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A Home Based Business Modeled After Google

Copyright © 2006 Gobala Krishnan

Probably the most exciting company to not only survive, but come out strong out of the dot-com crash of the late 90's is Google Inc (http://www.google.com). Having started out small as a company operated in the garage of a friend and employing a staff of three, Google's meteoric rise to a top name on the Internet is not really that perplexing when we analyze the core strengths and policies of this company.

I am a super-fan of Google. I am also a fan of studying success so that I can learn from it. Here are a few key points that you, as a home based business entrepreneur, can learn from Google:

1) Capital Isn't Everything

It may be hard for the newcomer to the home based business scene to swallow this fact. After all, more capital investment would mean more money to spend on advertising and building a home business. Its tempting to think how your business would be right now if you had, say $100,000 to start with, instead of the meager $1000 you scrambled to get from selling things around your home.

But here's one thing more important than capital - ingenuity. Ingenuity involves making the best of the resources available to you, making every advertising dollar count, and treating every customer or prospect invaluable to your business.

Capital in the wrong hands, in the hands of an inexperienced entrepreneur or marketer, is just a waste of money. Ingenuity, on the other hand, can turn a $1000 capital into a thriving business. And yes, when you get the ingenuity part right, then whatever extra capital you get would be worth so much more.

2) Differentiate and Win - Think Outside the Box

Innovation, ability to think outside the box and a willingness to test ideas and make mistakes is the trademark of any truly successful company, especially in Google's case. Recently when Google's Gmail (http://www.gmail.com) was launched, many ISPs and email providers were scrambling to offer more space to their free email accounts, simply because Google offered 1G of space. What they didn't get, however, was that Gmail was more that just about space.

So how did Google differentiate? They turned what would otherwise been just another email service into something much more. It is, as any user would be able to testify, the best way to store, organize and find information contained in emails. Keeping track of business responses and follow-ups is a breeze with Gmail. Try it yourself if you cannot believe that statement.

Many home based business entrepreneurs, especially the ones involved in network marketing, shiver at the word "saturated". In a network marketing environment it may dawn upon every person, at one point or another, that there are many others with products and opportunities that are similar to theirs, and the products that they are expected to sell may be in the highly competitive industries. I felt that way once too, but here's the real question - what can you offer?

Not too long ago a friend of mine, after completing her course on cosmetics, offered free facials and beauty consulting to promote cosmetic products sold by her network marketing company. By doing things most people were not doing at that time, she simple blew the competition away.

So what can you contribute to your home based business to make it different, to make it stand out from the crowd?

3) Give Your Customers Exactly What They Want

The success of Google's AdWords (http://adwords.google.com) and AdSense (http://adsense.google.com) is due to this simple fact - they gave advertisers exactly what they wanted. Marketers wanted a quick, results based, and dynamic advertising tool, and they got Adwords. Website owners wanted more advertising revenue, but did not want the hassle of maintaining it over the hundreds of pages that they have, and they got Adsense.

Its a pretty simple strategy - understand what your customers want and give it to them!

My ex-sponsor in my old network marketing company used to say that in order for me to move their nutritional supplements, I had to teach people that supplements can prevent many hazardous illnesses. Prevention is better than cure. But here's what I learned in a few years - the majority of people are looking for cures, not prevention. Most of the people I met in Malaysia are looking for a cure to sleeping disorders, a cure for fatigue, a cure for arthritis, and so on.

Sure, it may be a noble deed to educate people about prevention, but the world does not always work that way. The majority of people look for a home based business only when they get retrenched, when they run out of savings, or when they retire. So why not make your recruitment efforts match this need? Why not develop your niche market based on this category of people?

Instead of teaching them about residual income and the power of duplication which they are not interested in, wouldn't your message be more effective if you taught them how to earn a comfortable retirement income, or how to replace their current income instead?

The point is this - as a home based entrepreneur you must understand your target market's need, and serve them well. You should focus on being the best in providing the cure, not the best in preaching about the prevention. Focus on customer needs, and they will flock to you.

4) Are You Having Fun?

Everything about Google spells fun. But don't get me wrong. They are probably the most innovative company at the moment.

The fact that they can present their complicated technology in such a simple way to end-users is an act that every company can envy. Have you ever heard anyone complain about Google search being too complicated to use? Yet as an Internet marketer I can go crazy trying to understand the complexity behind the simple white page and squiggly logo.

Leave the complexity of a home based or network marketing business behind the scenes. Teach people how to have fun, while achieving goals and building their business. Show them that you are having fun yourself, and they will buy, they will join, or at least tell someone else about you, and your exciting business.

When you're having fun, it will not seem like work at all. Everyone could use a little fun in their lives, don't you think?

5) Focus on Your Core Competency

Yes, this is another phrase that is thrown around in the business world, but how many entrepreneurs actually practice it? As a home based entrepreneur, you may find the need to explore other sources of income. There's nothing wrong in that, but here's the catch - don't go where the money is, especially if it's not related to what you're doing.

Many people tend to find other sources of income that is totally unrelated to their main home business. As a result of that, they become an expert in nothing, and they become the best in nothing. If you make custom furniture at home, why take a job at a fast food chain to make ends meet, when you can explore other ways to make money out of your core competency? Having woodworking workshops, writing a 'how to' book on woodworking, or even a sales job at a furniture outlet can make good sources of additional revenue, while building your name and expertise on your core competency itself.

Starting out as a search engine, Google pretty much maintained their core competency until today. When they explore other sources of revenue or develop new products, you can be pretty sure it's related to search technology. And the undisputed result of that is that there is simply no other better alternative when it comes to search and information retrieval.

Therefore, we have much to learn from the success story of Google. Just as much as the age old story of entrepreneurs who drop out of school, and go on to develop multi-million dollar businesses armed with nothing more than guts and ingenuity, Google's success story is inspirational to say the least.

A tale of humble beginnings with extraordinary endings. Maybe that will someday be the story of your life, and your home based business...

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7 Ways To Sky Rocket Your Google AdWords Revenue

Article Body:

Making money online is the goal of every entrepreneur, and one of the most effective ways of generating revenue online is to use Google Adwords. But, to make the most of what Adwords offers, you must have a firm grasp on how to run an effective Adwords campaign.

The first step you must take is to learn everything you can about Adwords. That means you must invest time in researching Adwords, and you may also want to consider taking an Adwords course or purchasing an Adwords guide.

Here are seven ways that will help you increase your Google Adwords revenue:

1. Once you have a thorough understanding of Adwords, consider how much you want to invest initially to bid on keywords. Set a budget that you are you comfortable with, and stick to it. Once you drive more traffic to your Web site and, in return, make larger profits, you may want to increase your budget. For now, however, only bid what you can comfortably afford to pay.

2. Know how to use keywords to maximize your investment. Your main keyword or keyword phrase should be in the headline of your ad, in the ad itself, and in the content on your Web site.

3. Your ad must be innovative and grab the attention of your prospective customers. Illustrate to your prospective customers WHY they should click on the link and visit your Web site. Remember, the objective is for prospective customers to click on your ad.

4. Your Web site must contain information that is valuable to your target market. Once prospective customers click on the link to your Web site, they want to find information that they need and can use. By providing unique and compelling content, you'll give prospective customers to both sign up for your list and visit your Web site again and again (provided that you add fresh content on a regular basis).

5. Always keep track of the competition. You must know what your competitors are doing, so you can ensure you're doing enough to get ahead - and stay ahead - of them.

6. Use a variation of keywords, including commonly misspelled words. By using a variety of keywords, you'll reach a larger audience.

7. Avoid using negative or inactive keywords. If a keyword isn't getting many hits, stop using it. Likewise, avoid using negative keywords. All of your keywords should be directly related to your target market.

If you apply the right techniques, you should see an increase in traffic to your Web site which will, hopefully, increase your overall profits. Remember, you should only bid as much as you can comfortably afford.

Purchasing keywords before having a thorough understanding of what to expect could end up costing you money, so be sure to do your research before you actually start bidding and placing ads.

What Google Knows

It wasn’t that long ago that a tremendous scare went through the internet community. The issue had to do with the huge amount of data that can be collected on individuals using search engines online. This large body of information naturally drew the attention of the Homeland Security agencies who are charged with the job of finding out all they can about potential sleeper cells of terrorism in this country.

The stand off came when the government began to demand access to the search records of all users of the major search engines. When this upcoming struggle for privacy began to come to a head, many of us who depend on search engines for both personal and business research began to get that “big brother is watching” feeling.

It’s a tough compromise. We know that our government must have the ability to find and put a stop to security risks that might result in another disaster like September 11th 2001. But at the same time, Americans are tremendously protective of their liberties, their privacy and their right to be left alone by the government.

Of all of the search engines who were in the spotlight during that struggle, Google’s resistance to allowing undue invasion of privacy of their customers stood out as an act of courage in a difficult confrontation. It turned out that Homeland Security really wasn’t becoming “big brother” and was simply researching how to use statistical data to possibly find terrorist patterns in search engine usage. But many of us remember that while Yahoo and others knuckled under quickly, it was Google who stood up and protected user information rather than immediately turn it over to Uncle Sam.

This stand reflects a long established business ethic that Google has maintained to be protective of the data it collects about users of its search tools. That protective nature has more benefits than just building our confidence that Google is a safe tool for all of us to use. Google indeed has at its disposal a tremendous library of personal information on anyone using its search tools. And as the dominant search engine in the industry, this potential includes just about anyone who accesses the internet.

The information that can be collected from you and I as we use the internet can tell an interested party a lot about your interests, what kind of business you are in, your religious views and your political affiliations. Powerful analytical tools are available to take large volumes of search information and translate that into profiles that would be of great interest to the government and to marketers who would love to be able to target specific populations for sales.

For Google, this information has significant value to them as they fine tune their search engine methodologies. They can methodically analyze this data to draw conclusions about how their search tools are working and how they should update the formulas that drive those tools to be more in step with how the internet audience is using cyberspace. Yes, this is taking advantage of their already dominant position to secure that position and make their toolset even more capable of staying ahead of the game. But we really cannot fault Google for using this data in that way. That is just good business.

It turns out then that Google’s protective posture when it comes to that massive database of search information serves their purposes extremely well. If they can keep this mountain of very specific data secure and proprietary, it represents a trade secret of tremendous value to Google to help them maintain their market superiority for a long time to come.

This is a case of the needs of the market serving the public good well. For as Google protects our search information so only it can benefit from such knowledge, they also are protecting our privacy from the prying eyes of overenthusiastic government agencies, hackers, marketing campaigns and even the terrorists who could use that information for insidious purposes. Therefore we can be thankful that Google jealously guards this data for its own uses because in the process, they are protecting us along the way.

Why Use Google Adsense?

Undoubtedly, you've heard about Google's AdSense and you are thinking about giving it a go. But is it really worth placing an AdSense banner on your site?

The answer is a definite yes. You could always have some other banner on your site, or even use some search of affiliate ad program and that would probably make you some money, given of course that your site enjoys a healthy amount of visitors. However with affiliate marketing, it is expected that the visitor from your website completes a sale before you are remunerated.

But that's nowhere near what you get for using AdSense. There are people who earn in excess of 100.000 dollars per year by using AdSense. And it doesn't just stop with making more money. Firstly, the ads are text only. That means they're by far less obtrusive on your visitors then your average, flashy banner that's designed to catch the eye of the visitor.

Sure, you'll have to ensure they get better placement, so as to be noticed but despite that they don't bother viewer’s as much as traditional ads. Think about the many sites you've seen using pop-ups, floating banners and many other schemes that will have visitors screaming in anger every time they visit the said website. You can actually do better then that, annoying people less and still making an amount of money.

Secondly, the ads are generated based on the contents of your site automatically. When you use an affiliate ad program, you have to specify certain categories that your sites belong to.

However, if any page on your site falls outside of these categories, the banners aren't targeted anymore. And what that means is that you're potentially showing ads to people who don't have any interest in them and that can lead to inefficiencies.

With Google AdSense that just about never happens: the ads present on your site will always be in sync with whatever your visitors are interested in and that adds to your site's value and to the revenue it produces.

What's more, the look of these banners and their size is customizable, which means they will feel more integrated with the rest of your site's content, which brings an increase in your site's overall visual quality as opposed to a traditional approach.

For many people, there's also a great problem with finding people to advertise on their site as well. AdSense is clearly the easiest solution available to this problem today.

It's free to join the AdSense program and it almost takes no time at all. The potential database of websites from AdWords is larger then anything you might encounter from any competitor, numbering over 150.000 users. This means as more people compete the CPC or cost per click for search terms will inevitably rise.

Also, setting up AdSense on your site is a breeze, and you can complete the whole process in less then an hour. It takes a lot less to do then any form of affiliate advertising which is yet another reason to choose the easy AdSense approach.

All you need to do is add an AdSense banner on your website (other then registering with the program of course) is to copy & paste a few lines and you're all done, you get to choose where the banners go, how large they are and how they integrate with the rest of your site.

For any webmaster out there, that's a killer scheme because it lets you draw the line between your site's usability level and the amount of advertising you wish to have. Some people need the money badly while others just keep AdSense running to pay for the hosting of their website.

AdSense is a great advertising program because a lot of thought has went into making it "just work for everyone". It works great for the people who use AdWords, for the webmasters using AdSense, and most importantly for the visitors of the websites.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

Using Google Adwords To Drive Laser Targeted Traffic

The biggest well known secret in generating wealth in the internet based business or e-commerce is Traffic. Everybody knows it; every site wants it and every site needs it. The point of websites is to be visited and viewed. Many elaborate designs, money and countless hours of developing a site to make them beautiful and attractive are utilized. Without traffic, it is for naught.

With traffic comes a potential customer which basically means sales which in turn means profit. While many sites have collapsed in the past with the downturn of many internet based business, many smaller sites have generated good money by concentrating on a certain niche and some subniches.

This is a reason why e-commerce site laser target certain groups of people and drive them to their site to showcase their sites and products. Precision marketing is essential so that you could count on all the traffic on your site as potential customers.

Using Money to Make Money

It’s a common business notion that if you want to make money, you have to spend money. One good way of spending money for business gain is through advertising. Advertising brings in the people because through advertising, they know that there is such a company or product in existence. With the right type of advertising, you can see the spurt of traffic growth to your site. With a high volume of traffic, even if only a small portion or percentage turns out to be buying customers it is still a good average of profit generating income.

Right now, there is no other advertising scheme that would be worth every cent than using Google’s Adwords. The surge in popularity of Google’s Adwords is very evident as you can see so many sites sporting this ad scheme.

In using Google's Adwords, you pay a certain fee depending on the number of keywords your ad is keyword sensitive to. Each time a person does a search in Google, the keyword or keywords use generate ads in the side of Google which are generated by the keywords they have assigned for their ads.

This method laser targets the traffic a site wants for their site. This also ensures that you are readily visible in the first page of a search result. Paying Google for this ad scheme ensures that your target group of people sees your ads. You drive your laser targeted traffic to your site which provides for their needs and wants. You can also be sure that you can meet their demands and needs.

Aside from Google, you can also be featured in their other search networks, these includes sites like, AskJeeves, AOL Search and Netscape. These sites also show Adwords ads that react to searches done by visitors. There are also content networks, non-search engine sites that feature Google Adwords, which will also carry your ads. But this is subjected to the niche the site features. Your chosen keywords will determine which content network shall feature your ad. The frequency of your ad shall also be determined by your allowed budget.

Laser Targeting your Traffic

To get a good number or estimate of the traffic to buying customer ratio it is good to laser target your traffic. Knowing that your traffic are all potential customers and are interested in your products and company provides you with a more accurate statistics. This will show you how effective your utilizing of Google Adwords is.

Drive laser targeted traffic to your site by using keywords or keyword phrases for your Goggle Adwords that pertains to your company and to your products. There are many online internet tools that can help you in choosing keywords and keyword phrases that are currently in demand that could help drive laser targeted traffic to your site.

With your Google Adwords ad, you are ensured that every click to your ad is a potential customer that is precisely looking pr interested in what you have to offer. Make sure that your Google Adwords ad has the right keywords so that you can drive you're laser targeted traffic to your site.

Using Google Adwords to help boost the drive to increase laser targeted traffic will prove to be very beneficial as many other companies can attest to. The benefits are high with the cost relatively justifiable.

Using Google Adwords to Drive Traffic to your Website

Highly targeted traffic is one of the most important entities in the internet universe. Any website owner or administrator recognizes the importance of driving traffic to a website. The success of any website does not rely entirely on the site itself. You may have a terrific idea for a website, offer an excellent product or service, or have an exceptionally designed site with superb content, but if you do not use the right strategies to advertise, your site would not attract the high traffic you need. Attracting targeted traffic is a task that should be taken seriously for any site to succeed or make a profit. Fortunately, there are internet-marketing tools that help the website marketer to drive traffic to his website. One of the most significant, and effective, of these tools is Google's Adwords. Adwords is one of Google's advertising services.

How does Google Adwords work? Google is the largest search engine on the web receiving over 200 million queries each day through its various services. As Google is the most popular search engine today, webmasters are keen on having their websites achieve a higher ranking in the search engine results it provides. A high ranking can mean high traffic for that website. The search engine results page is also a great venue for advertisers to promote a product or service through ads and links. Consequently, Google launched its Adwords service, as a way for businesses to advertise products and services to a targeted audience. Google Adwords can guarantee instant traffic. In this service, Google displays relevant text based ads within its search engine results page termed as "Sponsored Links". Whenever a particular keyword is searched on, these relevant links appear in a separate section giving excellent exposure to the sites listed.

How do you use Google Adwords? First, you have to open an account with the Google Adwords Service. Then, you should indicate your target language and country. This is important because you would not want your products advertised in countries where your product or service cannot be sold. Afterwards, you should now create an ad group. This involves designing the ad, selecting keywords and determining maximum cost per click that you are willing to spend and defining bid amounts. The most important step in creating a successful Adwords campaign is selecting an effective title tag that will catch the attention of your target audience. The title tag, generally a short phrase, is the most important part of your Adwords campaign so make sure that it is attractive and catchy. You should describe the website clearly and accurately. The most effective advertising conveys a clear message to the target audience. With a clear message, you will be attracting qualified leads, which can eventually convert to sale. Thus, the importance of selecting the right keywords cannot be overemphasized.

There are keyword variations you can adapt to reach more prospects. Using these varieties, misspellings and derivatives can help increase the chance of your ads being served. Broad match is targeting keywords in a loosely defined manner. Here, the ads appear based on the keywords that have been queried by other users as opposed to exact match, which calls for the keyword to match the query exactly. Meanwhile, a keyword phrase set to phrase match will only appear when the exact phrase is searched on. A negative keyword is helpful in filtering unrelated pages.

After you have decided on what title tag to use in your ad, you must now define a budget in order to maximize exposure. Google Adwords recommend a daily budget for each campaign. However, you should determine a budget that is suitable and affordable. You should also determine the maximum cost per click. Google will offer a recommended cost per click, but you do not have to stick with this. Usually, a number one position is not ideal as it can also attract unwanted traffic and useless clicks. A number two position is more preferred as it can filter useless clicks and provide traffic with a higher conversion rate.

To conclude, Google Adwords is an excellent strategy and tool in giving your site maximum exposure. Nevertheless, Google Adwords should not be your sole advertising campaign. It will definitely help you find the all-important, highly targeted traffic you need.

The Future of Google Adsense

There are many ideas springing up concerning what AdSense will look like in the future and how the system will change as opposed to what it is now.

Firstly, it's clear that targeting algorithms will become even better and more powerful then they are now. This has clearly been seen with the Google search engine itself over the last few years and it should be of no surprise as this happens with AdSense. Advertisers will appear in more appropriate results and those advertisers who manipulate their content to allow high paying keywords to appear may struggle to do this unless it is actually appropriate to their content.

Another thing which is bound to happen is more protection for AdWords advertisers concerning click fraud. Google acknowledges this to be a very key issue that it needs to address as quickly as possible and there's no doubt it will happen as fast as possible. At the moment those who have high levels of traffic, can easily disguise IP addresses and increase CTR ( Click Through Rate).

Google is always keen on improving its products and this has been seen before in AdSense. The search engine company has introduced site-targeted AdSense CPM, "smart pricing" and domain blocking and there will probably be improvements that have already been added by other similar sites.

One such example is the option for the advertiser to have more control over where the content is being displayed. This could mean blocking your site from displaying on several addresses that host AdSense banners.

Another idea that has been advanced is that Google will integrate AdSense in other forms of media like newspapers or television and so on. While this might seem to be more on the science-fiction side of the facts there's no indication that this might not happen.

Google have access to an international array of over 150,000 advertisers of whom may choose to penetrate offline markets in different countries. With Google’s strong network of advertisers, they may choose to appoint or allow offline distributors to create a format for Adwords advertising in content, in search and now offline.

More options could be implemented for AdSense publishers, allowing them to specify keywords of their own. While Google has been reluctant of this there's no indication that this will not happen in the future.

Also, a lot of people are demanding a clear specification of the pricing policy of AdSense. Google has given no indication of why this isn't public information but at this moment it seems highly unlikely that such information will ever be present on Google AdSense.

Another feature that could find itself into AdSense would be letting website publishers see which links are generating clicks on their website and based on what keywords they arrive there.

This could end up being a major issue that could threaten the entire system as it could perhaps encourage more adsense only websites as profits become more transparent. A lot of people may make AdSense-only sites, designed just for making profits through AdSense.

While this is already happening today, it might be foolish of Google to put such tools in the hands of its publishers.

However, one thing that could happen is a way for users to fix their issues with low AdSense generated income on their site. This could be done through an on-line wizard or something similar that would make suggestions to website owners based on their contents.

But the major buzzword of the day is RSS. The possibility of sending targeted ads directly to users without requiring any navigation on their behalf is becoming a reality with RSS. And there are clear signs that Google isn't going to let such an opportunity pass by.

This is what "interactive television" and similar items have been trying to do for quite some time now. But the Internet would be a much better medium for this, because there are no mediums quite as interactive as the Internet.

But in the end, this is mostly speculation and we are bound to have Google surprising us with new features we would have never thought of.

What is Google adsense?

If you look at the Internet a few years back, you'll see that advertising was done in a way that was very similar to other types of media like television, or actually, more like what you see in a newspaper.

You'd enter a site, and in some location you'd get to see a banner (often these were quite numerous and very large), which would present and ad for whatever company was paying for adds on your space.

But there was one problem with this kind of advertising. It really wasn't exploiting the fact that the adds weren't in some newspaper, but were instead presented over the Internet.

You've probably noticed a lot of things like this over the pages you've browsed. You're looking at an on-line shop, looking for a watch but you get a banner that advertises a car.

While you might, at some later point want to buy a car, right now you're looking for a watch and it would have surely been nice if the banner were advertising a watch, because then you would have probably clicked it.

Well that's also what the folks at Google thought of, so they came up with a killer idea. This is knows as Google AdSense, and it's known as a targeted advertising program

What you do (as a web designer / website owner) is, instead of jumping through hoops to get some banner on your site that your visitors won't even care about, is you just allocate some region of the screen.

You then sign up for the Google AdSense program, you insert a small snippet of code in your webpage and Google ensures that in the location you specify, a banner will appear, presenting adds relevant to the contents of your site.

It's very easy for Google to do this because Google is a search engine company. It looks for the key words in your page, searches a database of websites to find the ones related to whatever is on your page and presto: a targeted ad.

You (the webmaster) get a fee for each visitor that clicks on an adsense banner on your site. Now that's bound to happen more often then with a traditional banner because people are actually interested in what's in that banner (otherwise, they wouldn't be on your page would they?).

But, this also does wonders for the people who want to advertise. And it's because of the same reason. The greatest thing about Google AdSense is that all the content in a banner is relevant.

This relevancy is the key to the programs success, and also the reason why everyone remains happy. The advertiser has a relevantly placed advert, the publisher earns money from their content and Google take their cut.

Of course, as always, Google has set some high standards for its AdSense program, in terms of looks and functionality. You can't have more than two such banners on your website and Google only inserts text in these banners.

So an extra benefit is that AdSense advertising is a lot less obtrusive then regular advertising. But this also means you should position the banner better because it's possible that visitors might miss it altogether.

So in the end, Google AdSense is an advertising program that is unique because the ads are relevant to the content on the site. Anyone that wants to advertise pays Google for it. Anyone who wants to place ads on their site does this through AdSense, getting paid by Google in the process.

All transactions are run through Google, and the advertisers and publishers get access to statistics which help them to understand and moderate the effectiveness of their campaign.

The whole process is elegant, simple and effective from anyone in the chain, from site visitors to advertisers, and it's one of the reasons Google are known for their innovation and new thinking.