He was hired by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google's founders, in the belief that like a Napoleonic army, an internet giant marches on its stomach. As Google's first chef, his mission was to seduce an unruly gaggle of brilliant but wayward computer engineers into wanting to stay at the office. His success, he said, meant Google's rise to the top was fuelled by free beer, barbecues and rum.

It began in 1998, when Page and Brin started Google in a friend's garage near Stanford University in California. A few months later, they recruited Ayers. "They said: 'We are not going to charge for food here, ever.' "I said: 'That's crazy.' They explained my job was to create this ambience, to build this captivated audience where people wanted to come in super-early and stay super-late. "They interviewed me above a bicycle shop. They thought they were going to go global. I thought 'Good luck.' The way they were playing with children's toys, riding around on scooters, I had no idea they were doing any work."

He signed up, however, and started easing the computer engineers into the long hours culture with innovations including free beer and fortnightly "big-ass" barbecues. To introduce computer experts fresh out of university to early mornings, he developed breakfast specials, such as "French toast with coconut, macadamia and rum". The rum, beer and barbecues provided perfect cover for converting the "googlers" to a diet that ensured they kept working after lunch, weaning them off pizzas and on to salads. As explained in his new book, Eat Yourself Smart, his faith in the profit-making power of raw food extended to generous offerings of sushi. "The fat found in fish helps make the cell membranes round the brain more elastic and more able to absorb nutrients easily."

His kitchen empire grew to five chefs, 75 dishwashers, and 150 cooks, serving up to 7000 meals a day to the staff of 5000 at the 280,000-square-metre "Googleplex" — the HQ in Mountain View, California. Ayers would fly in more than 200 kilograms of live lobsters for "Lobster Boil Day". The Googleplex houses a pool table, a gaming arcade, two swimming pools and a beach volleyball court — complete with sand. "I still wonder how the work gets done," says Ayers. But Google enjoys $A4.6 billion annual profits. Brin and Page are now billionaires at the age of just 34. Ayers bought a $A1.5 million house with a fraction of his reputed $A28.8 million of Google shares. He was deemed so important that, after he left in May 2005, the food court was renamed Charlie's.

The free food was, he says, part of a strategy that helped Brin and Page steer Google through the great dotcom crash of 2001. TELEGRAPH