Catshanghai

I have been taking Google for granted for granted since the turn of the decade. This search engine project was started by Larry Page and Sergey Grin in 1998 during their Stanford days as post graduate computer science students. They had such a simple and effective idea to index web pages better than anyone else based on who was linking to your site. They also created a vast and powerful infrastructure based on low cost server farms and open source software, which they wrote called Googleware. They were the good guys of Silicon Valley who built up their reputation based on the hacker ethic and the motto of “Don’t Be Evil”. Google have never paid for advertising, yet they have come from nowhere to become a $100 billion empire in less than a decade.

This biography does a good job of charting Google’s history and showing the brilliance of Page and Brin in changing the way that hundreds of millions of connected people look for information using the Internet. In 2001, Eric Schmidt was brought on board as the CEO to instill some corporate discipline, but Googleplex has always been a very creative workplace. Google’s strategy is to attract the most talented software engineers and to look after them with free food, laundry and perks in return for long hours and total commitment. Google’s engineers get one day a week to work on their own projects. The entrance exam is a fun, unorthodox quiz that is almost impossible for mere mortals to attempt. Google has never charged users for the basic searching service, but they became very profitable by receiving revenue for sponsored links that display on the right third of the screen. This was very effective, because you only see advertisements related to the keywords you are searching for. Google maximised revenue by auctioning these keywords to advertisers and setting up an affiliate program with other websites and services including AOL and Ask Jeeves. In effect they created a new paradigm of focused advertising that complemented the free search service. Vise describes this as the Google Economy.

Sometimes the biography reads like a 300 page public relations document praising Google’s many achievements, but the controversies such as click fraud, accepting Chinese censorship and Gmail privacy concerns are also discussed. The final chapters set the scene for future projects of expanding web services into digitising university libraries and towards artificial intelligence and searches based on the human genome project. There is still a big disparity between Google’s share price and its present earnings, but I put the book down with the thought that the Google deserve their reputation and success based on the brilliance and progrssive vision of Page, Brin and Schmidt. Google are expanding at a phenomenal rate, employing the world’s most talented technologists. I am sure we can look forward to even better things in the future. In many ways, Google’s success is due to their sound ethical judgement so I hope they do not lose sight of their “Don’t Be Evil” tagline.

Links:
thegooglestory.com