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By Dawn Kawamoto, 8 October 2003 08:39

NEWS Personalisation has become an ever more important part of search, as a means to deliver more accurate results to users, according to Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO. Schmidt, who joined Google in 2001 after serving as chief executive of Novell, and venture capitalist Michael Moritz, a Google investor, discussed the future of search, Schmidt's hiring as Google CEO and what it takes to build a successful young company during the Silicon Valley 4.0 conference in Mountain View. Google plans to leave well enough alone when it comes to changing its interface, Schmidt said. However, he noted the company has no qualms in bolstering the way its search technology works. The company is increasingly focusing on personalisation as a means to improve its search results, with the acquisition last week of Kaltix, a start-up that builds search tools based on personalization and context. "The primary mission of Google is to get you what you want, rather than what someone thinks you want," Schmidt said. The notion that products and technology don't matter when a company is young is a fallacy, and not just an issue for older, established companies, said Schmidt, who has also previously served as chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems. Nurturing passion is another key area when building a start-up, Schmidt said. "It's human nature people want to do something that will matter and change the world," Schmidt said. "And it's these companies that will be built on passion." Google has a rigorous hiring system to draw in people with these sorts of traits, from passion to a perspective of limitless boundaries. Prospective Google employees are subjected to a peer review, which at times is tougher than the interview with executives and managers, Schmidt said. And job candidates who manage to pass the first hurdle are then interviewed by a second committee. Moritz said: "A merciless hiring process in the first 60 days [of a company's life] is important. That's why Google has been able to do more with fewer people than some larger companies." Schmidt said he too went through a rigorous interviewing process with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Dawn Kawamoto writes for News.com