Success Quote by Sergey Brin

Brin’s line is a neat piece of early-tech stagecraft: it reframes marketing not as persuasion but as a side effect of usefulness. The intent is disarmingly pragmatic - reassure investors and the public that Google can grow without looking like a traditional company selling itself. In the late-1990s/early-2000s context, “marketing” still carried the whiff of banner ads, portal deals, and dot-com hype. Google wanted to be the opposite: spare, fast, and suspiciously good. So Brin positions word-of-mouth as proof, not strategy. If users “often tell others,” the product must be doing something objectively right.

The subtext is more calculating than it sounds. Calling users “our marketing” turns trust into an asset on the balance sheet. It hints at a growth engine that’s cheap, scalable, and difficult for competitors to buy outright: social recommendation. The phrasing also quietly shifts agency. Users are framed as partners in expansion, which flatters them, but it also normalizes the idea that their behavior - searching, sharing, adopting - is part of Google’s business model.

There’s also an ideological flex: the best marketing is no marketing, just engineering. That story helped Google claim moral high ground over louder, ad-soaked rivals, even as advertising would become its core revenue. The quote works because it sells inevitability. A “high percentage” of evangelists implies momentum; the audience is invited to believe Google isn’t pushing growth - it’s simply being pulled there by people who can’t help but spread it.