Craig Silverstein's : The Man of Google

Via Slashdot :
Craig Silverstein is the employee No. 1 & the technology director of world No.1 Search Engine & the only company which is giving Microsoft a tough time. Silverstein, 31, left his doctoral studies at Stanford University in 1998, joining school chums Sergey Brin and Larry Page in a nearby garage to build "the Google". Google is poised to raise US$2.7 billion in one of the hottest tech initial public offerings since 2000. Imminent wealth aside, Silverstein has long been a champion of working hard and whistling while you do it. As Google's director of technology, he balances pie-in-the-sky visions for search -- in other words, artificially intelligent search pets -- and churning out products that improve people's access to information. Just a sampling includes new technology to personalise the company's Web site; comparative shopping prices on wireless devices; and the ability to send, store and manage up to 1 gigabyte of free e-mail, otherwise known as Gmail.



In an interview before Google's IPO filing [ZDnet], Silverstein discussed the backlash against Gmail among privacy advocates, the company's cultural changes and its shifting reliance on PageRank, the mathematical algorithm that has helped Google shine. The company recently renewed an exclusive PageRank licence from Stanford that's valid through 2011.