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| Happy Birthday Google! |
Twelve is the best age. If I could close my eyes and be 12 again, all would be right with the world--my parents would still be together, my bills would be nonexistent and I would be a much smaller shoe and clothing size. Oh well... We all know age is inevitable.
I wanted to use today's blog post to honor Google. I always remember Google as the internet search engine company many of my former coworkers jumped ship to work for. Between 1999-2001, I was working at a teen internet company called Snowball.com which owned the male gaming website IGN.com, a girl power website called ChickClick.com (I loved ChickClick!) and some other sites like HighSchoolAlumni.com.
Business wasn't going very well by 2001. Our stock options dropped to about 40 cents a share and there were rounds of layoffs every quarter. It was so depressing. I loved that job. It was my first copy writing job and I had the chance to work on awesome interactive ad campaigns. I remember each time I made the layoff cut, I felt as if I had won some sort of job lottery. As the dot bomb blew up, my coworkers began leaving in droves for a place called Google. The name made me giggle and I wasn't really sure what it was they did exactly.
I remember receiving a call from a former coworker a few weeks after she and about ten others left for Google. She asked if I would mind helping her with a writing project. One of my biggest career regrets is turning her down. I told her I wasn't good enough to write something targeted to adults. At that time, I had only written for kids. She urged me to give it a shot, I refused. Yet another awesome opportunity turned down by low self-esteem.
Today, our VP who left for Google is now the CEO of AOL, another internet company I worked for and fell victim to rounds of layoffs. Anyway, that's my Google story. Happy birthday Google! We'd be lost without you--literally, I love Google Maps. My Verizon DROID phone is just as dependent on you as I am. Thank you for Blogger and Google Analytics and much, much more!
