In the Plex

How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

By: Steven Levy

Narrated by: L. J. Ganser

Length: 19 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes listeners inside Google headquarters - the Googleplex - to explain how Google works.

While they were still students at Stanford, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google's earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow (until Google's IPO, nobody other than Google management had any idea how lucrative the company's ad business was), Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open-source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more.

The key to Google's success in all these businesses, Levy reveals, is its engineering mind-set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After it's unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers with free food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseuses, and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire.

But has Google lost its innovative edge? It stumbled badly in China. And now, with its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be "evil" still compete?

No other book has turned Google inside out as Levy does with In the Plex.

This edition of In the Plex includes an exclusive interview with Google's Marissa Mayer, one of the company's earliest hires and most visible executives, as well as the youngest woman to ever make Fortune's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" list. She provides a high-level insider's perspective on the company's life story, its unique hiring practices, its new social networking initiative, and more.

©2011 Steven Levy (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Thoroughly versed in technology reporting, Wired senior writer Levy deliberates at great length about online behemoth Google and creatively documents the company’s genesis from a 'feisty start-up to a market-dominating giant'.... Though the author offers plenty of well-known information, it’s his catbird-seat vantage point that really gets to the good stuff. Outstanding reportage delivered in the upbeat, informative fashion for which Levy is well known." ( Kirkus Reviews)

"The book, a wide-ranging history of the company from start-up to behemoth, sheds light on the biggest threats Google faces today, from the Chinese government to Facebook and privacy critics." ( The New York Times)

“With a commanding voice, L.J. Ganser narrates this history and exploration of Google….Ganser’s stern voice is clear and moves through the text with determination.” ( AudioFile)

Lucky to be a xGoogler

Really enjoyed the book, a lot of good memories while working at Google. Thanks Google.

Very Enjoyable

The book is more than a little sympathetic to Google, but it really puts the impact that Google has had on the Internet and society into sharp focus. You almost forget what life was like before Google. Like them or love them, Googlers have changed the way the world works.

Go Google!

If I hadn't read such good reviews about this book I probably wouldn't have chosen it to read, but I am so glad I did. Ganser was a terrific reader and even though some of the info went over my head and I zoned out, what I did learn about Google was great. While I was cooking dinner, I had the book on speakers and my son, who is a computer programmer, started listening to it. He got right into it and now wants to listen to the whole book. It is a book that I would go back and read again.

Great listen!

This book contains lots of insight into the minds of the people inside Google. The reader doesn't need to know much computer jargon to enjoy this book.

enlightening

Levy does a fantastic job unpacking the complexity of google, how it thinks, how it works, and most importantly how it makes money. highly recommended.

required reading for the digital revolution

This wasn't as well written as the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, but it is still worth a listen. We have all been living through a revolution as profound as the industrial revolution and all of these people and companies have impacted our lives in so many ways. It's fascinating to realize what has gone on behind the scenes with such things as Google maps, search, and Youtube. Similarly, the personalities needed to create these advances are equally interesting. My capsule summary: Bill Gates = businessman, Steve Jobs = artist, the Google founders, Sergei Brinn and Larry Page = engineers. All of them brilliant, of course, and visionaries. We're living in the world they imagine and it's good to know what they think.

Brilliant. Google.

Where does In the Plex rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Very highly.

What did you like best about this story?

I learned a lot about Google, things I hadn't dreamed of. It opens your eyes to what's happening to us, and this is just one brilliant company.

Interesting but long and sparse focus.

Good to know but not as practical or useful as many of the themes are relatively known from other better, more detail and practical books. Served the purpose for it was created!

Very good, almost a 5 star!

The author has followed Google for a decade, had access to its founders Larry and Sergei, hundred of employees and also to internal meetings.

It starts talking about a visit to a very remote part on the earth where a tribe never heard about Google. Then talks about a problem Google has suffered with a public attorney about how big they got and potentially having to much power and market concentration.

It’s a story on two Stanford kids that enjoyed the book of the internet. Larry was someone with very long term view and people used to say that he usually goes to the future and come back to say how it is. Sergei was born and Russia and was almost a genius and one of the youngest to have doctoral, PhD in Stanford.

At the beginning it tells the story on their initial thesis on the university and how it was helping to search on the web. It was a time when internet was being creating and the most popular search engine was Altavista.

They started as a project at Stanford and the main differences of Google’s search tool is that it used not only the words on the webpages but also referring links to that page. This was named “back rub”. For example, if you type “newspaper” on Alta vista, you get some pages that mentions newspapers two times on the title and never New York Times ir other paper. In google it also considered the size of the font and the placement on the webpage. After some frustrating attempts to raise money, because they were running out of computer power (they were using half of the power at Stanford), they kept at the university, changed their name (from back rub to Google) and had to make some papers to disclose their tools (the book mentions sometimes that Larry didn’t want to end like Tesla, who was as brilliant and Edison, but got no visibility).

They also found some ways on buying cheap infrastructure (Larry’s dorm was the “bunker” of the computers at first) and they started hiring.

The team kept improving the search engine and got much better than competitors. They found how to differentiate dog, hot and hot dog. They also find ways to include synonyms on the search. They also discovered how to find names and cities. They also used the “feedback” and logs form the users to keep improving. If the user turned to the second page on the search, it was a clear signal that the results were not satisfactory.

At one point they were growing a lot and demanded additional infrastructure and had higher hiring costs and needed funding. When they started talking to bankers and VCs, they realized that they needed a business plan. This was something they never had. Somewhere on the book mentioned that some people only looked for pleasing the users and never on how to make money out of that. They ended up with a USD 50 mm funding from to VCs (sequoia and another one) agreeing that they would hire a more experienced CEO (at first Page was the CEO and Sergei the chairman).

At some point they wanted to review this term on having a CEO, and the investors had to prove with data that it made sense. They brought numbers on failed start ups that didn’t hired CEOs and Sergei and Larry were convinced. They made a list on the names they thought and the first in the list was Steve Jobs. They ended up hiring Eric Shimdt a former sun Microsystems.

By 2000, given the tech bubble problems they started to receive pressure on generating results. It was when the AdWords came in and they started to make money. The concept was to use similar algorithm to run ads that were related to the clicks it received and not only the words in the search. It was also very important to not harm the user experience and it was highlighted that it was an ad and had different color on the search result page. At first it had a price based on appearance. Then, after they analyzed how”GoTo”, a competitor, was doing it they changed for an pay per click and with an auction based charge. The main difference was that they made an auction with the winner paying only a cent more than the second bidder. In this case the bidders would not have a remorse on paying too much and were more inclined to place high bids. During this period they won a bid to be the search engine at the AOL portal. They won claiming better algorithms and also a higher financial proposition. The former supplier was goto. This company ended up being bought by yahoo and google was worried that it might improve its product to compete with google. But they ended up suffering the “innovators dilemma” were the incumbent is not able to keep up innovating.

The second great shot was Adsense. Basically it was a marketing platform were google place ads on the publishers webpages and split the fees.

After these two main products, the company started to generate enough cash and was able to focus in other products and expand. The founders were really worried on the culture and tried to keep its original culture when they have few people. They always tried to maintain the “university “ environment and “dorm room” approach. They started on the Stanford campus, moved to a garage/backyard, then to a second floor on a bike store and then to Palo Alto. They always focused on being frugal and buying furniture in fire sale from failed startups. But they always wanted to keep like they were still on campus, where you can circulate between buildings and interact with other people. They liked to have they own restaurants and serve free food to the employees. They came form a Montessori education and were trained to doubt authorities, think independently and innovate.

Other important point was on the hiring process. They really focused on similar backgrounds at first. Good education, best university and team oriented. After a while they started to accepts different backgrounds but had always to have the “googly” spirit.

For this, they made a team for trying to create the values and the behavior that would define such “googly” spirit. After several attempts and brainstorming they ended up with “don’t be evil”.

Time has passed and they came to the difficult decision on being public company. Usually, the main reason on being public is having public info and have to please “the market” with short term strategy. Google had already became big enough that they needed to disclose financial info to the market. For the short term thinking of the market, they made very clear from the start (including mentioning it on the prospectus) and said that they would always favor long term vs short term. They also mentioned that the level of disclosure would be minimum.

As everything they did and as “Montessori” kids, they made the first Dutch auction IPO, where the prices were not defined by bankers, but by an auction by the market. The book mentioned the Hambrecht boutique who had this principle on the IPOs (this company is also subject from a Harvard case study). At first banker thought it should be valued from 135-180 a share but after a not well conducted roadshow, unique prospectus, newspaper misjudgment on the opportunity, the price was auctioned at 85.

After the IPO, the company kept growing and even with the founders conviction on trying to keep things simple and without “management” they needed to change a very flat organization for a more verticalize done. The CEO convinced the founders when that came to a deadlock and shimdt suggested on calling people and asking them directly if they needed management or not. People answered that they needed guidance and someone to learn from.

They also created the 70-20-10 method that was 70% of the engineers worked on current projects (ads, sense, etc), 20 on projects they choose and 10 on “wild cards” (usually created on the 20 team). To keep agility and a startup environment, they usually breakdown projects so they can have small teams with ~3 people in it.

It also took sometime for them to hire a product manager, thinking that they don’t needed one. It was hired a very young to start to run the gmail project.

The company wanted always to keep the things very transparent and keep the startup culture were everybody knew all and the things that were being done. In this sense they put on their portal the OKRs (quarterly goals) for every employee (including the founders) and all the projects under development and also if it needed additional work force.

The gmail had the goal on increasing the capacity that was possible to be stored and to search emails with their search tool. The competitors at that time had 2-4 MB of storage and they came with 1GB. For that they introduced ads related to the conversation that was done in the email. People found it creepy at first and a lot of people talked about privacy. The gmail was in beta test for a very long time and people only got it through invitation (those were being sold on eBay for $100). For the storage capacity google became the largest producer of computers and had huge data centers.

At first they started on leasing facilities or buying existing data centers. It was a time that due to the tech bubble burst, there was a lot of spare capacity. The demand was so high that this over supply ended and google saw the necessity to keep costs down. They started to build their own facilities where they could innovate and keep costs down. They considered building data centers under the sea and in locations with cool weather so they could have an economy on the cooling process. They created a company and website with a generic name so they could look for locations without people knowing it was google. They also ended up buying optic cables for data transferring between data centers. The strategy was to look at that as a giant computer. They also had an strategy of having cheap components and a higher level of failure. To offset that they had more back ups.

With data center in place they had all to start to put everything on the cloud. They understood that in the future you would not need to keep info on the personal computer. They also had a long term goal on having an operational system run on the cloud (this would be a huge threat to Microsoft). They also started on the google chrome project. The idea was to increase usage for the internet (more internet users, more ads). The time spent on internet was still much lower than tv and others types of entertainment. They started with Mozilla Firefox but needed up creating their own.

After that the next step was to enter the mobile device business. Sergey and Larry became close to Steve Jobs and had a lot of “crazy” ideas on how to beat Microsoft.

Shimdt became board member. Google started with the android project and ended up trying to make cellphones themselves. The long “partnership” with jobs ended with him furious and feeling betrayed by the two kids he once considered mentoring. They also tried to buy spectrum on an auction (conflicting with Verizon and other big carriers) and also buying Skype.

After the mobile/ telecom attempt they kept searching new products. They had google maps, google earth, picasa, a competing to Wikipedia. Some ended up well and others don’t. They had this video platform they were trying to create but ended up buying YouTube. Interesting that they kept it separate from the company as an “independent” subsidiary. The rationale we that their own endeavor ended up falling in the bureaucracy of a big firm. Their platform didn’t succeed because there were to many presentations and worries on copyright. YouTube did what they wanted and feel and was not worrying on regulation.

After a while the crises came and the growth was no happening in an exponential mode as in the past years. They brought a new CFO with the mission on focusing more on costs and efficiency, something that they never had before. At first it was easy and they started reducing costs on travel, the free food (closing empty restaurants and not allowing people to bringing in people and or taking food home). It was all fare things to be cut and everyone was on board. At some point it also started to impact on people’s and it was the first year that the number of people graph had reached a plateau. Google had also a problem on losing talent to other start ups and growing companies. At this point, they started a program to develop people and focus more on managing people.

As the crisis passed, Google turned back the growth mode on. They had a clear view on monetizing YouTube and grow the business.

At one point they faced one of the most difficult decision on entering the Chinese market. The conflict here was the restrictions Chinese government imposed on search results. Google was so confident that they shouldn’t restrict results that in one point they kept a Jew search resulting in a anti semitist website even when Sergei suffered on his family. They had also problems with leadership, team and even with the name.

After a while they suffered a security breach they believed to be related to the government and decided to change its “sensor ship” which was referring the site to another one without restrictions (this could make the search slower and to be subject to errors).

At the campaign of 2008 they ended up “supporting” Obama due their similarities. Some high ranking employees joined campaign or went to work with the president but were frustrated with the pace of things.

At one point they was getting so big that they hired an anti trust lawyer to the company. When they bought double click, they had the longest battle to convince they were only a part of total marketing expending (and should not only consider the search) and they also had to deal with internal conflicts on the cookies policy.

In the epilogue, it mentions the battle for the social media development. Google lagged behind Facebook and others platforms. They never had focus and always wanted to enforce algorithms and didn’t considered human behavior. For example one employee when looking for a gift to his wife never found a good result on the search, but had better results on he put on his google talk status. Also when they created a “buzz” button on the gmail, linking to people’s contact, they had a massive problem on privacy.

Worth a listen!

A very interesting book. Written a 7 years ago it's interesting to see how the space has developed since then.