Mike McCue Quotes

Microsoft could help Facebook with one of the biggest challenges, namely monetizing its traffic without reducing the user's experience. It's obvious that Microsoft needs traffic and Facebook needs search.

What people want is a seamless Web experience.

Generally, our approach with products at Google is to first develop the right user base and then to figure out what's the right experience for the ads.

The idea that somebody would go to my YouTube channel and want to watch movies and then be subjected to some terrible car commercial - I don't like that.

If advertisers want to decorate their ads to increase their conversions by showing what users think, that's a good thing.

WhatsApp only wanted to focus on how current users were engaging with the product. Like how they did not use advertising and kept the experience uncluttered.

Boxes and rectangles on the side or top of a website simply do not deliver against brand advertising goals. Like it or not, boxes and rectangles have for the most part become the province of direct response advertising, or brand advertising that pays, on average, as if it's driven by direct response metrics.

The reason we make money is because we have a few different business models. One is ads: we get incredibly high click rates because most people on Scribd are searching the site for something, or they came from a search engine, and they're looking for something specific.

Personally, I'd love to see more social media firms develop business models that aren't reliant on advertising. If you're a social media firm selling ads, your goal is to get people to interrupt what they're doing all day long so they come and stare at your service as much as possible.

The Web or card experience is not at all going to replicate the book experience, nor is the book experience going to replicate the Web.

Google, Facebook, and other consumer web companies violate our privacy. But that's only because they have an ad-based business model. They can only make money by selling your data - and degrading the product experience with ads.

I did an early version of my site where it was virtually impossible to get through it, just as a statement about the web. But after a few laughs and some angry e-mails, I realized it wasn't doing me much good. I think the web has become more about the final product, not what it takes to get to it.

The trouble with writing for the web is that writing is about getting people to forget they're reading. Anything that reminds them they are reading, or which annoys or distracts them, bounces them out of the world. And the web, it seems to me, is all bounce. A very, very difficult medium to write for.

Facebook needs to maintain its vise-like grip on our attention to become a conduit of not only advertising but also commerce, so that it can take a cut of everything.

A Web site that promotes flow is like a gourmet meal. You start off with the appetizers, move on to the salads and entrees, and build toward dessert. Unfortunately, most sites are built like a cafeteria. You pick whatever you want. That sounds good at first, but soon it doesn't matter what you choose to do. Everything is bland and the same.

Video games and YouTube.com are creatively booming, even though Web design, as demonstrated by the ugly clutter of most major news sites, is in the pits.

The utmost thing is the user experience, to have the most useful experience.

Our theory is, if you need the user to tell you what you're selling, then you don't know what you're selling, and it's probably not going to be a good experience.

What happens to the Microsofts, Oracles and IBMs of the world is that when they get big enough, they don't think they need to bring that same level of focus and energy to the end-user experience.

I never really enjoyed getting a portfolio together then sending it out; whereas, putting up the website is quite an enjoyable experience. The net's just a much faster and more modern way to distribute things, and you have to embrace it.

I subscribe to about 200 blogs. I look for insights and good writing, and I look to get smarter.

Look at growth, look at how much time people spend on the Net and look at the variety of things that they are doing. It's all really good, so I am actually encouraged by the fundamentals that underlie usage growth on the Net.

We are a consumer company and our success is directly linked to our users trusting us. Therefore we have the same incentive as the user: they want to see relevant advertising so their experience of Google is positive and we want to deliver it.

Google is a consumer brand and people need to be comfortable. If we were just an advertising brand we wouldn't have the same concerns. We've always tried to promote transparency and choice among our users.

Advertising is very simple in a lot of ways. Advertisers go where the users go, and users are choosing to spend a lot more time online.