Matt Cutts on the US Digital Service and Working at Google for 17 Years

TL;DR

Matt Cutts describes his 17-year tenure at Google (71st employee, web spam lead) and his current role as administrator of the US Digital Service. He contrasts Google's early startup uncertainty and informal culture with the meaningful but frustrating work of improving government technology, where progress is measured in moving from 1995-level practices toward modern cloud and bug bounty programs.

Key insights

• Google's early survival was completely uncertain; the dot-com crash happened in March 2000 and they worried about Alta Vista crushing them.
• The first self-service AdWords ad was for a Maine lobster company, proving the long tail of advertisers who could not be reached by traditional sales.
• Early AdWords prototype nearly melted Google because Cutts forgot to turn off caching for 30% of traffic; click-through rates were initially low because copy was untested.