Have you ever been dazed, astounded about Google and wished to know---
- How Google has grown so big within such short period of time just making people Search?
- What’s the secret behind Google success?
- What’s the Google Culture? .....
The answer for such kind of questions is the book named “The Google Story” written by David Vise (Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter) and Mark Malseed
"The Google Story" is a neat and tidy memoir about the company Google founded by two Techy wizards Larry Page and Sergey Brin from its pre-inception till mid of 2005.
Preponderance times, companies were started by School / College dropouts in a garage and Google is no different. The author tells us about how and why the two Stanford students, who by choice dropped out of Stanford Univerisity ( left their PHD in middle ) to start Google in a garage.
The author also reveals many interesting facts like
- How the name Google originated which was the misspell of Googol
- Altavista , Yahoo and other companies discarded the offer made by Larry and Sergey to sell their Search technology ( page rank)
- The difficulties in the initial stages to arrange funds
- Bending WalStreet rules and doing the IPO Google Way
- Eric Schmidt reluctance just to meet the two founders and finally ended up to be the CEO of Google
and many such incidences…
The author talks about the great working culture and also about employees being proffered 20 % of their work time ( 1day of a week ) to work on the project that interests them. Because of this, products like Google News, Froogle( Now Google Products ), Orkut has come into existence
One complete chapter is dedicated to Charlie Ayers, the chef for Google, and how he got the employees hooked on free organic gourmet food offered at the Google Campus. ( A survey among Google employees reported 9 out of 10 people cited food as the reason to return to Office for work )
The author also mentions about the tough times during the IPO process and the controversies regarding privacy that surrounded during its Gmail launch, the legal battles and court / out of the court settlements.
At the end of the book you also have some good Google search tips, GLAT ( Google Labs Aptitude Test ) and Google’s Financial Scorecard.
After reading this book, what appeals Google the most is their values and their utmost adherence to the principle “Don’t be evil”. The best example for this is keeping their home page clean and simple without any ads and there by losing millions.
A chronically organized book in chapters to read if you are interested to know more about Google and its making and by any chance if you are thinking that you can know more about Google technical’s by reading this book you will be disenchanted and let down.
My Rating – 3 of 5 ( Good )
Posts
