David Wise & Mark Malseed's - The Google Story

Genre : Non-Fiction
Rating : 5/5

It is a peek Inside the Hottest Business, Media and Technology Success of Our Time ;) Approximately an yr back I had seen this book on my boss's desk and since then I wanted to read it. I tried hunting for it on Amazon / Thirftbooks but the outrageous cost always detered my plans to buy it. During last month's library sale when I saw this book lying unattended I almost pounced over it with sheepish grin.

I knew Google was not designed with an idea of starting an organization, instead it was a school project of two brilliant guys - Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Scion of professor parents, these both guys worshipped education uber alles. Sergey (born on August 21, 1973) and Larry (born on March 26, 1973) met at the Stanford University campus in the spring of 1995. Sergey who was just 19 when he completed his undergrad, had been at Stanford for 2 yrs before Larry came. Initally they did not click. They had differences, coz they shared the same passion for jousting with an intellectually worthy adversary. It was their relentless verbal sparring that laid foundation to this stalwart partnership.

In the early 1990s WWW was not so sophisticated and searches from WebCrawler, Lycos, Infoseek produced slew of meaningless results. Disappointed by this Larry and his professor Rajeev Motwani thought that there has to be some better way to search the internet. While looking for the information for his 'Digital Library Project' on AltaVista, an obscure information called 'links' caught Larry's interest. Larry found this 'links' as potentially vital and yearned to learn more about them as they were better search trap. To research more about these links he told his professor that he would download the entire World Wide Web on his desktop. And moreover he declared that doing this could be done easily and quickly ( Doesn't that sound ridiculous?) Out of his interest in extracting the information from this largish random data, Sergey chipped in to help Larry in his research. Larry realized that the web sites with more links pointing to them were important than others. This is the logic he used to rank the web sites and called it as PageRank. Till now I used to think that 'page' in PageRank represented the page which we sometimes use as synonym for the web site. But in reality it stood for Larry's last name - Page!

Within less than 2 years Larry developed a primitive search engine and named it 'BackRub'. For BackRub web site's logo Larry (Authors have described him as a cheapskate :)) used the scanned image of his left hand! Well instead of tagging him as thrifty I would say he was innovative. Larry, Sergey and Rajeev Motwani, all contributed their efforts in creating a comprehensive product out of Larry's idea of PageRank. PageRank technology retruned the prioritized results based on the relevance unlike other search engines who relied on matcing words in queries with the words on Web pages.

By fall of 1997 when the contributors decided that the BackRub needed a new name, their office-mate Sean Anderson suggested 'GooglePlex' , which was an apt name as their search engine was used to search and organize vast amount of data. Larry wanted a short name and suggested 'Google'. Sean looked for availability of google.com and Larry registered for it. Little did they know that they had misspelled 'googol'. I knew the meaning of googol but was oblivious to the fact that our darling google was its faulty version ;) While monkeying with the software called GIMP, Sergey created a color rendering of the Google letters with an excalmation mark at the end mimicking Yahoo. (Remember the Beta version?) Sergey's creativity eventually gave birth to Google-doodles. The search engine was made available in the Stanford campus at google.stanford.edu. Ever wondered why Google.com always wore this clean and clear looks? Well they could not afford to hire web designer to create something elegant. And it was this lucid, sans advertisments looks of google that attracted more users.

With the large use of google.com on the campus, Larry and Sergey started falling short of computers to maintain database and user base. Unable to gather enough funds for buying the computers, Larry and Sergey, unsuccessfully tried to sell their PageRank to Excite, Yahoo, AltaVista and other capital firms, but nobody was excited in funding 'search' as there was no real business model! Andy Bechtolsheim, the computer wiz and legendary investor in successful start-ups, benevolently provided $1 million to the guys. Larry and Sergey had mentioned that to build the audience, they would give away their search engines for free and later make money from the advertisements on google. They would charge 5 cents to $5 to every click on the advertisement displayed. They had certain set of rules for the ads as well. They denied to display any pictoral ads. Its accurate search results and no interrupting picture advertisments always attracted masses. They did not spend any money on advertising their search engine instead they send an email newsletter to all their friends. Ironically, this giant firm whose most of the revenue comes from the ads always believed in the word-of-the-mouth-strategy to do its own advertising! Larry and Sergey had proposed the plans of giving the search license to some big company who would pay to use it. They knew that then these companies would mix their search engine in their products and thus their baby would find its way to the public. (Similar to the advertisements in the telephone directory or in yellow pages)

It was a difficult feat for both the guys to keep their one foot in academia and other in running the organization. Advised by their professors and other well-wishers they took leave from school. On September 7, 1998, Google went public and since then there was no turning back. But the road to success was not a bed of roses. It involved lot of lawsuits, battle against investers, and peer competitions. But no matter what, Larry and Sergey were always bound to the principles they had set at the start - they remained loyal to dual class share structure which was considered as a bad corporate governance; they never provided enough information about their business; they refused to give guidance on the future prospects; they always kept the control over their company. (The book mentions that before hiring some employees Larry goes through the resume and demands the transcripts and test results.)

The founders of Google have kept the a very casual atmosphere in the campus. They have provided everything to the employee to make them more prouctive. (I visited Google campus in last November and of course I was totally elated. I couldnt go inside the buildings as I was not accompanied by an authorative personnel. I am waiting for the second chance to see that place!) Google provides free meals to ALL the employees. There are facilities for the car wash. Dr visits are scheduled for regular check ups. There are playgrounds for the employees. Employees traverse in the Silicon Valley campus on scooters and inline skates. Every employee is allowed to use 20% of his time on working on his own project. If this project is substantial then it discussed in the meetings and he is provided with the required resources to make it successful.

The mantra on which Google is based - Don't Be Evil. While deciding about the products / designs whatever Sergey says evil is evil :)

Once a reporter of a magazine wanted to interview the google guys and he had to drag Sergey from the basketball court, who gave the interview without wearing his shoes :) And Larry (who was wearing his shoes) did not sit on his chair even for a single moment. He kept pacing across the room, taking support of the back of the chair or looking out of the window while answering the questions!

Larry and Sergey are so cool that when they founded their company Larry hold the CEO title and Sergey that of President and Chairman, and this arrangement was decided by the flip of a coin :) Later Larry took the title of President-Products and Sergey of President-Technology. They assigned Eric Schmidt as CEO and since then the trio have consistenly done a great job. Have'nt they?

Since its launch Google has grown leaps and bounds. Froogle, Gmail, News, Maps, Toolbar, Scholar... every product is worth mentioning a WOW!

Dont expect this book to be techie, coz it covers no technical details. This book doesn't even tell the secrets of the technology used. It is simply the road map of the GOOGLE GUYS from the labs of the Stanford University to the gigantic campus of Google! Throughout the book I rarely concentrated on the writing style of the authors, neither did I pay any attention to their choice of words. But I greedily hogged on all the information about these goofy-smart(as their friend describes them) founders of Google. The book also limelights few of the personalities associated with Google either as employess or as well-wishers. I can definitely say that it is one of the most intriguing books I read lately! (I got lost on the chapters talking lot about stocks though ;))

If you can't imagine Google not existing or if you feel your livelihood is inextricably tied to Google search engine then u MUST read this book!;)

p.s. - If you noticed, it is Larry Page's birthday today. Happy Birthday Larry!