Monday, October 6, 2008

Planet Google (Book)

A new book by Randall Stross is out; it’s called “Planet Google” and covers Google’s beginnings but also their latest actions and troubles. It’s a very good, highly readable, well-researched and up-to-date introduction to the subject and will also offer bits and pieces of interest to those following Google more closely for longer. Randall both talked to Google employees and was there at one of Google’s Thank-God-It’s-Friday meetings (where employees can ask questions), but he also apparently had his ears close to the web to write the book. For instance, you’ll find blog sources and Friendfeed comments among the material.

This book broadly falls into the category of company biographies, like The Search by John Battelle or The Google Story by David Vise. Because Planet Google is so new, even more recent topics like Knol or OpenSocial are covered. (Google Chrome didn’t make it into the book, though.) The book also does a good job at avoiding to oversimplify certain patterns we can see with Google; for instance, the first chapter is called “Open and Closed,” describing both the ways Google opens up to the world – like via open source projects – but also the different ways in which they remain closed and non-transparent.

Here are some of the noteworthy bits from the book (with my emphasis):

«Google has been determined to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” since June 1999 ... Until then, Google had used a modest statement of company mission that the founders had hastily put on Google’s Web site at the time the site was launched: “To make it easier to find high-quality information on the web.” »

» «How Google should respond to the social networking phenomenon in general, and to Facebook in particular, was not clear to Google’s executive troika, but they understood that the question was a pressing one. ... Google appointed three executives in its applications group ... to organize an internal team ... The first step was recruiting other members of the team. This did not require hiring new employees – scattered across different groups within Google were plenty of individuals who were working in one way or another on projects that could conceivably contribute to Google’s social networking initiative. ... The initial response was, in many cases, a shrug. Google may appear, on the outside, to be a monolithic organization that acts with terrifying efficiency ... On the inside, however, it is a federation of autonomous teams , staffed by feisty individuals who have no compuction about slamming the door on fellow employees and the company’s top priorities.»

in general, and to Facebook in particular, was not clear to Google’s executive troika, but they understood that the question was a pressing one. ... Google appointed three executives in its applications group ... to organize an internal team ... The first step was recruiting other members of the team. This did not require hiring new employees – scattered across different groups within Google were plenty of individuals who were working in one way or another on projects that could conceivably contribute to Google’s social networking initiative. ... The initial response was, in many cases, a shrug. Google may appear, on the outside, to be a monolithic organization that acts with terrifying efficiency ... On the inside, however, it is , staffed by feisty individuals who have no compuction about slamming the door on fellow employees and the company’s top priorities.» «When Marissa Mayer, employee number 20, arrived on June 24, 1999, for her second day of work at Google, the company had about three hundred computers to handle search requests ... Google would receive search requests sent to it by its new affiliate, Netscape. ... Google had wanted to start off with a limited volume of queries from this new source ... But Netscape forgot or ignored Google’s wishes and sent Google all of its requests that day. It was too much: Google.com had to close. ... That morning, Mayer stopped by the company kitchen and noticed that Larry Page was standing in a corner of the room for no clearly visible purpose. She asked Page what he was doing. “I’m hiding,” he replied. “The site is down. It’s all gone horribly awry.” Mayer said that seeing the CEO of the company in such a state led to her estimate that Google had about a 2 percent chance of succeeding.»

... That morning, Mayer stopped by the company kitchen and noticed that Larry Page was standing in a corner of the room for no clearly visible purpose. She asked Page what he was doing. he replied. “The site is down. It’s all gone horribly awry.” Mayer said that seeing the CEO of the company in such a state led to her estimate that Google had about a 2 percent chance of succeeding.» «Google hired human evaluators to judge the relative quality of results produces by variations of algorithmic tweaks – in 2007, Google used ten thousand contractors around the world as “quality raters.” »

» «Google reacted to the criticism with an announcement that created more unfavorable publicity for Google Print: in August 2005, Google said it would suspend scanning of in-copyright books until November, by which time publishers were to have submitted a list of books still in copyright that they did not wish to have Google copy. ... Jack Romanos, who was then the CEO of Simon & Schuster, said, “ There’s sort of this innocent arrogance about [Google]. One minute they’re pretending to be all idealistic, talking about how they’re only in this to expand the world’s knowledge, and the next they’re telling you that you’re going to do it their way or no way at all.”»

One minute they’re pretending to be all idealistic, talking about how they’re only in this to expand the world’s knowledge, and the next they’re telling you that you’re going to do it their way or no way at all.”» «Or at the very least, should Google share access to its digital books with other search engines? [Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive] said he was told by librarians at several institutions that they would permit their books to be scanned only once and they could not participate in the OCA [Open Content Alliance] because they were already working with Google. “We want a public library system in the digital age,” Kahle said, “but what we are getting is a private library system controlled by a single corporation.” »

Kahle said, » «[In May 2005, YouTube’s] Steve Chen said, he had become “pretty depressed” because “Dude, we have like maybe forty, fifty, sixty videos on the site.” ... And the quality of what had been posted made him wince – there were few videos he’d want to watch himself. ... At this point, they decided to try a desperate measure: they would run an advertisement on Craigslist in the Los Angeles area, inviting “attractive” women to upload videos of themselves. The enticement would be a payment of $100 upon submission of every ten videos. This, too, ended in failure. The advertisement drew not a single response.»

... And the quality of what had been posted made him wince – there were few videos he’d want to watch himself. ... At this point, they decided to try a desperate measure: they would run an advertisement on Craigslist in the Los Angeles area, inviting “attractive” women to upload videos of themselves. The enticement would be a payment of $100 upon submission of every ten videos. This, too, ended in failure. The advertisement drew not a single response.» «Nonetheless, it was Google that was depicted as acting irresonsibly. One cartoon showed a barber offering a customer not just a mirror but also a PDA to use to examine the just-completed haircut: “Would you like to see the top on Google Earth?” »

» «In looking back, [Google’s Brian Rakowski] marveled at the public’s focus on the scanning for matching ads [in Gmail], while ignoring much more serious privacy issues, such as the increased risk that e-mail on centralized servers could easily be subpoenaed or personal information in e-mail messages could be shared with advertisers. “Nobody was talking about those privacy issues and the few things we were doing to protect users’ privacy,” he said.»

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