The story behind a success all the time makes for good reading. And, if such a story is presented like a drama, interspersed with audacious ambition, envy, struggle for control, rivalry, lawsuits, accusations, counter-accusations, and some humour, it would most likely make for some very engrossing reading. To top it all, this is not a work of fiction - in fact, it is not even a dramatization of reality. It is a review of events that happened behind the scenes of what in the words of the author is the 'hottest business, media and technology success of our time'.
The book starts with describing a scene in 2003, where the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, address a high school in Israel. They interpret how Google was born.
Page and Brin were PhD students at Stanford University. The idea of Google was born when Page conceived of downloading the entire web on to his computer to try and devise a crusade program for it. It was an audacious idea. While he had planned to end the practice in a week, he could conduct only a portion of it even after a year. "So, optimism is important," Page told his audience, "One must have a wholesome disregard for the impossible."
It was this optimism that helped Page persist with his plan. He kept downloading the web on to his machine, and Brin helped him mine the data and make sense of it. Agreeing to the duo, it took a lot of effort, a lot of night-outs, and a lot of working through holidays.
After this brief prelude-like beginning, the story goes back to the starting - when Page met Brin.
Page and Brin were both PhD students at Stanford, and they had a lot in common. They were both from families which located great value on scholarship and academic excellence. They both had fathers who were professors, and mothers whose jobs revolved colse to computers and technology. Computers, mathematics, and intellectual debates and discussions were part of their genetic codes as well as their day-to-day lives. It was only natural, then, that they got along with each other quite well, and started working together.
They also had an environment that was very conducive to innovation, experimentation and ideation. Stanford is known for churning out any thriving technology ventures, including Hp and Sun (Sun stands for Stanford University Network). Habitancy in Stanford are firm in their belief that sometimes, production a company out of a technological innovation delivers a much greater succeed than writing a paper on it.
Also, at the time the two were together, there was a major It revolution happening. The likes of Netscape were creating waves covering with unprecedentedly huge Ipo's, and the Internet was touted to be the next big thing. As a result, speculation capitals were skewed heavily towards funding technological start-ups. These circumstances created a setting ripe for investigate and innovation relating to the Internet, and Page and Brin believed that a robust crusade application was the one thing that Internet users most needed.
Search engines prevalent at that time provided assistance that was far from satisfactory. There were many in execution - the likes of Lycos, Webcrawler, Excite and a few others. All of them fell short. They would only display a slew of results that made microscopic sense to the searcher.
At that time, other duo from Stanford was running a company which they had named 'Yahoo'. They devised a better crusade algorithm, by creating an alphabetized directory of Web Pages. Also, other new crusade engine called AltaVista came up. Its crusade algorithm was based, like other crusade engines, on the estimate of times the key word figured in the web page, but it displayed results using the now favorite idea of web links. A link, essentially, is a kind of a pointer to other web page.
The idea of using links for a crusade engine excited Brin and Page. They started mental of it on an entirely new dimension.
Coming from families that treasured academic research, Page and Brin looked at links as something akin to citations in academic research. In academia, a paper was considered good if it had citations. The more the citations, the better the paper. Also, not all citations were equal. Citations from ability sources enhanced the paper's value.
Using the analogy, the pair industrialized their crusade algorithm, called PageRank. It depended, among other things, the estimate of links that pointed to the web page. The more the links, the higher the rank. Also, links from the more noted websites, such as Yahoo, would carry more weight than a link from a lesser known website.
Initially, the Google Guys named their crusade engine 'BackRub', as it was based on the links pointing backward to the site. However, they finally decided that they had to come up with a new name. Because it dealt with vast amounts of data, they decided to name it 'Google'. Googol is a very large estimate - 1 followed by 100 zeros. 'Google', is easily a misspelling of 'Googol', something which many Habitancy do not know.
Google was first released internally in Stanford. From the beginning, it has maintained a clean and simple homepage, free from flashy animations and the like. It was an instant hit in the Stanford network.
As their database grew, Brin and Page needed more hardware. As they were short of cash, they bought reasonable parts and assembled them themselves. They also tried all they could to get their hands on unclaimed machines. They did everything they could to keep their hardware cost at a minimum.
Initially, the duo attempted to sell Google to other major web companies like Yahoo and AltaVista. However, both companies could not accept Google, because, among other reasons, they did not believe that crusade was a vital part of the Web experience.
In the first days, the Google guys were not sure of the company model. They did not know just how Google could make money. The motto of the company was 'Don't be evil'. They believed that advertisements on web pages were evil, and hence wanted to avoid having ads on their webpages. They were hopeful that in the future, other websites would want to use their crusade engine, and they could behalf by payment these websites. They were also relying purely on word-of-mouth for their marketing. They did not advertise at all.
Google's database kept growing, and they started buying more hardware and recruiting more people. Initially, Google was funded by a million speculation by an angel investor named Andy Bechtolsheim. Eventually, though, they ran out of it, and needed more money.
They did not want to go communal and raise money like many other companies did, for they had no intentions of letting their facts go public, and they also wanted to have full operate over the company. The only option, then, seemed to be to coming speculation capitalists. The duo was convinced that they could get Vc's to fund them, and at the same time continue to withhold their operate over the company.
They approached two Vc companies, Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins. Both companies were impressed with the idea, and were ready to fund Google. However, because they did not want to give up control, the Google guys demanded that both companies spend jointly in Google.
In Wall Street, two major Vc companies would hardly consent to a joint speculation in a fledgling firm owned by a join of unrelenting youngsters. However, due to the potential amenity and workability of their idea, and through help from some of their contacts, the Google guys pulled off a coup that was unheard of. They got the two companies to spend million each, and they still retained full operate of Google. The only health that the two Vc's located was to hire an experienced commerce someone to conduct their business. The Google guys agreed, hoping that they could push such an appointment to as late a date as possible.
As Google progressed, any improvements came up. The now noted Google Doodle - an image that appears in the Google homepage to signify an prominent event or to honour a someone - started out as a signal to employees that Brin and Page were away. When Brin and Page went to a party called Burning Man, they left an image of a burning man in the homepage to signal to employees that they were away. After this, they experimented with replacing the two O's of Google with Halloween pumpkins, to signify the festival of Halloween. It was an instant hit with Google's users. Since then, the logo is often decorated with a doodle to signify or honour prominent occasions/landmarks/persons.
Google started recruiting Habitancy for definite roles. There was an laborer dedicated to production doodles, and other to polishing and enhancing user design. Significantly, they recruited Dr.Jim Reese of Harvard to conduct operations. His responsibility was to ensure that Google's burgeoning hardware requirements were consistently met. Since Google saves a lot of money by buying cheap computers and assembling them themselves, it was prominent that they be maintained, monitored and managed properly. To ensure reliability, Dr.Reeves spread data over any computers, managed them all from a central system, and used redundancy to insure the company against law crashes. By minimizing hardware costs, and using free to use Linux based operating systems over expensive ones like Windows, Google had earned for itself a major cost advantage.
Google got more and more popular. It won the withhold and admiration of Danny Sullivan, editor of an influential newsletter focused on Internet search. It had built for itself a very loyal user base that gave feedback on even the slightest of modifications to the site. However, it had yet to come up with a way of production money.
At that time, a company called Overture caught Brin's attention. Overture was the company that provided the crusade results that accompanied searches of Yahoo and Aol, among others. The Google guys liked the idea of having ads based on search, rather than flashy and distracting banner ads. However, there was one custom of Overture's that they did not approve of - Overture guaranteed that if a company paid a determined estimate of money, it would find a place among the advertisements. It went directly against their motto of 'Don't be evil'.
They decided, therefore, to go it alone. They industrialized an algorithm for search-based advertising on their own. True to their motto, they ensured that there was a clear demarcation between the actual crusade results and the advertisements. Like the crusade results, the advertisements, too, would be ranked. The ranking of the advertisements would be based not only on the estimate of money paid, but also on the estimate of times it is clicked. Hence, favorite ads would appear more prominently.
Prices for Google's ads were fixed through a nonstop auctioning process. Auctions were done for every crusade phrase. A phrase like 'investment advice' would cost a lot more than a phrase like 'pet food'. companies started having dedicated employees to carry out Google auctions. There were any subtleties involved. For instance, 'digital cameras' would be auctioned for a higher rate than 'digital camera', because a user googling 'digital cameras' is more likely to buy one.
Google advertising policy was not without its share of problems. Once, an assurance company named Geico filed a lawsuit against Google, on the grounds that it had allowed other companies to bid for its name. A user searching for 'Geico' would see in his results all assurance companies that had made a winning bid for it. Geico claimed that Google did not have a right to let Geico's competition take advantage of searches on its name. Google's defense was that Geico's understanding of consumer behavior on the Internet was incorrect. A user googling 'Geico' is not necessarily looking only at Geico's website. Besides, Google was not the publisher of the ads, and it also had systems in place to protect trademarks. It did not allow ads to comprise trademarks in their heading or text. Google ended up winning the case.
It has also been alleged that Google's naming of the advertisement section 'Sponsored Links' misleads many users. Many users confuse ads with actual results, and click on them without even knowing they are ads. The ethicality of this lack of clear divergence has often come under question.
With the company model set straight, innovation and new ideas flourished at Google's expanded office, called the Googleplex. One laborer came up with the idea of retrieving a person's phone estimate if his name and zip code are entered. other came up with the idea of auto-correcting spelling mistakes. If, for instance, you misspell a celebrity's name, Google would automatically definite it and display crusade results for the corrected name. If a less determined mistake is made, Google comes up with a "Did you mean...?" link at the top of the page.
Google also launched its Google Image Search, which again was revolutionary. Millions of images are stored in Google's database and can be retrieved at the click of a mouse.
The Google guys created an infrastructure and a culture inside the Googleplex that would make employees want to stay there for most part of the day - and night. Mean as they were with spending on computer hardware, they spent unrestrainedly when it came to creating the right environment for their employees. There were free meals, unlimited snacks, toys, roller hockey, scooter races, and lots more. Even the buses were equipped with Wi-Fi Internet connectivity, so that employees could be productive even while they commuted.
External happenings also helped Google. The dotcom crash of 2000 left any very talented software developers unemployed, giving Google passage to a vast talent pool. Also, colse to that time, Microsoft was facing a legal dispute regarding its anti-competitive practices. This made the image of Microsoft take a beating. Google, with its 'Don't be evil' motto, suddenly overtook Microsoft as the greatest place for a software developer to be in. The creme-de-la-crème of the software profession started preferring to work in Google.
Google also actively encouraged and fostered innovation inside the Googleplex. Employees were free to spend 20% of their time on innovative tasks that curious him. They did not have to worry about either it could be made profitable, or have any fear about its acceptance or workability. They could so just work on anything that was of interest to them. Ideas were often discussed in bulletin boards and over lunch. As an idea grew, it would get bigger and bigger. Google also provided the resources to carry out innovation. Out of this culture were born any ideas. An avid reader of news came up with an idea of providing users with manifold sources of news clustered together, to help them analyze and understand news better. Thus was born Google news. Interestingly, unlike Google crusade results, the Google news results are cramped close together. This denseness is intended to give the user as much news as possible. Ranking is based on relevance, and also the source. other innovation was Froogle, later renamed Google product search, which helped users crusade for sell products to shop.
Google soon became a verb in any languages, including English, German, and Japanese. A lot of debates about Google were triggered. With facts on Habitancy only a Google crusade away, there were issues associated to online stalking of individuals. Google's advertisements, despite the company's checks, included determined obscene websites. In academia, the use of Google by students in preference to the classically used specialized databases was looked at, on one hand, as increasingly easy and wide passage to information, and on the other hand, looked down as a shortcut formula that fostered laziness.
For all its popularity, Google hardly spent on advertising. Marketing happened only through word-of-mouth. Google kept its homepage clean and free of ads, foregoing millions of dollars of revenue. It avoided a graphics-heavy homepage which would slow down retrieving crusade results. It focused on getting users fast results, unlike other sites which wanted users to stay on their respective pages for as long as possible. It did not have a user lock-in - there was no need to register to be able to use Google search. By gift a excellent product aimed primarily at satisfying the user, Google had eliminated any need for advertising. The only promotion it did was through selling caps and T-shirts with the Google logo.
Google launched a new program, to be able to pull users towards Google rather than just wait for them to find Google. Under this program, any website could register to use the Google crusade box in its page. Called the affiliate program, it promised to pay websites 3 cents for every crusade that they added to Google. Google, would, of course, earn from ad revenue.
Ever since they had got funded by the two Vc firms, the Google guys had been under permanently increasing pressure to hire a Ceo who would conduct the company aspects of the company. Google had crossed the threshold beyond which a company was required to go public, and the Vc firms were single about having an experienced company expert as the communal face of the company before it went public. any candidates were sent to Brin and Page by the speculation Capitalists, but none of them managed to please the Google guys.
As pressure mounted and time kept running out, Eric Schmidt, Ceo of the software company Novell, stepped into the Googleplex to meet Brin and Page. He had consented to see them only because of the insistence of top Habitancy from one of the Vc firms, a good relationship with whom he knew was important. He had no interest in the meeting at all. The Google guys were equally uninterested in meeting him. They were expecting other of the dull and boring kind of which they had already seen many.
When Schmidt entered, his biography was projected against the wall, and his strategy at Novell was openly criticized. Schmidt argued back vehemently, and there started a heated debate that went on for a long time. After he left, Schmidt realized that he had not had an intellectual debate of that kind in a long time. Brin and Page, too, found Schmidt to be refreshingly separate from the rest of the candidates they had interviewed. The speculation Capital Habitancy knew that Schmidt could do the deft balancing act of giving a company buildings and direction to the company, while at the same time ensuring that the freedom that Brin and Page so wanted remained unaffected.
Soon, Eric Schmidt was made Ceo of Google. He put all his taste into play and acted most maturely. He knew when to push, when to agree, when to back off, and when to argue. He still gave the Google guys a lot of leeway. He realized that they had created in Google a culture of innovation which it would be unwise to tamper with. All he intended to do was to build a company and management buildings colse to the strategy and the culture that Brin and Page had so meticulously built.
There were, of course, points of divergence between Schmidt and the Google guys. It took a lot of convincing from Schmidt to persuade Brin and Page into appreciating that the payroll law of the company, which was based on free software, needed an overhaul. Schmidt wanted to purchase packaged software of Oracle, which he believed was a necessity, given Google's size and rate of expansion. Brin and Page, however, did not see any merit in paying thousands to Oracle when free software was available.
There were also cases when Brin and Page had their way stubbornly. There was once a violent bidding war going on between Google and Overture over Aol's crusade business. Google finally won it by gift Aol guarantees amounting to millions of dollars. Schmidt was worried about this, as the company's cash balance was fast shrinking. Brin and Page, however, went on with the deal, as they firmly believed that crusade and search-related advertising with a company like Aol was well worth the risk. Eventually, it turned out to be the right decision.
This apart, Google also inked a deal with Yahoo to furnish its crusade results. It also signed a 0 million deal with AskJeeves.com, a competitor, to furnish it with search-based advertising. It showed maturity and belief on Google's part to get into deals with competitors.
In April 2004, Google promised to start an email assistance which it promised would be markedly excellent to existing email services. Brin and Page knew that, with the fullness of email assistance providers already functioning, a new email assistance had to be significantly excellent to be able to succeed. Google Mail, or Gmail, they believed, was significantly superior.
Gmail's unique features included easy retrievability through a Google-like crusade of emails, 1 Gb of free storage, which was any times the storage space of existing email assistance providers, and a unique way of representing a series of emails, resembling a conversation. Gmail was first given to 1000 idea leaders for testing. They could then give Gmail to a microscopic estimate of Habitancy on an ask basis. This gave Gmail a kind of exclusivity which made it a much desired item.
However, just as all seemed to be going well, Gmail ran into troubles. Google had planned to have ads in Gmail similar to those in Google. The ads would be context-specific, based on the article of the email. This notification led to a hue and cry among privacy groups. Law suits were threatened and there were calls to close down Gmail. The issue was with the scanning of emails. It was felt that by reading every email, Google was infringing on the privacy of individuals. It was also feared that safety issues might arise because of the huge storage space and the subsequent long retention period of emails.
Google's clean prestige till then took a beating for the first time. The timing could not have been worse, as Google was soon to go public. Brin and Page, who were expecting determined reception for what they believed was a excellent product, were taken aback. They hoped that the protests were only a passing cloud, and that things would decree down soon. They clarified that the scanning of emails was automated, and that they would not be informed about the content. They explained that every email assistance victualer scanned emails for displaying emails itself, and for detecting viruses.
As time passed and more and more users started using Gmail, they started looking the taste very satisfying. The bad publicity started dying down slowly, and Gmail finally became a big hit.
When the time came for Google to go public, Brin and Page wanted to play it their way, again. A typical Ipo in Usa is done with the help of big speculation banks. These banks do the publicity with the help of what is called a road show, help price the stock, and warrant a minimum estimate to the issuing company. However, there was a conflict in the goals of the speculation bank and the issuing company. While the speculation bank would want the stock to be underpriced, so that it rises in value and favoured investors gain. The company, on the other hand, would want the price to be as high as possible, so as to raise the maximum potential amount.
Google did not want speculation banks to call the shots. They were ready to pay only half the price speculation banks usually demanded, and they wanted to dictate terms in the Ipo. They wanted the Ipo to be egalitarian - anything could invest. The minimum estimate of shares was only 5. Pricing would be based on an auction, just like Google ads. They felt that the road shows unfairly divulged facts only to a elect few. To make things fair, they released all relevant facts on the Internet, for every person to see.
Also, to withhold control, they issued two classes of shares - Class A and Class B. Class A shares were for regular investors, carrying one vote each. Class B shares were for themselves, carrying ten votes each, and giving them absolute control.
As the date of stock issue neared, skepticism started arising regarding Google's stock. The price band - 0-5, about 150 times its per share earnings, started being seen as too high. It was feared that after the stock issue, employees of Google would practice their stock options and leave the company. To make things worse, Playboy magazine released an informal and very casual interview of Brin and Page. It was an interview taken a lot earlier, but was timed to cash in on all the publicity surrounding Google. Also being a violation of Sec rules, it also sowed seeds of doubt in potential investors' mind about the seriousness of the guys at the top of Google's hierarchy.
Google's speculation capitalists, who had a lot at stake, had to step in. It was decided that the Playboy article would be attached as appendix to Google's registration documents, to circumvent the violation of the quiet period. Also, the speculation capitalists decided to hold back all Google stock they had planned to sell - a signal that they incredible the stock price to increase. Finally, Google's Ipo was completed and the stock went out at per share. It currently trades at 0 per share.
Google kept going from force to strength. It won Aol's European company approximately from under Yahoo's nose, buy gift Aol million dollar guarantees after Yahoo had nearly consummated a deal with Aol. The deal was made by Sergey Brin. Sergey Brin's responsibilities mainly complex production deals, cutting costs, and handling issues relating to culture and motivation. Larry Page, on the other hand, was complex more in hands-on work. He also supervised hiring of employees, and identified innovative projects that showed most potential. Eric Schmidt, the Ceo, for his part, took care of operations. He ensured that projects were on schedule, and that deadlines were met. He also looked after the finance, accounting, and other systems.
Innovations kept coming. Google suggest guessed what you wanted to search. Google desktop gave a ample crusade clarification for your Pc. Google video crusade and Google satellite map came up. Google expert was introduced to help crusade for scholarly articles. The list just kept getting longer.
In between all this, Google started out on an ambitious task to digitize all books in prominent libraries and make them ready to Google users. starting with the University of Michigan, a few libraries were selected. Books were scanned using technology that was gentle on the books, and did not work on them. After scanning, these books would be made ready in a form which would not allow copying. For books still in copyright, users would be able to view only snippets of pages.
To win the withhold of publishers, Google came up with a compelling value proposition. It would cover the costs of scanning and indexing books in return for the right to be able to show them in its crusade results. It would then gift them in a form which would not allow copying. It would also furnish direct links to booksellers, from whom the book could be bought. Thus, Google was, in effect, giving the user a flavor of the book's article and enticing him to purchase it. It finally got withhold from publishers. The task was named Google Books.
In the future, we might see Google use its heavy computing power to help investigate in the field of genetics. Already, Google has downloaded a map of the human genome, and is exploring possibilities with biologists. Millions of genes, combined with loads of biological and scientific data form a composition which only a law of Google's power, processing capacity, and storage space can execute.
The book is exceedingly well written. From the beginning, and till the end, the author makes sure that the reader is kept curious and enthralled. And he does so by using no dramatization whatsoever. By just sequencing events logically, occasionally switching focus to ancillary characters, and by naturally describing articulately how the Google phenomenon unfolded, the author gives the reader every conjecture to keep reading the book. The characters of Larry Page and Sergey Brin are sketched beautifully. The book is written like a novel, so the reader never gets bored. The author should also be given prestige for his neutrality. While he is kind in his praise for Google in general and its founders in particular, he is also valuable of them on occasions, such as their unseemly interview to Playboy.
On the flip side, the author sometimes goes to a level of detail that tests the reader's patience, such as the detailed article of the Burning Man Festival. Also, determined characters, such as Charlie Ayers, the chef, are given undue importance. While it is understandable that the chef's stay at Google created an entirely new food culture and helped motivate employees, dedicating an entire part to him and including one of his recipes in it are neither valuable nor justified.
On the whole, the Google story takes you on a journey - a journey in time of the biggest Internet success story till date. It is a journey that will keep you engrossed, and it is one you will enjoy.
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