"The Search" is a book by John Battelle. It talks about Google and its rivals and their supremacy in the internet era. With my trace of megalomania the first thing this story did is of course to spark a tad of envy in me. Why not me? I had written some interesting things in my lifetime but never attained mainstream status etc. But then I digress.
I have found that there are a lot of things about Google that I like. One of the first things I like about them is that there is a lot of "Good Karma" about the company. And by this, I dont mean their somewhat bombastic "Don't be Evil" motto. What I mean is that Larry and Sergey went about building their search engine with no trace of profit motive to begin with. They did not even heed the "Build it and they will come" dictum. (or maybe they did). But their motive was to build the thing for the sake of doing it. And we all thronged to google.com. They benefitted a ton of people by directing valuable traffic to their websites.
All this happened BEFORE they evolved their adWords model (which the book says is based out of the Overture.com business model) I think it was quite natural and inevitable that they succeeded.
The other thing I like about google is their emphasis on technical leadership. This is one topic that I have firm opinions about. I have seen many a startup succumb to the pressure of VCs and Wall Street and delegate its leadership to more "finance savvy" CEOs who may or may not be in line with the founders' mission. The founders think of building a bird and suddenly end up with a dinosaur! Google still emphasizes technical leadership. I would say that is a great trait indeed.
Like many high growth companies, Google has its share of problems. But I can't think of any that is unsolvable.
I also think that the book is written in a very compelling, story telling kind of fashion. This makes it extremely readable and at the same time very informative. Five stars both to the book and to Google as a company!
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
