I couldn't agree more. A prototype is always going to be more valid as a point of discussion than a powerpoint slide, because it represents something that can be implemented.

In the UK there are regularly very large projects that never go live, because they were implemented from a specification which is divorced from the real world requirements.

Sadly, large corporations are not prototype-friendly. As Paul points out, it wouldn't be possible in Google nowadays to gain access to the ad database for prototyping purposes. I don't see why not though, assuming we're talking read-only access.

According to the book "the search" the relevant ads (now known as adwords/adsense) was an idea of goto.com grabbed by google search (they ended up settling for alot of money).... and now another google person claims relevant ads it's his idea? I don't really understand the timeline here: goto.com, google search, google search + relevant ads, gmail, gmail + relevant ads?

I agree with Paul Buchheit,

Infact, I like to decide idea within 15 mins, and finish prototype within 4 hours. finish beta within 7 days, a week.

if a project hard to do, you should notice, the user maybe, can not unerstand your product also.

Simple is good.

For old chinese words, 不做不知道，Just do it and get the result!

Don't confuse search ads with contextual ads, they're different things. I don't think Paul claimed that it was his idea to show relevant ads, he wrote a prototype and some of his colleagues liked the results. Google later launched a contextual ad service and then acquired Applied Semantics (Oingo), which has already come up with AdSense.

http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/market-research-analysis/6585174-1.html
http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/applied.html

Also see: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-07-06-n82.html

[Edit: In the post, to make it more clear, I changed "targeted ads when working at Google's Gmail" to "content targeted ads when working at Google's Gmail".]

Ionut Alex. Chitu

Search ads is a kind of contextual ads, the keywords can be treated as content, the special content.

Google adsense is a kind of relevant ads, Google adsense decide the keywords from the content, then search within the ads via these keywords. then display the ads.

Roger Browne "[...] As Paul points out, it wouldn't be possible in Google nowadays to gain access to the ad database for prototyping purposes. I don't see why not though, assuming we're talking read-only access."

Paul spoke of fully unrestricted Google-wide access. I understand why Google chose to close that apparent internal-security hole: real risk – if ever so minute [in that ever-happy Googleland, er... Plex] – of conscious, or merely coincidential leakeage of DB structure and/or contents. Not to mention the risk of outright copying of, and/or sabotaging by "future ex-employees." That's bound to be worth aplenty to competitors. Besides, it's never a good practice to be playing around with live data, even within a "Googlesandbox" – be they ads or account records.

For such prototyping there ought to be a specially-scrambled (i.e. "prototyped" ;-)) database, rewritten for the purpose of testing with random strings and other suitable "looky-like-but-fake" elements.