Book Review – The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media and Technology Success of Our Time, by David A. Vise
Quick Review: A quick read, a whirlwind tour of the brains and business behind a company that has changed my world and the world around it while I watched. It has an exceptionally positive tone, but that\’s the nature of writing about a company that hasn\’t ever lost a big battle.
In the interest of full disclosure, I love Google. I wouldn\’t go so far to say that I\’m a fanboy (no branded clothing, no pilgrimages to the Googleplex, etc), I have switched to several of their products because they were so clearly better while quickly forgetting the other companies\’ products that I left. Case in point, the other day I was looking up parking garages in downtown
That being said, I even thought this book was exceedingly positive and almost hagiographic at times. Granted, Google as a company has had a charmed history from the beginning. If there were any great hardships, failures, or losses up to the time this book was written (2005), the author went out of his way to exclude or minimize them. But in all fairness, in order to go from a grad school lab to a garage to high-flying startup to $150 billion giant in a decade, you can\’t have too many speed bumps!
The books is about the story and history of the company, but very little about the technology used. I guess that not everyone is as nerdy as I am, and a chapter on A* search, eigenvectors, and distributed dynamic load balancing algorithms probably would have cut deeply into sales. It explains in fairly simple terms some of the steps Google took that gave them a technological and computational advantage over their competitors, which I suppose is enough for most people. I did chuckle at the thought of Google employees scouring the newspaper for sales at computer stores and then organizing raids to all of the Fry\’s electronics stores in the Bay Area when there was a good sale! Those people are now holding shares worth nearly $600 each, so their frugality was definitely rewarded.
The chapter about the catered lunches at the Google offices impressed me the most. I love good food but mostly get what\’s cheap or easy. The best benefits I\’ve had from work included sodas in the fridge and donut day once a month. The fact that Brin and Page wanted not only to reward and impress their employees, not only to keep them together and near work, but to give filling, easy to digest food that would energize their employees instead of make them sluggish. I thought it demonstrated the company\’s brilliant attention to detail, performance, and economy better than any other story in the book. They carefully calculated every action taken by the business, and made sure that each action met several goals.
In the end, I\’m a computer programmer who has heard the stories about how wonderful an employer Google is. The crazy, creative work environment, the wonderful perks, the innovation-centric organization structure, and of course, the food. How much of it is true is hard to say; Google has tight NDA forms yet seeks publicity and recognition for its hiring practice, competitors want to claim that it\’s all exaggeration, and the company is too big, young, and prominent for journalists to get a complete picture. The impression I get is that the Google of The Google Story was a dream come true and an amazing experience for all involved, but now the company is too big, too rich, and too diverse for that experience to be universal. Some parts of the company may still be like that, but now matter how much they try to act like an exciting startup, there are too many facts of life that come with being an industry titan.
I guess this is less review of the book and more commentary on Google, but I guess that\’s the whole reason for reading a book like this. I highly recommend it to anyone who\’s interested in “the Googleâ€.
About the Author: (from Greater Talent Network
David Vise is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post, where his beat focuses on Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Time Warner/AOL. Vise has covered the FBI and the Justice Department for the Post, along with numerous other beats since joining the paper in the 1980s.
A 1982 magna cum laude graduate of the
Born in
In
Other books by this author:
It might be a little too positive about Google, but it’s still a great account of Google’s growth from the early days. As someone who’s been enthusiastic about Google products for a long time, I really enjoyed reading the book.