HOW GOOGLE ADWORDS GOT ITS NAME

The price per click (PPC) offering AdWords is Google’s most successful product to date and its largest revenue earner. Google’s revenues from advertising for the full year in 2013 were $50 billion. AdWords was initially started by aping the successful model of the then competing search engine GoTo. But the engineers at Google, under the directions of Larry and Sergey, quickly took it to another level with plenty of value-adds. In his book I’m Feeling Lucky, former Google consumer marketing head Douglas Edwards has given insights on how the founders settled on the name AdWords for their new offering.

IT SHOULDN’T SOUND FUNNY WHEN REPEATED FIVE TIMES
Edwards says the new ad serving system began in late 2000 with the working title ‘AdsToo’, although no one wanted it to become the permanent name of the offering. Larry Page left the field open saying all suggestions are welcome except those which sounded funny when repeated five times fast. Omid Kordestani, the sales head, did not want a combination word which started with Google. Within this broad framework, suggestions started pouring in. ‘PrestoAds’ and ‘Self-serve Ads’were two names which earned the support of Salar Kamangar. Susan Wojcicki veered around to choosing ‘AdsDirect’ as the name for the offering. But they were not done yet.

Edwards says he started off on a bad note by pushing for GIDYAP (Google Interactive Do-It-Yourself Ad Program) which was received with great derision. To retrieve lost ground, he had to come up with something better. So he tried ‘BuyWords’, a play between ‘bywords’ and ‘buy words’. It met with the approval of the sales team. And even Larry found it acceptable. But just when Edwards thought the matter was settled, he sensed that a new round of lobbying had just begun.

So he went home that day and worked on a new set of names for about an hour. The next day morning, he sent out the fresh list of possibilities:

Promote Control

Ad-O-Mat

Ad Commander

Impulse Ads

AdWords

He liked the last one the best, and spent considerable time selling it. “It’s new, and improved. It’s like ‘BuyWords’ without the ‘Buy’,” he pleaded.

Redemption at last. Salar liked it. Omid liked it. Larry liked it. Sergey cast the final vote. He told the engineering team that the new ad serving system would be called AdWords. And so it came to be.

e.o.m.