Wednesday, June 14, 2006
As a veddy Vise editor once said...
..of course only to us haloed ones known as journalists... "Google is the next Microsoft - it will take over every aspect of the Internet and we wont even realise it." Of course she must have had a communist outlook but then thats just me...
But that aside -The Google Story by David A Vise & Mark Malseed - was neat detour from what I usually pick up to read. This book, like the site itself, is neat, clean and uncluttered and piqued my curiosity enough to go beyond the first few pages.
Its a story about Google (well that's no surprise) and how it came to represent the name for unqualified searches and its associated products. Google- its origin at Stanford and initial attempts to sell it and finally the famous duo starting out on their own. Slowly how the company retained search as its best service and developed ancilliary services.
Fought almost every step of the way to give out ownership of the company and got their way almost always. Its makes you want to believe that every business model is doable in this fashion. Keep going and doing what you think is right and make sure that you get away and because your product(s) consistently blows market expectations over and you always get your way.
Google, which became famous for its motto "Dont be evil" was almost like a slap-in-the-face for other prevalent technology companies, if this book is to be believed. It continues to, today, make and do bigger things and have even grander plans for the future.
But the book conveneniently glosses over issues like when Google ran into trouble in China and keen that it was to China, it had to bow down to regulatory pressure and block certain words from its search. Then the various cases filed against Google for many a trademark infringements- the whole issue in the book has been glossed over and more emphasis has been laid on how Google insisted on free food for its employees which became something of a cult status in the job market for tech companies.
What is most infectious or perhaps the bigger lesson that you carry on is 'have a healthy disregard for the impossible'. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, geniuses in the own right, made things look disarmingly easy. But these two fought every step of way from refusing advertisements on the home page to not giving up ownership to reluctantly hiring a CEO and going public in a way that was complicated and unique at the same time or getting pulled up for an interview that got published, of all places, in Playboy!
Instances are many and the book is filled with loads of anecdotes. Its worth reading to know the origins of Google (not really humble) especially if tomorrow it goes the conventional way of becoming a traditional enterprise, you at least know it began differently!
# posted by Janaki @ 9:58 am 
