Much to our surprise, they didn’t – at least, as far as we know.

The most recent collective hush comes out of New York where Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist and TCP/IP pioneer Vinton Cerf gave a presentation. Those invited were given these instructions, according to Nathan Weinberg:

In order to support the free and open exchange of information at our speaker series events we ask that attendees refrain from recording or reporting on these meetings, their content or Google.

Virginia Tech professor Jeremy Hunsinger didn’t get that message, and in a blog post titled "I drank Google’s beer, then left," he explains why a vow of secrecy moved him out the door:

Google said that if i wanted to blog or publicly discuss the event, I had to get their permission. If I’d have known, I would not have attended or been affiliated with the event in any way. I am a professor, was and still am, and by the very nature of my job, i cannot guarantee that I will follow their rules about publication or blogging. I couldn’t consent to them, so I had to leave.

Just what was Cerf talking about? Well, again, nobody’s talking, either like good sheep, out of commitment to their agreement, or fear of not getting invited again. Asking one person to keep a secret is one thing, but asking hundreds to drink your Kool-Aid and them do it – well, that’s borderline frightening.

As Danny Sullivan points out, these rules don’t apply to CEO Eric Schmidt, who is always on the record. 

The company was profiled in a recent San Francisco Chronicle article, and they’re doing some interesting things (aside from embracing Calvinball, that is).  One project, dubbed GoodTree, is a center for Web, image, and news searches, among other things, and has the motto “Internet for Good” beneath its logo.

Remind you of those folks in Mountain View?

It should – in an older article SFC piece, James Currier, Ooga’s founder, said  “Google is sucking the oxygen out of the system” in reference to the company’s practice of hiring the best people available.  He then added, “You can’t blame them, though.  If I were them, I’d be doing the same thing.”

As for what Currier’s doing now, well . . . it’s hard to say.  Jessica Guyn states that Ooga, which is a “13-employee San Francisco startup,” “currently has five stealth projects under development.”

There’s no breaking news here in respect to those – sorry if you’ve read this far looking for some – but Ooga Labs is definitely a company that bears watching.  As do, by the way, all of the old Calvin and Hobbes comics.

Does Google’s Secrecy Hinder Or Help?

…as it cited a comment from Jordan Rohan, a financial analyst with RBC Capital Markets.

“It’s somewhat of a paradox. Google’s whole purpose is to make information easier to access – unless, of course, you want to know information about Google,” he said.

“It makes the rules, and it reserves the right to change the rules,” said Fortune Interactive’s CEO, Andy Beal. “But there’s only so long it can continue to do that before the other kids say, ‘We’re not going to play with them anymore.’ ”

One example of the company’s disdain for convention came when Google CEO Eric Schmidt made the comment that Google wanted to be a $100 billion company. Reporters noted that Google was already worth that much in market capitalization; did he mean market cap or revenue?

“I’ll leave it to you to judge whether that is $100 billion in market capitalization or revenue,” said Schmidt. The flippant comment was not very well received.

But when you’re Google and making billions of dollars in revenue as fast as advertisers can throw it you’re way, there isn’t much motivation to change. Opening up the company’s inner workings is anathema to Schmidt and Google’s well-known billionaire founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

When faced with a federal subpoena for extensive information from its search indexes and databases, Google fought the Department of Justice instead of readily complying as did competitors Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL. Google’s resistance to the probe prompted DoJ to file a lawsuit against Google, and revealed the widespread information gathering that had taken place.

Google had no desire to permit its operations and technology to be researched by outsiders, even under court seal, and a judge ultimately sided with Google on the matter. Apparently Google feared leaks would happen, with deep-pocketed rivals eager to capitalize on whatever they could learn about the dominant search engine.

Users have propelled Google to that dominance, as its search result relevance to queries has been much more impressive than its rivals. How Google achieves that relevance is one of the many secrets the company maintains.

The lack of transparency has been decried by certain segments of its users, namely the advertisers who enrich the company. Those advertisers pay for contextually-based ads to appear when certain keywords or phrases are entered into Google as a query.

Google operates on an auction-based model, so as more businesses embrace online ads and increase demand for keywords, the prices paid for each time users click on those ads goes up as well. Advertisers don’t mind paying for legitimate traffic; that’s a cost of doing business.

They do object to what has been seen as a growing problem with click fraud in the industry. Automated clicking software visits pages hosting online ads and performs those clicks. In some cases, people employed in boiler-room setups in countries like India visit sites and click on the ads, in exchange for payment made to those running the operations.

Advertisers have called for more transparency into the process, but Google and competitors like Yahoo have stuffed those requests as they are made. Google claims it dedicates a significant amount of resources to fighting click fraud, and it has a process where advertisers can request reimbursement for clicks that Google does not catch as being illegal ones.

Only Google’s top people know how or where they will address issues like click fraud and competition. And they aren’t talking except in very general terms about it.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

“In a blogosphere of connected, fast-breaking posts, you can’t control the story. It’s that simple. Paradoxically, the best way to control a story is to let it go. The more openly and honestly you expose the corporate story — the more transparent the company becomes, the better off your company will be.”

More from the article:

“There are simple rules for blogging at Channel 9, and at Microsoft: Don’t be stupid, and tell the truth. In risking the exposure — the transparency — of honest discussion about the company by those closest to it, Microsoft arguably has done more to improve the image of Microsoft with developers than any other developer program the company has ever run.

It’s a model that other companies are beginning to follow, in internal and public blogs. Be open, be direct, and tell what you can as honestly as you can. It’s a model that more companies need to adopt — and soon. Because if you aren’t blogging truthfully about your company — if you aren’t embracing transparency — you can bet that someone else will.”

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

Google’s dominance in this market is due largely to the search engine’s AdWords/AdSense campaign revenues, which have increased yearly since 2001. Google also enjoys the largest growth in user base. Advertisers have adopted Google as a “must have” to expand their reach amongst target audiences, most of whom are using the search engine.

Google has catapulted to the top of an intensely competitive market for paid inclusion, and search advertising dollars. The search engine is leading the market substantially due to its wide-ranging reach, and the effortless usability of their self-serve advertising tools.

Random Secrecy predicts the use of search technologies exclusively for e-commerce purchases will exceed $35 billion in 2004, estimates the total market size will top $92 billion by 2008.

Google’s prominence is largely due to growth in advertisers eager to embrace search based advertising to reach the millions using its search engine. The online search advertising industry as a whole grew substantially in 2003 as use of search to locate information, goods, and services increased. The three major search providers, led by Google, included Yahoo and MSN, saw a marked jump in revenues due to this trend.

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