Search: Google versus Microsoft 49 `Why?' replies the second. `You've never even met him.' The exchange lasted just under 30 seconds, yet positioned Google at the heart of how people were now using the web ­ to search and find and dig into information that was pouring into online repositories from formerly paper-based systems disgorging themselves online, and from people creating their own identities, which ­ if you joined the dots ­ could be connected. That Google had vaulted from being just a brand into something you did, into a verb that could be thrown out in prime-time episodes of the most popular series on TV, without needing explanation, indicated that Microsoft already faced the most uphill of battles before it had even begun to fight in earnest. But around the time that episode of ER was being filmed ­ in mid-2002 ­ Yusuf Mehdi realized that Google, and in particular the search business, needed to be taken seriously. Google didn't know it, but the giant had woken up. Mehdi was the head of Microsoft's MSN Search business. Project Underdog In February 2003, an audience of 25 of Microsoft's most senior management, including Gates and Ballmer, assembled in Building 36, on the east of Microsoft's Redmond campus. They were there to hear Christopher Payne, then 37 and the vice-president in charge of MSN, tell them about a serious business threat they had overlooked. Payne had originally joined Microsoft in 1995, and then moved to Amazon in 1998 before rejoining MSN in 2001. In the middle of 2002 he had joined the team behind MSN Search, where he and Mehdi had looked at how Microsoft was doing in search, and realized it had a big problem. It's easy for a `webmaster' who controls a site to see where incoming traffic is coming from: any inbound browser will bring a `referrer' link indicating which page sent it there. As the year wore on, Mehdi and Payne could see more and more traffic to MSN coming from Google. And they could also see that Google didn't seem to have any trouble finding advertisements (or `inventory') to go with its searches.