Copyright: 2005
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN-10: 0-553-80457-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-553-80457-7
The Google Guys are fascinating to a lot of people and of course since I am a software developer they are intriguing to me on many levels. David Vise does a very good job of unveiling the facts and providing some insight into the world of Google. There is a touch of sycophancy in the tone of the book so I read it with the proverbial grain of salt, however true to his journalistic roots, Mr. Vise did portray at least some of the darker side of Google. While I use Google on a daily basis and still respect the work they have done, I think much of the praise and adulation heaped upon them is a little overdone.
Regular Guys
One of the myths that seems to persist with the Google Guys (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) is that they were just a couple of regular guys who made it big by working hard. The truth is that these two men were raised with extraordinary opportunities. I respect all that they have done and I truly believe that they have worked incredibly hard to get where they are today so I do not want to belittle their accomplishments in any way. The fact remains however that Larry's dad held one of the first Computer Science degrees ever granted by the University of Michigan along with a Ph.D. Sergey's parents were also highly educated with his father teaching mat at the University of Maryland and his mother working as a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Both Larry and Sergey attended Montessori schools while young and both had conscientious parents who valued education which no doubt left an indelible impression on both young men.
The biographical background that David Vise explores in this book is very well written and very well researched. There are quotes from people such as Cub Scout leaders and other family members about their early lives. Some of this information is interesting while some of it is obviously geared at "getting quoted." It's always amazing how people look back and fix on the one thing that was a "true sign" of a childs gifts when at the time it was just another day in a kids life. For instance the account of Larry taking apart power tools with a screwdriver set might now seem to be an indication of his fascination for how things work... but in reality there are a lot of kids who do that, including my brothers and me. My own son took apart a hard drive when he was 9 or 10 just to "see where stuff got saved". I think most kids are naturally curious and fortunately for searchers everywhere, Larry and Sergey kept their curiosity going even after they got to school.
Brilliant Students
No one questions that Larry Page and Sergey Brin are smart guys. The account of their days at Standford is very interesting and Vise did a great job of keeping the narrative going while providing solid information to give insight into the minds and character of the Google Guys. Especially interesting was how the seed of the search engine idea grew out of their desire to "download the entire internet" and make it searchable. Larry Page came up with the concept of PageRank (with the help of course of others around him) and the name is a play on his name and the concept of "ranking" search results. The notion of ranking pages based on the number of links to them is a direct result of their strong educational background. Anyone who has done any research knows that the quality of a source for a research paper is determined largely by how often a particular author or paper is referenced or quoted elsewhere.
Do No Evil
One of the biggest PR coups in recent history has been Google's ability to convince the world that "Do No Evil" isn't just some corporate value statement mantra. (Let's be honest, how many corporations truly value the values in their "Values Statement"?) This is an important image for Google to maintain because in their fight against Microsoft, it is very easy to paint Microsoft as "The Bad Guys". As a software developer I am not a huge Microsoft fan but I am also pragmatic in acknowledging that most of the people who use computers in their homes today would not be if it weren't for the Windows operating system. Say what you want, Linux is free...and yet people still buy Windows. But regardless of their success, Microsoft is still easy to paint as the bad guy because of their legal troubles. Over and again we have seen the folks in Redmond show up on the evening news as the subject of this or that lawsuit or being investigated for this or that infraction of the law.
But the big question remains, Google claims to "do no evil" but do they? Well that depends. David Vise in this book gives a very compelling argument that most of the negativity around Google surrounded their IPO and he even makes it sound like mostly sour grapes from the Wall Street elite. However I think if any part of the book comes close to pandering, this part is the one. Larry and Sergey are undoubtedly very smart guys who know a lot about science, computers and search. What they don't know is business. Fortunately for them, if you have the right idea at the right time in the right place, you don't need to know business to make money. Not knowing business does not make them evil, however I believe in some cases they have inadvertantly "done evil" by not admitting they don't know business and letting the experts take care of it for them.
The IPO was a good example. Google wanted to "shake things up" and "do things their own way". According to Vise they didn't think that the way Wall Street did things made sense. So they came up with their own way of doing things and did everything they could to spite Wall Street and the SEC. The fact that they refused to change some things in their public filings smacks of hubris especially in light of the fact that the SEC is the "consumer advocate" of the investing world. By spiting the SEC they might as well have said "we don't care about the people who are investing in us." Admittedly they may see the SEC as being in the "back pocket" of Wall Street and therefore not worthy of protecting the investor.
The biggest evil I believe manifested itself in the fact that because of their bungles of the business end of the IPO, the initial stock price was lowered from the $130 range to the $85 range. Now as a stock market investor, that's a good thing considering what subsequently happened to the price of Google's stock. Think back however to the angel investors and family and friends that gave Sergey and Brin money to get started. The first computers had to be bought with someone's money, the first rent checks had to come from somewhere. Nowhere did I find in Vise's book that Sergey and Larry were waiting tables to make ends meet. That means someone, somewhere was paying their bills so they could chase their dreams. Those are the people who lost money when Larry and Sergey muffed the IPO...their shares weren't worth as much when they could finally get in the market.
Granted, no one is going to feel sorry for John Doerr and Michael Moritz who bought 23.89 million shares each for 49.5 cents each or even for Paul Ottelini who got his 65,000 shares for $35 each. They still make plenty of money on their options. In hindsight however, does it take very much business acumen to know that you should NOT do an interview for Playboy in the same year you are taking a company public? Was it worth it, or more to the point, was it not evil to take money out of the pockets of loyal employees like Charlie the cook who had to buy his stock options? Certainly no one feels sorry for all the millionaires that came out of the Google IPO but just because someone made a lot of money doesn't make it less evil that Larry and Sergey took money out of their pockets due to their personal hubris.
Then too there are the multiple investigations by the SEC into the options granting practices of Google. In some cases it was simple lack of good (or any) business practices that got them into trouble. In most cases however the irony of their woes is that the search engine company that hopes to make all the information in the world available to you on your desktop... didn't give out enough information about their own company. To this day, Google is often incredibly tight lipped about what they are doing and how they are going about it. In that sense, they are no different than their neighbors to the north in Redmond, they are ruthless in the business of shutting out the competition wherever it may be found.
Conclusion
This book is a "must read" for people who want to understand a little more about the Google Guys. I found it to be a very good and easy read. While I think the author is slightly too enamored with the Google Guys to really give them a truly fair treatment, the book still comes across as genuine enough to be on my book shelf.