Auletta, Ken Googled: The End of the World As We Know It
This book ranks as the 408th most highlighted book read on Kindle.
Here are some of my highlights:
“The founders don’t value marketing”—or most nonengineering disciplines. Larry Page is aggressively
disdainful of marketing and public relations. In early 2008, Page instructed Google’s public relations
department, which consisted of 130 people, that he would only give them a total of eight hours of his
time that year for press conferences, speeches, or interviews.
Engineers are rarely accomplished communi cators. Google is a culture dominated by a belief in
science, in data, and facts, not instinct or perception or opinion. This reflects not just a disdain for public
relations, but also a whiff of arrogance.
Schmidt’s summation understates the mistakes Google will make, and has made, because its computer
scientists live on their own planet and often harbor disdain for the way others think. Terry Winograd,
who was Larry Page’s graduate school mentor at Stanford, and who still serves as an engineering
consultant to Google, recounted a discussion at a TGIF he attended where an employee raised the
question of one day splitting Google’s stock and asserted that a stock purchased at, say, four hundred
dollars a share that was now selling at forty dollars per share because it had been split, would be
perceived as not a good thing for employees because the perception would be that their stock was
worth less. Page erupted, “It’s stupid. If you own ten shares at forty dollars and one share at four
hundred dollars, it’s the same thing! You just need to know how to divide.” This is “logically true,” said
Winograd. “But there is an emotional issue here. He felt that those who disagreed were not thinking
logically, were being stupid.”
few would describe the founders as ideal mediators. They are often too brusque and intimidating for that
role. “Larry can be a little raw, but never unkind,” said Megan Smith, vice president of new business
development. A part of the rawness is due to the fact that they are geeks, more comfortable staring at a
computer screen than schmoozing, and too zealously impatient to waste time.
Page is more reclusive, and odder. He was once asked at a dinner, according to a dinner guest, “What’s
the most important thing the government should be doing?”
“Colonize Mars!” Page said.
Most of the dinner guests nodded as if he had said something profound.
Page can be almost monklike. He ruthlessly guards his time, and can treat those who ask him to make a
speech or meet reporters as if they were thieves trying to steal his time. A longtime Google employee
describes Page this way: “Larry is like a wall. He analyzes everything. He asks, ‘Is this the most efficient
way to do this?’ You’re always on trial with Larry. He always pushes you.” While Brin is more
approachable than Page, he, too, can be awkward around strangers. His wife Anne Wojcicki’s company,
23andMe, was feted at a fashionable cocktail party in September 2008 that was cohosted by Diane von
Furstenberg and her husband, Barry Diller, Wendi and Rupert Murdoch, and Georgina Chapman and
her husband, Harvey Weinstein. The event was held at Diller’s Frank Gehry-designed IAC headquarters
in Manhattan. Brin appeared wearing a dark crewneck sweater and gray Crocs. He and Google are
investors in her company and he is openly proud of her work. But she had to quietly beseech him to
stay. He did, but hid behind his oversized Canon camera, moving about the vast room or retreating to a
corner, always snapping pictures.
These anti-social (hanging out with people with a normal IQ is a waste of time) 'pro-society' geeks who
believe the Democrat mantra that profits represent greed are now running Google without help from a
normal person.
Actually, I identify with them. In my opinion Larry Page is probably correct that we should be colonizing
Mars...with robots, of course. But that is the opinion of a robot named...
donbot
This book ranks as the 408th most highlighted book read on Kindle.
Here are some of my highlights:
“The founders don’t value marketing”—or most nonengineering disciplines. Larry Page is aggressively
disdainful of marketing and public relations. In early 2008, Page instructed Google’s public relations
department, which consisted of 130 people, that he would only give them a total of eight hours of his
time that year for press conferences, speeches, or interviews.
Engineers are rarely accomplished communi cators. Google is a culture dominated by a belief in
science, in data, and facts, not instinct or perception or opinion. This reflects not just a disdain for public
relations, but also a whiff of arrogance.
Schmidt’s summation understates the mistakes Google will make, and has made, because its computer
scientists live on their own planet and often harbor disdain for the way others think. Terry Winograd,
who was Larry Page’s graduate school mentor at Stanford, and who still serves as an engineering
consultant to Google, recounted a discussion at a TGIF he attended where an employee raised the
question of one day splitting Google’s stock and asserted that a stock purchased at, say, four hundred
dollars a share that was now selling at forty dollars per share because it had been split, would be
perceived as not a good thing for employees because the perception would be that their stock was
worth less. Page erupted, “It’s stupid. If you own ten shares at forty dollars and one share at four
hundred dollars, it’s the same thing! You just need to know how to divide.” This is “logically true,” said
Winograd. “But there is an emotional issue here. He felt that those who disagreed were not thinking
logically, were being stupid.”
few would describe the founders as ideal mediators. They are often too brusque and intimidating for that
role. “Larry can be a little raw, but never unkind,” said Megan Smith, vice president of new business
development. A part of the rawness is due to the fact that they are geeks, more comfortable staring at a
computer screen than schmoozing, and too zealously impatient to waste time.
Page is more reclusive, and odder. He was once asked at a dinner, according to a dinner guest, “What’s
the most important thing the government should be doing?”
“Colonize Mars!” Page said.
Most of the dinner guests nodded as if he had said something profound.
Page can be almost monklike. He ruthlessly guards his time, and can treat those who ask him to make a
speech or meet reporters as if they were thieves trying to steal his time. A longtime Google employee
describes Page this way: “Larry is like a wall. He analyzes everything. He asks, ‘Is this the most efficient
way to do this?’ You’re always on trial with Larry. He always pushes you.” While Brin is more
approachable than Page, he, too, can be awkward around strangers. His wife Anne Wojcicki’s company,
23andMe, was feted at a fashionable cocktail party in September 2008 that was cohosted by Diane von
Furstenberg and her husband, Barry Diller, Wendi and Rupert Murdoch, and Georgina Chapman and
her husband, Harvey Weinstein. The event was held at Diller’s Frank Gehry-designed IAC headquarters
in Manhattan. Brin appeared wearing a dark crewneck sweater and gray Crocs. He and Google are
investors in her company and he is openly proud of her work. But she had to quietly beseech him to
stay. He did, but hid behind his oversized Canon camera, moving about the vast room or retreating to a
corner, always snapping pictures.
These anti-social (hanging out with people with a normal IQ is a waste of time) 'pro-society' geeks who
believe the Democrat mantra that profits represent greed are now running Google without help from a
normal person.
Actually, I identify with them. In my opinion Larry Page is probably correct that we should be colonizing
Mars...with robots, of course. But that is the opinion of a robot named...
donbot
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