As a child Monika Henzinger wanted to be an astronaut. "When the Challenger exploded," she says, "I changed my mind." Good decision. Henzinger now stands on the bridge of the hottest search company around.
Since its debut less than three years ago, Google has built a massive index of more than 1 billion Web pages; it has run away with awards and outstanding user ratings; and it has snatched perhaps the most prestigious prize of all in its field: the right to power the search on No. 1 portal Yahoo. Add its own visitors to the deals the company has cut to handle searches for AOL/Netscape, Martha Stewart and 120 other sites, and you get more than 70 million searches a day powered by Google.
As the first wave of search sites has gone IPO and taken a beating in the market, Google has chosen to not go public - or even portal. Instead, the company is focusing on keeping its prized search engine tuned to outrace the competition. That puts Henzinger, director of research, at the heart of the company. Not only are Henzinger and her team of 10 scientists dedicated to keeping the engine running smoothly, but also they're in charge of adding new features such as translation, dictionary links, maps and white pages. Henzinger's team is responsible for making Google run on wireless devices and, with voice recognition, on cell phones as well.
Google's success raises the possibility that it, too, could slip into portalhood and get distracted. Executives brush off the concern. "People need to find things on the Web," says Google President Sergey Brin. "That's our core mission."
Analysts don't seem worried, either. "There's no expectation that they're suddenly going to get dumb," says Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch.
The company may be conservative in its goals - but not with its perks. The in-house gym, massages and free gourmet meals are enticing (and surprising) in this frugal age. For her part, Henzinger ignores most of it. Family remains her priority; she gets to work early and leaves before 5:30 p.m. to pick up her 3-year-old daughter from day care. She and her husband, a computer science professor at the University of California at Berkeley, are expecting a second daughter in July.
At a company that has succeeded by not overreaching, Henzinger, a self-proclaimed pragmatist, is a perfect fit.
