The Google Story - An Inspiring Journey in Time

The story behind a success continually makes for correct reading. And, if such a story is presented like a drama, interspersed with audacious ambition, envy, battle for control, rivalry, lawsuits, accusations, counter-accusations, and some humour, it would most probably make for some very engrossing reading. To pinnacle it all, this is now not a work of fiction - in fact, it is now not even a dramatization of reality. It is a chronicle of occasions that happened in the back of the scenes of what in the words of the creator is the 'hottest business, media and science success of our time'.

The book starts with describing a scene in 2003, where the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, tackle a excessive college in Israel. They explain how Google was born.

Page and Brin had been PhD students at Stanford University. The thought of Google used to be born when Page conceived of downloading the whole internet on to his laptop to strive and devise a search software for it. It was an audacious idea. While he had planned to end the exercising in a week, he may want to control only a component of it even after a year. "So, optimism is important," Page instructed his audience, "One need to have a healthful disregard for the impossible."

It used to be this optimism that helped Page persist with his plan. He kept downloading the web on to his machine, and Brin helped him mine the information and make feel of it. According to the duo, it took a lot of effort, a lot of night-outs, and a lot of working through holidays.

After this short prelude-like beginning, the story goes returned to the opening - when Page met Brin.

Page and Brin had been each PhD college students at Stanford, and they had a lot in common. They were each from households which placed brilliant price on scholarship and educational excellence. They both had fathers who had been professors, and mothers whose jobs revolved round computers and technology. Computers, mathematics, and intellectual debates and discussions had been section of their genetic codes as properly as their everyday lives. It used to be solely natural, then, that they acquired along with each different quite well, and began working together.

They also had an environment that was very conducive to innovation, experimentation and ideation. Stanford is known for churning out several profitable technological know-how ventures, which include HP and Sun (Sun stands for Stanford University Network). People in Stanford are company in their faith that sometimes, making a enterprise out of a technological innovation delivers a a lot greater effect than writing a paper on it.

Also, at the time the two had been together, there was a most important IT revolution happening. The likes of Netscape had been growing waves outdoor with unprecedentedly huge IPO's, and the Internet was once touted to be the next big thing. As a result, project capitals were skewed heavily toward funding technological start-ups. These circumstances created a placing ripe for lookup and innovation concerning to the Internet, and Page and Brin believed that a sturdy search application was the one thing that Internet users most needed.

Search engines widely wide-spread at that time provided carrier that was once a long way from satisfactory. There were many in operation - the likes of Lycos, Webcrawler, Excite and a few others. All of them fell short. They would solely show a slew of outcomes that made little feel to the searcher.

At that time, any other duo from Stanford used to be jogging a organization which they had named 'Yahoo'. They devised a better search algorithm, by means of growing an alphabetized directory of Web Pages. Also, some other new search engine called AltaVista got here up. Its search algorithm used to be based, like other search engines, on the wide variety of times the key word figured in the internet page, but it displayed results the use of the now famous notion of net links. A link, essentially, is a sort of a pointer to every other net page.

The notion of the usage of links for a search engine excited Brin and Page. They started wondering of it on an completely new dimension.

Coming from families that treasured tutorial research, Page and Brin looked at links as some thing akin to citations in educational research. In academia, a paper was considered right if it had citations. The extra the citations, the higher the paper. Also, now not all citations were equal. Citations from first-class sources better the paper's value.

Using the analogy, the pair developed their search algorithm, called PageRank. It depended, amongst other things, the variety of links that pointed to the net page. The greater the links, the greater the rank. Also, links from the more famend websites, such as Yahoo, would raise more weight than a link from a lesser known website.

Initially, the Google Guys named their search engine 'BackRub', as it was based totally on the links pointing backward to the site. However, they finally determined that they had to come up with a new name. Because it dealt with good sized quantities of data, they decided to name it 'Google'. Googol is a very giant wide variety - 1 observed by way of a hundred zeros. 'Google', is genuinely a misspelling of 'Googol', some thing which many people do now not know.

Google was first released internally in Stanford. From the beginning, it has maintained a smooth and easy homepage, free from flashy animations and the like. It was an on the spot hit in the Stanford network.

As their database grew, Brin and Page needed extra hardware. As they have been short of cash, they sold inexpensive parts and assembled them themselves. They additionally tried all they should to get their hands on unclaimed machines. They did the whole lot they could to preserve their hardware cost at a minimum.

Initially, the duo tried to promote Google to other main internet agencies like Yahoo and AltaVista. However, each agencies could not be given Google, because, amongst other reasons, they did now not agree with that search was a fundamental part of the Web experience.

In the preliminary days, the Google guys had been no longer sure of the business model. They did not know just how Google may want to make money. The motto of the employer used to be 'Don't be evil'. They believed that advertisements on net pages were evil, and as a result wanted to avoid having advertisements on their webpages. They had been hopeful that in the future, different web sites would want to use their search engine, and they ought to earnings with the aid of cost these websites. They had been also relying simply on word-of-mouth for their marketing. They did not promote at all.

Google's database kept growing, and they started buying more hardware and recruiting extra people. Initially, Google used to be funded via a $1 million funding with the aid of an angel investor named Andy Bechtolsheim. Eventually, though, they ran out of it, and wanted greater money.

They did now not desire to go public and raise cash like many other businesses did, for they had no intentions of letting their information go public, and they additionally desired to have full control over the company. The only option, then, regarded to be to method challenge capitalists. The duo was convinced that they should get VC's to fund them, and at the equal time proceed to hold their manipulate over the company.

They approached two VC companies, Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins. Both companies have been impressed with the idea, and were ready to fund Google. However, due to the fact they did no longer prefer to provide up control, the Google guys demanded that both businesses make investments together in Google.

In Wall Street, two foremost VC groups would hardly ever consent to a joint investment in a fledgling firm owned with the aid of a couple of unrelenting youngsters. However, due to the inherent splendor and workability of their idea, and via assist from some of their contacts, the Google guys pulled off a coup that used to be unheard of. They received the two businesses to invest $25 million each, and they still retained full manage of Google. The solely circumstance that the two VC's placed was once to employ an experienced enterprise character to manipulate their business. The Google guys agreed, hoping that they should push such an appointment to as late a date as possible.

As Google progressed, a number of improvements got here up. The now well-known Google Doodle - an image that seems in the Google homepage to signify an necessary match or to honour a individual - started out out as a signal to personnel that Brin and Page had been away. When Brin and Page went to a celebration known as Burning Man, they left an photo of a burning man in the homepage to signal to personnel that they had been away. After this, they experimented with changing the two O's of Google with Halloween pumpkins, to signify the festival of Halloween. It used to be an instantaneous hit with Google's users. Since then, the emblem is often adorned with a doodle to signify or honour important occasions/landmarks/persons.

Google commenced recruiting human beings for specific roles. There used to be an employee devoted to making doodles, and another to polishing and improving person design. Significantly, they recruited Dr.Jim Reese of Harvard to manipulate operations. His duty used to be to ensure that Google's burgeoning hardware requirements have been persistently met. Since Google saves a lot of money by using shopping for affordable computers and assembling them themselves, it used to be essential that they be maintained, monitored and managed properly. To make certain reliability, Dr.Reeves spread information over quite a few computers, managed them all from a central system, and used redundancy to insure the enterprise against gadget crashes. By minimizing hardware costs, and the usage of free to use Linux based working systems over luxurious ones like Windows, Google had earned for itself a principal cost advantage.

Google received extra and greater popular. It gained the aid and admiration of Danny Sullivan, editor of an influential e-newsletter focused on Internet search. It had constructed for itself a very loyal user base that gave comments on even the slightest of adjustments to the site. However, it had but to come up with a way of making money.

At that time, a enterprise called Overture caught Brin's attention. Overture was once the organisation that supplied the search effects that accompanied searches of Yahoo and AOL, among others. The Google guys liked the concept of having ads primarily based on search, rather than flashy and distracting banner ads. However, there was one practice of Overture's that they did not approve of - Overture assured that if a enterprise paid a sure amount of money, it would find a location among the advertisements. It went directly towards their motto of 'Don't be evil'.

They decided, therefore, to go it alone. They developed an algorithm for search-based advertising on their own. True to their motto, they ensured that there was a clear demarcation between the authentic search results and the advertisements. Like the search results, the advertisements, too, would be ranked. The ranking of the classified ads would be based not solely on the quantity of money paid, however additionally on the number of instances it is clicked. Hence, popular ads would appear greater prominently.

Prices for Google's advertisements were fixed thru a nonstop auctioning process. Auctions had been done for each search phrase. A phrase like 'investment advice' would cost a lot more than a phrase like 'pet food'. Companies started having dedicated employees to lift out Google auctions. There had been several subtleties involved. For instance, 'digital cameras' would be auctioned for a higher rate than 'digital camera', due to the fact a user googling 'digital cameras' is greater likely to purchase one.

Google marketing policy used to be not except its share of problems. Once, an insurance plan corporation named Geico filed a lawsuit in opposition to Google, on the grounds that it had allowed other groups to bid for its name. A user looking out for 'Geico' would see in his consequences all insurance plan agencies that had made a prevailing bid for it. Geico claimed that Google did no longer have a right to let Geico's opposition take advantage of searches on its name. Google's protection was that Geico's understanding of consumer behavior on the Internet was once incorrect. A person googling 'Geico' is no longer always searching only at Geico's website. Besides, Google used to be not the writer of the ads, and it additionally had structures in region to defend trademarks. It did now not allow commercials to comprise logos in their heading or text. Google ended up winning the case.

It has also been alleged that Google's naming of the advertisement part 'Sponsored Links' misleads many users. Many users confuse commercials with real results, and click on on them except even understanding they are ads. The ethicality of this lack of clear big difference has frequently come under question.

With the enterprise mannequin set straight, innovation and new thoughts flourished at Google's expanded office, known as the Googleplex. One employee came up with the notion of retrieving a person's smartphone range if his title and zip code are entered. Another got here up with the concept of auto-correcting spelling mistakes. If, for instance, you misspell a celebrity's name, Google would robotically correct it and display search outcomes for the corrected name. If a less obvious mistake is made, Google comes up with a "Did you mean...?" link at the top of the page.

Google also launched its Google Image Search, which again was once revolutionary. Millions of photos are stored in Google's database and can be retrieved at the click on of a mouse.

The Google guys created an infrastructure and a way of life inner the Googleplex that would make personnel want to continue to be there for most phase of the day - and night. Mean as they had been with spending on pc hardware, they spent unrestrainedly when it came to developing the proper environment for their employees. There had been free meals, unlimited snacks, toys, roller hockey, scooter races, and a lot more. Even the buses were outfitted with Wi-Fi Internet connectivity, so that employees ought to be productive even while they commuted.

External happenings additionally helped Google. The dotcom crash of 2000 left numerous extraordinarily talented software program builders unemployed, giving Google access to a sizable brain pool. Also, round that time, Microsoft was once facing a felony dispute regarding its anti-competitive practices. This made the photograph of Microsoft take a beating. Google, with its 'Don't be evil' motto, all at once overtook Microsoft as the last vicinity for a software program developer to be in. The creme-de-la-crème of the software profession commenced preferring to work in Google.

Google also actively inspired and fostered innovation inside the Googleplex. Employees had been free to spend 20% of their time on revolutionary tasks that involved him. They did now not have to worry about whether or not it could be made profitable, or have any worry about its acceptance or workability. They ought to so simply work on whatever that was once of hobby to them. Ideas have been frequently discussed in bulletin boards and over lunch. As an thought grew, it would get greater and bigger. Google also supplied the resources to elevate out innovation. Out of this culture have been born several ideas. An avid reader of information came up with an notion of offering customers with multiple sources of news clustered together, to assist them analyze and understand news better. Thus was born Google news. Interestingly, not like Google search results, the Google information effects are cramped close together. This denseness is supposed to provide the consumer as a lot information as possible. Ranking is based totally on relevance, and also the source. Another innovation was once Froogle, later renamed Google Product search, which helped customers search for retail merchandise to shop.

Google soon grew to be a verb in a number of languages, which includes English, German, and Japanese. A lot of debates about Google had been triggered. With facts on human beings only a Google search away, there had been troubles related to online stalking of individuals. Google's advertisements, regardless of the company's checks, covered certain obscene websites. In academia, the use of Google by way of college students in desire to the classically used specialized databases used to be seemed at, on one hand, as increasingly handy and broad get admission to to information, and on the other hand, regarded down as a shortcut approach that fostered laziness.

For all its popularity, Google hardly spent on advertising. Marketing came about only through word-of-mouth. Google kept its homepage easy and free of ads, foregoing millions of bucks of revenue. It averted a graphics-heavy homepage which would sluggish down retrieving search results. It centered on getting customers quick results, in contrast to different websites which wanted customers to continue to be on their respective pages for as long as possible. It did now not have a person lock-in - there used to be no need to register to be capable to use Google search. By imparting a gold standard product aimed principally at pleasurable the user, Google had eliminated any need for advertising. The only promoting it did used to be through selling caps and T-shirts with the Google logo.

Google launched a new program, to be capable to pull users towards Google rather than just wait for them to discover Google. Under this program, any website could register to use the Google search field in its page. Called the affiliate program, it promised to pay websites three cents for each search that they brought to Google. Google, would, of course, earn from advert revenue.

Ever on account that they had received funded by using the two VC firms, the Google guys had been underneath continuously increasing stress to rent a CEO who would manipulate the commercial enterprise aspects of the company. Google had crossed the threshold beyond which a organization used to be required to go public, and the VC firms had been particular about having an experienced enterprise professional as the public face of the corporation earlier than it went public. Several candidates had been sent to Brin and Page with the aid of the Venture Capitalists, however none of them managed to please the Google guys.

As stress set up and time kept strolling out, Eric Schmidt, CEO of the software program enterprise Novell, stepped into the Googleplex to meet Brin and Page. He had consented to see them only due to the fact of the insistence of pinnacle human beings from one of the VC firms, a correct relationship with whom he knew was important. He had no hobby in the assembly at all. The Google guys had been equally bored to death in assembly him. They were waiting for any other of the dull and boring form of which they had already considered many.

When Schmidt entered, his biography was projected in opposition to the wall, and his approach at Novell was once brazenly criticized. Schmidt argued returned vehemently, and there began a heated debate that went on for a lengthy time. After he left, Schmidt realized that he had not had an intellectual debate of that variety in a lengthy time. Brin and Page, too, determined Schmidt to be refreshingly one-of-a-kind from the rest of the candidates they had interviewed. The Venture Capital humans knew that Schmidt could do the deft balancing act of giving a business structure and route to the company, whilst at the same time ensuring that the freedom that Brin and Page so wanted remained unaffected.

Soon, Eric Schmidt used to be made CEO of Google. He put all his trip into play and acted most maturely. He knew when to push, when to agree, when to lower back off, and when to argue. He still gave the Google guys a lot of leeway. He realized that they had created in Google a lifestyle of innovation which it would be unwise to tamper with. All he intended to do was once to construct a enterprise and management shape round the strategy and the subculture that Brin and Page had so meticulously built.

There were, of course, factors of disagreement between Schmidt and the Google guys. It took a lot of convincing from Schmidt to persuade Brin and Page into appreciating that the payroll system of the company, which used to be primarily based on free software, needed an overhaul. Schmidt wanted to buy packaged software program of Oracle, which he believed used to be a necessity, given Google's dimension and fee of expansion. Brin and Page, however, did not see any merit in paying heaps to Oracle when free software used to be available.

There have been additionally instances when Brin and Page had their way stubbornly. There was as soon as a violent bidding war going on between Google and Overture over AOL's search business. Google sooner or later won it through supplying AOL guarantees amounting to millions of dollars. Schmidt was once involved about this, as the company's cash stability was once speedy shrinking. Brin and Page, however, went on with the deal, as they firmly believed that search and search-related advertising and marketing with a business enterprise like AOL was well really worth the risk. Eventually, it grew to become out to be the right decision.

This apart, Google also inked a deal with Yahoo to grant its search results. It also signed a $100 million deal with AskJeeves.com, a competitor, to grant it with search-based advertising. It confirmed maturity and confidence on Google's section to get into offers with competitors.

In April 2004, Google promised to launch an e-mail service which it promised would be markedly best to present e mail services. Brin and Page knew that, with the abundance of electronic mail provider carriers already functioning, a new electronic mail service had to be extensively most efficient to be capable to succeed. Google Mail, or Gmail, they believed, was appreciably superior.

Gmail's special features included easy retrievability through a Google-like search of emails, 1 GB of free storage, which used to be a number of instances the storage house of present electronic mail carrier providers, and a unique way of representing a series of emails, corresponding to a conversation. Gmail was once first given to one thousand opinion leaders for testing. They should then supply Gmail to a restrained wide variety of people on an Invite basis. This gave Gmail a variety of exclusivity which made it a a good deal favored item.

However, just as all appeared to be going well, Gmail ran into troubles. Google had planned to have advertisements in Gmail similar to these in Google. The ads would be context-specific, based on the content of the email. This announcement led to a hue and cry among privacy groups. Law suits had been threatened and there have been calls to shut down Gmail. The difficulty was with the scanning of emails. It was once felt that via analyzing each and every email, Google used to be infringing on the privateness of individuals. It was once also feared that security issues would possibly arise due to the fact of the massive storage space and the subsequent long retention duration of emails.

Google's smooth reputation till then took a beating for the first time. The timing may want to not have been worse, as Google used to be soon to go public. Brin and Page, who have been expecting advantageous reception for what they believed used to be a most effective product, have been taken aback. They hoped that the protests have been solely a passing cloud, and that things would settle down soon. They clarified that the scanning of emails was automated, and that they would no longer be informed about the content. They explained that each and every electronic mail service company scanned emails for displaying emails itself, and for detecting viruses.

As time passed and greater and extra customers started using Gmail, they started out finding the journey fairly satisfying. The awful publicity started death down slowly, and Gmail ultimately grew to be a big hit.

When the time got here for Google to go public, Brin and Page desired to play it their way, again. A regular IPO in USA is executed with the assist of large investment banks. These banks do the publicity with the assist of what is known as a avenue show, assist price the stock, and assurance a minimal amount to the issuing company. However, there used to be a battle in the dreams of the investment bank and the issuing company. While the investment bank would prefer the stock to be underpriced, so that it rises in value and favoured traders gain. The company, on the other hand, would want the fee to be as excessive as possible, so as to increase the maximum feasible amount.

Google did no longer prefer funding banks to name the shots. They had been geared up to pay solely 1/2 the charge funding banks generally demanded, and they wanted to dictate phrases in the IPO. They wanted the IPO to be egalitarian - every body could invest. The minimum quantity of shares used to be only 5. Pricing would be primarily based on an auction, just like Google ads. They felt that the road shows unfairly divulged information solely to a choose few. To make things fair, they launched all applicable statistics on the Internet, for absolutely everyone to see.

Also, to keep control, they issued two instructions of shares - Class A and Class B. Class A shares were for everyday investors, carrying one vote each. Class B shares were for themselves, carrying ten votes each, and giving them absolute control.

As the date of inventory difficulty neared, skepticism began arising regarding Google's stock. The fee band - $110-$135, about 150 instances its per share earnings, started being seen as too high. It was once feared that after the stock issue, employees of Google would workout their inventory preferences and depart the company. To make matters worse, Playboy journal launched an casual and very casual interview of Brin and Page. It used to be an interview taken a lot earlier, however was timed to money in on all the publicity surrounding Google. Besides being a violation of SEC rules, it also sowed seeds of doubt in manageable investors' thought about the seriousness of the guys at the top of Google's hierarchy.

Google's assignment capitalists, who had a lot at stake, had to step in. It was once determined that the Playboy article would be connected as appendix to Google's registration documents, to keep away from the violation of the quiet period. Also, the project capitalists decided to maintain again all Google stock they had deliberate to sell - a sign that they expected the inventory fee to increase. Finally, Google's IPO used to be accomplished and the inventory went out at $85 per share. It currently trades at $530 per share.

Google stored going from energy to strength. It won AOL's European business nearly from beneath Yahoo's nose, purchase imparting AOL million greenback ensures after Yahoo had nearly consummated a deal with AOL. The deal was made by way of Sergey Brin. Sergey Brin's duties on the whole worried making deals, reducing costs, and handling troubles bearing on to tradition and motivation. Larry Page, on the other hand, was worried more in hands-on work. He also supervised hiring of employees, and recognized revolutionary tasks that showed most potential. Eric Schmidt, the CEO, for his part, took care of operations. He ensured that initiatives have been on schedule, and that closing dates were met. He also appeared after the finance, accounting, and different systems.

Innovations kept coming. Google Suggest guessed what you wanted to search. Google desktop gave a comprehensive search solution for your PC. Google video search and Google satellite tv for pc map got here up. Google Scholar was introduced to help search for scholarly articles. The list simply saved getting longer.

In between all this, Google began out on an bold venture to digitize all books in leading libraries and make them accessible to Google users. Starting with the University of Michigan, a few libraries had been selected. Books have been scanned the use of technology that was once mild on the books, and did now not have an effect on them. After scanning, these books would be made available in a form which would no longer allow copying. For books still in copyright, users would be capable to view solely snippets of pages.

To win the aid of publishers, Google got here up with a compelling cost proposition. It would cowl the fees of scanning and indexing books in return for the right to be able to show them in its search results. It would then existing them in a structure which would not allow copying. It would additionally provide direct hyperlinks to booksellers, from whom the book could be bought. Thus, Google was, in effect, giving the consumer a flavor of the book's content material and enticing him to purchase it. It subsequently got aid from publishers. The challenge used to be named Google Books.

In the future, we would possibly see Google use its massive computing strength to assist research in the area of genetics. Already, Google has downloaded a map of the human genome, and is exploring probabilities with biologists. Millions of genes, blended with loads of organic and scientific data form a combination which solely a device of Google's power, processing capacity, and storage area can execute.

The e book is exceptionally well written. From the beginning, and until the end, the creator makes certain that the reader is saved involved and enthralled. And he does so with the aid of the use of no dramatization whatsoever. By just sequencing occasions logically, every now and then switching focal point to ancillary characters, and with the aid of actually describing articulately how the Google phenomenon unfolded, the writer offers the reader each motive to maintain analyzing the book. The characters of Larry Page and Sergey Brin are sketched beautifully. The e book is written like a novel, so the reader in no way receives bored. The writer have to also be given deposit for his neutrality. While he is beneficiant in his praise for Google in generic and its founders in particular, he is also indispensable of them on occasions, such as their unseemly interview to Playboy.

On the flip side, the writer on occasion goes to a level of detail that tests the reader's patience, such as the designated description of the Burning Man Festival. Also, certain characters, such as Charlie Ayers, the chef, are given undue importance. While it is understandable that the chef's continue to be at Google created an entirely new meals culture and helped encourage employees, dedicating an whole chapter to him and inclusive of one of his recipes in it are neither quintessential nor justified.

On the whole, the Google story takes you on a trip - a trip in time of the biggest Internet success story until date. It is a journey that will keep you engrossed, and it is one you will enjoy.