I Just finished reading Steven Levy’s “In The Plex” and loved it! (http://amzn.to/s46q1F) It gives some fantastic insight in to Google’s history, their culture as a company, projects they are working on now and in the past that have both failed and become integral parts of our daily lives and most importantly in to the minds of the 2 founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. By time I finished reading the book I was in awe of the massive ideas and accomplishments of these men, their company and the people that have helped turn Google in to the custodians of the worlds information.
I made a ton of notes as I was reading the book and think it’s important I share some of what I learned. This post is the beginning of a series of posts I’ll write to share the remarkable information Mr. Levy obtained with unprecedented access to the company and it’s people.
Don’t Be Evil
“Don’t be evil” is the informal corporate motto (or slogan) of Google, originally suggested by Google employees Paul Buchheit and Amit Patel at a meeting. They believe strongly that in the long term, they will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if they forgo some short term gains. Google is NOT EVIL!
Let’s scan and store the content of every book ever written…
Did you know one of their goals (amazingly as early as when they were still at Stanford) was to scan every book in print and make them available online, free? EVERY BOOK. Who even thinks that big? Luckily for the world, they did. At their first estimate there were over 33 million books that had been published since the printing press was created. Later they learned there are over 100 million. I had no idea and in fact, for the first time I just used their tool http://books.google.com to find “In The Plex”, then search within the book to find some facts and figures I was looking for (which I did) rather than trying to find it in the book itself.
Google is changing the world
Page and Brin and ultimately their former CEO Eric Schmidt (who helped lead them through their main growth phase before turning the company back over to Larry Page) set out to change the world and have done just that. In fact, they have done it (and are still doing it) at such a magnitude it’s almost incomprehensible. Most only know Google as a search engine. Few realize that they look at problems much bigger than helping us find what we want on the web and solving them. Things like cutting the cost of electricity, building cars that drive themselves and free cell phone service.
I promise you will be amazed and in awe as well of what I’ll be sharing soon. Please subscribe to our blog in the form to the right so you will get out updates.
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