Book Review: The Google Story

Book Review by Nancy Hodgman

The Google Story by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed
Bantam Dell ISBN-13: 978-0-553-80457-7

When Larry Page met Sergey Brin at Stanford University in 1995, sparks flew.  The two brilliant computer science students met their match in each other’s intellect, opinionated stance, and love of gamesmanship.  When the dust settled, they had forged a working relationship that launched a software tool used by millions all over the world to search the internet.  In 1999, the two – now known as The Google Guys – launched www.Google.com from a small office in Silicon Valley.   By 2001, the Google Economy was in full swing.

The Google Story is a quick read, told in chronological order, and written in a clear, informative writing style that is somewhat marred by the authors’ obvious idolatry for Page and Brin. The book begins with Page and Brin’s early family lives, characterized by remarkably similar values steeped in the ideals of academia, science, and technology.  This foundation imbued them with a reverence for the pure application of technology to human endeavors. From the beginning, their expressed mission was to provide a free, easy to use tool to access all of the information on the internet, with no financial motivations except to fund their company, in a value-based work environment whose motto was, “Don’t be Evil.” 

This book purports to reveal the secrets behind Google – how it grew, why it is considered the best search engine in the world, how it is profitable, and its future.  I believe the average computer user already knows these “secrets” but the behind-the-scenes details are intriguing. One of the first secrets revealed is about the powerful engine that supports Google’s search results – Googleware:  a combination of custom software running on thousands of custom built PCs assembled in the Googleplex, the Mountain View, California buildings that house Google employees.  Googleware is constantly downloading webpages, indexing them and physically taking over for disabled computers without human intervention, fueling rapid and uninterrupted search results.

The second secret is the differentiator identified by Larry Page:  PageRank, which rated a website based on the number of links it had pointing to it and the importance of those links.  Websites with more links and with links from important sources, for example from Yahoo versus an unknown site, got a higher rating. Through the elegant PageRank algorithms, Google’s search results were more useful to Googlers than anything returned by competing search engines, catapulting Google to the forefront of the search engine turf wars.

The Google Story entertains with descriptions of the unique working environment at Google, orchestrated by Page and Brin.  First, the company culture placed a high priority on innovation and creativity, as evidenced by the 20% rule:  software engineers were required to spend at least 20% of their time working on pet projects. Second, the atmosphere in the Googleplex was akin to a university campus center, where employees spent enjoyable but productive time working and socializing with each other.  Page and Brin personally interviewed all prospective employees for intelligence, creativity, and fit.  The resulting sense of teamwork was characterized by one employee as, “It was never, look what I did” but “Look what we did.”

I recommend this book to business managers for the primary lesson it conveys:  keep a laser focus on the customer experience.  The authors provide many examples of Page and Brin's devotion to the customer experience, including the fact that Google forgoes millions of dollars of valuable advertisement real estate on the barren Google home page to keep it devoid of obtrusive popup ads and banners.  Also, ads in search result are placed so they are accessible but not visually intrusive on the free search results.  To meet the demands of today’s discerning and elusive customer, we are well-advised to be guided by the example set by The Google Guys.