The Google Story...

Author: David A. Vise
Rating: 7

An interesting historical perspective on the years leading up to the development of Google through the first year after Google's initial public offering. Vise gives insights as to the how and why Google developed - not just as a technology, but also as to the company and its culture.

While Vise does a good job giving the historian perspective, my personal take-away information follows under various subheadings.


GOOGLE FOUNDERS AND INITIAL HISTORY
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* the two founders were second generation computer scientists - a rarity - parents of both founders were professors in computer science, mathematics, and space science - additionally so were their grandparents - both grew up in a university environment

* both founders grew up in the Montessori system and households with continuous philosophical and scientific debate - Montessori - do what interests the student during ages 6-12, then hard labor where you apply hard work and focus through the teen years

* 5 years to go from graduate project to billion dollar company - mining data on the internet for user search inquires

* the page ranking was the PhD thesis

* googles "blankness" was because they couldn't afford a graphic artist to make it look fancy - the simple design resonated with users and they adopted the look in an internet world gone made with obnoxious colors and blinking banners - sometimes simplicity is best

* Google is a perfect case study from the concepts of the Innovator's Dilemma (a book about why big companies fail and how small companies innovate) - they pitched their concept to Alta Vista - the dominant search engine of the day (had the majority of the market share) - they wanted $1m and then they would go back to being PhD students - Alta Vista was owned by DEC - of course, Alta Vista said that they weren't going to pay for it and they didn't want it as searching wasn't in their core competency - their current thought process was that searching is a generic commodity and by itself would never make any money - DEC was another big company that really blew it - didn't know what to do with innovative technology - DEC wasn't the only one - Excite, Yahoo (they suggested that they go start their own business - Yahoo at the time was only interested in human entered rankings)

* Bechtolsheim's three things he looks for when investing in a company - 1) better technology that solves real problems that people can understand 2) business has the potential to raise real profits 3) passionate founders that are capable - he gave them $100,000 (it was a nice round number and he didn't ask for anything in return) to build the computer network (using stacks of inexpensive computers) they needed to get the company going prior to them even having a company - what impressed him the most is that they were to spend the money on real tangible hardware - not on a bunch of advertising (which was the current trend of the day) - possibly the most important nugget of advice Bechtolsheim gave them was to resolve item 2 on his list, they would have to sell advertising as part of the user's search query (something that at the time they were reluctant to do as they didn't want bias in their reporting)


GOOGLE CULTURE FOR INNOVATION
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* do no evil - their underlying motto

* a healthy disregard for the impossible - that's the driving factor for their success

* healthy food, drink, and snacks are part of work - keeps the employees on campus - benefits of keeping team environment and people going is more beneficial than the cost of lunch - hired a gourmet chef for the company - additionally, food was healthy which benefited in better fit employees

* shared offices for everyone - including the founders and a couple of open offices - fosters teamwork - no cubicles

* the original work was done by a couple of graduate students in small brainstorming sessions - that concept remains within the company today

* always work in small teams of 3-5 - innovative - much like a college graduate studies - leader dubbed UTL (uber team leader) - as little middle management as possible

* the more you stumble around - the more you might find something valuable - that's the grad school thinking which is the foundation for innovation - google solves problems with technology first and gives it away for free to test if the public agrees - then they figure out if there is a monetary model for profit - they're always thinking long term and not short term

* 20% of your company time spent on personal projects or exploration - something you were passionate about - this came from the university environment whereby professors work 4 days a week and spend 1 day a week on their own research - additionally - google allows them to pool their time up to a month at a time - then your idea can be critically reviewed by your peers during lunch - this can germinate into getting others to to contribute and become a company funded project - big difference between permitted and encouraged - at google it is encouraged - encouraged is actively making time for it

* always have a digital camera - particularly when visiting other companies to get ideas on workspace and culture


GOOGLE BUSINESS
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* no advertising of the company name - simply word of mouth

* google makes money by generating targeted ads for dynamic searches

* links became the foundation as it reminded them of the citations used in scientific research - the more citations that referenced a professors thoughts/work, the greater importance was placed on that body of knowledge - reported that it takes 10,000 citations of your work to win the Nobel Prize - that concept is the foundation for the google search engine - the more links to a web page the higher the page ranking - additionally, any pages that the high ranking page links to also gets a boost in their rankings - therefore an important page as deemed by the internet community can boost other web pages in importance (that's the google ranking)

* they started building on hardware that they could scrounge around - which meant low cost pc's - essentially generic boxes that they could hook together on a massive scale - they couldn't afford the big iron mainframes of the competing companies - that lesson in technology still is the backbone of the company and is based on Moore's Law - that computing power will double every couple of years - that means a continual influx of inexpensive computing and storage power stacked together in a massive network

* the long tail - in the internet age geography mattered less - low cost distribution enables niche products to hit larger audiences - example - amazon has significant business in books/movies which are obscure favorites - google has wide array of diverse businesses (particularly small to mid-size business who never had access to the large audience market)

* business model initially sold to investors is that while they are unique in innovation; they do care about objectives (every quarter a how are we doing), management and financial focus is 70 (core product - search) - 20 (adjacent products) - 10 (new ideas)


OTHER LESSONS
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* In a discussion about Berkiwitz at Ask Jeeves - three questions he asked when he came into the company - 1) understanding of the company and why it's failing (or been sideways), 2) what sort of talent is on board, 3) how was the company and product perceived by customers - first several months he asked questions and then listened - he changed out the entire executive team one area at a time - he wanted to understand how to fix it before he broke it - prior to Berkiwitz coming on board, Ask Jeeves did the opposite of Google - they spent money on marketing and not on infrastructure - he believed you had to have a great product in order to have a great business

* regarding competition - in a fast growing market - it's better to work together to grow the market than it is to kill the competitors and shrink the market - Berkiwitz stated you can compete and cooperate - coopertition