We have talked about Amit Singhal a lot here, but often, people here do not understand that virtually everything you see in the search results with the exception of the ads, is under Amit Singhal's supervision. He is the head of ranking, core search, knowledge graph, voice search, mobile, pretty much every answer and search result you see in Google, goes through his approval first.
Of course, he is not manually serving up the results like a butler, but rather, he is in charge of the algorithms that automate the responses given to your queries.
Amit Singhal announced on Twitter and Google+ that Saturday was his fifteenth year anniversary at the company. Back in November 28, 2000, Google was just a "small start up" he said, now it serves over one billion users.
Here is what Amit said (just in case Google+ one day goes offline):
Fifteen years ago, on this day, I joined a small startup called Google; and here I am, fifteen years later, enjoying every moment of this beautiful journey that I started with Google on Nov 28, 2000.A lot has changed in the last fifteen years, Google has grown up a lot, and I have experienced tremendous personal growth. But one thing that has not changed, is the Google mission: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. This mission is one of the things that keeps me so engaged at Google. I feel proud to come in everyday knowing that what I will do will improve the lives of over a Billion people, and that is exactly what my employer wants me to do.
The second reason that has kept me at Google, in fact has made the last fifteen years the best professional ride anyone could every experience is my wonderful colleagues at Google. The people at Google are just amazing, and they are not just amazing in their respective areas, they are some of the most amazing human beings you will ever meet. I have made friends at Google that will last a lifetime, and that is the true wealth I've accumulated in my life.
On a personal note, when I joined Google, my two kids were four years old and six months old. Even though I had a few jobs before coming to Google, my kids only remember their Dad as a Googler.
Today... I am feeling Thankful.
Matt Cutts, who shared an office with Amit for years and worked under him as the head of spam, added on Google+:
Congrats to Amit Singhal on 15 years at Google!Amit Singhal, one of the unsung heroes of Google, just celebrated 15 years at the company. If you've ever gotten a magical answer from Google, you probably have Amit to thank for it.
I can't think of another person who has taken on so many different roles--individual contributor, manager, and head of search, not to mention dealing with press--and done such a superb job in each role. When a regular person hits a wall and gets discouraged, that's when Amit is just getting started. :) It's always fun to see how he cuts to the root of a problem and solves it. I'm proud to call him my friend.
What is Amit up to next? Well, besides for the continuation of search, we mentioned it on Friday, the universal assistant.
It is hard to imagine the impact of one person, if only there was an algorithm that could show us how important each individual is on a PageRank scale. :)
