had actually been working on improving the state of browsers for years.
Ben：实际上，他们多年来一直在改善浏览器的现状。
David: Oh yes they have. The story of Chrome goes all the way back to 2001. Larry and Sergey wanted to build a web browser in 2001 for this very reason that we’ve been talking about the whole episode. All of Google rested on,
David：没错。Chrome 的故事要追溯到 2001 年。Larry 和 Sergey 在 2001 年就想做一个浏览器，原因正是我们整期节目反复强调的：整个 Google 都建立在……
Ben: I didn’t realize that.
Ben：我之前完全不知道。
David: Internet Explorer and also, it was Larry and Sergey, of course, they wanted to build a web browser. It’s the most Google thing. Why wouldn’t we build our own web browser? Right. But it was Eric who said in 2001, no, we can’t do this now. We can’t poke the bear right now. Like Google is too young, too vulnerable.
David：……建立在 Internet Explorer 之上。而且你要知道，这可是 Larry 和 Sergey，他们当然想做浏览器。这太符合 Google 的风格了：“为什么我们不自己造一个浏览器呢？”但 2001 年的 Eric 说，不行，我们现在不能这么做。我们不能在这个时候去“戳熊屁股”。Google 那时候太年轻，太脆弱了。
Ben: Calls like this are why Larry and Sergey brought in Eric.
Ben：像这种判断，正是 Larry 和 Sergey 当初请 Eric 来的原因。
David: Yes. The actual quote from Eric at the time, this is in In the Plex, is I don’t want to moon the giant in 2001.
David：没错。当时 Eric 的原话（出自《In the Plex》）是：“我不想在 2001 年的时候给巨人亮屁股。”
Ben: It’s a very Eric Schmidt quote.
Ben：这句话真是太符合 Eric Schmidt 的风格了。
David: But that doesn’t mean that Google isn’t preparing for this. Instead, what they do is they decide that they are going to become the primary major benefactor for the new Mozilla Foundation. what would become Firefox. Mozilla was the nonprofit organization that was founded and spun off from Netscape. When AOL bought Netscape.
David：但这并不意味着 Google 没有做准备。相反，他们决定成为新成立的 Mozilla 基金会的主要资助者——也就是后来推出 Firefox 的组织。Mozilla 是从 Netscape 分拆出来成立的非营利组织，当时 AOL 收购了 Netscape。
Ben: Are they a funder? Are they actually just like giving money?
Ben：所以他们是出资人？真的就是直接送钱吗？
David: Well, I think at first it probably was like with grants like giving money. Again, this is strategically important for Google. But then once Firefox actually gets released by Mozilla and deployed out there, the way Google starts supporting Mozilla and Firefox is through paying traffic acquisition cost to them to be the default search in the Firefox browser. Spoiler alert, like they do to Apple for Safari today to the tune of like $20 billion a year.
David：嗯，我觉得一开始确实就是以资助的形式直接给钱。对 Google 来说，这是战略性的投资。但等 Firefox 真正由 Mozilla 发布并推广之后，Google 支持 Mozilla 和 Firefox 的方式是支付流量获取成本（TAC），让自己成为 Firefox 浏览器的默认搜索引擎。提前剧透一下：这和他们今天给 Apple 的 Safari 支付的方式一模一样，每年大约 200 亿美元。
Ben: Yes.
Ben：是的。
David: Firefox is where this all starts with Mozilla
David：而这一切就是从 Firefox 开始的。
Ben: Actually traffic acquisition costs originated before Mozilla because it’s effectively the same thing that they were doing with software vendors to include Google toolbar. Right. I think the mechanism of payment over time shifted to more of a rev share. My understanding now is that they share some of the revenue they generate from queries that originate.
Ben：实际上，流量获取成本的概念早在 Mozilla 之前就有了，因为这本质上就是他们当年给软件厂商钱，让他们捆绑 Google 工具栏的同一套玩法。后来支付机制逐渐转变成收入分成。我的理解是，现在他们会把通过这些入口产生的查询所带来的部分收入分给合作方。
David: Searches that happen in the browser.
David：对，就是发生在浏览器里的搜索。
Ben: Exactly. Which is why it ends up being variable year to year. But yes, Google has a long history of paying for distribution of their search engine. The new form that it is now taking is the Mozilla Firefox browser.
Ben：没错，这也是为什么这项支出每年会有所波动。但 Google 一直以来都有为搜索引擎分发渠道买单的历史。如今，这个新形式就是 Mozilla Firefox 浏览器。
David: Yep. Starting with toolbar. This goes on for a couple of years,
David：对，从工具栏开始。这种方式持续了好几年。
Ben: And by the way, I should say Google becomes a giant contributor of source code to Firefox.
Ben：顺便说一句，Google 还成了 Firefox 源代码的重要贡献者。
David: Well.
David：嗯。
Ben: Oh, is that where you’re going?
Ben：哦，你是要说这个吗？
David: I’m going to get into this. A couple of years, Google’s paying Mozilla for default search and Firefox basically funding Mozilla. After a little while Google decides that they’re going to hire some of the key Firefox engineers at Mozilla to come and work at Google directly. But they position this as like, essentially this is the same thing. We are still funding Mozilla and Firefox just like you’re Mozilla, you can’t give these employees these engineers stock options like you’re a nonprofit. How about instead they do the same thing that they’re doing, which is working on Firefox. They’ll just come and work here at Google and we’ll pay their salaries and they’ll get Google stock options, otherwise they’re going to get poached by all these tech companies, et cetera, et cetera.
David：我正要说这个。前几年 Google 一直付钱给 Mozilla，让 Firefox 默认使用 Google 搜索，相当于直接在资助 Mozilla。过了一阵子，Google 决定直接把 Mozilla 的一些核心 Firefox 工程师挖到 Google 工作。但他们的说法是：这本质上还是同一回事。我们依然在支持 Mozilla 和 Firefox。毕竟 Mozilla 是非营利组织，没法给这些员工发股票期权。那不如让他们继续做原来的事情——开发 Firefox——只是换个身份，在 Google 上班，由 Google 支付薪水，并且拿 Google 的股票期权。不然的话，这些工程师迟早会被其他科技公司挖走，等等。
Ben: Fascinating.
Ben：太有意思了。
David: You can see how this makes sense. This team that comes over from Mozilla into Google becomes the core of a new product client group within Google. Meaning of this being products on clients, IE installed applications on PCs, not the web apps that the rest of new Google is doing. The leader of this group, Google hires from McKinsey in 2004, Sundar Pichai.
David：你可以看到这很合理。从 Mozilla 跳到 Google 的这批人，成为 Google 内部一个新“客户端产品组”的核心。所谓客户端，就是安装在 PC 上的应用程序，而不是 Google 其他部门正在做的 Web 应用。这个团队的领导人，Google 在 2004 年从麦肯锡挖来的人——Sundar Pichai。
Ben: Oh, I did not realize that. That’s where Sundar came from.
Ben：哦，我之前完全不知道。原来 Sundar 是这么来的。
David: Yep. Well again, all of this is very strategic because if you did someday want to build your own web browser.
David：是的。这一切都非常具有战略性，因为如果哪天你真的想做自己的浏览器……
Ben: Now you’ve got the bench of talent, their employees.
Ben：你就已经有了人才储备，他们都是你的员工。
David: So there’s a quote from Eric Schmidt in In the Plex. This was very clever on Larry and Sergey’s part because of course these people doing Firefox are perfectly capable of going and doing another great web browser. This group is sitting there within Google for a couple of years, almost like a latent sleeper cell within Google. They’re just ready to activate as soon as the Microsoft threat becomes real.
David：《In the Plex》里有一句 Eric Schmidt 的原话。这是 Larry 和 Sergey 非常聪明的一步，因为这些做 Firefox 的人完全有能力再做一个出色的浏览器。这个团队在 Google 里待了几年，几乎就像一支“潜伏小队”。一旦微软的威胁变成现实，他们随时可以被激活。
Ben: The way I heard it was a lot of people are working on Google Gears, which is this browser extension that allows for offline functionality. They’ve built the Google web toolkit to make web application development even more advanced, even more sophisticated. At some point they lost faith that Firefox was going to keep the pace and that Firefox was going to stay as high quality of a browser as they needed it. Of course they had some divergent technical ideas, like different architecture ideas for how a browser should function that we’ll talk about.
Ben：据我所知，当时很多人正在开发 Google Gears，这是一个浏览器扩展，允许实现离线功能。他们还开发了 Google Web Toolkit，让 Web 应用的开发更先进、更复杂。但在某个时点，他们对 Firefox 能否继续保持足够的速度和质量失去了信心。当然，他们还存在一些不同的技术想法，比如浏览器架构到底该怎么设计，这些我们一会儿会聊到。
David: I think all of these things are true. However, having your own browser when Microsoft does launch Bing, hugely, hugely, hugely important. Imagine if 90% of Google happened on Internet Explorer and all of a sudden Microsoft launches Bing.
David：我觉得这些说法都没错。但更重要的是，一旦微软真的推出 Bing，拥有自己的浏览器就显得极其、极其、极其重要。想象一下，如果当时 90% 的 Google 流量都发生在 Internet Explorer 上，而微软突然上线了 Bing……
Ben: Right? There’s no amount of money suddenly that you could pay Microsoft where they would keep you as the default search engine. They just want all the traffic to go to Bing. because They now have a great way to monetize.
Ben：对吧？无论你给微软多少钱，他们都不可能继续让你作为默认搜索引擎。他们只想让所有流量都导向 Bing，因为那时候他们终于有了一个很好的变现方式。
David: Absolutely not Bing default search engine done.
David：对，绝对不会让 Bing 之外的搜索引擎成为默认。
Ben: The thing that of course Microsoft would fail to realize with Bing is you can’t be second place in search.
Ben：当然，微软在 Bing 上没意识到的关键问题是：在搜索领域，你不能做老二。
David: Right?
David：对吧？
Ben: The most liquid auction will always win and Google has already run away with the search ads auction liquidity. Traffic on Google searches will forever be worth more than traffic on the second place browser.
Ben：流动性最强的拍卖市场永远会赢，而 Google 已经彻底掌握了搜索广告的流动性。Google 搜索上的流量永远比第二名浏览器上的流量更值钱。
David: Sure. Doesn’t mean that that battle wouldn’t be hugely damaging to Google if they didn’t have their own web browser. 2006 they finally decide, okay, it’s time to start work on Chrome. It’s clear web apps, JavaScript, AJAX, very important thing and Internet Explorer isn’t keeping up with the technology. There are two killer features, arguably maybe three that they’re going to bake into the Google browser.
David：没错。但这并不意味着，如果他们没有自己的浏览器，那场竞争不会对 Google 造成巨大伤害。2006 年，Google 终于决定：“好，时候到了，我们要开始开发 Chrome。”很明显，Web 应用、JavaScript、AJAX 已经变得非常重要，而 Internet Explorer 完全跟不上技术发展。他们准备在 Chrome 里加入两个“杀手级功能”，也可能是三个。
Ben: I’ve got six. Oh. I’m curious which ones you don’t think are important.
Ben：我这儿列了六个功能。哦，那我很想知道你觉得哪些不重要。
David: I’ll go through my three and then I’ll see what else you have to add. Number one most important, it is going to have a super fast, super modern, super performant, JavaScript virtual machine called V8. That is going to run big web apps fast and stably.
David：我先讲我的三个功能，然后看看你要补充什么。第一个也是最重要的，就是要有一个超级快、超级现代、超级高性能的 JavaScript 虚拟机，叫做 V8。它能让大型 Web 应用运行得又快又稳定。
Ben: We’re the AJAX company baby, we got to speed up the J.
Ben：我们可是 AJAX 公司啊，兄弟，必须把 J 提速！
David: That’s right. Two, web apps crashed a lot back in the day. They don’t so much anymore, but they used to crash a lot.
David：没错。第二点，当年 Web 应用经常崩溃。虽然现在好一些了，但那时候崩溃很常见。
Ben: And Larry has this quote when they’re deciding that they should roll out Chrome and he explains, we have found the web-based service delivery model to have significant advantages. you don’t say, but it also comes with its own set of challenges, primarily related to web browsers, which can be slow, unreliable, and unable to function offline.
Ben：当时 Larry 在决定要推出 Chrome 的时候有一句名言：“我们发现基于 Web 的服务交付模式有显著优势。”这不是废话嘛。但他也补充说，这种模式有自身的挑战，主要是浏览器速度慢、不稳定，而且不能离线运行。
David: There you go. Before Chrome, this is impossible to remember now, but if you had a tab or a window open and running a web app and that web app crashed, it took down your whole browser. Everything that you had open gone
David：对，这就是问题。在 Chrome 之前，现在几乎很难想象——如果你开了一个标签页或窗口运行 Web 应用，而那个应用崩溃了，你整个浏览器都会挂掉，所有打开的东西全没了。
Ben: Tabs were not their own processes.
Ben：因为当时的标签页不是独立进程。
David: Nope, so each tab is going to be a separate process on your machine. If the web app running in one tab crashes, all it takes down is that one tab.
David：对，所以 Chrome 的设计是每个标签页都是你电脑上的一个独立进程。如果某个标签页里的 Web 应用崩溃了，只会影响这个标签页。
Ben: And it made sense that before this they weren’t their own process because one tabs were a new thing, but two web applications were websites. The notion of web applications was only really four-ish years old.
Ben：而且在这之前，标签页不被设计成独立进程是有道理的。一方面，标签页本身就是新鲜事物；另一方面，那时候 Web 应用其实还是“网页”，真正意义上的 Web 应用概念也就存在四年左右。
David: Those are my big two. I suspect one of yours is WebKit. I’m not including WebKit here because that was an Apple innovation. Yeah. That they borrowed. I’ll let you talk about that in a sec.
David：这就是我认为最重要的两个。我猜你的清单里有 WebKit。我没把它算进来，因为那是 Apple 的创新，Google 借用了它。我一会儿让你讲这个。
Ben: I don’t have any more to say on that. It was the best rendering engine.
Ben：我也没什么要补充的。它就是当时最好的渲染引擎。
David: Yes. Let’s say that’s three and then my three and a half is the design. The web browser ultimately comes to be called Chrome, which is ironic. Chrome is a reference to all the stuff in a web browser that toolbar the NAB bar, et cetera, that take up space around the content. The idea with Chrome is, and the Google web browser is going to be minimal chrome as little as possible. It’s just about the content. Let the web and the web apps shine.
David：没错。那就把它算作第三个。而我的“二点五”是设计。浏览器最终被命名为“Chrome”，这其实很讽刺。因为 Chrome 一词原本是指浏览器界面上那些围绕内容的东西，比如工具栏、导航栏，都是占空间的元素。而 Google 浏览器的理念是尽量减少这些“chrome”，突出内容本身，让网页和 Web 应用成为主角。
Ben: Yes. Okay. When you said UI, I thought you were going to say this, my fifth is the Omnibox.
Ben：对。当你说到 UI 时，我以为你要说的是这个。我的第五点是——Omnibox。
David: Ah, yes.
David：啊，对。
Ben: Originally there was just the URL bar and then when search became the killer app of the web, there’s a second little input box that is for search on the right side. We had that awkward teenage years where browsers had the URL bar on the left and then the search on the right and it’s clean to think about it on its own because now that we understand that that is sponsored, that I think for the longest time that was not in the public psyche, that whatever search engine appeared in that box in the right hand corner was paying for that placement. That was nice because you type in the URL bar and that’s your organic typing and then the other one is your I’m willing to give a kickback to Google probably, but it could also be Bing, could be Yahoo, could be whoever, Google correctly from a user experience perspective. But also just think about their core business model is like the right design for web browsers is that if you don’t type a URL, it should just search.
Ben：最早浏览器里只有地址栏（URL bar）。后来搜索成了 Web 的杀手级应用，于是又加了一个搜索框，在右边。于是我们经历了那段尴尬的“青春期”：浏览器左边是地址栏，右边是搜索框。现在回头看很清楚，那其实是广告位。长期以来公众没意识到，右上角的那个搜索框里出现的搜索引擎，其实是付费买来的。不管是 Google、Bing、Yahoo 还是其他谁，他们都是花钱换来的。用户在地址栏输入，是“自然流量”；右边的搜索框，是“我愿意分成给 Google（或别人）”的流量。从用户体验的角度看，Google 的做法是对的；从商业模式的角度看，浏览器的正确设计就是：如果用户没输入 URL，就应该直接进行搜索。
David: Just one bar. Why have two bars?
David：没错，一个框就够了，为什么要有两个？
Ben: Imagine that generating a whole bunch more page views on search results pages and a whole bunch more opportunities for our advertisers to reach your eyeballs. But I will say they were also correct from a user experience perspective, the fact that URLS ever leaked to the public is a mistake that is letting an implementation detail of the technology.
Ben：想象一下，这会带来更多的搜索结果页面浏览量，也就带来更多广告主接触用户眼球的机会。但我要说，从用户体验角度看，这也是对的。URL 这种东西能流入公众视野，本身就是个错误——那只是技术实现的细节。
David: It’s an accident of history that consumers type.
David：用户要自己敲 URL，这是历史的意外。
Ben: https:// Are you kidding me? Consumers never should have known the phrase http.
David: They should just type New York Times.
David：他们就应该直接输入“New York Times”就好。
Ben: Yes. Which AOL tried to do, AOL keywords. This is effectively leaning into that idea of you can use this box for typing URLs but really what you use this box for is kicking off the Google search so brilliantly aligned with their business model.
Ben：没错。这就是 AOL 当年尝试过的关键词（AOL keywords）。Chrome 的 Omnibox 本质上就是把这个理念发扬光大：你可以在框里输入 URL，但实际上，你真正做的，是触发一次 Google 搜索。这和他们的商业模式完美契合。
David: All right. That’s what I got. What else do you have that’s not on my list.
David：好吧，这就是我的清单。你还有什么没提到的吗？
Ben: That’s five, then lastly, Sandboxing. Each tab is a sandboxed environment. This prevented a ton of malware. This was like a big breakthrough in computer security where anything that was operating in that tab was in its own Sandboxing, couldn’t be accessed maliciously.
Ben：那就是五个了。最后一个是沙盒（Sandboxing）。每个标签页都是一个沙盒环境，这防止了大量恶意软件。这是计算机安全领域的重大突破，因为运行在标签页里的任何东西都被限制在沙盒中，不能被恶意访问。
David: That’s I guess, gosh, remembering back, before Chrome and modern web browsers browsing the web was like a security threat to your pc.
David：是啊，回想起来，在 Chrome 和现代浏览器出现之前，上网浏览几乎就是对你电脑的安全威胁。
Ben: Yep, that’s exactly right.
Ben：没错，就是这样。
David: Great point. Okay, they start work officially on this in 2006. They launch it in early September, 2008, like a week before Lehman goes down. This is wild.
David：说得太好了。好，他们在 2006 年正式启动开发。2008 年 9 月初发布，就在雷曼兄弟倒闭前一周。这太疯狂了。
Ben: I remember that because I remember sitting in North Carolina at my Cisco office and I remember reading the Chrome comic, which I actually just read a couple of nights ago for this episode. This like amazing web comic, at the same desk where I read the news about the great financial crisis and the world falling apart and Lehman Brothers collapsing.
Ben：我记得特别清楚。当时我在北卡罗来纳的 Cisco 办公室，看到了介绍 Chrome 的漫画——其实为了这期节目，我几天前又重新读了一遍。那是一部了不起的网络漫画。就在那张办公桌上，我一边看着它，一边读到全球金融危机爆发、世界崩塌、雷曼兄弟破产的新闻。
David: Wow. They launch it early September, 2008 with the way this is so Google, the way they decide to launch it is they hire the famous comic artist Scott McLeod to illustrate a digital comic book as like a introduction to Chrome explaining what it is and like a user manual in a comic book form.
David：哇。Chrome 在 2008 年 9 月初发布，发布的方式非常“Google”：他们请了著名漫画家 Scott McLeod 绘制了一本数字漫画，用漫画的形式作为 Chrome 的介绍和用户手册，解释这是什么以及如何使用。
Ben: It’s written for this weird half user who’s like technical, but you don’t need to be a programmer necessarily. It’s written for the tech enthusiast who can understand process independence, understand sandboxing, understand V8 and the JavaScript speed up, but it’s not written for the general public.
Ben：这本漫画面向的是一种“半技术型用户”，他们不一定是程序员，但对技术感兴趣。读者能理解进程独立、沙盒、V8 引擎和 JavaScript 提速这些概念，但它并不是为普通大众写的。
David: Yeah. But that was exactly the right seed crystal user base to get Chrome.
David：对。但这正好是 Chrome 需要的种子用户群体。
Ben: Yeah.
Ben：是的。
David: Into.
David：就是他们。
Ben: Yeah, it’s written for the Slashdot reader.
Ben：对，这本漫画就是写给 Slashdot 的读者看的。
David: The people who are going to go home for Thanksgiving in a couple of months and install it on all their family’s computers and say you need to stop using Internet Explorer right now for all of these reasons Ben, that you just listed, probably security being number one amongst them. This is actually was me back in the day, like I’m going to go home, I’m going to install Chrome on my parents’ computers so that they don’t get hacked and lose their financial information, et cetera.
David：这群人会在两个月后的感恩节回家，把 Chrome 安装到家里所有人的电脑上，然后对他们说：“你们必须马上停止使用 Internet Explorer，原因就是 Ben 你刚才说的那些，安全可能是最重要的。”其实当年我就是这样的人——我回家会帮父母装上 Chrome，好让他们不至于被黑客攻击，导致丢掉财务信息。
Ben: Within 18 months they got 40 million users. Then let’s see, they launched it in 2008. By 2010 they had 70 million users then 2012 they had 200 million users. Actually what happened is it destroyed Firefox’s market share and I think the launch of Chrome and the peak of Firefox are right around the same time. After that, then it really started eating away at Internet Explorers market share. Today, aside from mostly iPhones but Apple devices running Safari, it is the browser.
Ben：在发布后的 18 个月里，Chrome 拥有了 4000 万用户。2008 年发布，到 2010 年用户数达到 7000 万，2012 年达到 2 亿。实际上，这直接摧毁了 Firefox 的市场份额。我觉得 Chrome 发布和 Firefox 巅峰几乎是同一时间，之后 Chrome 就开始大幅蚕食 Internet Explorer 的份额。直到今天，除了 iPhone 等 Apple 设备默认运行 Safari，Chrome 已经是浏览器市场的绝对霸主。
David: To say it worked is like the understatement of the century. It totally liberates Google from Internet Explorer and Microsoft. When Chrome launched in 2008, Internet Explorer had almost 70% market share of browsers and Firefox had most of the rest. Two years later, like you said, Chrome had passed 100 million users by 2012, so four years after launch. Chrome and Internet Explorer are now tied for market share with about 30% each. Internet Explorer has gone from 70% down to 30% and this is both Chrome on the desktop side, but you’re now also well into the rise of mobile. Apple’s mobile Safari is now becoming huge and Google’s Android that we’re going to talk about in a sec is becoming huge. Two years after that, in 2014, Chrome is now the clear leader with 40% market share. Internet Explorer is down to 15%. It’s over. Internet Explorer is basically dead at this point and today it truly is dead.
David：说 Chrome 成功了，这简直是世纪最轻描淡写的说法。它彻底让 Google 摆脱了对 IE 和微软的依赖。2008 年 Chrome 发布时，IE 占据了近 70% 的市场份额，Firefox 占据了大部分剩余市场。两年后，正如你说的，Chrome 用户数超过 1 亿，到 2012 年，也就是发布四年后，Chrome 和 IE 的市场份额打成平手，各自约 30%。IE 从 70% 掉到 30%。而且这不仅是桌面端的 Chrome，当时移动端也在快速崛起。Apple 的移动端 Safari 已经很强大，Google 的 Android（我们马上要谈到）也在崛起。再过两年，到 2014 年，Chrome 已经是明确的领导者，市场份额 40%，IE 掉到 15%。结束了。IE 基本上死掉了，而今天它真的彻底死了。
Ben: 2013, 14.
Ben：2013、2014 年。
David: Yeah. 2013, 14. Today it’s not even close. Chrome has almost 70% market share according to CloudFlare.
David：对，2013、2014 年。到今天，差距已经不是一个量级。根据 CloudFlare 的数据，Chrome 市场份额接近 70%。
Ben: Including iPhones, which all run Safari default.
Ben：即便把所有默认运行 Safari 的 iPhone 算上。
David: Right. Safari in aggregate across mobile and desktop of mobile is by far the biggest share of Safari market share is about 20%. Chrome has 70%, safari has 20%, there’s 10% left. I think Microsoft, I don’t know, has a couple of single digit percentage points. Talk about flipping the tables. Chrome was massive.
David：对。把移动端和桌面端加总来看，Safari 的整体份额大约是 20%。Chrome 占 70%，Safari 占 20%，剩下的 10% 里，微软可能只占个位数的百分点。真是彻底翻盘了。Chrome 实在太强大了。
Ben: And it was just better. It was so much better and it really kicked off this amazing era for the web between Apple needing to then play catch up and leapfrog in a lot of years. It was actually faster than Chrome and they would go back and forth and it really spurred Apple who was already a steward of WebKit and they had their own competitive response to Microsoft after Steve Jobs hated the fact that he had to keep shipping IE as his best option on Mac.
Ben：而且 Chrome 就是更好，好太多了。它真正开启了 Web 的一个黄金时代。Apple 为了追赶和超越，在很多年里被迫加快脚步。甚至有些年份 Safari 比 Chrome 还快，两边你追我赶。这也刺激了 Apple——他们本来就是 WebKit 的维护者。在 Steve Jobs 厌恶“在 Mac 上必须把 IE 当作默认浏览器”的事实之后，Apple 也拿出了对微软的竞争回应。
David: That was part of the Microsoft Apple deal. When Microsoft saved Apple, what the investment was, Internet Explorer will become default right on the Mac.
David：这是微软和 Apple 协议的一部分。当年微软出手拯救 Apple，作为投资条件之一，就是让 Internet Explorer 成为 Mac 的默认浏览器。
Ben: Safari was created for that. But over the years Apple’s incentives, especially post iPhone, were not to make it so web apps could be great. Apple’s incentives were to make it so native mobile and desktop applications could be great. Google, really pushing the envelope in the web’s capabilities and what a modern browser could do. Forced this like good for the world race between Apple and Google to both make better browsers.
Ben：Safari 就是因此而生。但这些年来，Apple 的动机发生了变化，尤其是 iPhone 出来之后，他们的激励不再是让 Web 应用变得更好，而是让原生的移动和桌面应用更好。而 Google 则不断突破 Web 的能力边界，推动现代浏览器能做的事情。这迫使 Apple 和 Google 展开了一场“造福世界的竞赛”，两边都不得不把浏览器做得更好。
David: I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that Chrome kept the web alive.
David：我觉得说“Chrome 保住了 Web 的生命力”一点也不夸张。
Ben: Yeah.
Ben：是的。
David: As a viable platform for applications.
David：让 Web 成为了一个可行的应用平台。
Ben: Yep. Microsoft certainly didn’t have an incentive to do it in the business model they were in at the time and Apple doesn’t,
Ben：没错。当时微软的商业模式下，他们根本没有动力去做这件事，而 Apple 也没有。
David: They had every incentive not to. Wait, who in the world least wants the web to be a viable application platform? Microsoft,
David：他们甚至有充足的理由不去做。等等，谁是全世界最不希望 Web 成为应用平台的公司？微软。
Ben: Right? At that point in time. Apple. Now, ironically,
Ben：对，当时是微软。现在，讽刺的是，变成了 Apple。
行业本身是决定走向的关键因素。
David: There’s one more amazing, delicious part of the Chrome story, which is, do you remember the Google Chrome frame? Google Chrome frame was a plugin for Internet Explorer that replaced IE’s JavaScript engine and pulled in the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine and I think also WebKit. For all the corporate users,
David：关于 Chrome，还有一个特别精彩的故事。你还记得 Google Chrome Frame 吗？那是一个 IE 插件，它会替换掉 IE 的 JavaScript 引擎，调用 Chrome 的 V8 引擎，我记得好像还包括 WebKit。它是专门为所有企业用户准备的。
Ben: Who couldn’t install a new app
Ben：这些用户不能安装新应用。
David: America in the world who were stuck with Internet Explorer. This is the only reason that IE hung onto market share for so long was just right.
David：全世界无数用户都被困在 IE 上。这其实是 IE 市场份额能苟延残喘那么久的唯一原因。
Ben: Lockdown PCs
Ben：因为 PC 都被锁定管理了。
David: For all those poor souls, Google was there for you with the Google Chrome frame plugin that let you run Chrome quality web apps within Internet Explorer. Amazing.
David：对于那些可怜的用户，Google 推出了 Chrome Frame 插件，让他们能在 IE 里运行 Chrome 级别的 Web 应用。太神奇了。
Ben: All right. I have a question for you on Chrome before we finish this story. Why make chromium open source?
Ben：好，在我们结束 Chrome 这个故事之前，我有个问题。为什么要把 Chromium 开源？
David: The answer that I’ve read to that is mostly about the Google culture and trying not to be too evil about it.
David：我看到的答案主要是和 Google 的文化有关，他们不想表现得太“邪恶”。
Ben: Yeah, I would buy that. They’re like an open source company. Like it’s in their bones to contribute to open source. There’s a thin business reason I can think of why they would want to make it open source.
Ben：是的，我认可这一点。他们就像是一家开源公司，把代码贡献出来已经刻进骨子里了。当然我也能想到一个相对薄弱的商业理由，说明他们为什么要开源。
David: The reason I can think of is like it doesn’t need to be closed source. They make their money from searches.
David：我能想到的原因是：浏览器不需要闭源。他们赚钱靠的是搜索。
Ben: Right? That’s like it can’t hurt. Here’s the way it could help. At first I was thinking, well wait, Google wants to own as many of the browsers that it searches originate from as they can so they don’t have to pay out distribution costs in the form of traffic acquisition. If someone takes Chromium and then builds a better browser, it’s bad because now you have to pay that browser maker. But in practice, as long as it’s not Microsoft and as long as it’s more fragmented, that’s probably a trade they’re perfectly happy with. If they need to go and split some rev share and pay someone who makes some variant of Chrome based on Chromium and that gets really big and it gets 30% of the market. Great. Google’s delighted. because it’s not Microsoft.
Ben：对吧？这不会造成伤害，反而可能有帮助。一开始我在想，Google 肯定希望尽可能多地控制用户使用的浏览器，这样他们就不用通过流量获取成本去支付分发费用。如果有人拿 Chromium 做出一个更好的浏览器，那确实麻烦，因为 Google 就得给那个浏览器厂商分成。但实际上，只要不是微软，只要市场更加分散，这笔买卖 Google 还是乐意的。如果需要给某个基于 Chromium 的浏览器厂商分点收入，那也没关系。假如它做大了，拿下了 30% 的市场份额，也没问题。Google 会很高兴，因为那不是微软。
David: Look, except for traffic acquisition cost, Google’s incremental gross margin on search revenue is like 98% or something like that. There’s still going to be an 87% gross margin business.
David：要知道，除去流量获取成本，Google 的搜索业务增量毛利率大概在 98% 左右。即使分出去一部分，他们依然是 87% 毛利的生意。
Ben: The whole point of this was to prevent a existential risk. If they have to do some light rev sharing, even in their worst case scenario where someone builds a successful thing based on their open source project.
Ben：这一切的重点是为了避免“生存风险”。哪怕他们要分一点点钱出去，即便在最糟糕的情况下，有人基于他们的开源项目做出了一个成功的产品……
David: Oh so horrible. We go down to 87% gross margin.
David：哦，太可怕了，我们的毛利率从 98% 降到了 87%。
Ben: Right. It’s still perfectly acceptable. Which actually may be the way it plays out if any of these new AI browsers work out.
Ben：对吧？这完全可以接受。而且这可能就是未来新一代 AI 浏览器出现后会走的路径。
David: Yeah.
David：是的。
Ben: Maybe.
Ben：也许吧。
David: Well not sure any of these AI browsers would be willing to let Google to pay them to be the default thing
David：不过我不确定这些 AI 浏览器是否愿意让 Google 付钱，来成为默认搜索引擎。
Ben: Right. Big chess game to consider there.
Ben：没错，这是一盘很大的棋，需要考虑。
David: That is the one catch is the owner of the browser still has to be willing to accept the payment from Google.
David：唯一的问题是，浏览器的拥有者必须愿意接受 Google 的钱。
Ben: Yes. I have one analogy for all of this that is a little far afield but I think is actually the right way to think about this.
Ben：对。我有一个比喻，虽然有点跑题，但我觉得这才是正确的理解方式。
David: Okay. Laid on me.
David：好，说来听听。
Ben: Walt Disney creates Disneyland, goes great. Very handcrafted, curated, auteur driven thing. But ultimately he has to play within the rules of things like city government.
Ben：沃尔特·迪士尼创建了迪士尼乐园，效果非常好，这是一个非常精心打造、由作者主导的作品。但最终，他还是必须在诸如市政府这样的规则体系内运营。
David: Okay.
David：好，我明白了。
Ben: They go big and get a huge plot of land in Florida to build Walt Disney World. It would be nice if we controlled our underlying foundation a little bit more. They build their own government district around the park and they say we make the rules here.
Ben：他们在佛罗里达买下了一大块土地，建造了迪士尼世界。他们觉得如果能更多地掌控底层基础就更好了，于是就在乐园周围建立了自己的行政区，然后说：“规则由我们制定。”
David: It’s not totally dissimilar.
David：这和 Google 的情况并不完全不同。
Ben: Yep. I’ve been reflecting a little bit on why basically from 1998 onward, Google’s biggest threat was Microsoft and not because of Bing, not because of building advertising because of this destabilizing thing. There’s a fine point on it, which is that spiritually Microsoft was the platform of the PC era and with this platform shift it would be very convenient to just be like, oh, Google’s the platform of the web era. But even though Google is the platform company of the web era, they aren’t necessarily the ones building the platform.
Ben：是的。我最近在思考，为什么从 1998 年开始，Google 最大的威胁一直是微软，不是因为 Bing，也不是因为广告业务，而是因为微软掌控着那个让 Google 不稳定的因素。要知道，在精神层面，微软是 PC 时代的平台。而随着平台转移，你很容易就会说：“Google 是 Web 时代的平台。”但即便 Google 是 Web 时代的平台型公司，他们并不一定是那个真正“建造平台”的人。
David: Right? They still existed at Microsoft’s pleasure.
David：对吧？他们依然是依附于微软的意志而存在。
Ben: And no one owns the web as a platform. There’s this funky thing where Microsoft built and owned Windows and then dominated the PC era because of that. Google operates a search engine that generates advertising revenue. They don’t charge anyone for anything. They benefit from the web’s growth. They’re doing this strange indirection.
Ben：而 Web 作为平台，却没有人真正“拥有”。微软自己打造并拥有 Windows，因而主宰了 PC 时代。而 Google 只是运营一个靠广告赚钱的搜索引擎，他们并不直接向用户收费。他们只是随着 Web 的发展受益，这是一种奇怪的“间接模式”。
David: The ecosystem building exercise.
David：这更像是一种生态系统建设。
Ben: Yeah, exactly. They’re trying to build the ecosystem. They’re trying to be the steward of the open web as a platform and they put their finger on the scale where they need to and take a little bit more control and ownership like with Chrome or like with some of these standards bodies to push the web forward to make sure that the place where they live, their neighborhood, the web is in good shape, but it’s not their platform in the way that it was Microsoft’s platform in that era.
Ben：没错。他们在试图建设这个生态系统。他们想充当开放 Web 的管理者。当需要的时候，他们会伸手去调整平衡，获得更多控制和所有权，比如 Chrome，或者在一些标准化机构里推动 Web 向前发展。目的是确保他们赖以生存的地方——Web 这个“社区”——保持良好状态。但它并不是他们的平台，不像 PC 时代微软那样绝对掌控。
David: Maybe the Disney World analogy is even better than we gave it credit for a minute ago.
David：也许迪士尼乐园的比喻比我们刚才说的还要贴切。
Ben: I don’t know, it’s a little bit loose, but that’s what I’ve been kicking around.
Ben：我不确定，可能有点牵强，但这是我一直在琢磨的想法。
David: I like it. Well no doubt Chrome was a huge success. Sundar becomes the CEO of the company. No better sign of how successful it was than that.
David：我觉得这个比喻挺好。毫无疑问，Chrome 是一次巨大的成功。Sundar 甚至成了 Google 的 CEO，没有比这更能说明成功的了。
Ben: It shored up their future and we could do a classic Acquired, what would’ve happened otherwise, just for a minute or two here. What if Google didn’t launch Chrome? Let’s say Bing launches in 2009 and there is no Chrome and Microsoft still has 70% share and will for a while.
Ben：Chrome 巩固了他们的未来。我们可以来个 Acquired 经典环节——假如历史不一样，会发生什么？比如说，如果 Google 没有发布 Chrome？2009 年 Bing 上线，微软继续保持 70% 的浏览器市场份额，并且维持几年。
David: Yep.
David：对。
Ben: They make Bing the default. Let’s see, mobile would get big three, four years later in the 2012 ish timeframe.
Ben：他们会把 Bing 设为默认搜索。再看，三四年后的 2012 年左右，移动互联网开始爆发。
David: Still small.
David：但那时规模还不大。
Ben: They basically would have like four years of 70% of people using browsers on any devices being defaulted to Bing.
Ben：这意味着有四年的时间里，70% 的人无论用什么设备，默认搜索引擎都是 Bing。
David: Now obviously a lot of people would still want Google. They were used to it, they’d switch back. But like, I don’t know man. Defaults are powerful.
David：当然，很多人还是会想用 Google，他们习惯了，还是会切换回来。但说实话，默认选项的力量很大。
Ben: Defaults are powerful. I think you’re right.
Ben：没错，默认的力量很大。我觉得你说得对。
David: This is why Google pays Apple $20 billion a year.
David：这就是为什么 Google 每年要给 Apple 支付 200 亿美元。
Ben: Yeah. To your point, maybe without Chrome, Bing would’ve been a serious competitor to Google.
Ben：是的。照你这么说，如果没有 Chrome，Bing 可能真的会成为 Google 的强劲对手。
David: There is no more important distribution point for search than the web browser.
David：没有什么分发渠道比浏览器对搜索更重要。
Ben: It is the way to monetize a browser. Basically the single way to monetize a browser.
Ben：这也是浏览器变现的唯一方式。基本上，浏览器只有这一条赚钱路径。
David: Yep.
David：对。
Ben: Which let’s make this relevant to today and stop dancing. If the DOJ’s ruling is that Google has to divest Chrome. There is one way that Chrome is a business and that is getting paid by Google to drive traffic to Google as a search engine. It’s the only way to operate a business of a browser. Maybe in the AI era, it’s the AI company having it drive traffic. But it’s the same exact thing. One of two things has to be true, Google owns Chrome or someone else owns Chrome and then Google pays them. Definitely can’t make illegal or I don’t really understand what the goal is, if you make it illegal is if you say they both can’t own Chrome and they can’t pay web browsers to drive traffic, Chrome has no potential of being a business if that’s the case.
Ben：这和今天也息息相关，咱们别拐弯抹角了。假如美国司法部裁定 Google 必须剥离 Chrome，那 Chrome 作为一个业务唯一的模式就是：由 Google 付钱，让它把流量引向 Google 搜索。这是浏览器能运营的唯一方式。也许在 AI 时代，会换成 AI 公司出钱让它导流，但本质完全一样。两种情况必须成立一种：要么 Google 拥有 Chrome，要么别人拥有 Chrome，然后 Google 付钱给对方。如果法律规定 Google 既不能拥有 Chrome，又不能给浏览器付钱买流量，那 Chrome 根本就不可能成为一个可行的业务。
David: Yep. Chrome, huge win. In fact, it’s so much of a win that after a couple of years Google starts thinking, well gosh, maybe we should build Chrome into an operating system in and of itself, let’s go attack Windows. Let’s take it to Microsoft where it really hurts Chrome OS, you know? But it became successful in schools in education.
David：没错。Chrome 是一次巨大的胜利。事实上，它赢得太大了，以至于几年后 Google 开始想：“嘿，也许我们应该把 Chrome 打造成一个独立的操作系统，直接攻击 Windows，打微软的命门。”于是就有了 Chrome OS。你知道的，它最终在教育市场里取得了成功。
Ben: Chromebooks.
Ben：Chromebook。
David: Yeah. Chromebooks have major market shares there, but it’s not a major player in the overall PC operating system market. It is wild how much the PC computer operating system market is still dominated by Windows. That has never changed. You and I live in this world where like everybody uses a Mac, Mac has like 15% market share. Windows has like 70% market share of computer operating systems. Well, speaking of operating systems,
David：对，Chromebook 在教育领域占了很大份额，但在整个 PC 操作系统市场里，它并不是主角。令人惊讶的是，PC 操作系统市场仍然被 Windows 主导，这一点从未改变。我们生活的环境里，好像大家都在用 Mac，但实际上 Mac 的市场份额只有大约 15%，而 Windows 仍然占了约 70%。说到操作系统——
Ben: It’s time.
Ben：是时候了。
David: I think it’s probably time to talk about Google’s big one.
David：我觉得该谈谈 Google 的“大杀器”了。
Ben: Yes.
Ben：没错。
David: Which is actually the biggest operating system in the world.
David：它实际上是全球最大的操作系统。
Ben: Over 3 billion active Android devices now.
Ben：现在有超过 30 亿台活跃的 Android 设备。
David: Totally freaking wild that they bought for $50 million.
David：简直疯狂——他们当年只花了 5000 万美元买下的东西。
Ben: Well that’s a red herring. They’ve invested so much more. But just to make the point, it is hit after hit after hit. These things are not predicated on Google’s distribution. If you’re a company that launches a new widget and you can just distribute it with your old widget, it’s not that impressive when your new widget gets dominance. But Google Chrome, they could do a little thing and they did push it on Google search pages, but they managed to get a lot of distribution just by being a great product on the market with viral adoption that everyone told their friends to use. It was the David Rosenthal’s going home to Thanksgiving that were like the seed of it. Then within three or four years they just ran the table. It’s not just Chrome, Gmail was that way. Google Docs and spreadsheets were that way maps was that way.
Ben：嗯，那只是个干扰点。实际上 Google 在里面投入了远远更多。但重点是，他们是一次又一次地推出爆款。这些产品的成功并不是依靠 Google 的分发。如果你是一家公司，推出了一个新工具，然后可以直接借助旧工具的渠道来分发，那新工具占领市场并不算多么了不起。但 Chrome 不一样，虽然他们在搜索结果页上稍微推了一下，但主要是靠产品本身够好，凭借口碑式的病毒传播——人人都告诉朋友去用。就像 David Rosenthal 回家过感恩节时，把 Chrome 装到家人电脑上的那样，形成了种子传播。三四年内，他们就横扫市场。而且不只是 Chrome，Gmail 也是这样，Google Docs 和表格是这样，Maps 也是这样。
David: It’s everything, everything.
David：对，所有产品都是这样。
Ben: All these things are independent, great products that became dominant on their own merits just like Google Search did.
Ben：这些都是独立的、优秀的产品，它们完全凭借自身优势成为了主导，就像 Google 搜索一样。
David: Yes, I 100% agree. Also helped by the fact that they were all free.
David：是的，我完全同意。而且别忘了，它们都是免费的，这也大大推动了普及。
Ben: Yes. Fair and massively subsidized, at least in the early years before they were able to be businesses on their own by the old money printing machine in the basement of Google.
Ben：没错。说得公平一点，它们在早期其实是被 Google 地下室那台“印钞机”（AdWords）大量补贴的，直到后来这些产品自己能成为独立业务。
David: Good old Uncle AdWords. Yes. But before we tell the Android story.
David：好用的老 AdWords，没错。不过在我们讲 Android 的故事之前——
Ben: Now is a great time to thank one of our favorite companies, Vercel.
Ben：现在是个好时机，来感谢我们最喜欢的公司之一——Vercel。
David: Yes. We have talked throughout the season about Vercel has become the infrastructure backbone for modern web and AI development. Highly relevant to this episode, powering companies like PayPal, Ramp, Under Armour, Notion, Runway, Cursor, and many more. Today though, we want to spotlight V0, which is Vercel’s AI app builder that goes one step further and programs designs, iterates and deploys full stack web applications entirely for you.
David：是的。整个季度我们都在聊 Vercel，它已经成为现代 Web 和 AI 开发的基础设施支柱。和今天的节目特别相关的是，Vercel 为 PayPal、Ramp、Under Armour、Notion、Runway、Cursor 等公司提供支持。今天我们要特别介绍的是 V0，这是 Vercel 的 AI 应用构建器，它更进一步，能够为你编程、设计、迭代，并且全自动部署全栈 Web 应用。
Ben: V0 is a chat bot that looks like Claude or chat GPT or Gemini. Except that when you give it a prompt, it will go build an entire fully functional website or application entirely for you. No engineering or web design skills are required. You don’t need to look at a single line of code or mock up a wire frame so a marketer can stand up a product landing page or a small business can generate a homepage in a contact form or a creator can spin up an independent content hub, anything.
Ben：V0 看起来就像 Claude、ChatGPT 或 Gemini 那样的聊天机器人。但不同的是，当你给它一个提示时，它会直接为你构建一个完整的、功能齐全的网站或应用。你完全不需要工程或网页设计技能。你不用写任何代码，不用画线框图。一个市场人员可以搭建产品落地页，一个小企业可以生成主页和联系表单，一个创作者可以快速创建独立内容中心，几乎什么都能做。
David: Vercel loves to paraphrase the famous line from Pixar’s Ratatouille that quote, “everybody can cook”, which is an especially fun Easter egg for us. Since Pixar was our very first Acquired episode and the numbers behind V0 are wild, it now has 4 million users. PMs, marketers, creators, founders, teachers, students, all building real production ready applications on this thing.
David：Vercel 特别喜欢引用皮克斯电影《料理鼠王》里的那句名言：“人人都能下厨。”这对我们来说也是个彩蛋，因为皮克斯是我们 Acquired 的第一期节目。而 V0 的数据也很疯狂：它现在已经有 400 万用户。产品经理、市场人员、创作者、创业者、教师、学生——大家都在用它来构建真正能上线的应用。
Ben: Speaking of production, every single V0 app you generate can be deployed to production instantly with Vercel because V0 itself entirely runs on Vercel’s platform, you go from prompt to full stack deployment with zero setup using the same secure, scalable, automatic infrastructure that powers sites like Ramp Notion and Under Armour.
Ben：说到上线，每一个 V0 生成的应用都可以直接在 Vercel 上部署，因为 V0 本身就完全运行在 Vercel 平台上。你可以从一个提示一步到位，完成全栈部署，完全零配置，使用的还是支撑 Ramp、Notion、Under Armour 等网站的那套安全、可扩展、自动化的基础设施。
David: It’s the perfect example of Versal being customer zero for their own products. They’re using their own AI cloud to power their own AI products.
David：这就是 Vercel 自己做自己首个用户的完美例子。他们用自己的 AI 云来驱动自己的 AI 产品。
Ben: If you’ve got an idea that you want to launch, whether you’re a seasoned developer or someone who’s never written a line of code, go to vercel.com/acquired, that’s vercel.com/acquired and try it out. Build something real and just tell them that Ben and David sent you.
Ben：如果你有个想法想要发布，无论你是经验丰富的开发者，还是一个从未写过一行代码的人，都可以去 vercel.com/acquired，没错，就是 vercel.com/acquired，试一试。做点真实的东西出来，然后告诉他们是 Ben 和 David 推荐的。
David: All right, Android. Google’s office spaces are legendary. The first one of course being Susan Wojcicki’s garage in Mountain View Companies first office and then today the Google Plex, the old SGI Silicon Graphics campus in Mountain View. In between Google had another office for a couple of years in downtown Palo Alto at 165 University Avenue would also later be the office that PayPal was started it.
David：好了，来说 Android。Google 的办公地点都很传奇。第一个当然是 Susan Wojcicki 在山景城的车库，那是 Google 的第一个办公室。今天的总部则是 Googleplex，也就是山景城旧的 SGI（Silicon Graphics）园区。在这中间，Google 还曾在帕洛阿尔托市中心大学大道 165 号有过一个办公室，后来那里也成了 PayPal 的发源地。
Ben: Oh really?
Ben：哦真的吗？
David: Very lucky building. Yeah. August, 1999 when Google moved out of that office. Do you know who moved in?
David：对，那是栋很“幸运”的大楼。1999 年 8 月 Google 搬离之后，你知道是谁搬进去了吗？
Ben: Based on the direction this is going? Is it Danger?
Ben：听你这么讲，是 Danger 吧？
David: Yes it is. Danger. The company started by Andy Rubin and Andy of course had been an engineer at Apple and then left Apple with a group of rebels. I don’t know, were they rebels that went to go start General Magic. General Magic, of course. Legendary failed startup in Silicon Valley in the early nineties. Basically was trying to create the iPhone just 15 years too early.
David：没错，就是 Danger。这家公司是 Andy Rubin 创办的。Andy 原本是 Apple 的工程师，后来和一群“叛逆者”一起离开了 Apple。我不知道是不是可以叫他们叛逆者，他们去创办了 General Magic。General Magic 当然是硅谷 90 年代早期一个传奇性的失败创业公司。他们基本上就是想造出 iPhone，只是早了 15 年。
David: After General Magic, after it falls apart, he starts Danger. Now Andy’s initial idea for danger was he wanted to make a wireless version of the Qcat scanner.
David：General Magic 倒闭后，他创办了 Danger。而 Andy 在 Danger 的最初想法是做一个 Qcat 扫描器的无线版本。
Ben: What is a Qcat scanner?
Ben：Qcat 扫描器是什么？
David: This was a device that plugged into your computer that looks like a cat, but it scanned barcodes. Andy’s idea was, okay, well man, all this general magic stuff we were trying to do that was too far ahead. What if we think simpler and we just make a wireless version of this to scan barcodes. Okay, not a big idea. His first employee at Danger, a guy named Hiroshi Lockheimer convinces him that, hey, actually a couple of years have gone by, maybe we should revisit this general magic stuff.
David：那是一个插在电脑上的设备，长得像只猫，用来扫描条形码。Andy 的想法是：好吧，我们在 General Magic 做的那些事太超前了，不如简单点，就做一个无线版的条形码扫描器。这个点子其实并不大。但 Danger 的第一位员工 Hiroshi Lockheimer 说服了他：“嘿，几年过去了，也许我们该重新考虑一下 General Magic 的那些想法。”
Ben: Wait, Hiroshi was with him at Danger.
Ben：等等，Hiroshi 当时就在 Danger？
David: He was the first employee.
David：是的，他是第一个员工。
Ben: I did not know that.
Ben：我之前完全不知道。
David: Yep. Yes, he was.
David：对，他就是。
Ben: I Mean he of course is instrumental in the Android story. Later I did not realize the two of them were at Danger together too.
Ben：我的意思是，Hiroshi 在 Android 的故事里可是关键人物。我没想到他和 Andy 早在 Danger 就已经一起共事了。
David: I spoke to Hiroshi in research, he told me these stories. Great, great guy, Hiroshi led Android and Chrome at Google for many, many years and would be the authority on this. Hiroshi’s like, hey, hey, maybe let’s revisit this general magic stuff. That led to Danger building the sidekick and launching it in partnership with T-Mobile. This thing was amazing.
David：我在调研时和 Hiroshi 聊过，他亲口给我讲了这些故事。他真是个了不起的人，在 Google 领导了 Android 和 Chrome 很多年，是这方面的权威。Hiroshi 当时就说：“嘿嘿，我们也许该重拾 General Magic 的那些想法。”于是 Danger 开发出了 Sidekick，并和 T-Mobile 合作推出。这东西简直太棒了。
Ben: That thing was so sick. I was jealous of all my friends that had one.
Ben：那真是太酷了。我当时特别嫉妒那些有 Sidekick 的朋友。
David: It was a messaging focused rich application cell phone. I think it was along with Blackberry’s the first vision of a cell phone where the primary thing you do on it is not talk to somebody.
David：那是一款以消息为核心的功能丰富的手机。我认为它和 Blackberry 一起，是第一批让人们意识到“手机的主要用途不是打电话”的产品。
Ben: Is messaging.
Ben：而是发消息。
David: These things were freaking awesome. They were really big with celebrities. I think it was a plot of an entourage episode at some point in time.
David：这些设备简直酷毙了，尤其在名人圈里非常流行。我记得《明星伙伴》（Entourage）的某一集里还专门出现过。
Ben: So they end up selling this company to Microsoft.
Ben：所以他们最终把这家公司卖给了微软。
David: Yes, Microsoft does end up acquiring the company, but not until 2008, which is the same year that Android launches. Andy actually had left Danger in 2003 and started a new company, Android.
David：是的，微软确实在 2008 年收购了 Danger，也就是 Android 发布的同一年。但实际上 Andy 在 2003 年就离开了 Danger，创办了另一家公司——Android。
Ben: Which in the earliest days, it was like an open source competitor to effectively Blackberry software.
Ben：而在最早期，Android 更像是一个开源的竞争对手，针对的是 Blackberry 的软件。
David: Yes. In its earliest, earliest days, the first version of Android, the company, remember I was talking about point and shoot cameras and digital cameras back in the YouTube section?
David：没错。在最早最早的时候，Android 公司开发的第一个版本，其实是和我们之前在 YouTube 那段提到的数码傻瓜相机有关的。还记得吗？
Ben: Yeah.
Ben：记得。
David: Was actually to build a cross platform open source operating system for point and shoot digital cameras.
David：当时他们的目标其实是为数码傻瓜相机开发一个跨平台的开源操作系统。
Ben: Oh wow.
Ben：哦，哇。
David: Yeah. That was Andy’s vision was like, oh hey these point and shoot devices, like hundreds of millions of consumers have them. Now what if there were a powerful operating system? Could that be a Trojan horse to get an operating system? You could imagine it.
David：是的。这就是 Andy 的设想：数码傻瓜相机当时有上亿消费者在用。如果我们能为它们提供一个强大的操作系统，会不会成为一个“特洛伊木马”，借机建立操作系统生态？你完全可以想象。
Ben: Right? If cameras became phones instead of phones becoming cameras, then yes.
Ben：对啊，如果是相机变成手机，而不是手机变成相机，那完全说得通。
David: Yep. Exactly. But pretty quickly it does become clear that phones are going to become cameras. Good thing is though, the software they’re writing still works just as well on phones. Andy pivots the company and has the delivery vector shift from cameras to smartphones. At the time the smartphone markets such that it existed and it did exist.
David：没错，完全正确。但很快事实就变得清晰：是手机要变成相机，而不是相机变成手机。不过好在他们写的软件同样能在手机上很好地运行。于是 Andy 迅速转向，把公司产品的落脚点从相机切换到智能手机。当时的智能手机市场，虽然还很小，但确实已经存在。
Ben: Blackberry Windows Mobile.
Ben：比如 Blackberry，还有 Windows Mobile。
David: Well, yeah. Here are the players, basically phone companies either were full stack like Apple and the iPhone is today where they made the phone and the operating system that was Nokia. Then the big player in the smartphone market at least was Blackberry made their own software, made their own devices huge in the enterprise market or you did have OEMs device makers who made devices and then they bought an operating system either from Palm, which made their own devices, but then also started selling the operating system to other vendors. Or the big player was Microsoft with Windows Mobile.
David：对，当时的格局大概是这样的：有些厂商是全栈式的，就像今天的 Apple iPhone，既造手机又造操作系统，那时候是诺基亚。另一个大玩家是 Blackberry，他们自己做软件和硬件，在企业市场里占据主导。除此之外，还有一些 OEM 厂商只做硬件，然后去购买操作系统，比如 Palm，既做设备又把操作系统卖给其他厂商。而最大的一个玩家就是微软，靠 Windows Mobile。
Ben: And this was a licensed model as we talked about in our Microsoft part two. This was you pay Microsoft single digit dollars and you get an operating system and then you build the phone stuff on top of the operating system.
Ben：而且这是一个授权模式，就像我们在微软第二期节目里聊过的。你付给微软几美元的授权费，就能拿到一个操作系统，然后再在这个操作系统上开发手机功能。
David: Exactly, this was a good business for Microsoft. Obviously it wasn’t as big as the desktop market, but you can totally understand why this is their strategy. We are the main desktop operating system provider. This is our business bottle there. Let’s just do the same thing here. It seems to be working.
David：没错，这对微软来说是一门好生意。虽然规模不如桌面市场大，但你完全能理解他们为什么采取这样的战略：我们是桌面操作系统的主导者，这就是我们的商业模式。那在手机上就照搬过来，似乎也挺奏效。
Ben: Yep.
Ben：对。
David: As far as the phone manufacturers, the OEMs and the carriers are concerned, things are also pretty good. These phones that they’re making, they can’t really do that much, but because of that, they don’t actually cost that much to make. The consumers meanwhile are paying through the nose for these things. You have a smartphone on a carrier contract, you’re paying like $100 a month.
David：对手机制造商、OEM 和运营商来说，当时的日子过得还挺滋润。这些手机功能并不强大，但也因此制造成本并不高。与此同时，消费者却要为这些手机付出高昂的代价。一台智能手机捆绑运营商合约，你可能每个月要付 100 美元。
Ben: And they don’t consume that much data either because they’re not that capable.
Ben：而且这些手机的数据消耗量也不大，因为它们本身没那么强大。
David: Everybody is fat and happy. Into this morass that also Steve Jobs is of course looking at the same thing and saying, this sucks. Enter Andy and Android, he goes around and he starts pitching the phone manufacturers and the carriers, hey, stop buying an operating system from Microsoft or from Palm. I’ll give you a great one for free and oh by the way, it’s going to be open source and there’ll be third party applications that can be written to it. These devices will be super powerful. The ecosystem’s like no, I don’t want this. One, there’s just no way in hell that AT&T or Verizon is going to work with a little rinky-dink startup that’s valued at like $10 million and has eight employees. There are billions and billions of dollars at stake here. But the other part of it too, I think the reason that the smartphone market had stagnated for so long was this. Everybody was happy.
David：所有人都过得肥肥胖胖、乐不思蜀。Steve Jobs 当时也看到了这种情况，说：“这太烂了。”这时 Andy Rubin 和 Android 登场了。他到处去推销，对手机制造商和运营商说：“别再买微软或 Palm 的操作系统了。我给你一个更好的，完全免费，而且它是开源的，能支持第三方应用。这些设备将会超级强大。”但生态圈的反应是：不，我们不想要。一方面，AT&T 或 Verizon 怎么可能去和一家估值才 1000 万美元、只有 8 个员工的小公司合作？这可是几百亿美元的生意啊。另一方面，我认为智能手机市场长期停滞的原因就在于：大家都挺满意现状。
Ben: It’s a non-priority to upset the apple cart.
Ben：没人有动力去打破这个“苹果车”。
David: It’s almost like a version of enterprise software in it. Right? The users don’t like it, but the users aren’t actually the customers here as it’s the carriers who are the customers.
David：这几乎就像企业软件市场，对吧？用户可能并不喜欢，但用户并不是这里的真正客户，运营商才是客户。
Ben: Yep.
Ben：没错。
David: So 2005 rolls around, Andy’s now two years into the company with Android. He’s managed to convince HTC, the Taiwanese manufacturer, to make a prototype with him. He’s showing it to carriers, he’s showing it to other OEMs. But for all the reasons we just discussed, it’s tough [inaudible: 02:35:13] out there. The company’s running out of money as Andy is going around trying to gin up investment for another round. He ends up meeting with Larry Page. Larry immediately is like, forget raising another round. What if I buy you right now? So July, 2005, Google buys Android for $50 million, five zero million dollars for Android. Oh my goodness.
David：到了 2005 年，Andy 创办 Android 已经两年了。他成功说服台湾厂商 HTC 和他一起做了一个原型机。他拿着原型机去给运营商、去给其他 OEM 展示。但正如我们刚才讨论的那些原因，这条路很难走。公司资金快要耗尽，Andy 一边到处奔走想拉新一轮投资，一边最终见到了 Larry Page。Larry 当场就说：“别想再去融资了，我现在就把你们收购怎么样？”于是，2005 年 7 月，Google 用 5000 万美元收购了 Android。天哪，只要 5000 万。
Ben: But of course that’s the fallacy because they would pour billions in development.
Ben：但当然，这其实是个“谬误”，因为他们后续在开发上投入了数十亿美元。
David: Yeah they put billions. I know, but like to your point, this episode, Google is the hit factory here. This is the hit parade.
David：对，他们确实投入了数十亿美元。我知道。但正如你说的，从这期节目的脉络看，Google 就是一台“爆款工厂”，一路产出热门产品。
Ben: The correct way to think about Android is that Google built it in-house with a little kick in the pants from this startup. Got far enough along with the idea that forced them to do it now.
Ben：理解 Android 的正确方式是：Google 基本上是自己在内部做的，只是这个创业公司给了他们一点“推动力”。Android 把这个想法推进得足够远，迫使 Google 必须立即行动。
David: But they needed the kick in the pants.
David：但他们确实需要这一脚“催促”。
Ben: Yes.
Ben：没错。
David: Because why was Larry so excited? Why did they buy Android right away? Eric and Larry and Sergey, they all knew that they were late to mobile. Here we are, it’s now mid 2005. Hmm. We’re 18 months away from the reveal of the iPhone. Apple and Google are very close.
David：为什么 Larry 当时那么兴奋？为什么他们立刻买下了 Android？因为 Eric、Larry 和 Sergey 都清楚他们在移动领域已经落后了。那是 2005 年年中，距离 iPhone 发布还有 18 个月。Apple 和 Google 当时的关系非常密切。
Ben: Why do you think they knew that they were late?
Ben：你为什么认为他们知道自己已经落后了？
David: I’m sure they were starting to get wind from Apple of what was going on. That’s
David：我确信他们已经开始从 Apple 那边听到一些风声，知道在发生什么。那是——
Ben: True. Eric’s on the board at this point of Apple.
Ben：没错。而且当时 Eric 已经是 Apple 的董事会成员了。
David: He’s not yet on the board, but he’s about to join the board. But the companies are very close.
David：当时他还没正式加入董事会，但马上就要加入了。不过，两家公司关系已经非常紧密。
Ben: Okay.
Ben：好。
David: But even let’s say they don’t know about the iPhone. Blackberry is a thing.
David：但即便假设他们不知道 iPhone 的存在，Blackberry 已经是大势所趋了。
Ben: Yep.
Ben：对。
David: Big adoption. Smartphones and even Windows mobile, as bad as it was, prove that there is demand, there is clearly consumer demand for this.
David：Blackberry 大规模普及。智能手机，甚至连糟糕的 Windows Mobile，都证明了这是有需求的，消费者对它有明显的需求。
Ben: They had a version of google.com for these devices to access and they could see the traffic.
Ben：他们已经为这些设备推出了一个 google.com 的版本，可以直接看到流量。
David: They really knew it. Especially from maps, Google Maps on mobile devices. Smartphones was a killer application. Google is maintaining, I kid you not 350 different versions of Google Maps for mobile, for all the just sea of phones out there.
David：他们当然知道这一点。尤其是通过 Maps——Google Maps 在手机上是个杀手级应用。当时 Google 维护着足足 350 个不同版本的 Google Maps，用于市场上一大堆各式各样的手机，这不是开玩笑。
Ben: We have built our local government district on the desktop around our Disney World and oh, looks like mobile needs a district too.
Ben：我们已经在桌面端的“迪士尼世界”周围建好了自己的“行政区”，而现在，移动端看来也需要一个“行政区”了。
David: Yeah, you’re right. They would’ve done this anyway but they were starting to feel already like, oh shoot, we should have started this two years ago buying Android kickstarts things from the Google perspective, thank God they did. Because we’re 18 months away from the iPhone launch and if they are starting from a cold start in January, 2007, good luck. We’re not telling this story right now.
David：是的，你说得对。他们无论如何都会去做，但他们已经开始感到：“糟糕，我们早该在两年前就开始。”而收购 Android 给了 Google 一个起步的契机，谢天谢地他们做了。因为那时距离 iPhone 发布只有 18 个月。如果他们等到 2007 年 1 月才从零开始，那基本没戏。我们今天就不会讲这个故事了。
Ben: If they don’t buy Android and they don’t get started basically in the month that they did, this market belongs to Microsoft
Ben：如果他们没有收购 Android，没有在那个时间点立即启动，那么这个市场就会属于微软。
David: or Apple
David：或者 Apple。
Ben: No, Microsoft.
Ben：不，是微软。
David: Oh, why do you say Microsoft?
David：哦，为什么你这么说？
Ben: There are going to be two players in this market.
Ben：因为这个市场最终只会有两家玩家。
David: Ah, I see what you’re saying.
David：啊，我明白你的意思了。
Ben: There’s going to be a fully integrated player, which Apple was going to be and then there’s going to be an OEM plus licensed operating system. The model would’ve just been that Microsoft sells operating systems, a mobile operating system. Great point to the OEMs who were freaking out that Apple was going to run away with it.
Ben：这个市场里一定会出现两种玩家：一种是完全一体化的厂商，比如 Apple；另一种是 OEM 厂商 + 授权操作系统的模式。微软的模式就是卖操作系统，卖移动操作系统。对于那些担心 Apple 会一骑绝尘的 OEM 来说，这听起来是个很好的选择。
David: Great point. Now back to Android and why Android was especially so attractive. Andy already had the right business model for Google. It’s just that as Android, the startup OEMs and carriers are like giving it to me for free. Like that makes you less attractive to me. But now all of a sudden within Google, they can run the playbook that they run everywhere they go, the carriers, the OEMs.
David：说得好。回到 Android，以及为什么它对 Google 特别有吸引力。Andy 早就有了一个非常符合 Google 的商业模式。只不过在 Android 还是一家创业公司时，OEM 和运营商会觉得“你免费给我？那你看起来就不那么有吸引力。”但一旦 Android 进入 Google，他们就能用 Google 在各处屡试不爽的那套打法来对付运营商和 OEM 了。
Ben: It’s funny how giving it away for free as a startup is counter signal. It makes you look desperate. But if you’re Google it’s like, oh, they must have a really good plan here.
Ben：有趣的是，作为一家创业公司，免费送东西反而是一种“反向信号”，让人觉得你很绝望。但如果是 Google 在免费，那就变成了：“哦，他们肯定有一个很棒的计划。”
David: Yeah, exactly. They start work on Android as part of Google here in summer of 2005. The plan initially is that there are going to be two versions of Android. There’s a prototype and a device that will be more near term to launch called the quote unquote sooner the more Blackberry like device, not a touchscreen device. Then there was a longer term advanced research project code named the Dream for a touchscreen smartphone device. Summer of 2006, that next year Eric Schmidt joins the Apple Board.
David：没错，正是这样。2005 年夏天，Android 正式成为 Google 的一部分并开始开发。最初的计划是推出两个版本：一个是短期内更快能上线的原型机，代号 “Sooner”，更像 Blackberry，不是触屏设备；另一个是长期的高级研究项目，代号 “Dream”，是一款触屏智能手机。到 2006 年夏天，Eric Schmidt 加入了 Apple 董事会。
Ben: Sees how far along and how good the iPhone is.
Ben：他亲眼看到 iPhone 已经开发得多么成熟、多么优秀。
David: And then January of 2007, the iPhone is revealed in the greatest corporate presentation keynote of all time.
David：然后到了 2007 年 1 月，iPhone 在史上最伟大的企业发布会上亮相。
Ben: Yeah.
Ben：对。
David: Eric is in the freaking keynote. Steve Jobs invites Eric Schmidt on stage
David：Eric 甚至就在那场发布会现场。Steve Jobs 邀请 Eric Schmidt 上台。
Ben: And Android hasn’t been announced yet.
Ben：而 Android 当时还没对外宣布。
David: Nope. Nobody knows about Android.
David：没错，没人知道 Android 的存在。
Ben: This is in January of 07, then July of 07 is when it shipped.
Ben：这是 2007 年 1 月。到 2007 年 7 月，iPhone 正式上市。
David: July of 07. Yes, is when the iPhone shipped. Now I believe Eric had disclosed to Steve about the Sooner project because obviously it was public that Google had acquired Android and I believe that Steve Jobs knew that Google was working on like a Blackberry style phone, but he did not know about the Dream prototype. Eric comes on stage and here you go, watch this. We’ll link to this in this clip in the show notes. It’s crazy. It’s about a three minute long total thing. Eric comes on stage, he makes a joke about merging the companies that like Apple and Google are so close they should merge. He says the companies should be called Apple Goo. Then he jokes and he says, well, but here’s the way with the iPhone that we can merge the companies without actually merging.
David：对，2007 年 7 月 iPhone 上市。我相信 Eric 当时确实向 Steve 透露过 “Sooner” 项目，因为 Google 收购 Android 已经是公开的。我也相信 Steve Jobs 知道 Google 在做一款类似 Blackberry 的手机，但他并不知道 “Dream” 原型机。Eric 上台后，你可以去看那个片段（节目备注里有链接），真是疯狂，总共大约 3 分钟。Eric 上台开玩笑说：“Apple 和 Google 的关系如此密切，干脆合并算了吧。”他说公司可以叫“Apple Goo”。接着又开玩笑：“不过有了 iPhone，我们其实不用真的合并，也能把两家公司合在一起。”
Ben: He’s making these jokes and the camera is focused on Steve Jobs and he just has the ick. That’s the best way to describe. He’s like trying to be a good sport and smile and be like, yeah, but he has the ick.
Ben：Eric 在台上开这些玩笑，镜头对准 Steve Jobs，他的表情简直可以用一个词来形容——“别扭”。他努力想做个好搭档，微笑着回应：“是啊”，但那种不自在的感觉完全写在脸上。
David: It is unbelievable to watch this knowing everything that would happen over the next 10, 15 years.
David：今天再回头看这一幕，想到之后 10 到 15 年里发生的一切，真是难以置信。
Ben: This incredibly close collaboration. 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 Apple. The icons are designed by Apple. They’re basically just consuming Google’s data as APIs.
Ben：当时两家公司关系密切到什么程度呢？在最初版本的 iPhone 上（注意，那时还没有 App Store，不对第三方开发者开放），预装了两个应用：YouTube 和 Maps，这两个都是 Google 的服务。但应用是 Apple 写的，图标也是 Apple 设计的，本质上就是通过 API 消费 Google 的数据。
David: The only icons and apps on the phone are the ones that Apple puts there. Two of the, I don’t know how many there were, 10, 12, 13 apps are Google apps. It’s wild by the way, the YouTube icon with the wood green tv, so awesome.
David：当时 iPhone 上的应用和图标全都是 Apple 放进去的。在那十几个（大概 10、12 或 13 个）应用里，就有两个是 Google 的。顺便说一句，那个木纹电视机样式的 YouTube 图标，真是太酷了。
Ben: So awesome. I heard the YouTube team absolutely detested it.
Ben：超级酷。但我听说 YouTube 团队特别讨厌那个图标。
David: They hated it. Yeah, they hated it. Well because it wasn’t the YouTube logo and so they, they knew already. It was obvious this was not going to work because The YouTube team is like, apple didn’t put our logo on there. Of course they’re going to start bringing in other video content over time.
David：没错，他们很讨厌。因为那根本不是 YouTube 的 logo。团队当时就知道，这迟早会出问题。Apple 不放我们的标识，显然未来会逐步引入其他视频内容。
Ben: It was a little bit pre algorithm but it was the thinking was there, of we have to make YouTube a destination and then control the experience when they’re in. Making the app icon reminiscent of an old school CRT TV was also just like deeply antithetical to YouTube inventing the video of tomorrow.
Ben：那还是算法时代之前，但 YouTube 的思路已经很明确了：我们必须让 YouTube 本身成为“目的地”，并且掌控用户在其中的体验。而把应用图标设计成一台老式显像管电视机，这和 YouTube 想“发明未来的视频”完全背道而驰。
David: Yes. Yes. It still looked great though.
David：对，对。不过不得不说，那个图标确实很好看。
Ben: It fit in with that first iPhone for sure.
Ben：对，它确实和第一代 iPhone 的整体风格很搭。
David: It totally did. Do you know who was the leader of the Google Mobile teams that developed the backends for these apps? Vic Gundotra.
David：没错。你知道当时领导 Google 移动团队、开发这些应用后台的人是谁吗？Vic Gundotra。
Ben: Really?
Ben：真的吗？
David: Yes. That was his first job I think within Google, first or second job within Google. Vic is going to come back up here in a minute. The iPhone keynote, truly world changing historic event. The Android team of course is watching this and that whole sooner prototype thing right in the trash the next day right in the trash can directly in the trash can. The dream is no longer a dream. It’s happening now.
David：对，我记得这是他在 Google 的第一份工作，或者第二份。不管怎样，他马上还会再次出现在我们的故事里。那场 iPhone 发布会，真的是改变世界的历史性事件。Android 团队当然也在看。结果第二天，“Sooner” 原型机项目直接被扔进垃圾桶。“Dream” 再也不只是梦想，而是必须立即实现的现实。
Ben: Get in kid. You’re the A team now.
Ben：上车吧，孩子，你现在是“A 团队”的一员了。
David: Yep. Clearly touchscreens are the future of mobile devices
David：没错，很明显，触摸屏就是移动设备的未来。
Ben: And a capacitive touchscreen at that.
Ben：而且必须是电容式触摸屏。
David: Remember Eric Schmidt is on the Apple Board, once Steve Jobs finds out about what the Android team and Google is now doing, he goes ballistic.
David：记住，当时 Eric Schmidt 还在 Apple 的董事会。一旦 Steve Jobs 发现 Android 团队和 Google 正在做的事情，他彻底暴怒。
Ben: Or perhaps to use his word thermonuclear.
Ben：或者用他的话来说，就是“核武级报复”。
David: Yes. Full on classic Steve Jobs, supposedly at an Apple all hands meeting, this is actually a little later, but he is overheard and quoted leaked to the press as saying we did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake, Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.
David：是的，典型的 Steve Jobs。据说在 Apple 的一次全员大会上（这是后来发生的），有人听到他这样说，后来还泄露给了媒体：“我们没有进入搜索业务，是他们进入了手机业务。毫无疑问，Google 想要干掉 iPhone。我们不会让他们得逞。”
Ben: Wow, oh man. Which is, to this day fair Apple has been happy to just take a spiff of all the traffic that they send to Google and not compete in Google’s core business.
Ben：哇，天哪。直到今天，Apple 仍然乐于从它导向 Google 的流量中分一杯羹，而不是直接去和 Google 的核心业务竞争。
David: Yep.
David：没错。
Ben: Now I will say I believe Apple reputation launderers a little bit. They get a lot of the value of being in the search business without having to do all the stuff that they demonize from a privacy and data sharing and all that ickiness perspective. But fine whatever it’s doing business.
Ben：不过我得说，Apple 在这方面有点“洗白”自己。他们从搜索业务里获取了大量价值，却不用去做那些他们口头上妖魔化的事情，比如隐私处理、数据共享，以及各种“脏兮兮”的活。但行吧，生意就是这样。
David: That’s fair. Apple did not enter the search business.
David：这话也有道理。Apple 确实没有进入搜索业务。
Ben: In Walter Isaacson’s book, Steve Jobs says, I’m going to destroy Android because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.
Ben：在 Walter Isaacson 的传记里，Steve Jobs 说过：“我要摧毁 Android，因为它是个偷来的产品。我愿意为此发动核武级战争。”
David: Yes.
David：对。
Ben: He also says, I will spend my last dying breath if I need to and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank to right this wrong.
Ben：他还说：“如果有必要，我愿意用我最后一口气来做这件事，我愿意花掉 Apple 银行账户里的 400 亿美元，把这个错误纠正过来。”
David: He was pissed, he was really pissed. Now interestingly, he doesn’t actually kick Eric Schmidt off the board until 2009.
David：他真的很愤怒，非常愤怒。但有趣的是，他直到 2009 年才真正把 Eric Schmidt 赶下 Apple 董事会。
Ben: It’s interesting.
Ben：这很耐人寻味。
David: I think it took Steve a little while to realize what the dream was within Google.
David：我觉得 Steve 花了一些时间才意识到 Google 内部“Dream”项目到底意味着什么。
Ben: And there’s also a reasonable argument back. Look, both companies took stuff from each other. A lot of the stuff that apple touts that they were the first company to ever do Multitouch and they own the, there were predecessor companies that did Multitouch before them too. The iPhone debuted a lot of technologies for the first time. A lot of them were also just at the right time in history. I think Android arrived at a lot of similar conclusions at the same time.
Ben：当然，也有一种合理的反驳。两家公司其实都互相借鉴过。Apple 吹嘘的很多功能，比如多点触控（Multitouch），他们说自己是第一家做的，但其实在他们之前就有公司做过多点触控。iPhone 确实首次把很多技术带到了市场，但很多也只是踩在了正确的历史时机上。而我觉得 Android 也是在同一时间得出了很多类似的结论。
David: True. It’s interesting you said Multitouch. Multitouch actually becomes the battleground.
David：没错。有意思的是你提到了多点触控。多点触控实际上成了双方的战场。
Ben: Because that’s the patent that they go to war over.
Ben：因为那正是他们后来开战的专利。
David: That’s the patents that Apple has. Steve Jobs threatens to sue Google over implementation of Multitouch gestures. As a result, Android for several years doesn’t have things like pinch to zoom or the swipe operating system, UI navigation gestures. I’m pretty sure if you remember early Android phones for the first couple of years, every single one of them had four physical buttons. At the bottom of the phone to navigate the operating system. I think this is why.
David：那是 Apple 掌握的专利。Steve Jobs 威胁要因为多点触控手势的实现而起诉 Google。结果就是，Android 在最初的几年里没有“捏合缩放”或“滑动导航”这样的系统 UI 手势。如果你还记得，早期的 Android 手机在头两年里，每一台都有四个物理按键，在机身底部用来操作系统。我认为原因就在这里。
Ben: But let’s take the Google side of this argument for a minute. When Android does launch, they have the market, which today is the play store. Apple didn’t have an app store. Android had, when you swipe down a notification center with all the notifications from each of your individual apps,
Ben：不过我们也来看一看 Google 这边的优势。当 Android 发布时，他们就已经有了“市场”（也就是今天的 Play Store）。Apple 当时还没有 App Store。Android 还有下拉通知中心的功能，能显示各个应用的通知。
David: Took Apple years to get that
David：Apple 花了好几年才把这个功能补上。
Ben: You could drag to rearrange apps on the home screen. These are things that Apple then directly copied as well, so. Great artists steal.
Ben：你还可以在主屏幕上拖动来重新排列应用。这些功能后来都被 Apple 直接照搬了。所以嘛——“伟大的艺术家偷窃”。
David: Exactly. Let’s get into the launch of the competition. November, 2007, so what’s that, 10 months after the iPhone reveal and five months after the launch, remember Android launches in 2008, Google announces the formation of the Open Handset Alliance.
David：没错。接下来我们来说说竞争的开端。2007 年 11 月，也就是 iPhone 发布 10 个月后、上市 5 个月后（别忘了 Android 是 2008 年发布的），Google 宣布成立“开放手机联盟”（Open Handset Alliance）。
Ben: That’s right.
Ben：对。
David: And this is a partnership with HTC, Motorola, Samsung, LG, T-Mobile, Sprint, Qualcomm, Intel, Broadcom and Texas Instruments. This was so confusing at the time I and everybody else was like.
David：这是一个联盟，成员包括 HTC、摩托罗拉、三星、LG、T-Mobile、Sprint、高通、英特尔、博通和德州仪器。当时这让人非常困惑，我和其他人都在想：
Ben: What does it mean?
Ben：这到底意味着什么？
David: What is this? Is Google making a phone? Is Google not making a phone? Then a whole year goes by with basically nothing. Then in September of 2008, a lot of things happened in September of 2008, Chrome, Android, Lehman Brothers, Google announces the T-Mobile G1 phone, the G phone, and the T-Mobile G one is manufactured by HTC. Remember Andy and Android’s original partner in the prototype and the product name the HTC product name for it is the HTC Dream. This is the dream. This was what they were working on in the US it’s called the G1. It actually is a super interesting little device.
David：这是啥？Google 要做手机吗？还是不做？结果整整一年什么也没发生。然后到了 2008 年 9 月，发生了一堆大事：Chrome 发布，Android 发布，雷曼兄弟破产。Google 宣布了 T-Mobile G1 手机，也叫 G Phone。G1 是 HTC 生产的。还记得吗？HTC 是 Andy 和 Android 最初的原型合作伙伴。这款产品在 HTC 的命名里叫 HTC Dream——就是“Dream”。他们一直在研发的梦想机。在美国，它叫 G1。这其实是一款非常有趣的小设备。
Ben: I wrote an app in it. I had a class in college, it was like a capstone class or something where I could like pick my own project to do. We had a four person team and one of the guys had a T-Mobile G1 and we wrote, I think it was like a Java thing for it. But he then founded the company Daily Booth after that.
Ben：我还给它写过一个应用。当时我在大学上了一门课程，好像是毕业设计之类的，可以自己选项目做。我们四个人一组，其中一个人有一台 T-Mobile G1，我们就用它写了一个应用，我记得是用 Java 写的。后来那位同学还创办了一家公司，叫 Daily Booth。
David: Wow. Yeah.
David：哇，真的啊。
Ben: In fact it may have even been like a daily booth for Android app.
Ben：实际上，那可能就是一个专门为 Android 做的 Daily Booth 应用。
David: You had a lot of founders come out of your crew at Ohio State, awesome. It has a touch screen on the front with the physical navigation buttons like I was talking about. It has a slide out horizontal query keyboard reminiscent of the sidekick back in the days. Unlike the iPhone, it has multitasking, you can run multiple apps at once and it has third party applications. Now that’s a little bit unfair to the iPhone because by the time the G1 actually launched, Apple had indeed just shipped the app store. The event where they launched it is like T-Mobile event in New York City in a commercial kitchen. It’s a haphazard random launch. You can’t even find video of it today. There are little clips you can find and still images, what is widely reported. You can actually see in photos, Larry and Sergey do show up. They roller blade into the building. They roller blade on stage. There are all these T-Mobile and HTC executives there in suits. Here come Larry and Serge on roller blades, on stage.
David：你那帮俄亥俄州立大学的同学里出了不少创业者啊，真棒。G1 手机正面有触屏，还有我之前提到的实体导航按钮。它还有一个横向滑出的 QWERTY 键盘，让人想起当年的 Sidekick。和 iPhone 不同的是，它支持多任务，可以同时运行多个应用，还有第三方应用。当然这样说对 iPhone 有点不公平，因为等 G1 真正上市时，Apple 也刚刚发布了 App Store。发布会是在纽约市 T-Mobile 办的，地点居然是一个商用厨房。那场发布会可以说是非常随意、甚至有些混乱。今天几乎找不到完整视频了，只有一些小片段和照片。但从照片上你能看到，Larry 和 Sergey 确实出席了。他们穿着轮滑鞋溜进会场，还直接滑上了舞台。当时一群穿西装的 T-Mobile 和 HTC 高管在台上，Larry 和 Sergey 却穿着轮滑鞋登场，场面非常另类。
Ben: Listeners join the Acquired email list. We’ll throw this in the next email that goes out.
Ben：听众朋友们，快来订阅 Acquired 的邮件列表吧。我们会在下一封邮件里把这些资料附上。
David: It was haphazard to say the least. But the G1 slash Dream becomes a pretty decent success. It sells over a million units in the US and just this one device, this one phone gets 6% smartphone market share, which puts it roughly on par with Palm like all of Palm. The G1 matches in market share, but the smartphone market is still very small.
David：说实话，那次发布会真的很随意。但 G1（也叫 Dream）最终还算成功。在美国卖出了超过 100 万台，仅凭这款设备，它就拿下了 6% 的智能手机市场份额，大致和整个 Palm 的份额持平。不过，当时的智能手机市场整体规模依然很小。
Ben: It’s important to remember mobile really wasn’t a thing until 2011 of very obviously the next wave and the next computing paradigm.
Ben：要记住，直到 2011 年前后，移动设备才真正成为主流，显然是下一波浪潮，也是新的计算范式。
David: But to be fair to Apple and the iPhone, it is starting to run away with the market. This is to the point of man, if Google had not bought Android when it had, it would’ve been too late. The whole lifetime of the G one, they sell about a million units. The iPhone sold 11 million units in 2008 alone, 20 million in 2009. Basically overnight Apple and the iPhone goes from not in the smartphone market at all to over 50% market share of smartphones. But as great as the iPhone was, it did have a few weaknesses.
David：但公平地说，Apple 和 iPhone 已经开始在市场上遥遥领先。这也说明，如果 Google 当时没有收购 Android，可能就为时已晚。G1 整个生命周期里卖了大约 100 万台，而 iPhone 仅在 2008 年就卖了 1100 万台，2009 年卖了 2000 万台。几乎是一夜之间，Apple 和 iPhone 从完全没有智能手机份额，一跃拿下超过 50% 的市场。但即便 iPhone 很强大，它仍然有一些弱点。
Ben: No copy paste.
Ben：没有复制粘贴功能。
David: No copy paste.
David：对，没有复制粘贴。
Ben: Yep. No multitasking
Ben：没错，也不支持多任务。
David: As mentioned before, it didn’t multitask. Not very customizable. I think we’re still in the era of, you can’t even change your wallpaper on the iPhone. Pretty sure we are. I think it’s still just the black background.
David：就像我之前说的，它不能多任务，而且几乎没法定制。我记得那时你甚至不能换壁纸吧？几乎可以确定，当时 iPhone 还是只有黑色背景。
Ben: Yep. You can’t put your own apps on it from anywhere but the app store even after it launches.
Ben：没错。即使 App Store 上线之后，你也只能通过它安装应用，不能从别的地方装。
David: A big knock at the time. People love that. It’s a touch screen. People really wanted the physical keyboards. The biggest problem with the iPhone, at least in the US, you can only get it on AT&T.
David：这是当时被人诟病的地方。虽然大家喜欢触摸屏，但也真的很想要实体键盘。iPhone 最大的问题，至少在美国，是它只能在 AT&T 独家销售。
Ben: And you could only get it with the Edge network. It was unusable.
Ben：而且你只能用 EDGE 网络，几乎无法使用。
David: That’s right. It didn’t have 3G,
David：没错，它当时不支持 3G。
Ben: It was so terrible, eventually the iPhone 3G came out within a year. But even that was really slow. The network had not caught up to what you wish the device could do for a few years.
Ben：EDGE 网络实在太糟糕了，结果不到一年，iPhone 3G 就出来了。但即便如此，速度还是很慢。网络在好几年里都没能追上设备能实现的潜力。
David: Yeah, that brings us to holiday 2009 and the Motorola droid.
David：是的，这就把我们带到了 2009 年圣诞节——摩托罗拉 Droid。
Ben: Changed everything.
Ben：彻底改变了一切。
David: It’s funny to say now, like oh the Motorola, like the Motorola droid, this changed everything. Yes, when we interviewed Steve Bomber a couple of months ago, he brought it up when the droid launched it was holiday 2009. I think you and I were like, was it really that late? Wasn’t it early? And he was like, Nope, Christmas 2009, I will never forget it. That is when Android won the market. This was the moment.
David：现在回头看，说“摩托罗拉 Droid 改变了一切”可能有点搞笑。但没错，当我们几个月前采访 Steve Ballmer 时，他特别提到 Droid 的发布是在 2009 年圣诞节。我记得当时你和我都在想：“真有那么晚吗？不是更早吗？”而他很肯定地说：“不，就是 2009 年圣诞节，我永远不会忘记。那是 Android 赢得市场的时刻。就是那个节点。”
Ben: Google was really willing to put their brand second. Now were they really putting their brand second? It’s Android versus Droid, very convenient. But like if you were to go survey the American public in 2009, 10, 11, 12, maybe even 13 and say, do you know about Android, the mobile operating system? No, do you know about Droid? I have a Droid phone.
Ben：Google 当时真的愿意把自己的品牌放在第二位。那他们真的是把品牌放在第二位吗？其实是 Android 对上 Droid，这样的名字非常巧妙。但如果你在 2009、2010、2011、2012，甚至 2013 年去问美国公众：“你知道 Android 这个移动操作系统吗？”很多人会说“不知道”。但你要问：“你知道 Droid 吗？”答案就是：“知道，我有一部 Droid 手机。”
David: Well, and then there were a couple of years after that where I was like, do you know about Google and Android? Yeah. Maybe. Do you know about Samsung and Galaxy? Oh yeah, I know about that.
David：是啊，接下来几年里情况变成这样：“你知道 Google 和 Android 吗？”回答可能是“嗯，大概知道吧。”但要是问：“你知道三星 Galaxy 吗？”回答就是“哦，对，那我知道。”
Ben: Yep, exactly.
Ben：没错，完全正确。
David: So we’ll get into that in a sec. The droid.
David：好，我们马上详细说说 Droid。
Ben: Droid does, baby.
Ben：“Droid Does”，伙计。
David: Verizon at this point is getting pummeled by at and t. It’s been two years since the iPhone launch. AT&T isn’t just stealing a lot of subscribers from Verizon because of the iPhone. They’re stealing the best subscribers, the people that are willing to pay the most money for the biggest price data plans for smartphones. Verizon finally decides like, we got to change the game here. We got to be able to compete with the iPhone. We’re going to go all in on Android. We are going to buy a device and make this our flagship smartphone, position it against the iPhone and we are going to invest hugely behind this thing.
David：当时 Verizon 正被 AT&T 打得落花流水。iPhone 上市两年，AT&T 不只是抢走了 Verizon 大量用户，更关键是抢走了最优质的用户——那些愿意为高价智能手机数据套餐付钱的用户。于是 Verizon 最终决定：“我们必须改变局面。我们必须有能力和 iPhone 竞争。我们要在 Android 上押上全部，买下一款设备，把它打造成我们的旗舰智能手机，正面对抗 iPhone，并在它背后投入巨额资源。”
David: The device itself, the actual droid made by Motorola, was a great device. It had a big screen, big screen for the time, a slide out keyboard. It had a five megapixel camera, removable battery, all of these things. The iPhone didn’t have. Probably the most important feature it had though the killer, killer app was on the software side. It was the first Android device launched with Google Maps, turn by turn navigation.
David：至于设备本身，这款由摩托罗拉制造的 Droid 是一台非常优秀的手机。它有一块当时算大的屏幕，还有一个滑出式键盘。它配备了一枚 500 万像素的摄像头，还能更换电池。这些都是 iPhone 没有的功能。但最重要的杀手级应用是在软件层面：它是第一台内置 Google Maps 并支持逐向导航（turn-by-turn navigation）的 Android 设备。
Ben: I didn’t realize that.
Ben：我之前都没意识到这一点。
David: Before the droid, there was this whole consumer electronics product category of dedicated GPS devices. People old enough to remember, might remember this. Tom Toms nav Techs people would buy Garmin, these devices. They would put them in their cars, you also paid a monthly subscription fee for the service of the turn by turn navigation. Overnight this entire product category gets obsoleted, sherlocked, gone. Because Google Maps is a better product with better navigation and it’s free, no more monthly fees just baked in in your phone and the device you already have with you. Why on earth would anybody buy, let alone pay monthly for a standalone GPS product again?
David：在 Droid 出现之前，消费电子里有一个完整的产品类别——专用 GPS 设备。年纪大一点的听众可能还记得，TomTom、NavTech、Garmin 这些牌子，人们会买这些设备装在车里，还得为逐向导航（turn-by-turn navigation）每个月付订阅费。结果一夜之间，这整个产品类别就被淘汰、被“Sherlocked”，消失了。因为 Google Maps 更好，用起来更顺畅，而且免费，没有任何月费，就直接内置在你随身携带的手机里。那还有谁会去买，甚至每月付费使用独立 GPS 产品呢？
Ben: Yep.
Ben：没错。
David: You know what doesn’t have it? The iPhone, the Apple version of Google Maps, you had to manually advance the steps so it would pull up the route. Then you could tap the button to be like, I have made this turn now show me the next part of it.
David：你知道什么没有吗？iPhone。当时 Apple 版本的 Google Maps，你得手动点击才能显示下一步路线。比如拐过一个弯后，你得自己点按钮告诉它“我拐弯了”，它才会显示接下来的导航。
Ben: You’re exactly right. I remember that too.
Ben：没错，我也记得这个。
David: Not really what you want to do while you’re driving, man. It’s crazy how not that long ago this was, that was the killer feature. But even more important than other features was the marketing and the muscle that Verizon put behind this. They licensed the droid name from Lucasfilm.
David：兄弟，这可不是你开车时想要操作的东西。令人难以置信的是，这事其实没过去多久，当时这就是杀手级功能。但比功能更重要的是 Verizon 在营销上投入的资源。他们甚至从卢卡斯影业（Lucasfilm）那获得了“Droid”这个名字的授权。
Ben: That’s right. I think Lucasfilm was mentioned at the bottom in the credits of every commercial.
Ben：没错。我记得当时每一条广告片尾字幕里都会写上 Lucasfilm。
David: Yes, every commercial. They did these series of commercials that we’ve been referencing. Man, if you lived in the US and you are older than like 12 at this time, this is burned in your memory. It was so great. The first 80% of the ad, 90% of the ad was a Apple style ad knockoff with the like bright, happy, upbeat music and the white background. It had the fading apple style text and it said, I don’t multitask, I don’t have a removable battery, et cetera, et cetera. Then the very last five seconds of the ad, there was like a hard cut and like static noise and it was black and it was edgy and then it said Droid does.
David：对，每一条广告都是这样。他们做了一系列广告，我们刚才也提到过。如果你当时住在美国，年龄超过 12 岁，这些广告绝对刻在你的记忆里。广告真是太精彩了。前 80%、90% 看起来就是在模仿 Apple 的风格——明亮、愉快、轻快的音乐，白色背景，淡入的苹果式文本，写着“我不支持多任务”“我没有可拆卸电池”等等。然后在最后五秒，画面突然硬切，出现静电噪音，画面变黑，风格变得锋利，然后出现一句话：“Droid does.”
Ben: It was so good, the CMO of Verizon. Verizon did all of this, said that the campaign was designed to quote ‘wake up the market’ and boy did it ever. That original droid, I think it sold a quarter million units the first weekend it was on sale and then it sold a million units faster than the original iPhone had. Like there was just so much pent up demand for a real smartphone on the Verizon network. Plus all this has turn by turn navigation is, but even to put aside whether it was better or not, it just was a real smartphone on Verizon, Time Magazine named the Droid its product of the year for 2009.
Ben：广告太成功了。Verizon 的首席市场官说过，这个广告活动的目标就是“唤醒市场”，而它真的做到了。最初的 Droid 在开卖的第一个周末就卖出了 25 万台，而且它突破 100 万销量的速度比初代 iPhone 还快。因为 Verizon 网络上一直有大量被压抑的智能手机需求。再加上它有逐向导航——即便撇开功能优劣不谈，它就是 Verizon 上的真正智能手机。《时代》杂志甚至把 Droid 评为 2009 年的“年度产品”。
Ben: Wow.
Ben：哇。
David: The bigger thing though is that like Verizon going all in behind it, even though they would add the iPhone later, it creates this seed of what the Android user base would become today, at least in America. Because Verizon went all in on Android, all in on Droid over the next couple of years. They followed the original droid up with, let’s see, there was the HTC Droid incredible, the Droid X, the Droid Two, the Droid Bionic, the Droid Max, all of these had major marketing campaigns behind it.
David：更重要的是，Verizon 在当时全力押注 Droid，虽然后来他们也会上线 iPhone，但这一举动种下了 Android 用户群在美国发展的种子。因为在随后的几年里，Verizon 全力支持 Android、全力支持 Droid。他们在初代 Droid 之后，又接连推出了 HTC Droid Incredible、Droid X、Droid 2、Droid Bionic、Droid Max 等机型，每一款背后都有大规模的市场宣传。
Ben: Game over for the segment of the market that is not Apple. This different OEM from operating system. Google just runs away with it. Before this, Microsoft had a shot.
Ben：对 Apple 之外的市场来说，游戏结束了。在这个“硬件 OEM 和操作系统分离”的模式下，Google 直接跑赢了。此前，微软其实是有机会的。
David: They really did.
David：他们的确有机会。
Ben: They were a systemic disadvantage because they were going to carriers and saying, why don’t you pay us $5, $10? And Google was going to them and saying, here you go. This is free, you can have the source code and you can modify it as you see fit. Even today, I think Samsung has their own OS, Samsung one or something like that, that looks different. It’s Android, but it’s the open source version of Android that they’ve customized. That’s the thing that’s on, I don’t know, a billion phones and three, we aren’t Microsoft.
Ben：但他们有个结构性劣势——微软去找运营商时说：“你们付我们 5 美元、10 美元来买操作系统吧。”而 Google 去的时候说：“来，这个是免费的，源代码给你们，你们可以随意修改。”甚至直到今天，三星都有自己定制的系统，叫什么 Samsung One 之类的，看起来和别的系统不一样，但其实就是 Android 的开源版本。他们把它装在了大约十亿台手机上。而且，第三点，我们不是微软。
David: Yeah, you guys don’t want to be compact.
David：没错，你们可不想再变成像康柏那样的厂商。
Ben: Right. Microsoft managed to suck up all the profit in that entire value chain and handset makers, you currently make money, so why would you go work with Microsoft who did that to the PC makers? And then as a little sweetener on top of all this, you know how I mentioned it was free in open source,
Ben：对啊。微软在 PC 价值链里把所有利润都榨干了，而手机厂商在当时是能赚钱的，那他们为什么要和微软合作，让微软再对他们重演 PC 制造商的遭遇呢？更妙的是，除了免费和开源之外，还有一个“甜头”……
David: It’s actually less than free.
David：实际上是“比免费还要便宜”。
Ben: We’re actually going to pay you.
Ben：对，Google 反过来要付钱给你。
David: Yeah.
David：没错。
Ben: For searches that originate on your phone, we will give a little rev share to both the carrier and the OEM, the handset maker.
Ben：只要搜索来自你的手机，我们就会给运营商和 OEM 厂商分成。
David: Yep. This was not widely publicized at the time, as you can imagine, but Bill Gurley wrote a blog post where he had heard from friends that Google was paying carriers and OEMs to use Android, even though Android was free. He wrote this incredible blog post about it called The Less Than Free Business Model. He basically predicted that Android’s going to run away with this here. If you’re a carrier or an OEM, sure there’s a segment of the market that’s going to demand Apple, that’s fine, but Microsoft is dead, Palm is dead, Blackberry is dead. There’s no way you can compete with free, let alone less than free, where they are paying you to take something of value for free.
David：对。当时这些信息并没有广泛公开，你也可以想象。但 Bill Gurley 写过一篇博客，他从朋友那里听说 Google 甚至会付钱给运营商和 OEM，让他们用 Android，尽管 Android 已经是免费的。他写了一篇非常精彩的文章，叫《比免费还便宜的商业模式》（The Less Than Free Business Model）。他基本上预测了 Android 将一骑绝尘。如果你是运营商或 OEM，市场上当然有一部分用户会强烈要求 Apple，这没问题。但微软死了，Palm 死了，Blackberry 也死了。你根本不可能和“免费”竞争，更别提“比免费还便宜”——别人还付钱给你，让你免费拿到有价值的东西。
Ben: And from Google’s side, it’s the exact same thing as that thing we talked about with Opensourcing Chromium, they’re happy to give a few percentage points in traffic acquisition costs of their search revenue to people who are insuring that the platform underneath them doesn’t belong to someone else. There were some risks that it was all Apple. Then that creates two problems for Google. One, they pay Apple a lot more money than they pay the combination of the carrier and the OEM maker those get a much smaller spiff.
Ben：从 Google 的角度看，这和我们之前谈到的 Chromium 开源是一样的逻辑。他们乐意拿出搜索收入里几个百分点作为流量获取成本，给那些能确保“底层平台不属于别人”的合作方。最大的风险是，如果一切都被 Apple 控制，那就有两个问题：第一，他们要给 Apple 支付的钱会远远高于给运营商和 OEM 厂商的费用，那些厂商得到的分成要小得多。
Ben: Two, this means that Google controls more of the underlying environment that they operate in. Imagine how terrible it would be for them if Mobile Safari was the new internet explorer and their entire franchise was at risk of Apple saying, and we’re going to point traffic over here. Now Google is happy to toss a couple of points over to these guys.
Ben：第二，这意味着 Google 能掌控更多他们运行所依赖的底层环境。想象一下，如果 Mobile Safari 成了新的 IE，而 Apple 说“我们要把流量导向别处”，那对 Google 来说简直是灭顶之灾。所以现在，Google 乐意分给这些合作方几个百分点的收入。
David: I can’t think of another example of a dominant technology business and business model that has successfully survived and transitioned a major platform shift and thrived in that next platform as well. Mobile was a platform shift, a huge one. Going from PC to the web was a platform shift. Going from PC, web, to mobile was an even bigger platform shift.
David：我想不出还有哪个科技公司和商业模式，能像 Google 这样，在一个平台转移中不仅活下来，还在下一个平台继续繁荣。移动就是一次巨大的平台转移。从 PC 到 Web 是一次，从 PC、Web 到移动，又是一次更大的转移。
Ben: Play it out even back further in history than this. IBM was dominant in mainframes and then lost their dominance in the PC era. Microsoft was dominant in PCs and then lost their dominance in the web era. Google was dominant on the web and stayed dominant in the mobile era. They didn’t derive giant profits from the mobile, like directly off of selling phones or selling the OS or they make somebody on the play store, but not giant amounts relative to the rest of their money than what other players like Apple make.
Ben：把历史再往前拉一点。IBM 曾经在大型机时代称霸，但在 PC 时代失去了主导地位。微软曾在 PC 时代称霸，但在 Web 时代失去了主导地位。而 Google 在 Web 时代称霸，并在移动时代继续保持主导。没错，他们没有像 Apple 那样通过卖手机或卖操作系统赚取巨额利润。Play Store 也能带来收入，但和 Google 其他业务相比，这不算巨额。
David: But they kept search going
David：但他们守住了搜索。
Ben: They managed to stay relevant to consumers with these hundreds of millions, billions of devices that they shipped and their business was doing better than ever.
Ben：他们通过数亿、数十亿台设备，成功保持了与消费者的相关性，业务也比以往任何时候都更好。
David: All of these Android phones that are shipping, especially in the earlier years, what is the most prominent part of the UI on the touchscreen giant freaking Google search bar right there at the top.
David：所有出货的 Android 手机上，尤其是早期，你看到的 UI 最显眼的部分是什么？就是触屏顶端那个巨大显眼的 Google 搜索框。
Ben: Right? The state of play of being a big tech company and this dates back 80 years, is technology moves fast and the new paradigms disrupt everyone that came before you. You get one era and you got to make the absolute most of the one era that you grew up in. After that you’re probably going to lose relevance. You might keep your money machine going for a long time. Famously, IBM made more revenue than Microsoft for a lot longer than people think.
Ben：对吧？作为一家大科技公司的现实——这可以追溯到 80 年前——就是科技发展太快，新范式总会颠覆前一代玩家。你只能抓住一个时代，并在那个时代把价值榨到极致。之后，你大概率会失去相关性。你可能还能靠钱机器维持很久。众所周知，IBM 的营收比微软高的时间，比大多数人以为的要长。
David: Or even take Microsoft and Windows. Like Windows is still big today.
David：或者看看微软和 Windows。Windows 到今天仍然很重要。
Ben: Yep, but the importance of that platform is going to fade and fade and fade.
Ben：没错，但那个平台的重要性正逐渐减弱、不断消退。
David: You won’t be able to transition your business model right to the next era. Google did it.
David：你通常没法把自己的商业模式直接转移到下一个时代。但 Google 做到了。
Ben: And occasionally someone misses the second era but comes back for the third. Like Apple figured out mobile, they never won a previous era. They were a player in PCs but they didn’t win. Almost no one gets two and almost no one gets two successive ones. That is the really impressive thing that Google figured out how to do here.
Ben：有时也会有人错过第二个时代，但在第三个时代卷土重来。比如 Apple，他们抓住了移动时代，但在之前的时代他们都没赢过。他们在 PC 时代是个玩家，但没赢。几乎没人能赢下两个时代，更别说连续赢下两个时代了。而这正是 Google 真正厉害的地方，他们做到了。
David: Yeah, guess like we said, this episode is the hit parade. Android basically from end of 2009 onward just washes over the world like a tidal wave. In holiday 2009 when the droid comes out, total Android market share of the smartphone market is still in the G1 range. Like five 6% global market share. One year later, 30%.
David：是啊，就像我们说的，这期节目就是一场“爆款巡礼”。Android 从 2009 年底开始，就像潮水一样席卷全球。2009 年圣诞节 Droid 发布时，Android 在智能手机市场的全球份额还只有 G1 水平，大约 5–6%。一年之后，就涨到了 30%。
Ben: Wow.
Ben：哇。
David: They go from 5% to 30% in one year. They announced that over 200,000 Android devices are shipping every day around the world. The next year in 2011, Android’s market share is 50% and two years after that, by the end of 2013, it is 80% market share.
David：他们在一年之内从 5% 涨到 30%。随后宣布每天有超过 20 万部 Android 设备在全球出货。再下一年，也就是 2011 年，Android 的市场份额达到 50%；两年后的 2013 年底，份额高达 80%。
Ben: In many ways it’s the visa network of networks thing where they don’t have to make every phone, they don’t have just one horse in the race. They’re getting leverage by having 2, 3, 4, 5 major manufacturers of these devices that are all independently doing their own marketing. There’s a very clever arrangement where you can just have the Android open source project and you can build your own mobile phone and you can launch it and you don’t have our app store and you don’t have to default to Google search and you don’t get Google Map. Like you just have the operating system and it’s great. Anyone could do that, but why wouldn’t you want to have our app store? It’s where all, all the apps are. If you do that, then you get all the great Google services, all the apps you get the native Gmail and the native maps and all this great stuff we’ve written. If you do that, then Google’s the default search and we’ll pay you for that.
Ben：在很多方面，这就像 Visa 的“网络中的网络”。Google 自己不用做每一部手机，也不用只押注一匹马。他们通过 2、3、4、5 家主要厂商的共同发力来获取杠杆效应，这些厂商都在独立进行市场营销。有一个非常聪明的安排：你可以只用 Android 开源项目，自己造手机，自己发布。你没有我们的应用商店，不必默认用 Google 搜索，也不会有 Google Maps。你只是得到一个操作系统，也挺好。任何人都能这么做。但问题是，你为什么不愿意要我们的应用商店呢？毕竟所有的应用都在这里。如果你这么做了，你就能得到所有优秀的 Google 服务，所有应用，包括原生 Gmail、原生 Maps，以及我们开发的其他好东西。而如果你这么做了，Google 就会成为默认搜索引擎，我们还会为此付钱给你。
David: And then you make money.
David：然后你就能赚钱。
Ben: But by the way, if you want all this stuff that you consumers are going to demand, you are going to default to Google search.
Ben：而且顺便说一句，如果你想要消费者真正需要的这些东西，那你必须默认用 Google 搜索。
David: That’s the payment. That’s the offer you can’t refuse. Now here’s the actual crazy thing. As I said by 2013, Android global market share is 80%. That’s actually higher than it is today. Today it’s down to like, I think 72% and Apple is 27.999%.
David：这就是“支付”，这是你无法拒绝的条件。真正疯狂的是，到 2013 年，Android 的全球市场份额达到 80%。这比今天还高。今天大约是 72%，而 Apple 占了 27.999%。
结果不能反证本质。
Ben: Apple’s share has really grown.
Ben：Apple 的份额真的增长了很多。
David: No question, Android pushed iPhone to be better on many dimensions. Things like cheaper iPhones, bigger screens, better cameras, on and on and on and on of things. I don’t think Apple would’ve done if Android hadn’t been pushing them.
David：毫无疑问，Android 在很多方面推动了 iPhone 的进步。比如更便宜的 iPhone、更大的屏幕、更好的相机，以及许许多多改进。如果没有 Android 施压，我不认为 Apple 会主动去做这些。
Ben: Probably not big cheap screens, but some of the cameras. I think so.
Ben：他们可能不会做大而便宜的屏幕，但在相机上，应该会有一些改进。
David: Maybe, I don’t know. For years the iPhones did not have good cameras. Big part of that droid marketing push was the five megapixel camera. The original few iPhones had a two megapixel camera. I think it was crappy.
David：也许吧，我不太确定。但在很长一段时间里，iPhone 的相机确实不怎么样。Droid 的市场宣传很大一部分就是“500 万像素相机”。而最初几代 iPhone 只有 200 万像素，我觉得那相机很差劲。
Ben: Yeah, they’ve definitely pushed each other.
Ben：是的，双方确实在不断推动彼此进步。
David: Yeah. Then the other quick thing to mention on Android history, there was one interesting moment in tension with Samsung in the early to mid 2010s. Samsung basically said, oh, okay, the iPhone is the premium device. Android is this incredibly flexible platform. What if we just take Android and copy the iPhone with Android? And they got really good at it. The Galaxy devices were just shipping in huge, huge numbers. Then Samsung started stripping out Google services and putting their own Samsung services in on some of their devices. That was a bridge too far for Google.
David：是的。关于 Android 的历史，还得提到 2010 年代早中期和三星之间的一个有趣张力。当时三星基本上说：“好，iPhone 是高端设备，而 Android 是一个极其灵活的平台。如果我们直接用 Android 去复制 iPhone 会怎么样？”他们真的做得很成功，Galaxy 设备出货量巨大。接着三星开始在一些设备里移除 Google 服务，换上自家的 Samsung 服务。这对 Google 来说就太过分了。
David: This is when Google started the Pixel program. Google had done the Nexus program making their own hardware before the Pixel though was and is a reference device that yeah, consumers could buy. But more so to show the rest of the OEM market, the non Samsung market, Hey here are reference designs essentially for great premium devices, great cameras, all the features you want here, copy these. It’s the same thing as the Microsoft Surface strategy. Why Bomber was so adamant, we got to make a surface, we got to show the OEMs how to do this.
David：这就是 Google 启动 Pixel 项目的时候。在 Pixel 之前，Google 曾经做过 Nexus 系列硬件。但 Pixel 的定位不止于消费产品，更重要的是作为参考设备，向其他 OEM 厂商（尤其是非三星厂商）展示：“看，这里有顶级设备的参考设计，优秀的相机和所有你想要的功能，你们可以照着做。”这和微软的 Surface 战略是一样的。当时 Ballmer 极力主张要做 Surface，就是为了给 OEM 厂商示范。
Ben: Right? It’s funny. I have been trying to think about what is the business of Android. Google having Android versus Google not having Android. I tried to pull up the most credible numbers I possibly could. There are basically two things that you just have to add together to create the value. One is how much money they make from the play store, which has become significant, didn’t used to be but is now. The second is how much money are they saving by not having the searches originate from a platform that they don’t own.
Ben：对吧？有意思的是，我一直在思考 Android 的生意逻辑。Google 拥有 Android 和 Google 没有 Android，到底有什么区别？我尽量找到了最可信的数据。基本上你只要把两部分加在一起就能算出 Android 的价值。第一部分是 Play Store 的收入，这在过去不算大，但现在已经相当可观。第二部分是节省下来的钱——也就是不必让搜索流量起源于一个他们不控制的平台。
Ben: I used to think, oh, because it’s Android, they don’t have to pay money, they have to pay $20 billion to Apple. It’s not zero, they do actually have to pay. Like we talked about, David and I figured out as we were going through the financial disclosures and stuff, they do pay the OEMs and they do pay the carriers.
Ben：我之前以为，因为有了 Android，他们不必付钱，而不用像对 Apple 那样每年付 200 亿美元。但事实并不是零，他们确实也要支付。就像我们之前分析财报时发现的那样，Google 也要付钱给 OEM 厂商和运营商。
Ben: The question is how much? Because once you can figure out how much, then you can do a little bit of napkin math to figure out, okay, well how much are they still saving by it not being Apple? Google paid out last year, and I’m just using the current numbers to try to figure out what the splits have always been. They paid out last year $55 billion in total traffic acquisition costs. Now traffic acquisition costs are actually the sum of two different numbers from two different businesses because they love to obfuscate things.
Ben：问题是：到底付了多少？因为一旦算出这个数，你就能做个“餐巾纸计算”：好，他们到底节省了多少没被 Apple 吃掉的钱？去年 Google 总共支付了 550 亿美元的流量获取成本（TAC）。而 TAC 实际上是两个不同业务的两类数字加总，因为 Google 很喜欢把事情搞得模糊不清。
Ben: One, it’s what we’re actually looking for, the acquisition of traffic to Google search. The other component is money that we paid to publishers where our ads show up in the double click AdSense world.
Ben：第一部分，就是我们真正关心的——获取流量到 Google 搜索的支出。第二部分，是 Google 在 DoubleClick/AdSense 网络里支付给发布商的钱，因为广告在他们网站上展示。
David: Yep.
David：对。
Ben: Now we know that that average is about a 70-30 split and we know that they made $30 billion last year gross in the Google network. You could say, okay, they probably paid out about $21 billion of that 55 billion in the AdSense double click Google Network world. That backs our 55 billion down to 34 billion. Okay, that’s 34 billion in actual traffic acquisition for Google search.
Ben：我们知道这部分的平均分成大约是 70-30。去年 Google Network 的总收入是 300 亿美元。那就可以推算，他们大约支付了 210 亿美元给 AdSense/DoubleClick 网络里的发布商。这样 550 亿里的大约 210 亿可以剔除，剩下的 340 亿就是 Google 搜索的真实流量获取成本。
David: And we know 20 was iPhone,
David：而且我们知道，其中有 200 亿是付给 iPhone 的。
Ben: Right. For Safari searches, that means there are 14 billion that gets distributed to non Apple traffic acquisition distribution partners, which in their annual report they define as browser providers, mobile carriers, original equipment manufacturers, and software developers. It’s basically 14 billion to the Android mobile carriers and OEMs plus Firefox.
Ben：没错。那就是 Safari 搜索。换句话说，还有 140 亿分配给非 Apple 的流量获取合作伙伴。在 Google 年报里，这些被定义为浏览器提供商、移动运营商、OEM 厂商以及软件开发者。基本就是 Android 的运营商和 OEM，再加上 Firefox。
David: Yep.
David：对。
Ben: What am I missing? I’m going to guess Firefox is less than a billion. Call it somewhere around half a billion ish.
Ben：我是不是漏了什么？我猜 Firefox 的份额不到 10 亿美元，大概在 5 亿左右。
David: Yeah, there’s probably some version of the old portal deals that still exist, properties on the web that have Google search baked into it.
David：对，可能还有一些旧的门户网站合作还存在，那些网站内置了 Google 搜索。
Ben: Okay, let’s cut 4 billion off for Firefox and the other web properties and other.
Ben：好，那就把 Firefox 和这些网页属性、其他渠道算进去，减掉 40 亿。
David: Okay. 10 billion going to the carriers and OEMs.
David：那就是大约 100 亿支付给运营商和 OEM 厂商。
Ben: It’s actually pretty significant that 10 billion going to carriers and OEMs, it’s half of what they’re paying Apple,
Ben：这其实很重要——给运营商和 OEM 的 100 亿，相当于他们支付给 Apple 的一半。
David: Half of what they’re paying Apple, but for many, many, many more devices.
David：没错，是 Apple 的一半，但对应的是数量多得多的设备。
Ben: Right, clearly the rev share to the carriers and OEMs is a much smaller percent than what they have to pay Apple, I’d guess a quarter. Either way, I actually think after walking all the way through it, the bigger component of this is just de-risking their future. It’s not how many billions, they don’t care about giving 10 billion up for this.
Ben：对，很明显分给运营商和 OEM 的比例比 Apple 要小得多，我估计大概是四分之一。不管怎样，我觉得经过这一番推算后，更重要的其实是去风险，而不是几百亿的数字。为了保护未来，Google 并不在乎付出这 100 亿。
David: As we’ve been saying all episode, Google is more than happy to pay traffic acquisition costs to any and everyone.
David：就像我们整期节目都在说的，Google 乐意为任何人、所有人支付流量获取成本。
Ben: Then direct value that they make from the PlayStore, it actually came out in a lawsuit. In 2019, PlayStore revenue was 11.2 billion, then gross profit was 8.5 billion and 7 billion in operating income. Now 7 billion, not nothing, but still a far cry from Google’s core business of ads from search Gmail and Maps. That same year the core business did almost 100 billion in revenue. Something like 85 billion in gross profit is my best estimate. around 30 ish billion in operating income. Even though the PlayStore made 7 billion in 2019, the important thing is that Android is still primarily protecting the core search ads business and making sure that traffic doesn’t go elsewhere.
Ben：再说 Play Store 的直接收益，有一次诉讼里披露过。2019 年，Play Store 的收入是 112 亿美元，毛利润 85 亿美元，营业利润 70 亿美元。70 亿当然不少，但和 Google 的核心业务比起来差得远——搜索、Gmail 和 Maps 广告业务。同一年核心业务营收接近 1000 亿美元，毛利润大约 850 亿美元，营业利润大约 300 亿美元。即使 Play Store 在 2019 年赚了 70 亿，但最重要的是，Android 的核心作用仍然是保护搜索广告业务，确保流量不会流向别处。
David: This levered Google’s web business into the mobile era, how amazing is that?
David：这让 Google 的 Web 业务顺利杠杆化进入移动时代，多么惊人啊。
Ben: Yeah, that’s true. It probably generated several hundred billion dollars, profit dollars that they may not have had those years otherwise.
Ben：是的，没错。这可能为他们多创造了几千亿美元的利润，否则那些年他们可能拿不到。
David: Yep.
David：没错。
Ben: So I guess what I’m saying is obviously Android was a giant success and the biggest reason, even though they save, I don’t know, 10, 15 billion a year from not having to pay it to Apple. Even though they generate 8 billion, I’m sure at this point it’s bigger. I don’t know, 10, 15 billion a year. Really it’s about just protecting the core, not about saving costs.
Ben：所以我的意思是，Android 显然是一个巨大的成功。最大原因不是他们每年省下了 100 到 150 亿不用交给 Apple，也不是他们能赚到 80 亿、甚至现在可能是 100 到 150 亿的收入。真正的原因在于，它保护了核心，而不是节省成本。
David: And this one, they almost missed it. They hadn’t bought Android when they had like that window was closing fast.
David：而这件事，他们差点就错过了。如果当时没有收购 Android，那个窗口很快就会关上。
Ben: And Microsoft did miss it.
Ben：而微软的确错过了。
David: Fast, fast, fast. Yep.
David：快，非常快，他们就被甩开了。没错。
Ben: At some point, Andy Rubin leaves and Sundar actually takes over the combined teams. Our hero here, who is starting to gather more responsibilities, was just the application clients and then it was Chrome and in 2013 it becomes Chrome and Android. Whenever you see Sundar on stage, he is very proud of Google’s two open platforms. Today there are more than 3 billion active Android devices. I think it’s even higher than that now.
Ben：后来 Andy Rubin 离开了，Sundar 接手了合并后的团队。我们的“主角”逐渐承担起更多职责，一开始只是应用客户端，然后是 Chrome，到 2013 年时已经是 Chrome 加 Android。每当你看到 Sundar 出现在台上，他总是非常自豪地提到 Google 的两个开放平台。今天，全球活跃的 Android 设备超过 30 亿台，我觉得现在可能还要更多。
David: It was just silly. There are like 7 billion people in the world. They’re active over 3 billion active Android phones.
David：这太惊人了。全世界大概 70 亿人口，活跃的 Android 手机就有 30 多亿台。
Ben: You’re probably thinking coming into this 2010, 2011 era, they’re really feeling themselves over there at Google. We’ve jumped over some failures, but it’s been hit after hit after hit in a lot of these areas that really matter. Just like we talked about on the Microsoft episodes, it really doesn’t matter when you fail and how many times you fail, even the size of your failures, if your hits are these giant world changing platform type tech businesses that endure for decades and that’s what they had on their hands.
Ben：你可能会想，进入 2010、2011 年的时候，Google 内部肯定觉得自己无比成功。我们跳过了一些失败的项目，但在真正关键的领域，他们接连不断地产生了一个又一个爆款。就像我们在微软那几期节目里说的，其实失败多少次、失败多大都无所谓，只要你的成功是那种能改变世界、并且能延续数十年的平台级科技业务，那你就赢了。而这正是当时 Google 手里的牌。
David: And it sure looked at this time like there was another big technology category out there,
David：而且在当时，看起来还有另一个巨大科技领域机会正在出现。
Ben: Of social
Ben：社交。
David: That Google should be playing in of a similar size called social.
David：Google 应该也要参与进来，这就是和搜索一样规模的“社交”。
Ben: Yes.
Ben：没错。
David: And this is the Google Plus story. I’d say rest in peace, but I don’t think anybody misses it.
David：于是就有了 Google+ 的故事。我本该说“安息吧”，但我想没人会怀念它。
Ben: All right. Well I want to start this story the way that people expect us to start this story. I have a little bit of a different take on it as we get partway in.
Ben：好吧，我想按照大家预期的方式来开启这个故事。不过讲到中途时，我会给出一个有点不同的观点。
David: Great.
David：好啊。
Ben: Google had been interested in social for a long time. They weren’t blind blind to it in 2007, they tried to do open social and they basically failed at that because Facebook didn’t participate and Facebook was social. Everything else combined didn’t really matter.
Ben：Google 很早就对社交有兴趣。他们并不是到 2007 年才意识到这个机会。当时他们尝试做过 Open Social，但基本失败了，因为 Facebook 没有参与。而 Facebook 就是“社交”，其他平台加在一起都无关紧要。
David: You didn’t start where I thought you were going to start. The craziest thing is that Google had Facebook before Facebook, Orkut.
David：你并没有从我以为的地方开始。最疯狂的是，其实 Google 在 Facebook 之前就有一个类似 Facebook 的产品——Orkut。
Ben: Yeah, that’s true. Which I think was like a 20% time project then blew up in Brazil.
Ben：对，没错。我记得那是一个“20% 自由时间项目”，结果在巴西彻底火了。
David: Totally. There was a Turkish engineer who worked for Google named Orkut Büyükkökten, and his passion was social networking. Friendster was a thing at the time, January, 2004, before Gmail, before the Google IPO, before Facebook launches on the Harvard campus, in his 20% time, he launches a social network within Google called Orkut. It didn’t become that big in America, but it got at its peak, I think 300 million users. It was the biggest social network in Brazil, the biggest social network in India. Google was like, eh, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem that important.
David：完全正确。当时 Google 有一位土耳其工程师叫 Orkut Büyükkökten，他的热情就是社交网络。当时 Friendster 正在流行。2004 年 1 月——比 Gmail 发布早，比 Google IPO 早，也比 Facebook 在哈佛校园上线早——他利用 20% 自由时间，在 Google 内部推出了一个社交网络，叫 Orkut。它在美国没发展起来，但在巅峰时期有大约 3 亿用户。它是巴西最大的社交网络，也是印度最大的社交网络。但 Google 的态度是：“嗯，不确定啊，这东西好像没那么重要。”
Ben: Open Social Event in 2007, Google Wave in 2009. By the way, can we just pause and say 2009, this is like right after Chrome, right after Android. Google is a big place and Google is a siloed place at this point. It’s crazy that Android is happening over in this other building and there’s this fight with Apple and that’s the same time that they’re doing Google Wave. It’s weird that this is all concurrent. The company was focused in a lot of different directions.
Ben：2007 年是 Open Social，2009 年是 Google Wave。顺便说一句，我们先暂停一下——2009 年正好是 Chrome 发布、Android 起飞之后。Google 当时已经是一家很大的公司，而且内部已经呈现出“烟囱化”的特点。很疯狂，对吧？Android 在另一栋楼里如火如荼，和 Apple 的大战已经打响，而与此同时，公司竟然还在做 Google Wave。这些事情同时发生，感觉很奇怪。公司当时的注意力分散在很多不同的方向。
David: But it was so decentralized, it actually worked well.
David：但正因为去中心化，反而运转得很好。
Ben: It worked early. It worked really well to get all this stuff off the ground.
Ben：在早期，这种模式确实非常奏效，能把很多新东西快速推出来。
David: It was so interesting doing the research for this episode because so many of the people we talked to, even people who were leaders of a lot of these products, because Google was so decentralized and so siloed, they were focused on their thing on Android or Chrome, whatever. We’d ask what was the overall strategy? What was the through line to all of this? And we kept getting answers like, well it was just googly. People worked on what they thought was cool and it was good for the web. That is absolutely true. But there was this all overlay of this very, very thin layer of strategy that held the whole web together.
David：在准备这期节目的时候，我们做了很多采访，特别有意思的是，即便是那些产品的负责人，由于 Google 当时高度分散、部门林立，他们其实只专注于自己那块——Android 或 Chrome 等等。当我们问他们：“整体战略是什么？这些事的主线是什么？”我们反复听到的答案是：“这就是 Google 风格（Googly）。大家做自己觉得酷的东西，而且对 Web 有好处。”这当然没错。但在这之上，确实有一层非常薄的战略，将整个 Web 联系在一起。
Ben: I think that the strategy was pretty tight at the top level and they just didn’t actually need to communicate it down very far. Most people that I talked to said, I don’t know, I was just trying to build great products that people love.
Ben：我觉得顶层战略其实很紧凑，但他们并不需要向下传达得很详细。我采访的大多数人都说：“我不知道啊，我只是想做出用户喜欢的好产品。”
David: Right. I think it was a feature, not a bug. Is what I’m saying, that it didn’t communicate down because it let the teams below build really, really great products.
David：对。我认为这不是缺陷，而是特性。没有把战略过度传递下去，反而让下面的团队能专注于打造非常优秀的产品。
Ben: Yep, never really think about how is this going to help the ads business? And that was okay. Wave failed because really nobody knew what to use it for despite a dazzling and wonderful first introductory video buzz. Then in 2010 that created this big privacy debacle right at launch. It was super short-lived that shut down. Then in 2010, Urs Hölzle, very senior Google at this point, probably distinguished engineer, senior vice president.
Ben：是的，大家从来不会去想“这对广告业务有什么帮助？”——而且这没问题。Wave 失败的原因是，尽管最初的演示视频炫目又精彩，但没人知道它到底能用来干什么。然后在 2010 年，Buzz 一上线就闹出严重的隐私丑闻，很快就被叫停。同样在 2010 年，Google 的高级人物 Urs Hölzle——当时可能是杰出工程师、也是高级副总裁——出手了。
David: The guy who created the distributed infrastructure.
David：对，就是那个创造了分布式基础设施的人。
Ben: Right after the buzz failure, he is inspired to write this memo, like the Bill Gates 1995 internet memo. There’s a sea change going on. The internet is becoming more people oriented. Social media could be a problem for us. The social media challenge requires a decisive and substantial response involving a significant deployment of personnel right away. Essentially the internet was now starting to organize around people in this web 2.0 era, not just pages and applications with the things that were the domain of Google.
Ben：Buzz 失败后，他受到启发写了一份备忘录，就像比尔·盖茨 1995 年的互联网宣言一样。他指出：正在发生一场巨变。互联网正变得以人为中心。社交媒体可能会成为 Google 的问题。社交媒体的挑战需要果断且大规模的回应，必须立即调配大量人员。本质上，在 Web 2.0 时代，互联网开始围绕“人”来组织，而不仅仅是网页和应用——这些才是 Google 的传统领域。
Ben: Here’s why I want to pause David, and I’m going to take it in a little bit different direction than I think you’re probably expecting, which is so therefore they went after Facebook. I think it’s a little bit more related to the palace intrigue at Google and a little bit less on the nail strategic. If you zoom out and look at the company right now, it’s pretty fragmented. It’s got different fiefdoms with big personalities at the top of each of these fiefdoms, Android, Chrome. Search, YouTube developer relations, trying to will a Google platform into existence. Different products with competing goals. Ultimately they all help Google’s overarching mission, but there are a lot of elbows starting to come out.
Ben：接下来我想暂停一下，David，并带到一个你可能没预期的方向。大家通常会说：所以 Google 去挑战 Facebook。但我认为这更多和 Google 内部的“宫廷政治”有关，而不完全是精准的战略。如果你拉远镜头来看，当时公司内部其实是很碎片化的。有不同的“封地”，每个封地上面都有个性鲜明的领导人：Android、Chrome、Search、YouTube、开发者关系，各自都在努力把 Google 打造成一个平台。不同产品有相互竞争的目标，最终它们都服务于 Google 的总体使命，但内部已经开始出现很多“碰撞”。
Ben: Android was its own fiefdom, totally off on its own island, fighting an existential battle. Chrome is starting to do the same stuff as Android. They’re building their own operating system. It’s not clear what belongs in an Android camp versus a Chrome camp. Sundar hasn’t unified them yet. Search, very protected separate team, especially the core people doing search ranking and monetization. No one touches them. YouTube is totally separate. Gmail is massive and it really is the only one in 2009-10 at the company that owns identity.
Ben：Android 是一个独立的“封地”，孤立作战，面对生死存亡的战斗。Chrome 也开始做和 Android 类似的事情——他们也在造操作系统。到底哪些属于 Android 阵营，哪些属于 Chrome 阵营，并不清晰。当时 Sundar 还没有把它们统一起来。Search 是高度保护的独立团队，特别是做搜索排序和商业化的核心人员，没人能碰。YouTube 完全独立。Gmail 则规模庞大，并且在 2009-10 年间是公司里唯一真正拥有“用户身份体系”的产品。
Ben: Since it’s the only Google property that you actually have to log into. YouTube has its own entirely different username and password system. It’s a mess, right? It’s a complete mess. Larry’s sensing this, he’s not CEO at the time, but he is realizing the company’s all over the place. He decides he’s just going to come back and get the company on track. I think Google Plus is just the thing he picked as the single thing to try to galvanize and unify the company around. No matter what they picked and how they executed it, it was going to create a lot of carnage.
Ben：因为 Gmail 是唯一一个你必须登录的 Google 产品。YouTube 当时还有一套完全独立的用户名和密码系统。乱套了，对吧？完全是一团糟。Larry 察觉到了这一点，他当时还不是 CEO，但他意识到公司已经四分五裂。他决定要回来重新让公司步入正轨。我认为 Google+ 就是他选的那个“统一抓手”，试图用它来凝聚公司。不管他们选什么、怎么执行，这都会带来很多混乱和“牺牲品”。
David: I can buy that.
David：我认同这个说法。
Ben: There was a big shift that needed to happen in one way, shape, or form. Google Plus ended up being the ugly thing they did.
Ben：当时确实需要一次大的转型，以某种形式来完成。而 Google+ 最终成了他们做出的那个“丑陋的选择”。
David: Yeah. A recentralizing of authority, so to speak, within the company.
David：没错，可以说是公司内部的一次“权力再集中”。
Ben: Right, in May, 2010, they get the top 50 people at Google’s leadership assembled to discuss what to do.
Ben：对。2010 年 5 月，Google 把公司前 50 位高管召集在一起，讨论接下来要怎么办。
David: The argument for this is this is more of a convenient crisis model.
David：有人认为，这其实是一种“便利的危机模型”。
Ben: It might be a real crisis also, but it’s also exactly what you’re saying, David. Officially then in January, 2011, Google announces Larry Page will return as CEO in a few months. That April right away Larry moves his office into what would become the Google Plus building.
Ben：它可能是真危机，但也正如你说的，David。2011 年 1 月，Google 正式宣布 Larry Page 将在几个月后回归担任 CEO。同年 4 月，Larry 马上就把办公室搬进了后来成为 Google+ 大楼的地方。
David: Wow.
David：哇。
Ben: Yep, they had just come out of this chapter, they’ve got this amazing business. The whole Chrome and Bing thing was defense against Microsoft. Android was defense against Apple and Microsoft and Google Plus is now defense against Facebook. Legitimately, you could imagine a world where social ends up becoming way more important and the only places to put ads and the places where people are asking for information. There was rumors for a long time Facebook was going to build a search engine. You have the attention, you can hijack it and do other stuff with it.
Ben：对。当时他们刚刚结束上一阶段，手里握着一个了不起的业务。Chrome 与 Bing 的竞争，是对微软的防御；Android，是对 Apple 和微软的防御；而 Google+，则是对 Facebook 的防御。完全可以想象一种未来：社交会变得更重要，甚至成为投放广告和用户寻找信息的唯一场所。当时长期有传言说 Facebook 要做搜索引擎——他们已经拥有用户注意力，可以劫持流量做其他事情。
David: These were walled gardens, Facebook was a walled garden. Google search couldn’t index what happened inside of Facebook. You could see how this is an existential threat. You said like the traffic is growing like oh my gosh, what if this becomes AOL all over again?
David：这些都是“围墙花园”。Facebook 就是一个围墙花园，Google 搜索无法索引 Facebook 内部发生的事情。你能看出这对 Google 是一种生存威胁。你说过流量在增长——天啊，如果这又变成另一个 AOL 怎么办？
Ben: Right. That’s the main thing. One tier down from that is Facebook doesn’t even allow other ad servers.
Ben：对，这就是核心问题。其次，Facebook 甚至不允许其他广告服务器进入。
David: At least with AOL, we could do a deal with them and power their monetization. Facebook just hired Sheryl Sandberg. They’re doing this themselves.
David：至少当年和 AOL，我们还能合作，帮他们做商业化。但 Facebook 已经请来了 Sheryl Sandberg，他们要自己来做。
Ben: They’re doing it all in house. Closed loop system. Google plus, what was Google Plus and how did it get built? It was a one year sprint following this point, the 50 getting together. It was built in a very, very un googly way. It was not organic David, like these passion projects you’re talking about.
Ben：他们要全都自己做，形成一个闭环系统。那么，Google+ 是什么，又是怎么建起来的呢？就是在那次 50 人会议之后的一年冲刺产物。它的构建方式非常、非常“不像 Google”。David，它不是你刚才说的那种有机成长、充满热情的小项目。
David: It was instilled from on high down upon all of the products.
David：它是自上而下强行灌输到所有产品里的。
Ben: It was not based on a core technical insight, it was not consensus driven, it was top down command and control style led by the person that you mentioned earlier, Vic Gundotra. Now who was Vic Gundotra.
Ben：它并不是基于某个核心技术洞察，也不是共识驱动，而是自上而下的命令控制式项目。带头的人就是你之前提到的 Vic Gundotra。那么，Vic Gundotra 是谁呢？
David: Vic was this interesting character. Like we said earlier, he had been leading Google’s developer efforts in the pre-Android days.
David：Vic 是个很有意思的人。就像我们之前说的，在 Android 出现之前，他领导着 Google 的开发者关系团队。
Ben: And he was the front man. He was the mc at Google IO.
Ben：他是“前台人物”，是 Google I/O 大会的主持人。
David: If you were looking for somebody to communicate and push down this new top down vision across the company, he would be a logical choice.
David：如果你要找一个人来在公司内部传达并推行这种自上而下的新愿景，他就是最合适的人选。
Ben: Yes. I don’t know if he raised his hand. I don’t know if Larry said, hey, I really think you should do this on our behalf. But what is definitely true is it became Vic’s thing and Eric and Larry and Sergey step back and let Vic run with it. He was given an enormous amount of institutional authority.
Ben：是的。我不知道是不是他主动请缨，也不知道是不是 Larry 对他说：“嘿，我真的觉得你应该代表我们来做这件事。”但可以肯定的是，这最终成了 Vic 的项目，而 Eric、Larry 和 Sergey 都退到一边，让 Vic 来主导。他被赋予了巨大的组织权力。
David: We should say too, you alluded to this earlier, what was Google Plus? It wasn’t just a social product in and of itself. It was baked into all of Google. It was inserted into every other product that Google had. There’s a quote from Vic to the press at the time about this, about what Google Plus is. He says, this is the next generation of Google. It is Google plus one.
David：我们还应该说，你之前提到过，Google+ 并不仅仅是一个独立的社交产品。它被内嵌进了整个 Google，被强行插入到 Google 拥有的每一个产品里。当时 Vic 在接受媒体采访时，有一句话特别有代表性。他说：“这是 Google 的下一代，它是 Google 加一（Google Plus One）。”
Ben: There are a lot of these really.
Ben：类似这种说法很多。
David: Corny. I’m crazy even saying that, gives me the heebie-jeebies.
David：太肉麻了。我光是复述都觉得尴尬，起鸡皮疙瘩。
Ben: It was a Facebook style thing, but its goal, in addition to being a Facebook style thing, was to leverage all of Google’s assets and make all Google things, Google plus things. They moved big headcounts out of each team and onto the Google Plus team. They reached deep to integrate with these other products. It’s very clear who the boss was. In all these negotiations, you had a clear mandate, like your job this half year, this year is do these Google plus integrations?
Ben：它是一个仿 Facebook 的东西，但目标不仅仅是做个 Facebook 克隆，而是要利用 Google 的所有资产，把所有 Google 的东西都变成 Google+ 的东西。他们从各个团队抽调了大量人力到 Google+ 团队，深入到其他产品里强制做整合。谁是老大非常明确。在所有这些谈判中，要求也很清晰：你这半年、这一年的工作任务，就是把 Google+ 集成进去。
David: Your OKR. Google famously ran on OKRs, was now all about plus, pluses.
David：你的 OKR——Google 著名的绩效体系——此时全都围绕 Google+ 展开了。
Ben: Danny Crichton, who would go on to become the managing editor at TechCrunch at this point in time, was a Google intern. He wrote about it later and he said, due to this integration, much of it was forced. The culture around the company at Google had become deeply poisonous by the time I started, I still remember talking to one member of the Picasa team who was a Google’s photo repository that they bought, who told me to F off when I asked about integrating Google Plus into the product. He was hardly the only one. Company-Wide bonuses were based on the success of Google Plus, they even went so far as to put little plus one buttons on mobile advertisements. Like those little banner ads at the bottom.
Ben：Danny Crichton，当时还是 Google 的实习生，后来成了 TechCrunch 的主编。他之后写过一篇文章，说这种集成大多是被强制的。当他加入时，Google 的公司文化已经变得非常有毒。他记得和 Picasa 团队（Google 收购的照片库产品）的一个成员聊天时，问到是否要把 Google+ 集成进去，对方直接回了一句“F off”。而且这并不是个例。当时整个公司的奖金都和 Google+ 的成功挂钩。他们甚至把小小的“+1”按钮放到了移动广告上，就像底部的小横幅广告。
David: Yes. This is the best Google had bought AdMob. Yes. the mobile display ad units.
David：对。当时 Google 已经收购了 AdMob，就是那些移动展示广告单元。
Ben: You could plus one it, who the hell wants to plus one an ad. This is like Facebook’s like button, but Google Plus’s version and they’re like, any Google thing should be plus oneable. They even reached into YouTube comments and YouTube comments became Google plus posts, they almost killed the golden goose.
Ben：你甚至可以对广告点“+1”。可谁他妈会想给广告点“+1”呢？这就像 Facebook 的“点赞”按钮，但这是 Google+ 的版本。他们认为任何 Google 的东西都应该能“+1”。他们甚至把 YouTube 评论也整合进来，让 YouTube 评论直接变成 Google+ 帖子。结果差点把这只“下金蛋的鹅”给弄死了。
David: Right? They almost killed all of these golden gooses that they had.
David：没错，他们差点把自己所有的“下金蛋的鹅”都给杀了。
Ben: Yes and so Google Plus from a product perspective, it wasn’t just Facebook. They brought a lot of really interesting ideas. Google Hangouts came out of this. Google Photos came out of this. There were these things called Sparks, they really rethought a lot of social networking. The issue is nobody really wanted to rethink social networking. That was a Google priority to get people to use this. Not a user-driven one, they tried to essentially put rocket fuel onto scale. Something that really didn’t have product market fit.
Ben：是的，从产品角度看，Google+ 不只是一个 Facebook 克隆。他们带来了很多有趣的想法，比如 Google Hangouts、Google Photos，甚至还有一个叫 Sparks 的东西。他们确实重新思考了很多社交网络的形式。问题在于，没有人真的想重新思考社交网络。这是 Google 的优先事项，而不是用户驱动的。他们试图用火箭燃料推动规模扩张，但产品根本没有找到市场契合点。
David: Well, I really think the key huge mistake with Google plus,one of the huge mistakes with Google Plus was.
David：我认为 Google+ 的一个巨大错误，甚至说是关键性的错误在于——
Ben: You don’t need a Facebook when there’s already Facebook.
Ben：当 Facebook 已经存在时，你不需要再来一个 Facebook。
David: Not even that Facebook was already dying. Mark Zuckerberg had already realized that the future of social was not what it looked like at this point in time. As Google is launching Google Plus.
David：甚至更严重的是，当时 Facebook 自己已经意识到旧的社交模式在“衰亡”。Mark Zuckerberg 已经认识到社交的未来并不是当时的样子。而就在 Google 推出 Google+ 的时候……
Ben: 2011, June, 2011.
Ben：2011 年 6 月，Google+ 上线。
David: 2011, 2012, 2013, these were the big years for Google Plus. What is Mark Zuckerberg doing? He’s buying Instagram. He’s buying WhatsApp and he’s remaking essentially Facebook into what meta would become of like, hey, what we used to think of as social networking has bifurcated into two things. Public media, IE YouTube, Instagram, UGC and private messaging. Here’s Google.
David：2011、2012、2013 年是 Google+ 的关键年份。而这时 Mark Zuckerberg 在做什么？他在收购 Instagram，他在收购 WhatsApp，他在把 Facebook 重塑成后来 Meta 的样子：社交网络分化为两条路径——公共媒体（比如 YouTube、Instagram、UGC）和私人消息。与此同时，这边是 Google……
Ben: Launching, I kid you not, this is the craziest thing, Desktop first. With a desktop only UI to arrange your friends into circles.
Ben：Google 居然在发布一个“桌面优先”的产品——真的没开玩笑。一个只有桌面端 UI 的系统，让你把朋友分类到一个个“圈子”（Circles）里。
David: Circles. That’s right. Circles.
David：对，Circles。就是“圈子”。
Ben: Which is on its own. It’s such a computer science way of thinking about it. Oh, my friends are in sometimes overlapping, sometimes not overlapping groups that I want to carefully label so that I can identify deterministically who I want to share what with.
Ben：这本身就是一种典型的计算机科学思维方式——“我的朋友分布在一些有交集或无交集的群组里，我需要小心地打上标签，这样我就能确定地知道我要和谁分享什么。”
David: Right. Nobody wants to do that. Here’s the thing that just leapt out to me about Google Plus. This was Google’s Windows Longhorn/Windows Vista. In our Microsoft saga, we talked about how Vista/Longhorn was the most damaging thing to the company because of the distraction and the siphoning of resources and the best talent away from working on what really mattered. Now the question I was asking myself and others in research of, okay, what were the negative consequences of that? With Microsoft, it was clear Google who was the negative consequence. The whole reason Microsoft let Google fester from their perspective for all these years and didn’t kneecap them was they were tied up with all the distraction from Vista.
David：对，但没人愿意这么干。这就是 Google+ 给我的最大感受：它是 Google 的 Windows Longhorn / Windows Vista。在我们的微软篇里，我们说过 Vista/Longhorn 对微软伤害最大，因为它分散注意力、抽走资源和顶尖人才，让他们没法专注在真正重要的事情上。于是我就在研究时问自己和别人：那 Google+ 的负面后果是什么呢？在微软那边答案很清楚——受害者就是 Google。微软眼睁睁看着 Google 茁壮成长，而没有出手遏制，就是因为他们自己被 Vista 分散了精力。
Ben: And losing relevance with developers because they keep selling them a platform that kept not shipping. Then when it eventually did ship, it wasn’t good.
Ben：而且微软还因此失去了开发者的信任，因为他们一直在推销一个总是跳票的平台，最终好不容易发布了，结果还不行。
David: I started trying to figure out like, okay, what are the similar consequences for Google of the Plus era? And at first I couldn’t really think of anything. I was like, oh well Android’s pretty good. YouTube’s pretty good, Chrome’s pretty good. Search is still pretty good. Gemini, AI comes out later, it’s all pretty good. But there are two things.
David：于是我开始试着思考：Google+ 时代对 Google 的负面后果是什么？起初我想不出什么。因为 Android 还不错，YouTube 还不错，Chrome 还不错，搜索也还不错。后来 Gemini 和 AI 出来了，也还不错。但最后我发现有两个问题。
Ben: Messaging probably I bet in a Nonplus world, WhatsApp, something like that could be owned by Google.
Ben：第一个是即时通讯。我敢打赌，如果没有 Google+，WhatsApp 这种东西很可能会被 Google 收购。
David: Two things. One is messaging. Totally missed messaging. When I was a business school student at Stanford, Eric was now executive chairman and he started co-teaching a class at GSP. I took his class. I was one of his students during these years. It was awesome. It was one of the best classes I ever took. The quarter when I was taking the class was when Facebook bought WhatsApp. I remember Eric coming into class right after it happened and just being like, God, we missed it. We totally missed it. That’s because Google was distracted, that was one thing.
David：有两个方面。第一是即时通讯。Google 完全错过了。在我斯坦福商学院读书的时候，Eric 已经是执行董事长，他当时在 GSP（研究生商学院）共同教授一门课程。我选了他的课，那是我上过的最好课程之一。就在我上这门课的那个季度，Facebook 收购了 WhatsApp。我还记得 Eric 走进教室时就说：“天哪，我们错过了，完全错过了。”原因就是 Google 当时分心了。
David: Then I realized the other as bigger or bigger thing is cloud Google should have been massively investing in cloud. There are all sorts of reasons that they didn’t, we’re going to save this for the next episode. But I was like, yeah, especially think about where the impetus for this came from, from [inaudible 03:30:20] from this memo. The [inaudible 03:30:22] memo, as it’s known [inaudible 03:30:24] should have been focused on Cloud. He should not have been focused on social. Google had the wrong strategy in Cloud for many years and as a result, that’s why their Cloud business is way behind Amazon and Microsoft.
David：然后我意识到，第二个问题，甚至比第一个更严重——云计算。Google 当时本该在云上大举投资。但他们没有，原因有很多，我们会留到下一期节目再讲。但我当时就想，尤其是考虑到这一切的起点——那份著名的备忘录——其实应该把精力放在 Cloud 上，而不是社交。Google 在云计算上的战略多年是错误的，结果就是，他们的云业务远远落后于 Amazon 和 Microsoft。
Ben: And maybe they turned some talent, maybe there was some good people that got burned by the culture souring. You could argue this destroyed product velocity. People complain today that Google’s always working on really interesting technology and they just never get cool products out the door.
Ben：而且可能他们还流失了一些人才。也许一些优秀的人被当时恶化的公司文化“烧伤”了。可以说，这摧毁了 Google 的产品速度。今天人们常抱怨 Google：总是在研究一些很有意思的技术，但就是无法推出真正酷的产品。
David: That is by far the biggest complaint. You hear about Google from.
David：这是迄今为止关于 Google 最大的抱怨。
Ben: Slow and big and bureaucratic.
Ben：行动缓慢、臃肿、官僚化。
David: Yep. Folks on the inside and outside these days is just too slow and yeah. That’s probably the biggest negative consequences.
David：没错。不论是公司内部还是外部的人，现在普遍觉得 Google 太慢了。这大概就是 Google+ 时代带来的最大负面后果。
Ben: Maybe you could trace that here.
Ben：也许你可以把原因追溯到那时。
David: I bet you can because think about it before this. We just be this whole episode talking about all these amazing things they were building and shipping and acquiring and transforming.
David：我敢说可以。想想在此之前，我们整期节目都在讲他们做的那些令人惊叹的事：不断推出、收购、转型的新产品。
Ben: Until Gemini, I actually don’t know where Gemini Stacks, is it a third place product?
Ben：直到 Gemini 出现之前，我真的说不清 Gemini 究竟算不算是一个“第三阵营”的产品？
David: Still a question mark.
David：这还是个问号。
Ben: Until Gemini. What great breakthrough consumer service did they launch after Google Plus?
Ben：在 Gemini 之前，Google 在 Google+ 之后还推出过什么突破性的消费者服务吗？
David: I got nothing.
David：我想不出来。
Ben: That’s pretty wild.
Ben：这真的很疯狂。
David: After having this incredible 10 year run
David：在经历了那 10 年辉煌之后。
Ben: And there was a lot of stuff they tried. I think some things for Android users, think about Google now that predated Google Assistant, maybe Google Home.
Ben：他们也尝试了很多东西，比如给 Android 用户推出的一些功能，比如 Google Now（Google Assistant 的前身），还有 Google Home。
David: These are not world changing products.
David：但这些都不是改变世界的产品。
Ben: It’s funny, the thing that I keep thinking about from the Google plus failure is this big existential Facebook threat they were worried about, there was a strategy memo in 2013 where Neal Mohan said there is a risk that Facebook becomes the starting point of the Internet. Google knew social was the future and tried to win it, but interestingly they didn’t and they’ve been fine.
Ben：很有意思，我一直在想 Google+ 失败这件事。当时 Google 非常担心 Facebook 带来的生存威胁。2013 年有一份战略备忘录，Neal Mohan 在里面写道：“存在一个风险，那就是 Facebook 会成为互联网的起点。”Google 明知道社交是未来，并试图赢下它。但有趣的是，他们没赢，但结果完全没事。
David: Right. It was all totally fine.
David：对，结果一点问题都没有。
Ben: And Facebook was really freaked out too that Google was going to come in and win it. Google was like this giant and Facebook was recently public, going through their own problems. Even though it was like a nothing burger and Google Plus was a footnote in history. Both companies were completely all in on this big battle. Ultimately Google wasn’t a credible threat to Facebook.
Ben：而且 Facebook 当时也很害怕 Google 会杀进来并赢下这场战斗。Google 是巨头，而 Facebook 刚刚上市，还在经历自己的问题。尽管最终 Google+ 什么也不是，只是历史的一个脚注，但当时两家公司都把这场战争看得极其重要。最后证明，Google 并不是 Facebook 的可信威胁。
David: Facebook went in a different direction anyway.
David：Facebook 反正也走向了另一个方向。
Ben: Facebook went in a different direction. It’s almost like the end of Burn After Reading. Have you ever seen that movie?
Ben：对，Facebook 另辟蹊径。这感觉几乎就像电影《阅后即焚》的结局。你看过吗？
David: No.
David：没看过。
Ben: I won’t spoil anything. But the feeling you have at the end is you just watched all this crazy stuff happen and you’re like, whoa, wait, did any of that matter? That’s how Google Plus feels to me. Google Plus did have two great surviving products Hangouts, which became Meet and Photos.
Ben：那我就不剧透了。但看完之后的感觉是：你刚看了一堆疯狂的事，然后心想“等等，这些事真的重要吗？”这就是我对 Google+ 的感觉。不过，Google+ 确实留下了两个伟大的存活产品：Hangouts（后来变成 Meet）和 Photos。
David: Yep. Photos is a billion user product today.
David：对，Photos 今天已经是一个拥有十亿用户的产品了。
Ben: Huge. The biggest thing and I think this is like getting back to my original postulate of Never Waste a Crisis. You know what we have today, Google accounts.
Ben：没错，规模巨大。但我觉得最大的收获，回到我最初的观点“不要浪费一场危机”。今天我们有了什么？Google 账户。
David: Hmm, yep.
David：嗯，对。
Ben: You know what Google is today? It’s one company. It’s not these little fiefdoms here and there of different people amassing power and building things in different ways. I’m sure there’s still plenty of that. Everything about Google got more unified from this era. They have a failed product and a smoking crater to show for it. But a unified look across all their products, a unified login that would I think be pretty important for them going forward.
Ben：你知道今天的 Google 是什么吗？它是一家公司，而不是以前那种分散的“封地”，各个领导各自集权、各搞各的产品。虽然现在可能还有一点这种情况，但从那个时代开始，Google 在各方面变得更加统一了。虽然 Google+ 失败了，留下了一个“冒烟的弹坑”，但它带来了一个统一的产品外观、统一的登录体系，这对他们未来非常重要。
Ben: Anyway, my snarky finish on all this is, it’s tempting to say Google lost in social because Google Plus was this giant smoking crater. But actually all of social ended up pivoting to either look like messaging or like YouTube, anyway. YouTube is the winning paradigm in “social media and UGC media”. They should have just done nothing and just watch the money printer go burr.
Ben：总之，我对这一切的讽刺性总结是：人们容易说 Google 在社交上失败了，因为 Google+ 留下了一个巨大的“冒烟弹坑”。但实际上，整个社交领域最终都转向了两种形态：要么是即时通讯，要么是像 YouTube 这样的 UGC 公共媒体。YouTube 才是“社交媒体与 UGC 媒体”的赢家。他们其实完全可以什么都不做，安静地看着自家的印钞机哗哗作响。
David: Yep. To put a bow on it Vic ends up leaving the company in 2014. In 2019 they finally shut Google Plus down. There’s a blog post about it, they cite a big security breach as the reason like, oh no, we’ve discovered there’s this huge security vulnerability, thus we need to shut down all of Google Plus.
David：是的，总结一下，Vic 在 2014 年离开公司。2019 年他们终于彻底关闭了 Google+。当时有一篇博客文章，理由是发现了一个重大的安全漏洞，说“哦不，我们发现了巨大的安全隐患，所以必须关闭整个 Google+。”
Ben: Dude, it’s so bad. There’s been 50 Google products that all sound the same. They launched this one called Currents at one point and when they shut Google Plus down, this is horrible. Many people wrote like articles as posts on Google Plus and they’re just gone.
Ben：伙计，这真的很糟糕。Google 曾经推出过大概 50 个名字听起来都差不多的产品。有一个甚至叫 Currents。而当他们关闭 Google+ 的时候，最糟糕的是：很多人当年在 Google+ 上写了文章，结果就这样全都没了。
David: Yeah, that’s right. Actually, it was an impediment to doing some of the research for this episode because these posts are gone.
David：对，没错。实际上这对我们准备这期节目的研究也造成了阻碍，因为那些帖子全都没了。
Ben: If you go to plus.google.com/anything, it just redirects you to Google Currents. However, Google Currents has now been shut down. It is a Google workspace blog post announcing the Currents shutdown. Every time you click any Google Plus link anywhere on the web, you go to a blog post that tells you about the shutdown of Currents. That’s the most googly thing. They got to do a better job with those. It’s our last section, the bridge to Alphabet.
Ben：如果你现在访问 plus.google.com/任何路径，它会直接跳转到 Google Currents。但问题是 Currents 现在也已经被关闭了。现在点任何 Google+ 的链接，都会被重定向到一篇 Google Workspace 的博客文章，告诉你 Currents 关闭了。这简直是最“Google 式”的事了。他们真的应该处理得更好。好了，接下来是最后一部分：通往 Alphabet 的桥梁。
David: It’s clear it’s time for a new era at Google. The company announces that it is reinventing itself, is becoming an entirely different company. Google is becoming Alphabet in August of 2015. Larry Page will be the CEO of this new Alphabet holding company. Sundar Pichai will be the CEO of Google, which will be by far the largest and really primary operating company within Alphabet. Interestingly, they didn’t at all decide to split up YouTube or any of the various. They just spent all these years unifying it all. That’s all Google.
David：很明显，Google 当时需要进入一个新时代。公司宣布要彻底重塑自己，变成一家全新的公司。2015 年 8 月，Google 成为 Alphabet。Larry Page 将出任新控股公司 Alphabet 的 CEO，而 Sundar Pichai 将出任 Google 的 CEO，Google 会是 Alphabet 旗下规模最大、也是最主要的运营公司。有趣的是，他们并没有决定拆分 YouTube 或其他业务，而是把多年来做的整合全都保留了下来。这些依然统统算作 Google。
Ben: They broke out Google X.
Ben：他们单独拆分了 Google X。
David: Yes, Google X, they broke out. Waymo is still part of X at this point in time that would later spin out as now part of Alphabet on its own. But the other bets including an Alphabet, really quite clever, the nomenclature here.
David：是的，Google X 被单独划出。当时 Waymo 还在 X 里面，后来才独立出来，成为 Alphabet 的一个独立部分。而“其他赌注”（Other Bets）也被放进了 Alphabet 里——不得不说这个命名真的很巧妙。
David: Were Nest that they had just acquired Google Fiber, Calico and Verily. They’re two health companies, Google X Lab and then Google Ventures and capital G, the two investing entities that they had. Then really the question is like, okay, well why did they do this? Why did Larry become CEO of Alphabet? Why did Sundar become CEO of Google? I think this had to happen as like a healing after Google Plus, Sundar was a leader who had real cred going back to the early days and with Chrome and with Android, the core great products, two of these core great products, platforms that we’ve talked about the whole episode that have really driven the Google flywheel all along.
David：这些“其他赌注”包括他们刚收购的 Nest、Google Fiber，以及两家健康公司 Calico 和 Verily，还有 Google X 实验室，以及他们的两大投资实体——Google Ventures 和 CapitalG。真正的问题是：为什么要这么做？为什么 Larry 要当 Alphabet 的 CEO，而 Sundar 要当 Google 的 CEO？我认为这是 Google+ 之后的一次“疗愈”。Sundar 是一个拥有真正声望的领导人，可以追溯到早期。他通过 Chrome 和 Android，这两个我们整期节目都在讲的核心伟大产品/平台，真正驱动了 Google 的飞轮。
Ben: Interestingly, he had never worked in search or ads.
Ben：有意思的是，他从没在搜索或广告部门工作过。
David: Right. But these are the platforms that had shoehorned Google into the mobile era and protected it from its greatest existential threat. Sundar’s personality I think was a way to reunify the company, bring everybody back together.
David：没错。但正是这些平台把 Google 硬生生挤进了移动时代，并保护它免于最大的生存威胁。我觉得 Sundar 的性格正是那种能重新统一公司、把大家凝聚在一起的类型。
Ben: Definitely strikes me as a peacemaker among big egos.
Ben：他给我的印象就是在一群大 ego 中间的“调停者”。
山头林立需要一个性格相对软一点的人。
David: Yes. That is where we are going to leave Alphabet/Google for the moment. Ben, give us a sense of how big this company had gotten.
David：好，就让我们先把 Alphabet/Google 的故事停在这里。Ben，你给大家讲讲，这家公司在当时已经有多大了。
Ben: At the end of 15, it’s gotten huge. It’s 75 billion in revenue, 52 billion of that is first party sites. Google websites, AdWords, Gmail maps, 15 billion the smaller part is over in DoubleClick AdSense land. Actually that’s pretty low margin revenue. Again, the Lion’s share in Google websites, YouTube is profitable at this point, their bottom line operating income, Google did about $23 billion in operating income and their other bets at this point lost about three and a half billion. Their other bets are extremely interesting and will be the focus of our next episode. But the big takeaway here, the business was still in 2015 and essentially is still today search ads.
Ben：到 2015 年底，Google 已经非常庞大了。营收达到 750 亿美元，其中 520 亿来自自有网站：Google 网站、AdWords、Gmail、Maps。还有 150 亿来自 DoubleClick/AdSense 这部分，但那部分利润率很低。主要营收还是来自 Google 自有网站。当时 YouTube 已经实现盈利。Google 的营业利润约为 230 亿美元。与此同时，“其他押注”亏损约 35 亿美元。这些“其他押注”非常有趣，会是我们下一期节目的重点。但最重要的一点是：2015 年的 Google，和今天本质上还是一样，核心业务就是搜索广告。
David: Yep, what so strikes me listening to you say those numbers in 2015, they’re huge. But also Google is so much bigger today on these same businesses with this same business model. There was another five X scaling to go over the next 10 years.
David：没错。听你报这些 2015 年的数据，已经很惊人了。但更让我震撼的是，今天 Google 在相同的业务和相同的商业模式下，比那时又大了五倍。在接下来的 10 年里，又扩张了五倍。
Ben: It’s crazy.
Ben：太疯狂了。
David: Google back then was like 20% the size of Google now and nothing has basically changed when it comes to the business model and products.
David：当年的 Google 大概只有今天的 20% 规模，而在商业模式和产品方面，基本上什么都没变。
Ben: Nothing’s changed since 2002.
Ben：自 2002 年以来，一直没变。
David: Right? Well I think this era, well we talked about all the episode, all the hits were stewarding that business. Through these C changes.
David：对吧？我觉得这一时期，正如我们整期节目里讲的，那些爆款产品的使命，就是帮助守护和推动核心业务度过各种巨变。
Ben: But nothing has changed about what the core business is. It just turned out that, that seed of an eye that search ads actually scaled to the biggest market in the world.
Ben：但核心业务本身一点没变。事实证明，搜索广告这颗种子，最终成长为全球最大的市场。
David: Just like the last episode with Gmail at the end, I’ve got one little quote, one little teaser for next time. Ben, what if I told you that between 2015 and 2016, this next year, this next 12 months after the Alphabet transition, all of the following people were Google employees, Alex Krizhevsky of Alex Net. Dawn of machine learning AI, his PhD advisor Jeff Hinton, godfather of AI, his collaborator on the Alex net paper, Ilya Sutskever founding scientist of open AI.
David：就像上一期 Gmail 篇结尾那样，我给大家留一个小小的引用，也算是下期的预告。Ben，如果我告诉你，在 2015 到 2016 年，也就是 Alphabet 转型之后的 12 个月内，以下这些人全都是 Google 的员工：AlexNet 的 Alex Krizhevsky，机器学习/AI 的开端人物；他的博士导师、AI 教父 Jeff Hinton；他们在 AlexNet 论文上的合作者、OpenAI 创始科学家 Ilya Sutskever……
David: Dario Amodei, co-founder with his sister of Anthropic, Andre Carpathy until recently, Chief AI scientist at Tesla. Chris Ola, Noam Shazi, Ian Goodfellow and of course the co-founders of DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014, Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman. Mustafa runs AI at Microsoft today, Andrew Ang from Stanford,[inaudible: 03:40:46] and oh yeah, in addition to all of those people the authors of the Transformer paper because Google invented the Transformer and published the paper in June of 2017.
David：还有 Dario Amodei（后来和妹妹一起创办了 Anthropic）、Andrej Karpathy（直到最近还是 Tesla 的首席 AI 科学家）、Chris Olah、Noam Shazeer、Ian Goodfellow。当然还有 DeepMind 的三位联合创始人——Google 在 2014 年收购的公司——Demis Hassabis、Shane Legg 和 Mustafa Suleyman（今天在微软负责 AI）。还有斯坦福的 Andrew Ng。[听不清片段]。哦对了，除此之外，还有 Transformer 论文的作者们——因为 Transformer 是 Google 发明的，并在 2017 年 6 月发表了论文。
Ben: Right. Which is the novel mechanism that all LLMs today from every big foundational model research lab is based on.
Ben：没错。Transformer 就是今天所有大型语言模型（LLM）的基础机制，所有主要研究机构的模型都建立在它之上。
行业的经济属性是首要因素，聪明人、即使是蠢人都是相对次要的。
David: When I was talking to folks in the research for this episode and AI came up, one of them said I have to remind people when I’m talking to partners out in the ecosystem that the T in chat GPT stands for transformer and that we invented that. Because it is also during this time while Ilya is working at Google, that he poses the question to his research colleagues and the Google brain team that is working on all of this. Gosh, what do you guys think? If we just built one really, really, really big neural network and we set it loose with training data on the entire internet, which by the way of course we can do, can do here at Google because thanks to the combination of the search index, we index the entire internet and all the products that we just talked about on this whole episode. We have all this data and all of this content out there. If we did that, do you think it would learn everything?
David：在我为这期节目做调研时，聊到 AI，有人对我说：“我得提醒生态系统里的合作伙伴，chatGPT 里的 T 代表 Transformer，而这是我们发明的。”就在 Ilya 在 Google 工作的那段时间，他向研究同事和 Google Brain 团队提出了一个问题：“伙计们，你们觉得怎么样？如果我们直接训练一个非常非常非常大的神经网络，用整个互联网的数据去喂它会怎样？顺便说一下，这事我们在 Google 完全可以做，因为我们有搜索索引，可以索引整个互联网，还有我们这期节目里提到的所有产品。我们掌握了所有这些数据和内容。如果我们这么做，你们觉得它能学会一切吗？”
Ben: Well, David, that feels like quite the groundwork for the next episode.
Ben：David，这听起来完全就是下一期节目的铺垫啊。
David: That feels like a story for next time. But through that lens, there is another way to view everything that happens at Google during this 10 year period we just discussed, which is that they’re just collecting all the access, all the information and all the talent for AI.
David：是的，这就是下期要讲的故事。但从这个角度来看，我们可以用另一种方式理解 Google 在过去十年间做的所有事情：他们其实是在为 AI 收集一切——所有的访问入口、所有的信息、以及所有的人才。
Ben: It’s nuts. There’s this whole other world of research who would be the people that would drive the next decade or five decades of change. They basically had them all in one place at one time.
Ben：这太疯狂了。那些研究人员正是未来十年、甚至未来五十年推动变革的人。而 Google 当时几乎把他们全都聚集在一个地方。
David: They were all employees of Google. I want to end with one more quote this time from Larry Page all the way back in the year 2000. This is Larry talking in the year 2000 artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google. If we had the ultimate search engine, it would understand everything on the web. It would understand exactly what you wanted and it would give you the right thing.
David：他们当时全都是 Google 的员工。我想用 Larry Page 在 2000 年说过的一句话来结束。这是 Larry 在 2000 年的原话：“人工智能将是 Google 的终极形态。如果我们拥有终极搜索引擎，它将理解互联网上的一切，准确理解你想要什么，并把正确的答案给你。”
David: That’s obviously artificial intelligence to be able to answer any question basically because almost everything is on the web. We’re nowhere near doing that now. However, we can get incrementally closer to that. That is basically what we work on. That’s tremendously interesting from an intellectual standpoint. We have all this data, if you printed out our index, it would be 70 miles high. Now we have all this computation. We have about 6,000 computers.
David：“显然，要能回答任何问题，就是人工智能，因为几乎所有东西都在网上。我们现在还远远做不到，但我们可以逐步接近。这基本上就是我们在做的事。从智力层面上看，这非常有趣。我们有海量数据，如果把我们的索引打印出来，可以堆到 70 英里高。现在我们有巨大的计算能力，大约 6000 台计算机。”
Ben: This is 25 years ago.
Ben：这是 25 年前说的话。
David: We have enough disc space to store like 100 copies of the whole web. You have a really interesting confluence of a lot of different things, a lot of computation, a lot of data that didn’t used to be available. From an engineering and scientific standpoint, building things that make use of this is a really interesting intellectual exercise. I expect we’ll be working on that for a while, incredible. This is 25 years ago that he said this.
David：“我们有足够的磁盘空间，能存下整个互联网的一百份副本。你会发现有趣的是，这里汇集了许多不同的东西：大量计算、大量以前无法获得的数据。从工程和科学的角度来看，利用这些去构建新东西，本身就是非常有趣的智力实验。我预计我们会在这个方向上努力很久。不可思议，这是他 25 年前说的话。”
Ben: Amazing.
Ben：太惊人了。
David: All right.
David：好，就到这里。
Ben: Should we do some analysis?
Ben：我们来做点分析吧？
David: Let’s do some analysis.
David：好，来做点分析。
Ben: All right, let’s do power. For those who are new listeners, power is the section where we analyze which of the seven powers does Google have from Hamilton Helmer framework that enables a business to achieve persistent differential returns or be more profitable than their nearest competitor and do so sustainably. Google is very, very weird to analyze for this because most of the way you think about Google is actually not where the economic transaction is. If you want to analyze the business, it is why are advertisers spending a marginal dollar with Google versus spending it elsewhere? Google has the seven powers that show up in numerous instances all over their business. But I think the interesting way for us to do this analysis, David, is let’s look at each one. Just assume Google has them all and say where is the biggest or a very large example in our mind of where each of them show up.
Ben：好，那我们就来谈“Power”。给新听众解释一下，“Power”是我们分析企业具备哪种 Hamilton Helmer 提出的七种力量，从而能够实现持续的差异化回报，或者比最接近的竞争对手更高的盈利能力，并且能够长期维持下去。分析 Google 会很特别，因为大多数人对 Google 的理解，并不是发生经济交易的地方。如果你真的要分析它的业务，关键问题是：为什么广告主会把最后一块钱花在 Google 上，而不是花在别的地方？Google 在其业务的很多地方都体现出了七种力量。但我觉得最有意思的方式是，David，我们逐一来过。假设 Google 全都有，然后指出每一种力量最明显或典型的例子。
David: Great. I like that.
David：太好了，我喜欢这个方式。
Ben: Counter positioning typically doesn’t show up for incumbents for large companies.
Ben：反向定位（Counter positioning）通常不会出现在大公司、 incumbents 身上。
David: This is the exception though with Google.
David：但 Google 是个例外。
Ben: Right? Where you just look at their new businesses, for example, in this episode talking about Android, they massively counter positioned against Microsoft. The less than free business.
Ben：没错。比如看它的新业务，这期节目里我们提到 Android，他们对微软的反向定位极为彻底。“比免费还便宜”的商业模式。
David: Less than free business model. This is the clearest example of counter positioning I think that has ever existed. My competitors require you to pay them. How about I pay you instead?
David：“比免费还便宜”的商业模式。我认为这是有史以来最清晰的反向定位例子。竞争对手要求你付钱，而我说：我反过来付钱给你。
Ben: And my competitors can’t do that because they don’t have the business model of advertising based on search such that they can justify doing this.
Ben：而我的竞争对手做不到，因为他们没有基于搜索广告的商业模式，无法合理化这种做法。
非常好的案例。
David: Scale economies. Especially as they’re adding all these apps, all these users across all this surface area. Now if you’re an advertiser and you want to reach users across search or display or video, Google is a one-stop shop.
David：规模经济。尤其是当他们增加了这么多应用、用户和入口。如果你是广告主，想要覆盖搜索、展示、视频等各种渠道，Google 是一个一站式平台。
Ben: You don’t have to independently spend operational time and headcount on all these different platforms, you get the one.
Ben：你不必在不同平台上额外花时间和人力运营，只需要用 Google 这一家。
David: That’s not even to mention the scale economies on the infrastructure side we talked about last time or like, they show up in every business here. But that’s just one example.
David：这还没提到我们上次讨论过的基础设施端的规模经济。其实它们在 Google 的每一个业务里都存在。刚才只是举了一个例子。
Ben: And the fact that the more advertisers there are and the more users there are, the more profit Google makes because each little individual auction on every individual search finds a maxable price.
Ben：而且越多广告主、越多用户，Google 赚的钱就越多。因为每一次搜索的竞价广告，都能找到最高的价格点。
David: Yes. Network economies, YouTube, hello. More creators, more viewers, creators make money from having views of their videos.
David：对。网络效应——YouTube 就是典型。创作者越多，观众越多，创作者从视频播放中赚钱。
Ben: Application developers on Android and users on Android. The two-sided network economies there, yes, everywhere. Not to mention in the core business too, in search, more users searching is more valuable to me as an advertiser because I have a deeper pool of people I can advertise to. I can just deploy more dollars on your channel if it’s working.
Ben：Android 上的应用开发者和用户，也是一种双边网络效应。到处都有。更不用说核心业务——搜索。用户搜索越多，对广告主来说价值越大，因为我有更深的潜在客户池。如果有效果，我就能在你的渠道上投放更多预算。
David: Yep. Switching costs. How about Gmail? I’ve got my last 20 years of email history in Gmail all stored for free. I’m not switching
David：对，谈到转换成本。比如 Gmail，我过去 20 年的邮件记录全都免费存放在里面。我不可能换走。
Ben: In the core business. There’s not as much switching costs. I suppose there’s a little bit of, oh because I’ve spent a lot of money, the targeting is very good at allocating my spend, but the switching costs in the core business for an advertiser are not as prominent as other powers. I don’t think I continue to spend on Google because it’s hard to switch. I continue to spend on Google because they have all the high intent users for products other than Amazon. That’s one of the two big search boxes in the world where people type in when they want to buy a product. I’m going to advertise there has little to do with switching costs I think.
Ben：在核心业务里，转换成本没那么显著。广告主可能会觉得：“哦，我已经在这里花了很多钱，投放效果也很好。”但广告主在 Google 上的转换成本并不像其他力量那么突出。我继续在 Google 投放广告，不是因为换平台很难，而是因为 Google 拥有除了 Amazon 之外最多的“高意图”用户。这是全球两个主要的搜索框之一，人们输入就是为了买东西。我在这儿投广告，和转换成本关系不大。
David: Yep. But for users of Gmail and several of the other products like enormous.
David：没错。但对 Gmail 用户和其他一些产品的用户来说，转换成本就很巨大。
Ben: For users all across the board. I won’t leave YouTube at this point. The algorithm’s dialed to my interests.
Ben：对所有用户都是这样。比如我现在绝不会离开 YouTube，因为它的算法已经完全契合了我的兴趣。
David: That’s a great point of switching costs of the algorithm on YouTube. Branding, I think in the heyday of Google that we’re talking about in this episode when they’re launching all these incredible products, yes these products won because they’re incredible and because they were free. But also like there was such a halo around the company. If there was a new Google product, I would be chomping at the bit to go try it.
David：这是 YouTube 算法带来的转换成本的一个极好例子。再说品牌，我觉得在 Google 的黄金年代——也就是我们这一期节目讲的，他们推出一系列惊艳产品的时期——这些产品之所以成功，当然是因为它们很棒、而且免费。但同时，公司本身也有一种光环。如果当时有新的 Google 产品出现，我一定迫不及待想去试用。
Ben: Yeah, that’s super true. I remember I was desperate for Google Wave invites. The product completely failed, but I was completely dazzled by it and I was desperate to get invite and access. The Google name meant something. Still does by the way. Which I think held them back in AI for a while. They know the Google name means something, so they are reticent to throw their name on it until they got shoved off the cliff.
Ben：对，太真实了。我记得我当时拼命想要 Google Wave 的邀请。这个产品最后完全失败了，但我当时完全被它吸引，迫切想要拿到邀请试用。Google 这个名字本身就代表了一种意义。直到今天依然如此。但这反而在 AI 方面拖了他们后腿。他们很清楚 Google 这个名字分量很重，所以迟迟不愿意把名字用在 AI 上，直到最后被迫推出。
David: Yep. Cornered resource, well certainly heading into the AI era now YouTube, the YouTube catalog you can train on. All the data they have.
David：对。再看“稀缺资源”（Cornered Resource）。进入 AI 时代后，YouTube 的视频库无疑是一个巨大的训练资源，还有他们掌握的所有数据。
Ben: I was about to say their infrastructure, but I think that’s actually a scale economy that they’ve built out the infrastructure they have so they can run all their products as cheaply as they can.
Ben：我本来想说是他们的基础设施，但我觉得那更应该算是规模经济。他们把基础设施扩展到足够大，可以让所有产品以极低成本运行。
David: Yep. I think the infrastructure is also a process power.
David：对，我觉得基础设施其实也是一种“流程力量”（Process Power）。
Ben: Yeah.
Ben：没错。
David: In the era we’ve been talking about, they could launch all these products on their infrastructure just way cheaper than anyone else.
David：在我们这期讨论的那个时代，他们能基于自有基础设施推出所有这些产品，成本远远低于任何竞争对手。
Ben: You know, what’s a coronary resource? They have built internal software and systems that is better than what is available outside of Google.
Ben：你知道另一种稀缺资源是什么吗？他们内部构建的软件和系统，比外界能用到的任何东西都要好。
David: Hmm, great point.
David：嗯，说得好。
Ben: A lot of the time they even create open source projects that are similar to their internal stuff, but they don’t actually give away the internal stuff inside Google. They still run Borg, they run far less Kubernetes than they run Borg. Borg is part of the secret sauce.
Ben：很多时候，他们会开源一些和内部系统类似的项目，但真正核心的内部工具并不会公开。比如他们至今仍在运行 Borg，运行 Kubernetes 的规模远不如 Borg。Borg 才是他们的“秘密武器”之一。
David: Yeah. When you talk to engineers who’ve left Google, they miss the infrastructure.
David：没错。你去和离开 Google 的工程师聊，他们最怀念的就是 Google 的基础设施。
Ben: So Google has it all.
Ben：所以 Google 拥有了所有这些力量。
David: All of them.
David：全都有。
Ben: And we can name a lot more examples but we got to go.
Ben：我们还可以举出很多例子，但时间有限，该收尾了。
David: All right, playbook. All right.
David：好，接下来讲“战略手册”。
Ben: I tried to get most of them in as we were going in the story. The first is that Google really wanted to become a platform company and I was noodling on did they ever do this successfully? And David, we touched on this idea that they are advancing the platform of the web without owning the platform of the web. If they didn’t have Android, how would you answer the question? Is Google a platform company?
Ben：我在讲故事的过程中，已经尽量把大部分要点带进来了。第一个结论是：Google 真的很想成为一家“平台公司”。但我一直在想，他们到底有没有成功？David，我们提到过这样一个观点：他们推动了 Web 平台的发展，但自己并不拥有 Web 平台。如果没有 Android，你会如何回答这个问题：Google 算是一家平台公司吗？
David: Hmm. I’d say it’s like a shadow platform company. It’s like a ecosystem company.
David：嗯，我会说它更像是一家“影子平台公司”，或者说是一家“生态系统公司”。
Ben: And even with Android. Okay great. They own the target development platform. Their money is still made elsewhere. It’s not a platform business, they may have a platform orientation as a company. They build a bunch of stuff for developers to build their applications on top of. But where their bread and butter is really, as an advertising company, it’s important when push really comes to shove on big strategic decisions the company has to make. Like Apple, pure play platform company, Microsoft, pure play platform company, they either sell software or hardware and then they need the platform around it to bolster their sales. Google’s very indirect.
Ben：即便有了 Android，情况也差不多。好吧，他们确实拥有了一个开发平台，但他们赚钱的地方在别处。Google 并不是一家“平台生意”的公司，而更像是一家有平台取向的公司。他们为开发者构建了很多工具，让别人可以在其之上开发应用。但真正养活他们的核心是广告业务。这在公司必须做出重大战略决策时尤其重要。比如 Apple，是纯粹的平台公司；微软也是纯粹的平台公司，他们要么卖软件，要么卖硬件，然后需要平台来支撑销售。Google 的路径则非常间接。
David: Yep.
David：没错。
Ben: All right, so that was one. The other one is they make tons of small acquisitions famously. that run in the 2010s, aside from the big ones, from YouTube, from Android, from DoubleClick, from AdMob, there was also what became Google groups, Spreadsheets, Docs, Blogger. They bought applied Semantics with the patents and some of the tech for AdSense. They bought the technology for Google Maps, they bought urchin for Google Analytics, dodgeball, feed burner, recaptcha, slide, [inaudible:03:51:46], like.com, wide vine, add meld, punched, Zagg it, Sparrow, Wave, I could just keep going.
Ben：好，这是第一点。第二点是他们以“大量小型收购”而闻名。在 2010 年代，他们不断进行这种操作。除了大收购——比如 YouTube、Android、DoubleClick、AdMob——他们还买了很多小公司：比如后来成为 Google Groups、Spreadsheets、Docs 的团队，Blogger；他们收购了 Applied Semantics，拿到了 AdSense 的专利和部分技术；买下了 Google Maps 的核心技术；收购了 Urchin（成为 Google Analytics）、Dodgeball、FeedBurner、reCAPTCHA、Slide、Like.com、Widevine、AdMeld、Punch’d、Zagat、Sparrow、Wave……名单可以一直列下去。
David: Oh yeah. There are hundreds of companies they bought in talking to folks in the research. There was this amazing part of Google culture that also fit the strategy perfectly of, help the web and the rich web and web apps bloom, come work at Google with these incredible people. Meet your co-founders. Go start a startup, leave Google. We will then reacquire you back into Google in a couple of years.
David：对，他们收购了几百家公司。我在调研时和一些人聊到，这其实是 Google 文化中一个非常特别的部分，也完美契合他们的战略：帮助 Web、丰富 Web 以及 Web 应用的繁荣。加入 Google，你会和很多优秀人才共事，甚至遇到未来的联合创始人。然后你离开去创业，几年后我们再把你收购回来。
Ben: It happened dozens or hundreds of times.
Ben：这种循环发生过几十次、上百次。
David: I remember seeing this happen from the outside and thought Google is nuts to let this happen. But I realize now, no, this was all part of the strategy. It’s all good for the web.
David：我记得当时在外部看这一切时，觉得 Google 真是疯了，竟然任由这种事发生。但我现在明白了——不，这其实是战略的一部分。这一切对 Web 来说都是好事。
Ben: You can run very indirect, generous, long-term strategies like that with a money printer like AdWords.
Ben：当你有像 AdWords 这样的“印钞机”，你就能跑一些非常间接、慷慨且长期的战略。
David: Yes.
David：没错。
Ben: I know I keep coming back to that. But that is at the core of what drives everything. This one’s a little bit less playbook, but just an observation. I watched the Google IO keynote with Glass and I watched a bunch of Glass content. I even back in the day at a startup weekend, launched a Google Glass app.
Ben：我知道我总是回到这个点，但它确实是驱动一切的核心。这一部分不算是“战略手册”，只是一个观察。我看过 Google I/O 大会上关于 Glass 的发布，也看了很多 Glass 的演示内容。甚至当年我还在一个创业周末里，发布过一个 Google Glass 应用。
David: Nice.
David：厉害。
Ben: So after watching all this Glass content and it’s the butt of every joke now, Meta Ray bands and Google Glass are the same thing feature-wise. The gestures on the side, the fact that it could take a photo, Google Glass was a little more advanced. It could run these like very basic text-based apps. But I’m sure when meta launches their little hologram version of the glasses, that’s going to be eerily similar. You could say, oh, it’s just timing but here’s the thing.
Ben：所以在看了这些 Glass 的内容之后——它现在几乎成了所有笑话的素材——我发现从功能上看，Meta 的 Ray-Ban 眼镜和 Google Glass 是一样的。侧边的手势控制、拍照功能，Google Glass 甚至更先进一些，它能运行非常基础的文本类应用。但我敢肯定，当 Meta 推出带小型全息功能的眼镜时，那一定会惊人地相似。你可能会说，这只是时机问题，但重点在于——
Ben: Google’s made you look like a cyborg Meta’s is for normal people and there is no better metaphor for the cultural difference between Facebook and Google than this. Google’s a bunch of wacky academics who did not really understand why this would make the product fail. Facebook is founded on the idea that you’re trying to be cool.
Ben：Google 让你看起来像个“半机械人”；而 Meta 的眼镜则是为普通人设计的。没有比这更好的隐喻，能体现出 Facebook 和 Google 在文化上的差异了。Google 是一群古怪的学者，他们根本没理解为什么这会导致产品失败。而 Facebook 的立身之本就是：让人觉得你很酷。
David: Yeah, went and did a partnership with Essilor Luxottica to get the tech into glasses that normal people wear.
David：对啊，他们和依视路路威酩轩（Essilor Luxottica）合作，把技术嵌入普通人会戴的眼镜里。
Ben: Yes. It was crazy watching these demos because these are the meta ar demos. It just happens to have a cool factor versus not.
Ben：没错。看那些演示真的很疯狂，因为它们其实就是 Meta 的 AR 演示。区别只是它们带有“酷”的元素，而不是像 Google Glass 那样缺乏这种感觉。
David: Yeah.
David：对。
Ben: My last one is this idea that they did figure out a way culturally to get people amped about just build great products, figure out how to do something really hard from an engineering perspective that ends up being really useful and ship things that people love. It’s not that you didn’t have to think about a business model, but a lot of the time for many years after launching a product, you really didn’t.
Ben：我最后的总结是，他们在文化上确实找到了一种方式，让人们热衷于：只管去做伟大的产品，想办法从工程角度解决非常难的问题，把它变成真正有用的东西，然后发布出人们喜爱的产品。不是说完全不用考虑商业模式，但在很多情况下，产品发布后的好几年里，你确实不用太担心这个问题。
David: Yep. It’s like we talked about earlier, there was this thin layer of really, really, really tight, really great strategy that was just like a few people at the top of the company, but below that it was just make a great product.
David：没错。就像我们之前说的，公司顶层有一层非常精密、非常优秀的战略，只掌握在少数高层手里。而在这之下，大家的目标就是：把产品做好。
Ben: Yes.
Ben：没错。
David: All right. I’ve got two for playbook. One that I’m going to make my quintessence, I just want to underscore again, we said this in the Android chapter, but like Android was the mother of all wins. It was so big to win with Android. Nobody stretches a business model across technology eras nobody. Google did it
David：好，我在“战略手册”里有两个观点。其中一个我认为是精华所在。我再强调一遍，我们在 Android 章节已经说过了：Android 是所有胜利中的“母胜利”。赢下 Android 的意义太大了。没有任何公司能把商业模式跨技术时代延展下去，但 Google 做到了。
Ben: In a dominant way where they are, they are the dominant company in the next era as well.
Ben：而且是以统治性的方式做到的，他们在下一个时代依然是主导公司。
David: Yeah. It is the Google version of Azure from our Microsoft series. It absolves any and all sins, not that there were many at Google. The only one was Google Plus.
David：是的。就像我们在微软系列里讲的那样，Azure 是微软的救赎，而 Android 就是 Google 的版本。它赦免了一切过错，当然 Google 其实没犯多少错，唯一的就是 Google+。
Ben: The only way it could have gone better is if instead of launching Android, they launched the iPhone and they also got the iPhone profits rather than just some small dollars that protected their core business.
Ben：唯一能更好的情况就是，如果他们不是发布 Android，而是发布了 iPhone，那他们就能拿到 iPhone 的利润，而不仅仅是赚一些保护核心业务的小钱。
David: That was my playbook. Then my quintessence is, it is wild that this one company has eight products with over a billion users and started this era with just one Search that didn’t even have a billion users yet, but Search, Android, Chrome, YouTube, Gmail maps, drive photos, and then if you count the Playstore as separate from Android, which Google does, I think that’s a bit of a stretch. But if you do then they have nine products with over a billion users. Just for context, Meta is the next highest count of products in one company with over a billion users. They have four, the Blue App, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. Meta likes to claim they have five. They like to say that Meta AI in aggregate has over a billion users embedded across all their products.
David：这就是我的“战略手册”。然后我的精华观点是：令人震惊的是，Google 一家公司有八款产品用户数超过 10 亿，而他们在这个时代刚开始时只有一个搜索产品，而且当时搜索的用户还没到 10 亿。如今他们有：搜索、Android、Chrome、YouTube、Gmail、Maps、Drive、Photos。如果把 Playstore 算作独立于 Android 的产品（Google 自己是这么算的），那就是九款。我觉得这有点牵强，但如果算的话就是九款。做个对比：Meta 是下一个最多的公司，有 4 款超过 10 亿用户的产品：Facebook 蓝色应用、WhatsApp、Instagram 和 Messenger。Meta 喜欢声称他们有 5 个，因为他们说 Meta AI 嵌入在所有产品里，总和用户超过 10 亿。
Ben: But this whole super intelligence thing is an admission that the active users of Meta AI is a little stretchy.
Ben：但整个“超级智能”的说法，其实就是在承认 Meta AI 的活跃用户数有点虚。
David: If the Playstore doesn’t really count on its own, the meta AI for sure doesn’t really count on its own. Meta has four. Apple I think only has three, maybe four. The three Apple has for sure are iPhone, iMessage and Safari, iPad maybe I don’t think so. Mac definitely not.
David：如果说 Playstore 本身都不能单独算，那 Meta AI 更不能单独算。Meta 只有 4 个。Apple 我觉得只有 3 个，也许 4 个。确定的是 iPhone、iMessage 和 Safari。iPad 也许算，但我不觉得。Mac 肯定不算。
Ben: I basically don’t count any iPhone app because they all come for free when you get the phone.
Ben：我基本不把任何 iPhone 自带的 app 算进去，因为它们都是你买手机时就自带的。
David: Okay, by your definition Apple has one with iPhone.
David：好吧，按你的定义，Apple 只有一个，就是 iPhone。
Ben: I think Apple has one.
Ben：对，我觉得 Apple 只有一个。
David: Okay. All right.
David：行吧，好。
Ben: Let’s take that same definition. How many of these came for free at Google? Google search, Android, those are two completely different distribution channels. Chrome.
Ben：那我们用同样的定义来看看 Google。有多少产品算是“自带”的？Google 搜索、Android——这是两个完全不同的分发渠道。还有 Chrome。
David: Yep. I don’t think any of these came for free.
David：没错。我觉得这些产品没有一个是“自带”的。
Ben: Google helped Chrome.
Ben：Google 是靠推动才让 Chrome 成功的。
David: These are all independently have achieved billion plus users.
David：这些产品都是独立实现了超过 10 亿用户的。
正好是苹果比Google强的地方。
Ben: Gmail and Google Drive advantage each other. I think you can subtract one of those out.
Ben：Gmail 和 Google Drive 互相受益，我觉得可以把其中一个减掉。
David: Yeah. But it’s not to the extent that iMessage is default with an iPhone.
David：是的。但也没有到 iMessage 那样——和 iPhone 捆绑默认的程度。
Ben: Right. Maps is advantaged by Android. They ship a whole lot of maps. Probably whatever the phone was would have a great Google Maps app.
Ben：没错。Maps 的优势来自 Android。他们预装了大量地图应用。基本上无论哪款手机都会带上一个很棒的 Google Maps。
David: Yep. Okay. All right. I buy it, Apple has one. Microsoft has two windows and LinkedIn. Amazon doesn’t have any billion user products. Google’s got eight, like that’s incredible.
David：对，好吧，我认可了。Apple 只有一个。微软有两个：Windows 和 LinkedIn。亚马逊没有任何一个用户超过 10 亿的产品。而 Google 有 8 个，这太不可思议了。
Ben: Call it seven or six. I think it is reasonable to subtract. Okay,
Ben：算作 7 个或者 6 个吧。我觉得扣掉一两个是合理的。好吧。
David: Okay, Fine. But whatever.
David：行，随便了。
Ben: That’s exactly right.
Ben：没错，就是这样。
David: That’s my point. This is my quintessence. This period at Google is a run like nobody’s ever had.
David：这就是我的观点。这就是我的“精华”。Google 在这一时期的表现，是前所未有的辉煌。
Ben: Yeah, absolutely. Right.
Ben：是啊，绝对没错。
David: All right, what you got.
David：好吧，那你来说说你的“精华”。
Ben: So quintessence for me is the thing that I can’t stop thinking about from the episode. I decided this time I knew what it was going in and I decided to hide it all the way until the end. we haven’t talked about this thing yet.
Ben：对我来说，“精华”是这一集中让我一直念念不忘的点。这次录之前我就知道是什么了，但我决定一直藏到最后才说。我们到现在还没谈过这个东西。
David: Okay.
David：好吧。
Ben: Almost all of Google’s successful products are based on a core technology insight that is underneath the whole thing. The type of insight that could be in an academic journal. Someone told me this and I’ve been using it as a little litmus test for, will a product work or not. As you look through, you look at the original search that is by definition the page rank algorithm is a core technology insight.
Ben：几乎所有 Google 成功的产品，背后都有一个核心的技术洞见，支撑着整个产品。这种洞见甚至可以写进学术期刊。有人告诉过我这一点，我也一直把它当作一个小测试，用来判断一个产品是否能成功。比如你看最初的搜索，定义上就是 PageRank 算法——这是一个核心技术洞见。
David: They published it as an academic paper.
David：他们甚至把它作为学术论文发表过。
Ben: The way that the ad-based auction works is a core, it’s almost mechanical in its elegance and its brilliance and its simplicity. It is a technology insight that in everything we talked about in Google part one, our first episode, then you look at everything that succeeded this episode Gmail, the way that they’re able to do the gigabyte of storage AJAX fast responsive web application. You look at maps and docs with realtime collaboration, breakthrough core technology insight.
Ben：基于广告的竞价模式也是核心的，它几乎以一种机械般的方式展现出优雅、聪明和简洁。这就是一种技术洞见。我们在 Google 的第一期节目里已经谈过这些。而在本期节目中，你再看 Gmail：他们能实现 1GB 存储、AJAX 快速响应的 Web 应用；再看 Maps 和 Docs 的实时协作，背后都是突破性的核心技术洞见。
David: Yeah, totally. Serving video on demand to the entire world.
David：是啊，没错。向全世界提供点播视频服务。
Ben: Being able to scale that and make it a real going concern. Chrome four core technology insights. Maybe six, maybe seven in the original comic. Android, I can’t name one magical core insight. This one may be the exception because that’s technically hard and all that, but there’s not like an elegant thing. That’s the reason that Android succeeded. It was perfect execution in a lot of ways, strategically distribution, marketing partnerships.
Ben：能把它规模化，并让它成为一个真正可持续的业务。Chrome 的核心技术洞见有四个，在最初的漫画里可能是六七个。但 Android，我说不出有什么神奇的核心洞见。这个可能是个例外，因为它在技术上确实很难，但没有那种优雅的东西能解释 Android 的成功。Android 成功的原因是各方面的完美执行——战略、分发、市场营销、合作伙伴关系。
David: Okay, wait, no, I got what it is. It’s the same thing as the iPhone. It was an incredible achievement to wrestle OS 10 into iOS and to get it to run on a battery powered mobile device that fit in your pocket. Android did the same thing with Linux. They wrestled Linux into a battery powered mobile device that fits in your pocket.
David：等等，我想到了。它和 iPhone 的本质一样。把 OS X 压缩成 iOS 并让它能在一个放进口袋的电池驱动移动设备上运行，这本身就是一项不可思议的成就。Android 做的事是类似的：他们把 Linux 搬进了口袋里的电池驱动设备上。
Ben: Yep. Less of an elegant, satisfying core insight I think and not the reason that it worked. Not the reason why Android, unlike these other ones there’s a clear line between, it’s almost like the Google products that succeed wildly organically except for Android are ones where there’s almost no product. The technology solution is just so incredible that it is directly the user experience and you get the technology breakthrough as the experience.
Ben：对。不过我觉得这不算是那种优雅的、令人满足的核心洞见，也不是它成功的真正原因。Android 与其他产品不同。Google 其他那些自然爆红的成功产品，几乎没有“产品”层面的东西，背后纯粹是惊人的技术方案直接转化为用户体验，你能把技术突破当作体验本身。而 Android 不是这样。
David: I see where you’re going
David：我明白你的意思了。
Ben: But then look at the other ones. Google Plus, Google Wave these are like products. These are like user experiences that people come up with that don’t necessarily have a breakthrough technology underneath them. Google Photo is actually quite the opposite. All of the AI stuff that’s been happening on Google Photos for a very long time, that’s why it worked, people wanted all these incredible magic features that come with Google Photos. It’s funny, as someone told me this in the research, it has been batting around in my head and then I’m reading Eric Schmidt’s book and Eric Schmidt said he would ask PMs, what is your core technical insight that makes it all work?
Ben：但你再看看其他产品，比如 Google+、Google Wave，这些就是“产品”而已。它们是人们想出来的一些用户体验，但底下没有什么突破性的技术支撑。Google Photos 恰好相反，它背后长期以来都有 AI 技术的支撑，所以才会成功。用户想要的就是那些随 Google Photos 一起出现的“魔法”功能。有意思的是，我在调研时有人告诉我这个观点，它一直在我脑子里盘旋。后来我读到 Eric Schmidt 的书，他说他会问产品经理：“是什么核心技术洞见让这一切成立？”
技术不等于洞察。
Ben: And if there wasn’t a good answer, he wouldn’t fund the project. They figured this out at Google too. It’s a googly thing that this genius technology is the product itself. If you try to craft some cool idea that you have that is not just directly translating tech breakthrough, it’s not going to be the type of product that succeeds at Google. They don’t know how some people can make an Instagram and those people are not Google.
Ben：如果产品经理答不上来，他就不会为这个项目提供资金。Google 自己也明白这一点。所谓“Googly”的东西就是：天才的技术本身就是产品。如果你只是想搞一个“很酷”的创意，而不是直接把技术突破转化为产品，那它就不可能在 Google 成功。他们不懂 Instagram 是怎么做出来的——那类人不是 Google。
David: Yeah. Ironic that Kevin Systrom was an erstwhile Google employee who left to start a startup.
David：是啊，讽刺的是，Kevin Systrom 曾经是 Google 员工，后来离职去创业了。
Ben: Yes. Anyway, I think that has made it extremely clear to me when Google products succeed and when they fail.
Ben：没错。总之，这让我非常清楚地理解了 Google 的产品何时会成功、何时会失败。
David: Love it. Spot on.
David：太棒了，说到点子上了。
Ben: All right. Carve outs.
Ben：好啦，接下来进入“Carve outs”环节。
David: Carve outs. I’ve got one and then I’ve got my long awaited follow up.
David：Carve outs 环节。我这次有一个分享，然后还有一个大家期待已久的后续。
Ben: Oh my God. We’ve been waiting with bated breath. Listeners, what game console did David buy?
Ben：天哪，我们大家都屏住呼吸在等。听众们，David 到底买了哪一台游戏机？
David: I’m going to make everybody wait for one more minute. My actual carve out for the episode is when we were in New York for Radio City, my whole family came, the girls came and we stayed for the rest of the week after the show and we took the girls to the Bluey experience at the camp store in New York City. It was awesome. Lived up to expectations, lived up to the hype. They basically have recreated the Bluey house in this physical space in New York City. The house is almost a character in the show and they have recreated it and they just let you and your kids in, to roam free in the house. Then you have a magical moment at the end of the experience.
David：我先让大家再等一分钟。这期真正的 carve out 是这样的：我们去纽约录 Radio City 的时候，我全家都来了，两个女儿也来了。演出之后我们在纽约又待了一周，带孩子们去体验了纽约市 camp store 里的 Bluey 体验馆。太棒了，完全符合预期，名副其实。他们基本上在纽约把 Bluey 的房子原样重建了。这个房子在动画里几乎就是一个角色，而他们真的在现实里还原了，然后让你和孩子在里面自由探索。最后体验还会有一个神奇的收尾时刻。
Ben: Ah..
Ben：啊……
David: It was cool. Highly, highly recommend if you are in the Bluey demographic and happen to be a New York.
David：真的很酷。如果你正好在 Bluey 的观众群体里，而且又在纽约，我强烈强烈推荐去体验一下。
Ben: Okay. What game console did you pick?
Ben：好吧。那你到底买了哪台游戏机？
David: I bought the Steam Deck.
David：我买了 Steam Deck。
Ben: The Steam Deck.
Ben：Steam Deck！
David: I bought the Steam deck and it’s great. Although I haven’t, truth be told, had much time to play it this past month with everything we’ve had going on at Radio City and then preparing this episode. But it’s great.
David：对，我买了 Steam Deck，很棒。虽然说实话，这个月因为 Radio City 的事和准备这一期节目，我没多少时间玩。但它真的很棒。
Ben: How’d you pick? What was the ultimate?
Ben：那你是怎么做决定的？最终的考量是什么？
David: It ultimately came down to, as much as I desperately wanted my older daughter to be ready to play Mario Kart with me. She’s just not.
David：最后决定因素是，虽然我很想让我大女儿能和我一起玩马里奥赛车，但她还没准备好。
Ben: And so if you’re buying a console for just you to enjoy, you went with the Steam deck.
Ben：所以如果是给你自己买来玩的，你就选择了 Steam Deck。
David: Yeah. I was like, ah, I would probably enjoy the Steam deck.
David：对，我想啊，我大概会更享受 Steam Deck。
Ben: Do you endorse it? Do you recommend it?
Ben：那你推荐吗？认可它吗？
David: What Valve has done with the Steam deck, I didn’t realize until buying it and using it is incredible. They have abstracted a PC gaming machine into a console experience. I’ve always liked PC type games, but I haven’t been a PC gamer in many, many years because I'm not going to build a gaming machine or even you could just buy one. But like, I don’t need another pc. Where am I going to put it? What am I going to do with it? I want the console simplicity of just buy the thing, turn it on, buy the games, play them. Valve has created that in handheld form. It’s awesome. You don’t have to worry about any of the drivers or specs. It’s really, really impressive.
David：Valve 在 Steam Deck 上做的事情，我买来用之后才意识到有多惊人。他们把一台 PC 游戏机抽象成了一种主机体验。我一直喜欢 PC 游戏，但已经很多年不是 PC 玩家了，因为我不可能去自己组装一台游戏机，哪怕可以买现成的，但我也不需要另一台 PC。我要放哪儿？要怎么用？我只想要主机的简单：买回来，开机，买游戏，玩。Valve 把这一切做成了掌机形式。太棒了。你完全不用担心驱动或配置问题。真的非常令人印象深刻。
Ben: Alright, good to know.
Ben：好，知道了。
David: I will buy a switch too at some point, probably in the next year or so. But for now, steam Deck. Alright. What are your carve outs?
David：我可能哪天也会买一台 Switch，大概在未来一年左右。但现在，还是 Steam Deck。好了，你的 carve outs 是什么？
Ben: I’ve got three.
Ben：我有三个。
David: Oh great.
David：太好了。
Ben: My first one, and I swear to God this is unrelated to their sponsorship, is Claude.
Ben：第一个，我发誓这和他们的赞助无关——是 Claude。
David: Amazing. It’s so great.
David：太棒了，真好。
Ben: It’s so good. Using AI has completely changed the way that I prepare for these episodes now and I cannot imagine going back.
Ben：它真的太好用了。AI 完全改变了我准备这些节目的方式，我完全无法想象回到过去的做法。
David: I hear AI is a thing.
David：我听说 AI 现在挺火的。
Ben: I hear AI is a thing. That's the first one. I just find myself in it all day now. Two is the Sony RX100 VII or seven. I recently bought a different camera, the Fuji X100 VI or the six.
Ben：我也听说过（笑）。这就是第一个。现在我一天到晚都在用它。第二个是 Sony RX100 VII，就是 7 代。我最近还买了另一台相机，Fuji X100 VI，或者叫 6 代。
David: Yeah, that’s what you had in New York.
David：对，你在纽约的时候带的就是那台。
Ben: It's great. It’s like the Internet’s favorite camera. It has these amazing film simulation color profiles. It’s like a camera though. I carry it around my neck because it’s a camera that you hold and use and it’s very fun shooting 35 millimeter equivalent. It feels like I’m taking pictures the way that pictures were meant to be taken.
Ben：是的，那台相机非常棒，简直是全网最受欢迎的相机。它有很出色的胶片模拟色彩模式。而且它就是一台“正经相机”。我会把它挂在脖子上，因为它是一台你要拿着、要操作的相机，用它拍等效 35 毫米焦段的照片很有意思，感觉这才是“照片应该被拍摄的方式”。
David: It’s not a full DSLR but it is like a big thing.
David：它不是单反，但也算是一件“大件”。
Ben: Exactly. It’s a handheld, but I wouldn’t call it a pocket camera. Now the funny thing is, the thing that I’m actually talking about is my carve out is the Sony Camera, Shield Monat tweeted actually this morning, I should have been praying for this episode and I was like replying to him on Twitter instead that he’s been considering getting this Sony or another point and shoot camera. I just remembered how much I love this camera. The Sony RX 107 fits in my pocket. It’s very small, it has a giant zoom lens for its size and I was just looking at some of the pictures that I’ve taken with it. It’s like the perfect thing to bring with a phone whenever I am space constrained, which is usually, I just don’t really want a camera around my neck. The perfect combo is bring a phone and bring the Sony.
Ben：没错。它是便携机，但我不会把它称为“口袋相机”。有趣的是，我今天真正的 carve out 是另一台相机——Sony RX100 VII。Shield Monat 今天早上在推特上发文说他在考虑要不要买这台 Sony 或者别的卡片机，本来我该为这期节目祈祷，但我却在推特上回他，结果让我想起自己有多喜欢这台相机。Sony RX100 VII 可以放进口袋，非常小巧，但配了一个体积里算是巨大的变焦镜头。我刚刚翻看了一些自己用它拍的照片，真是完美的搭配。每当我空间有限——其实几乎总是如此——我就不想把相机挂在脖子上。带一部手机和这台 Sony，就是完美组合。
Ben: I am aware that it’s not a full frame camera. I’m aware that it’s not as photographery as my Fuji, but it is the most practical one for most things that I want to do. For many, many shots it is far superior to shooting on a camera phone. I don’t know, I just love it. It’s a 2019 camera and they really need to come out with one that has USB-C because it’s annoying to charge. But other than that, it’s just awesome. I highly recommend it.
Ben：我当然知道它不是全画幅相机，也知道它没有 Fuji 那么“专业”，但对我大多数使用场景来说，它是最实用的。很多时候，它拍出来的效果远远好于手机。我也说不上来，就是喜欢它。虽然是 2019 年的相机了，而且它真的应该升级成 USB-C，不然充电很烦。但除此之外，它真的很棒。我强烈推荐。
David: There you go, you’re bringing it full circle on this episode. A point and shoot camera.
David：这就对了，你把这一集呼应圆满了。一台卡片机。
Ben: A point and shoot camera. Especially paired with Lightroom has this great AI feature called De-Noise that they launched and is now rolled out in production is incredible.
Ben：对，一台卡片机。尤其是搭配 Lightroom 的新 AI 功能“De-Noise”，现在已经正式上线，效果简直惊人。
David: Love it.
David：太赞了。
Ben: Then I have one more last one, a listener recently sent me, he started a clothing company called [inaudible:04:07:52] and it is an incredible garment. It is just like a really, really nice cashmere shirt. I’ve been wearing it all recording, it’s great. On a cool day, it’s great on a warm day. It’s my current favorite shirt. I wanted to thank the listener that sent it to me and say, you have built a, the prices are high, very nice clothing company, but just excellent products.
Ben：我还有最后一个。一位听众最近寄给我一件他自己品牌的衣服，他创办了一家服装公司，名字是 [听不清:04:07:52]。那是一件非常棒的衣服，就像是一件非常非常好的羊绒衬衫。我整场录制都在穿它，感觉太好了。天气凉的时候穿着舒服，天气暖的时候也很适合。这是我目前最喜欢的衬衫。我想在这里感谢这位听众寄来的礼物，也要说，你打造了一家价格虽然不低，但品质极佳的服装公司。
David: I’ve been staring at you for the past seven and a half hours here and I’ve been thinking the whole time, God, Ben is looking good.
David：我这七个半小时一直盯着你看，心里一直在想：天啊，Ben 今天看起来真帅。
Ben: My normal thing, if I could just wear it every day, is a long sleeve dark crew neck. Just like I don’t have to think about it. You can look nice in it. It just goes with everything. It’s the capsule wardrobe idea and this is the finest version of that that I’ve worn. It’s really great.
Ben：我平常的习惯是，如果每天都能穿同一类衣服，那就是深色长袖圆领衫。这样我就不用多想，穿上也好看，而且搭配任何东西都合适。这就是“胶囊衣橱”的概念，而这件羊绒衫是我穿过的最好的版本。真的很棒。
David: Nice.
David：不错。
Ben: All right, with that listeners, our huge thanks to our partners this season. J.P.Morgan Payments, trusted, reliable payments infrastructure for your business, no matter the scale. That’s J.P.morgan.com/acquired and Thropic the makers of Claude claude.ai/acquired, StatZig the best way to do experimentation and more as a product development team. That’s stat zig.com/acquired and Vercel your complete platform for web development and V0. That is vercel.com/acquired. Click the links in the show notes to learn more. We have a bunch of people to thank for contributing to this episode.
Ben：好了，在这里我们要向本季节目的合作伙伴致以最诚挚的感谢。J.P.Morgan Payments —— 值得信赖、可靠的支付基础设施，适用于任何规模的企业，网址是 jpmorgan.com/acquired；Anthropic —— Claude 的开发商，claude.ai/acquired；StatZig —— 产品开发团队做实验和分析的最佳工具，statzig.com/acquired；还有 Vercel —— 你的一体化 Web 开发与 V0 平台，vercel.com/acquired。可以在节目备注里点击这些链接了解更多信息。同时我们还要感谢为这一集提供帮助的许多人。
David: Yes, yes we do. Hiroshi Lockheimer, Tim Armstrong, Sam Schillace, Hunter Walk, Nick Fox, Shona Brown, Clay Bavor, a bunch of folks who helped a little bit here, but more are going to be for the next episode. Max Ross, Greg Carrado, Demis Hassabis. Ben, you had a bunch of folks who you spoke to as well.
David：对，我们要感谢的确实不少人。Hiroshi Lockheimer、Tim Armstrong、Sam Schillace、Hunter Walk、Nick Fox、Shona Brown、Clay Bavor，还有一些在这里帮了点忙的人，但会在下一期更深入：Max Ross、Greg Corrado、Demis Hassabis。Ben，你这边也有一批聊过的人。
Ben: Yeah, as always, I want to thank Arvind Navaratnam from Worldly Partners for his excellent writeup, which you can find linked in the show notes also Paul Buki, creator of Gmail, Bill Corin, Jonathan Rochelle, Bradley Horowitz, John Hanky, Ben Eidelson, Eisar Lipkovitz, and Ben Liebald.
Ben：是的，像往常一样，我要感谢 Worldly Partners 的 Arvind Navaratnam，他写了非常出色的分析文章，节目备注里有链接。还有 Gmail 的创造者 Paul Buchheit，Bill Corin，Jonathan Rochelle，Bradley Horowitz，John Hanke，Ben Eidelson，Eisar Lipkovitz，以及 Ben Liebald。
David: And that is in addition to as always the many folks who helped us, whose names we can’t say here. But no, you are appreciated. Thanks to all of you for listening.
David：此外，还有很多一直帮助我们的人，他们的名字我们不能在这里一一提及，但你们的付出我们都心怀感激。谢谢大家的收听。
Ben: Seriously, if you like this episode and you’re like, oh wait, there’s a Google episode before this. Most of you have probably listened, but if you have not, go check out our first episode on the origin of Google and the creation of the search engine and the search business of course our Microsoft series, part one, part two in an interview with Steve Ballmer.
Ben：认真地说，如果你喜欢这一集，然后突然想起来：啊，以前还有一期 Google 的节目。大多数人可能都听过了，但如果你还没有，去听一听我们第一期关于 Google 起源、搜索引擎和搜索业务诞生的节目吧。当然还有我们的微软系列——第一部分、第二部分以及和 Steve Ballmer 的访谈。
David: If you want the other side of the story too, everything we talked about here,
David：如果你也想听听另一面的故事，我们今天谈到的所有内容……
Ben: In addition, our giant episode on meta is probably pretty relevant and we referenced it several times after this episode. Check out ACQ2, our second show where we talk to founders and CEOs building businesses in areas that we have covered on the show. Our last one was with Google Legends, really industry legends. Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor about the current state of AI and where we are headed. Search ACQ2 in any podcast player. Come chat with us in the slack that’s acquired.fm/slack and join the email list for all the excellent email goodies, including voting on episodes for this fall.
Ben：另外，我们那期关于 Meta 的超长节目也非常相关，在本集之后我们多次引用过。别忘了去听听 ACQ2，我们的第二档节目，在那里我们和各个领域的创业者和 CEO 聊他们正在构建的业务。上一期我们请到的嘉宾是 Google 的传奇人物，真正的行业传奇：Bret Taylor 和 Clay Bavor，聊的是 AI 的现状以及未来走向。在任何播客播放器里搜索 ACQ2 就能找到。也欢迎来我们的 Slack 社区 acquired.fm/slack 和我们聊天，并订阅邮件列表，获取所有精彩的邮件内容，包括投票决定今年秋季的节目主题。
David: Woo-Hoo.
David：哇哦！
Ben: Without listeners, we’ll see you next time.
Ben：谢谢各位听众，我们下次再见。
David: We’ll see you next time.
David：下次见。
Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.
注：Acquired 的主持人和嘉宾可能持有本期节目讨论过的相关资产。本播客不构成投资建议，仅供信息分享和娱乐用途。在考虑任何金融交易时，请自行研究并独立做出决定。
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