EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Chances are if you heard the term Google, you know exactly what Im talking about. The company that has the most popular search engine and free tools available on the web is what I would be talking about of course. Making billions of dollars a year and single handedly changing the computing landscape, Google is a force to be reckoned with. With finances being stable and a stock price well above 500 dollars a share, the Google founders are sitting pretty with stacks of cash. So, you would think that the rules of business were followed to a T, right? Well, not exactly. How much do you know about the founders of this mega company? What other endeavors are they currently partaking in? How do they run their operations? Who are they? And where are they from? Thats what this book attempts to answer in the form of a lengthy novel.
Think of any job that you could ever have. Now, be irritated knowing that it will never be as good as working at Google. Thats not to be mean, but the perks of working at Google are far greater that anything you could imagine. And this is the way the founders intended for it to be. Goggles hiring practice usually involves a focus more on education that on experience and business expertise. The interview process actually passes directly through Page and Brin at some point, meaning that before you are hired at Google, you must first talk to the founders of Google. Talk about massive pressure. But with stock options that can literally make you a billionaire, no bosses per say, spas, massages, free gourmet food prepared by the road chef for the grateful dead, and many more, the perks far outweigh any pressure.
The odd thing is, Google is not run like a conventional business at all. In fact, there are no real parallels to and business out there as far as how it is run; mainly just in how it started. There is a story where the just as Google was five years old, a man by the name of Mel Karmazin (claim to fame as the CEO of Viacom) visited the Google campus to talk to the owners about a marketing deal. Mel is an old school marketing guy, where marketing is more of a blind investment then a guarantee of anything. Lets take, for example, television commercials. When you buy a television spot during, lets say, the super bowl. You are going to pay a fortune for that spot. The problem with this approach is that you have no idea what results you are going to get. How many people went out and bought my product because of this commercial going on at this time? How much revenue did this spot make us? Those questions have no way of being answered with that type of advertising. Google, on the o ther hand, wanted to take a scientific, if not downright mathematical, approach to advertising. They take the stance of how about we let you see real numbers? We can show you exactly how much revenue you can make on each advertising dollar. We can show you how your advertising is helping your business. Well, not only can they show you that information, they can also make it to where you only pay every time someone clicks on your advertisement. Needleless to say Mel thought they were crazy, and walked out of their offices saying it would never work. No one could make money like that.
The Ten Things Managers Need to Know fromGoogled
1. Ken Auletta is the author. He has written for the New York Times as a columnist.
2. The book is about the company of Google and its history as a business. Not so much the business aspect.
3. The founders of Google are Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They met in college while obtaining their PhD in computer science. One of them did not finish.
4. The conventional way of doing business is not always the way a business has to be run. Google
5. Most CEOs are not thrilled with Google. They think they are smug and reliant on other peoples content.
6. A very high percentage of Googles revenue come from the cheesy 3 line text averts from when you search something.
7. Google owns YouTube (and paid a ton of money. 1.65 billion to be exact).
8. Once you get to a certain size, you have to figure out new ways of growing, Ivan Seidenberg, the chief executive of Verizon, said to Auletta. And then you start leaking on everyone elses industry.
9. Google has yet to find a way to make YouTube profitable.
10. When all else fails, you can write a book and make money.
Full Review of Googled
Chances are if you heard the term Google, you know exactly what Im talking about. The company that has the most popular search engine and free tools available on the web is what I would be talking about of course. Making billions of dollars a year and single handedly changing the computing landscape, Google is a force to be reckoned with. With finances being stable and a stock price well above 500 dollars a share, the Google founders are sitting pretty with stacks of cash. So, you would think that the rules of business were followed to a T, right? Well, not exactly. How much do you know about the founders of this mega company? What other endeavors are they currently partaking in? How do they run their operations? Who are they? And where are they from? Thats what this book attempts to answer in the form of a lengthy novel.
Lets start with the owners shall we? Larry page, or Lawrence as his given name, was born in East Lansing Michigan to Jewish parents. Its no surprise that his parents are computer science professors at Michigan State. Page attended the Okemos Montessori School, and graduated from East Lansing high school. He went on to college at the University of Michigan, where he completed his masters degree in computer science. During his time at college he was the president of the national electrical and computer engineering honor society. He was also a member of the solar car team. From there he went to Stanford where he was to meet his partner in Google.
The other side of the team, Sergey Brin, was a different story. Brin was born in Moscow of the Soviet Union. His parents were both graduates of Moscow University. At the age of six, Brin and his family moved to the United States where his father is a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland. His mother took a job at NASAs Goddard space flight center .Brin attended paint branch Montessori school in Maryland briefly but his father removed him in order to home school him . After he graduated from Eleanor Roosevelt high school, he went on the University of Maryland where he obtained his degree in science. From there, he began his graduate studies at Stanford University (where he has not received his PhD as of yet, but then again, why would he need to?). This is where the story really begins.
Brin and Page, both attending Stanford at the time, met while page was working on his dissertation in computer science. Page had an idea to complete his dissertation on the mathematical properties of the web, an idea that a professor encouraged him to do. Page was a mentor for Brin, as bring was a computer science PhD candidate and page had been there for awhile. They met at an orientation and quickly combined efforts. The backrub project was the dissertation for page, and Brin helped with his ideas. The project would become the foundation of Google.
Brin and page began using computers in their dorms to test the webpage that they had created. The book even tells of a story where they would wait for the shipments of the computers to the school and borrow them as they came off of the truck. As the testing of the page widened, the school began to notice the missing equipment and the strain of the infrastructure of the project. This was the time where Brin and page were indexing the internet in total. It was during this time that they developed the page rank system and realized it could be used as a search engine. But much to their chagrin, Stanford was getting increasingly upset about the problems caused by the two students.
Realizing they had something special and procuring funds from friends and family, they rented a garage in Menlo Park. After continually running their indexing, they realized they needed more money, and went to search for investors. The first one they got was the CEO of Sun Microsystems, who wrote them a check for one hundred thousand dollars. After procuring more investors, and actually incorporating their business, Brin and page set up what is now known as the Google campus.
Think of any job that you could ever have. Now, be irritated knowing that it will never be as good as working at Google. Thats not to be mean, but the perks of working at Google are far greater that anything you could imagine. And this is the way the founders intended for it to be. Goggles hiring practice usually involves a focus more on education that on experience and business expertise. The interview process actually passes directly through Page and Brin at some point, meaning that before you are hired at Google, you must first talk to the founders of Google. Talk about massive pressure. But with stock options that can literally make you a billionaire, no bosses per say, spas, massages, free gourmet food prepared by the road chef for the grateful dead , and many more, the perks far outweigh any pressure.
The odd thing is, Google is not run like a conventional business at all. In fact, there are no real parallels to and business out there as far as how it is run; mainly just in how it started. There is a story where the just as Google was five years old, a man by the name of Mel Karmazin (claim to fame as the CEO of Viacom) visited the Google campus to talk to the owners about a marketing deal. Mel is an old school marketing guy, where marketing is more of a blind investment then a guarantee of anything. Lets take, for example, television commercials. When you buy a television spot during, lets say, the super bowl. You are going to pay a fortune for that spot. The problem with this approach is that you have no idea what results you are going to get. How many people went out and bought my product because of this commercial going on at this time? How much revenue did this spot make us? Those questions have no way of being answered with that type of advertising. Google, on the o ther hand, wanted to take a scientific, if not downright mathematical, approach to advertising. They take the stance of how about we let you see real numbers? We can show you exactly how much revenue you can make on each advertising dollar. We can show you how your advertising is helping your business. Well, not only can they show you that information, they can also make it to where you only pay every time someone clicks on your advertisement. Needleless to say Mel thought they were crazy, and walked out of their offices saying it would never work. No one could make money like that.
Another approach they took in their section of business, which was far different from the way similar business handled the same feat, was to auction off advertising. And not the kind of advertising one would come to expect. This advertising was performed by making a relevance to the search that was made, and by only putting text where normal search engines would pt color ads. For example, lets say you type peanut butter in the Google search engine (which has no ads on the front page if you have never noticed). Your search will return the most relevant page on peanut butter, whether it is a Wikipedia page on peanut butter or the definition. On the right hand column, however, there will be ads for peanut butter. Those are the spots that are sold. And the highest bidder on that area will have the top billing in the list. What also makes them different is the fact that you cannot pay to be on top of the results of the search engine. That is completely unlike all of the competito rs that Google has. This is also the way most of the money is made for the competition.
So how does Google make its money? Some would say by sticking by their mantra do no evil. But in actuality, they have made their money initially the same way others in the search engine area have, by advertising, just in a different manor. Nowadays, they make their money in a variety of different offerings that they have from maps to cell phones. Google has one of the widest arrays of services they provide, that there is no way of really knowing where the majority of the money comes from (aside from looking at their annual reports which is outside of the jurisdiction of this paper).
The future of Google? It looks bright, but time will tell.
My take on Google as a company.
From a business standpoint, I adore Google. Not so much for what they do, but for what they stand for. In the mid nineties, it used to be the computer guys greatest too, and secret to use Google. It returned results that no other search engine could. That being said, I dont think Google can keep up the pace at which they currently run. Its just not possible. Google was started with engineers; more worried about innovation that business. Money is on the back burner even still. Some will argue that with innovation comes money. I disagree with this philosophy whole heartedly. There have been more documented cases of innovation where the innovator got no money at all for their work. As a search engine Google thrives. In the computing realm, on one company has ever been so important (in my opinion). But it seems (from what I read in the book) that the business structure of Google is destined to fail. You run a business on innovation alone, eventually the innovation will stop. Tha ts Googles downfall. Its spreading itself too thin. Brin wants to colonize mars? Thats one hell of a stretch for a guy that created a search engine. Not saying its a bad idea, but is a search engine company really going to undertake space travel now?
My take on the book.
Im struggling with this book. The reason I say that is because for all intents and purposes, it really shows nothing about the business end of Google. Its just a long history of Google to present. Its hard to relate a history of a company to business practices, when it makes mention of them so sparsely. Tell me how Google operates now. Tell me why its good to invest in Google. Its hard to take Google seriously when the writer has made them seem like stubborn 5th graders. Now, before I get blasted for that comment, as a business major, I see the purpose of business to increase the share values of the share holders. With the way Ken wrote the beginning of the book, it seems like the founders of Google didnt care about that at all. I know that cant be true, because if it were true, then Google would not be at the share price it is now. It could not sustain itself. Ken wrote as if when the CEO of another top company were to visit Googles campus, that they would be almost ignored by the founders, brushed off so to say. Now if this is how the founders treat other CEOs, then tell me how Google works its magic while spitting in the face of other businesses. That would be a good story to read.
Another sore spot for me was how the book was hyped. It was touted as having big information that no other book has had before. It is totally untrue (not the book, mind you, just the hype). After reading two other books about Google, this book had no new information that I didnt already know (the Wikipedia page on Brin , Google , and Page has the same information without the 300 pages of bloat nor the hours of fighting sleep while reading). The only difference between this and other books was how they broke down the chapters by years of operation, the first three on the history of the founders, and an entire two chapters about the perks and rigorous job interview process then a year by year synopsis of every year since 1998 to the future of Google (chapter 8 2005 2006). This leaves a pretty boring book about nothing but the history. No real how they did it or this is the new business model So no, by no means did I enjoy it. Nor would I recommend it.
Personal Insights
Why I think:
Ken is a very good writer in the aspect of he left no stone unturned. If you want to know about one of the owners early years, its in there. Say that you want to know of the struggles of Google in its infancy, its there as well. However the book sorely lacks any real business depth. You want to know how they handle management, its not there. With the reviews that I read and the hype surrounding the book, I expected much more. What I got was a yawn inspired road to information that I either already knew, or I didnt care about.
1. Geared the book more towards the financial side of the coin. I know far more about the founders then I needed to know.
2. Focused more on the management style of the company, even though reading about the hiring process was intriguing.
3. His political affiliation shows like a beacon in his writing, when it comes to a business book, I dont think that is something that needs to shine through.
1. Even geeks can make a ton of money, which is good because I belong to that club.
2. Spreading yourself too thin is dangerous, but we will have to see whats in store for Google to find out what that does too your business, though historically it does not tend to bode well.
3. I had no idea that Google was the powerhouse that it is today. I understand why their stock is so high now.
1. Starting small and working up. If I took anything away from this book, this concept was it.
2. By understanding that a business takes time to grow, the smallest of ideas can make you rich provided its implemented properly.
3. If I do not succeed, I will write a book and make money that way.
Oddly enough, most review of this book (as few as there were, its brand new) has found it to be great. Me? I would say ok, but certainly not great. I had high expectations of the book to be sure, but when I found out that it was more of an expansive history of Google instead of a business breakdown (as the cover and most reviews implied), I was disappointed. Thats not to say the book is bad, just not what I expected.
In "Googled," New Yorker writer Ken Auletta tells the familiar story of the company's rapid transformation from Silicon Valley start-up to global corporation. As expected, we hear about the young Rollerblading employees at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, with its massage rooms, pool tables and free meals. But thanks to the unusual degree of access that the company granted the authorand thanks to his sharp eye"Googled" also presents interesting new details - the wall street journal./article/SB10001424052748703932904574510493674064458.html
Bibliography
1.)Auletta, K. (2009). Googled. In K. Auletta, Googled (p. 384). New York: Penguin Press.
2.)Philips, J. (2009, November 28). The Great Disruption. Retrieved 3 6, 2010, from The Wall Street Journal: /article/SB10001424052748703932904574510493674064458.html
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Contact Info: To contact the author of this Summary and Review of Googled, please email
Biography
David C. Wyld () is the Robert Maurin Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, and executive educator. His blog, Wyld About Business, can be viewed at /. He also serves as the Director of the Reverse Auction Research Center (/), a hub of research and news in the expanding world of competitive bidding. Dr. Wyld also maintains compilations of works he has helped his students to turn into editorially-reviewed publications at the following sites:
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