Notes:

Marissa Mayer of Google talks about a better, faster, stronger web.

4 key elements of search
-comprehensiveness
-relevancy
-user experience
-speed

Web Index (pages) @ Google
1999 – 30,000,000
2009 – 300,000,000,000 (*10K more!)

Searches per day
1999 – 100,000
2009 – 1,000,000,000

UxD – how does Google make Google better?
A-B Testing!
Scenario: # Results: 10, 20, 30?
Users said “Give us 30 results per page”.
However, 30 results lead 25% fewer searches (when accounting for just 1st page results).
Why? It took longer.

Google Reader – made it faster in 2009! Users enjoyed it more.
What happened? “HTML wants to square.” Removed rounded corners and viewership went up.

Google Checkout – made a graphic into html via a table. User experience improved.

Google News – Tables “flash render” – user smaller tables if (used for layout) rather than one big table. KHB: Why not float divs?

Search Results – Chunked encoding – Google header is always non specific to results so it can be sent first independently.

Google Maps – Compressed images more.

Images 101: Small images cost $1.00, big images cost $1.01.

< 50% of Google users are on fast browsers.