ALEC HOGG: Stafford Masie, chief executive of Google South Africa is in the studio. September 1998, ten years ago, Google started off in a garage in Menlo Park, California. I mentioned earlier that from the value of Google today you can buy Anglo American, Sasol, SA Breweries, Standard Bank, FirstRand, Nedbank - and still have a little bit of change left. It's a n incredible story.

STAFFORD MASIE: It's absolutely insane. It's such an awesome opportunity to be a part of the organisation. And I think if you take a look at what we are addressing in the company from a technology perspective, the businesses that we are in, the things that we have from a visionary perspective on our portfolio, I think there is still so much room to grow. I don't think that we have reached our pinnacle, I don't think that we have even in our core business, Search. We always talk about the Search problem and how far we've gone with the Search problem - we've still got such a long way to address what we call semantic search, really giving people what they want, based upon where they are, etc.

ALEC HOGG: It's interesting that Google has stuck a stake in the ground in South Africa. When did you come here, and how's it been going?

STAFFORD MASIE: We've been here since August, September last year. One year here, and since my appointment. The objective of Google putting its roots down in South Africa is to create an African model for the company, and that's one of the encouraging things about Google that I can say from an internal perspective. The company is very interested in not creating a Western cookie-cut version of Google in South Africa. They are truly looking at an Africanised model, an African business model that suits Africa for Google.

ALEC HOGG: Are you ruffling any feathers here yet? Changing ... Google does that.

STAFFORD MASIE: I think it's a disruptive technology, I think it's a disruptive business to certain institutes. I think there's been a tradition how media and advertising has worked in South Africa, and I think we'll be disruptive. But at the end of the day the end-user, the consumer, does benefit.

ALEC HOGG: The next ten years for Google - I know that you interact with Larry and Sergey and Eric Schmidt, the chief executive, very often. What are they looking to achieve?

STAFFORD MASIE: You know, there are so many challenges that we see on the globe. We have just announced Project 10¹⁰⁰ [Ten-to-the-100], and if you take a look at our birthday website you'll see the link on there. What we are actually looking for is the entire world to tell us what ideas are there are out there. Google have a set, defined number of things that we are looking at, but there are so many people out there with so many ideas it's probably much better. We've put up $10m and we are looking at opening up that even more. So we'll be funding at least five ideas from that initiative. That's all the way from renewable energy to community-based projects that make absolute sense.

ALEC HOGG: Fascinating story, the Google story. Worth today 425 times the value of Avusa, one of our biggest media businesses. And the big giant in South Africa, Naspers - that's one-seventeenth of the value of Google. And they started only ten years ago!

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