20 Questions for Sergey Brin

Questions for one of the original GoogleGuys

[Brett_Tabke]

Post your best question you would like to ask Sergey. (note: Sergey has not agreed to this [yet]), but these will be hand delivered to him next week. We shall see if he responds ;-)

Thread Rules:
-q's about Google operation. (not sergey himself - sorry gals)
-one question per person only please.
-no noise or clarifying questions.
-no specifics about your site please.
-off topic stuff will be zapped (nffc is still on duty! 'he loves this stuff).
-Keep it short. Don't drone on for more than 2 sentences.

[IITian]

People "buy" PR through Yahoo directory, ads on high PR mags etc. to place higher in SERPS. Will you start selling PR directly (a number that will be added to page) and cut the middlemen out?

[SinclairUser]

Did you process my application for a job at Google yet?

If not - why not?

I love America - especially CA!

From a poor deprived UK SEO who needs to feed his wife and my extravagant lifestyle!

[salson]

When are you going to open Google's office in Spain?

[GranPops]

As someone who is probably half a century older than you, I paraphrase the question that was always being put to us by one law professor..
Where do you see Google in 1 years time, 3 years time?

GranPops

[subway]

Can you "hand on heart" deny that major technological issues Google have had to deal with over the last 4 or so months have had a detrimental effect on the appearance of the SERPS we're seeing now. If not how long do you anticipate this problem to last?

sorry still not convinced these SERPS are what they used to be

[TheWhippinpost]

When the new dance routines are settled, can you help us, to help Google, by making it known precisely what will incur penalties and/or a total ban as currently it seems innocent webmasters are unwittingly being "prosecuted".

[twilight47]

What do you see as the future of Search?
5 years? 10 Years?

[ogletree]

Is there any chance of taking the PDF documents out of the main part of Google? If so can you make a document search for jsut PDF's and other non html pages? (ie Word, Excel)

[markus007]

What do you believe the limits of a algorithmic search engine are?

[jmccormac]

Do you see any shift in the emphasis of search engine algorithms from the generic searches which are poorly geographically targeted at the moment to a more precisely geographically targeted search that takes both the user's location and the website's location into the calculation of the SERPs?

Regards...jmcc

[bwelford]

Is Google really searching 3,083,324,652 web pages today? If not, what is the real number today?

Barry Welford

[dvduval]

What would you say is the most challenging part of improving Google: Hardware, Software or People?

[PatrickDeese]

What aspects of Google do you see as needing improvement? What features of Google do you foresee implementing that will make your company even more vital in the near future?

[keyplyr]

Who's the hottest looking babe at Google?

[Dolemite]

Are you making efforts to detect and neutralize questionable link development SEO tactics, what we might call linkspam, more subtle than the average link farm?

[beachlover]

Where do you see Google and it´s operations in 24 months from now.

[Powdork]

Are you, or have you ever been, GoogleGuy?

[Learning Curve]

How do you feel towards search engine optimizers?

[steveb]

Given the merger/acquisition semi-frenzy in the industry, is there a chance Google will acquire the Open Directory Project, or have you ruled out acquiring it?

[drewls]

When will our pages stop requiring a refresh to be seen in the serps?

[TheDave]

I'd just like to ditto Powdork, but also add, "and if you're not, then who is GoogleGuy?" :) maybe he's one of these guys [google.com...] :) I'd love to have a competition to pick GoogleGuy, but he'd never tell us who won! :P

edit- my guess is Urs Hölzle - "Google Fellow" ;)

[piskie]

Do you plan to reduce the importance (mistaken IMO) given to "Link Popularity" thus restoring "Relevence" as the predominant yardstick?

[SinclairUser]

Enjoy your millions dude. When is the IPO?

[anallawalla]

Will you give us more filtered search options, say to exclude certain broad topics, e.g. books, travel, blogs, shopping, jobs/resumes as a stored preference?

[Jakpot]

Google doesn't seem to believe that there is a problem with the current serps.... I see that as a MAJOR issue as only Google can fix this problem. Are you going to correct the problem this month?

[alxdean]

love the questions so far ;-) here is mine:

In the life of Google, from its birth through infancy and to the authority figure it has grown to now, what was the biggest hurdle, screwup, tight spot you had to overcome and how did you manage it?

[whatson]

Can you please explain the new update process, and how long it now take a site to get into the Google index with a decent Pagerank?

[Jesse_Smith]

For those of us that can't use the toolbar, will Google ever make a form that allows us to enter a URL and then get the sites PR? It is possible, one site has a form that does just that.

[ronin]

For two pages that are equal in all other respects, does the Google algorithm currently place more value on one that is W3C standards compliant than one which is not?

If not, are there any plans to introduce analysis of standards compliancy into the algo in future?

[robjones]

Is Google going to introduce a new tab for blogs in the near future?