And Shapes Our Lives - In The Plex - How Google Thinks

Besides my own business reasons for wanting to know as much as I can about Google, I think Google's now so central to learning that the more I understand it, the better I'll learn. Marshall McLuhan was right: the medium is the message.

The item arrived in its original packaging, although the box was a tiny bit dinged, the discs inside where not harmed. It arrived quickly and the price was right compared to retail. The story is also very interesting, well written and well read.

WIRED magazine writer Steven Levy gets a VIP pass to all things Google. He got to go in a lot and speak with many people, resulting in a great book. The first Part is a history of the company which is really nice, and the rest tackles issues like Censorship in China, privacy and other things. Talks about the culutre of a company that is in our day-to-day lives.
A MUST READ for anyone interested the least bit in Google.

Congratulations for Steven Levy with his great book about Google, "In The Plex". I have read this amazing book and I was impressed by his deep exploration into Googleplex. In my opinion, this book has been the best written book about Google ever and it was anticipated by the best technology writer in the world, Steven Levy.

This book is a must read for Communication and Information Technology fellows.

My introduction to author Steven Levy's work was with Crypto--I was looking for something to read on the subject, but light and entertaining enough for commuting/bedtime. This author develops nonfictional characters and stories to to a level of detail that reads more like a novel, one of the reasons I really liked Crypto. 'In The Plex' left me cold--I would have liked a story about the technology or it's creation. Instead, I felt I'd mistakenly crashed a Google fan-party, even before I read the gratuitous explanation of the company owners' (wAcKy!!!) Halowee'n costumes. Hey man, it's cool if you're into that sort thing, but I really just want to read about computer stuff!

PRO:

- The book offers a handful of amusing anecdotes
- The book confirmed my personal guesses about how Larry and Sergey think

NOT-SO-PRO:

Other than that it's a thinly veiled advertisement with a goal to paint Google as a radically different, new, revolutionary kind of business. What it achieves though, coupled with reader's own observations, is proving that Google is nothing special.

The book left me wondering "Why did I bother buying it?"

Why do I call it an advertisement? In the opening pages, Steven Levy mentions how secretive Google is. He hints at a special level of trust he enjoyed. And here he is, with a full featured book on Google. If they did not authorize a single comma, his grandchildren would be sued off the face of the Earth.

Why do I claim that Google is no different? Well, their management practices may be, but the idea behind Google is good old "let's keep selling stuff and invest profits into researching new ways of selling stuff".

According to the book, Page and Brin never miss a chance to mention how they are eager to improve the world; how Google is going to be different and better. According to the book, Google has already accumulated enormous power - but where is the trumpeted improvement of the world? What they have been doing so far was taking an existing idea and making it faster - what is radically different about it? They have no customer support - maybe this is a revolutionary improvement?

If I were touting a company as new, unique and aimed at improving the world, it would be a company that uses its wealth from the old world to blaze trails in the new world:

- buys patents and liberates them
- hooks up the whole world to the fast, reliable Internet
- uses its communication might to make representative democracy obsolete through global individual voting
- develops a new, non-hierarchical, uncontrollable DNS

In short, "radically new" today means "geared towards individual liberation". What Steven Levy peddles as "new" is what 2011 Toyota Camry is to 2010 Toyota Camry. It can only be called "new" in an advertisement. Oh, wait.

I used to be an unbending Google fan. I admired their obsession with honestly finding things out, rather than settling on "good enough".

This book helped me understand that Google is yet another business meant to improve the lives of nobody but a handful of people at Google. By marketing themselves as a mind-blowing breakthrough they turn into hypocrites, which is the dirtiest word in my vocabulary.

If you have an interest in finding out how Google ticks, this is the book for you. Steven Levy provides a very well balanced explanation for both the personalities and the corporate psyche for Google. We all know what Google has done, but when Levy pointed out the trials and tribulations of the small company trying to do good things, and later, the big company trying to do good things, I found it fascinating that the size of the business had such a big impact on the difficulty of the company to do what it believed to be good deeds.

From AdWords and AdSense to the “China syndrome” problems that Google had in that country, Levy provides what seems to be an unbiased perspective on how the company dealt with their financial windfalls and the political minefields. At its core, according to Levy, Google acts like you would expect its two Montessori raised owners, Page and Brin, were trained to act: Question the status quo and ask how a good project can be done, rather than why it cannot be done. Just the interplay between Larry Page and Sergey Brin and the slightly more senior Eric Schmidt was eye opening. I give “In The Plex” a good read.

I bought this book automatically because I had previously read and enjoyed Levy's previous works: Insanely Great, Hackers and Chaos. Given his heritage covering technology companies and personalities as both an author and a journalist, I was curious what he would make of Google.

The book is expansive and provides a lot of additional colour around Google, some of which I found of interest as I had worked at Yahoo! competing against Google and working with some of the early darlings of the web 2.0 movement - Flickr and Delicious. There were a couple of things that surprised me such as Google's use of machine learning on areas like translation explained why grammar is still so bad in this area as it needs heuristics that lexicographers could provide similar to that offered by Crystal Semantics.

Overall it was interesting to see that as with most large organisations Google is not only fallible but run through with realpolitik and a fair bit of serendipity. This contrasts with the external perception of Google as the technological Übermensch. A classic example of this is the series of missteps Google made whilst competing in China, which are documented in the book. From staffing practices, promotional tactics and legal to technology; Google blew it's chances and Baidu did a better job.

As an aside it was interesting to note that Google used queries on rival search engines to try and work out how to comply with Chinese government regulations, which is eerily like bad practices that Google accused Bing of last February in `hiybbprqag'-gate.

There is a curious myopia that runs through a lot of later Google product thinking that reminded me of the reality and perceptions that I was aware of existing inside Microsoft from the contact I have had with the organisation through the various different agencies I have worked at. A classic example of this is the Google view of a file-less future, which by implication assumes that people won't have legacy documents or use services other than the Google cloud. It is a myopia that comes part of arrogance and a patronising attitude towards the consumer that Google always knows best about every aspect of their needs.

Contrast this with Apple and iTunes. Whilst Apple would like to sell you only content from the iTunes store, it recognises that you will have content from different sources: the store MP3s, ripped CDs, podcasts and self-created files that iTunes needs to play nicely with.

The `no files' approach assumes ubiquitous bandwidth which is likely to be a fiction for a while. (Part of the reason why I am able to write this post is that I was stuck for half-a-day on a train journey to Wales enjoying patchy mobile phone coverage and a wi-fi free environment, which allowed me to focus on reading this book in hardback). This approach smacks of the old data lock-in that Microsoft used to have with proprietary file formats for its Office documents.

Levy does a good job pulling all of this together and chronicling Google, but he fails to cast a critical eye over it all. I suspect that this is because he is too close to the company: the access that he gained enveloped him. Which is a shame as all the experience and insight Levy could bring to the book that would add value to the reader is omitted. Whilst In The Plex is an interesting historical document, it could be so much more.

"In the Plex" is Steven Levy's a highly engrossing and well-written account of the the rise of Google from a garage start-up to a $30-billion colossus.

The book outlines Google from its initial conceptualization by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, examining the rise of its search capability, the advent of the advertising monster that became AdWords and AdSense (still accounting for the vast majority of Google's revenues), and the sometimes painful growth of the company from nimble start-up to Internet dominatrix.

Of particular interest is the gradual development of Google's market direction and management approaches, specifically in fostering innovation and new business opportunities. The author cites both hits and misses, delving into how Google works, thinks and acts. Levy examines the many challenges the company has faced with issues such as privacy concerns, copyright issues, the seesaw efforts in the China market, and the failure to catch the rising tide of the social media market. The book looks at the evolution of both management and corporate culture including Google's reticence for revealing much information about itself and its the famous 'Don't be evil' mantra.

Google's well-known 20% rule - whereby employees can spend up to 20% of their time working on other projects - is mentioned but is one area of the book that seems sadly under-examined in the book as is very much insight into Google's innovation approaches, beyond the interests of the founders.

Of note to anyone in management is Google's application of OKRs - Objectives and Key Results approach (something devised by Andy Grove from Intel) in planning and setting business objectives and direction across the organization. The OKR approach provided Google with a fundamental and rigorous objective planning system that was scalable across the rapidly growing organization, helping the new company in ensuring strong objective planning and a cohesive direction.

Well-written and in-depth, In the Plex is well worth your time.

The publisher description details exactly what you can expect in this comprehensive and detailed missive about the one company that is more intertwined with our daily (for some, hourly) routines than any other. It's impartially written by the great Steven Levy, who litters his works with unique turns of phrase and wonderful analogies. This is candy for tech and big data enthusiasts. Google is such a clandestine company, and I learned so much about the organization and in particular the ethos of the founders Page and Brin.

When the title cover explains that Levy was granted unprecedented access to the Company, it's not just hyperbole. Levy literally conducted thousands of interviews over the ten years leading up to the book and is also a personal friend of the two founders.

Just about every notable service, product and otherwise functionally significant aspect of Google is discussed here, including cursory explanations of its search engine and how it was the first to successfully algorithmically exploit the web's collective intelligence to deliver relevant search results. The company's antitrust and other legal disputes regarding online advertising and its Google Books initiative to digitize all 30+ million existing books are recounted. Their drawn out tribulations in censor-happy China are also given proper due. Google's latest foray into social networking, Google+, is not discussed directly but is hinted at within the epilogue of the book.

Highly recommended to tech aficionados, those interested in learning about a unique company with pioneering founders, and to anyone simply looking for a well-written and informative nonfiction book.

It's full of good information and anecdotes that will illuminate the reader regarding the history and operations of Google, however, it's also a sycophantic rant.

The author lacks any insight at all and the reader will be overwhelmed by the authors' opinions regarding the "brilliance" of Goolgers; he glazes over several business faux pas as well as some aggressive business practices and questionable deals. There are illustrations of cut throat business practices, illegality (regarding the book scanning), etc. which, as to avoid the reader developing a negative view of Google's founders and employees, he sugar coats it with "they're Montessori Kids," or "they operate on data," etc.

It bothers me that a book that is so full of good information lacks any insight or critical commentary at all. It's pretty bad; but if you can bear the groupie style, you will likely learn something.

Absolutely mesmerizing! Am starting to listen to it all over as there is so much to take in. L.J. Ganser does a wonderful job of reading Steven Levy's, In The Plex. Steven Levy had a enormously complex job in capturing a great deal of what Google does. Just try Googling, 'Google Products' and you'll begin to understand what an undertaking it is. You'll find yourself sitting in your car even after you've arrived at your destination because you want to keep listening. Definitely take it on trips so you have uninterrupted time to be immersed in Larry Paige and Sergey Brins company, how they developed it, how they hired, who they hired, and what's next. There's the bonus of an interview at the end with Google's product manager who started with the company in its infancy in the 1990's. You will love this book.

I am going to write a fairly brief review, highlighting the impression of the company Google that I was left with time and time again as I read this book. I have read just a few other reviews, looking for others that share my viewpoint, but haven't come across them to the degree I was certain I would. I like Google a lot LESS now than I did before I read this book. The book is well written, detailed, pretty even handed--worth the purchase if you are into tech companies. So, my review of the book is quite positive. However, I now have serious concerns about the company that I previously did not--which one could attribute to a book well written.

Although Google's motto is "Don't Be Evil" and they do seem to try to live up to this core value, the founders are quite full of themselves--they judge what is evil based on their values as intellectual, privileged, white males who have great faith in their own intellects and that they know best what everyone else in the world needs. (My values often overlap with theirs, but not always.)Their desire to open up all information to the world seems admirable except that it is laced with their desire to make big bucks off of it at every turn. They are aggressive in buying up other companies in their desire to dominate the internet and other tech worlds. In the process, however, they are becoming a monopoly a la Microsoft. But, they don't seem to be able to acknowledge this aggressive desire to dominate and how, at least in my opinion, one company having dominion over any enterprise is stifling and dangerous. I see them way more now like Microsoft (used to be) than I had expected I would.

I was also concerned that they seem unable to really understand how devastating it might be to others to have their personal information available for others to peruse without permission. I believe that they are unable to understand this because they are unable to view the world through any other lens but their own. I feel much less likely to use my gmail account or their search engine now that I understand how much information they are collecting about me. Levy does touch on this issue and the one above in his book.

I could go on, but will top there. Buy the book, it is a good read and is well written. It will prompt you to think about Google's culture, both good and bad and you can then be better informed on how involved you want to be with this company's products. I, for one, will probably pull back from purchasing and using them.

It seems like ancient history now, but in the early days of the Internet - around 1997 or so - finding even the most basic information was a big problem. Yes, there were some crude search engines like AltaVista and Hotbot, but their effectiveness at turning up a useful website was spotty at best. If you DID find a good site, you had to be sure to bookmark it, because you might not be able to find it again. Your bookmark list grew huge.

Then came a new search engine named Google with a remarkable knack for find a page that would answer your question. Users flocked to it and in less than a decade, Google would grow into one of the most powerful companies on the planet.

In the book "In the Plex," author Steven Levy helps explain how a company founded reluctantly by two Stanford graduate students became a force that has changed the way the world works and thinks. Levy was given insider access to Google and offers up insightful, detailed accounts of how Google has come up with one brilliant innovation after another.

The story of the early days of the company is one of the most interesting parts of the book. Larry Page didn't want to create his own company, Levy explains, he just thought he had come up with a really good way of searching the Internet and that someone might like to buy his program. But several companies, including Yahoo, turned him down, and soon he and Sergey Brin were launching their own startup.

After rushing to the forefront in search, Google made breakthroughs in online advertising with its AdWords and AdSense systems - crucial innovations because that allowed Google to make money (buckets of it). Then followed a succession popular products like Gmail, Google Maps and Google Earth. Less well-known are the company's flops - it actually developed a social media site, named Orkut, before Facebook, but failed to give it much support and it withered on the vine, Levy says.

The Google workplace was unlike no other, Levy explains. Workers zipped through hallways on roller skates, or bounced on giant balls in meetings. Engineers were king, and to encourage innovation, were told to spend 20% of their time on projects of their own devising. Structure and rigid lines of command were avoided, so that any worker could feel free to critique, even rip apart, someone else's work. On the Google campus, employees could eat free meals at an assortment of restaurants, see a doctor, get a massage, use the lap pool or play beach volleyball (some of these perks have since been cut back).

Levy structures the book well, breaking the book into sections devoted to different products or issues. A long section on Google's troubles in China is interesting, another section on Google political involvements less so. There's a lot of names in here and it`s hard to keep them straight; it`s too bad there's no pictures.

Levy has done meticulous work, but he may have suffered a bit from a writer's version of Stockholm Syndrome, sympathizing a too much with his subject. Levy consistently paints a picture of those that doubted Google or tried to stand its way as being too dense to understand the company's brilliance.

In fact, Google HAS been brilliant in many ways, but Levy is far too myopic in a chapter on Google Books. In launching an attempt to scan all the world's books and put them online, Google was remarkably oblivious to the obvious issues of copyright that would arise. Were they naïve? Or just flat-out arrogant? Sure enough, the Google Books project brought howls of protest from authors and publishers. Levy's description of the dispute is one-sided and he somehow buys into Google's argument that everyone should just quit their whining because an online book archive would be a darn cool thing. It's a rare weak moment in an otherwise well-done book.

As business biographies go, I have never been so enthralled by a piece of literature. Levy reveals the Googly character within every single major player of the organization since its beginnings. Levy is a master storyteller. The events, from the widely-publicized to the little-known, are told extensively, eloquently, and engagingly. Some of my favorite stories:

--When Sergey Brin and Larry Page were pitching the CEO of Alta Vista on investing in Back Rub (PageRank), the CEO turned them down, saying that it was "too good" and that people wouldn't stay on the search page long enough to be optimally exposed to advertising.
--In trying to eradicate porn from search, Matt Cutts established "Look for Porn Day," on which he would bring in cookies baked by his wife to entice other Googlers to help him find unwanted porn sites to block.
--In trying to perfect the algorithm, Googlers noticed at one point that a search for "running shoes" brought up a gnome wearing shoes and the engineers couldn't figure out how to fix the algorithm in order to remove it. So, one engineer went out and bought the gnome--thereby removing it from the search page.

And these are just a few. The book is rather lengthy (20 hours audio), but I'd listen to it again and again. Google's drive for innovation and relentless mission to unleash public access to information is inspiring. One quote to live by that Levy presents us with toward the end of the account seems to be the enduring mantra of Googlers: "The best path to success is doing what conventional wisdom says you cannot do."

Perhaps the most notable book of 2011 is Walter Isaacson's biography of Apple's founder Steve Jobs. In a case of interesting timing, Steven Levy has written what is essentially a biography of Google, a company that has sometimes been an ally of Apple and sometimes a nemesis; today it is both. Levy traces the origins of the company through its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Those two men found a way of doing something no one else had quite been able to master: making billions of dollars through online advertising. The near-endless streams of revenue generated by advertising has since allowed them to pursue innovation in other fields--email, social media, mobile communications and on and on.

Like Steve Jobs, Page and Brin are very complex characters whose motives are difficult to understand. Their careers have been marked with great successes and some very public failures. Yet for good or for ill, and at times for both, they have truly changed the world. Not only do they continue to strive to make all of the world's information available to all of us all of the time, but they have also changed the way we access it and understand it. This is a book to read if you want to understand the massive impact Google has made on me and you and all of us. You'll be amazed to learn just how far it extends into your life.

There are few things one can have recognized just about anywhere on the planet. Coca Cola is one. Google is another. This book traces the history of the Internet search Goliath, from its beginnings as a college research project through its exit from China and leadership change earlier this year. Levy offers insight few have had before, nor been allowed to share publicly.

Steven Levy is a senior writer for Wired and past technology writer for Newsweek. Over his years of covering the tech industry, he has gained the trust of some of the most tight-lipped CEOs, including Steve Jobs and, in this case, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the whiz-kid founders of Google. Levy provides a view inside the walls of Google and explains who they are, why they do what the do and how they think.

He begins by explaining the Google business model, revealing the revenue engine that allows the company to do incredible things. I was entranced by this explanation. For the first time, I understand how Google Adwords works, the heuristics behind the search engine and what makes them unique in the market. Levy beautifully explains some of the most complex Internet concepts that have eluded me for years. I can see how Google can afford to appear to give everything away. Services like Gmail, Google Docs, Blogger, Voice and Picasa, while free, all drive the same model of providing advertisers the unique ability to know a very specific audience and target the "more likely to buy" than ever before.

Levy goes on to explain the many paths Google has trod, including their legendary hiring practice (always hire above the median intelligence), how engineers rule the company (salesmen struggle to survive) and how Page and Brin built a culture that thrives on innovation and special projects. While many companies may try to copy their techniques, without the unique personalities of Page and Brin, I would venture to say it won't work outside of the Googleplex.

Much has been made of the "Don't be evil" mission statement of Google. Levy explains how it came to be (it wasn't intended to ever be known outside the company) and how, now that is out in public, it is used as a bludgeon anytime Google does something someone doesn't like. Who decides what is evil? That would be Sergei and Larry. After reading he book, I am more unsettled on this than before. Their lens of morality is very different than mine. They believe in a much more liberal sense of public good than I do. They don't have a problem with sacrificing personal privacy for the "greater good." They are perplexed when someone disagrees with them on issues such as Google scanning mail in order to provide more relevant ads. Resistance to scanning and indexing all the books in the world caught them completely off guard. They couldn't understands why authors didn't like the idea. Even while the lawsuits are pending, they continue to scan books at an ever increasing rate.

The stories about Page and Brin have left me more than a little concerned about them at the helm of one of the world's largest and most powerful companies. They do not like oversight or people telling them what they can or cannot do. They act like spoiled children, warping morality to their own way of seeing the world. Opposing views are not to be investigated, but dismissed as naive. They keep their investors in the dark, sometimes refusing to answer questions stockholder meetings. "If they only understood..." is a phrase to commonly used.

Levy offers a fair and unbiased opinion of Google's actions. He details Google's most controversial exploits, including their compliance with censorship in China, laying out the story and the facts that drove their decisions. He leaves it to the reader to decide if Google is the victim or the evil on in these cases. This unbiassed approach is very appreciated by me in today's world of tabloid exposés.

Have I cancelled my gmail account? Not yet. I still use Google products because they are simple and easy to use. Will I change at some point down the road? Perhaps. I am still pondering that decision. I trust Google less after reading this fascinating book. I just don't know who else I could trust to not be evil.

If you are working in/with technology, buy and read 'In the Plex'. It will show you 'natural evolution' of a single strong idea blooming into a techno-bazaar. Just like evolution of life went through some extinctions, often inexplicable with available knowledge - Google's journey from infancy to teenage has also been rocked every now and then. Steven Levy masterfully crafts an captivating narrative that goes through 4P's of Google - People, Processes, Products and Protests against it. Deep insights about each of the P's are interspersed within an objective tale. What differentiates 'In The Plex' from earlier books (Googled; Search etc) is Mr. Levy's intense focus on people and characters. Software, like other intellectual media, is ultimately a reflection of creators' personality. e.g., the fact Google home page has minimal artifacts could perhaps be traced back to the founders' engineering core that strips away all unnecessary details and focuses on the solution. Many executives, especially engineers behind various products were profiled to show the consistency and imbuement of engineering-driven culture that the founders weaved around.

Some highlights from the book -

1) Before Google, search was mostly about 'throwing massive silicon toward the problem and hope for the best'.

2) Relevance is not a machine language attribute. It lies in the eye of beholder. Levy masterfully narrates the fiasco in searching Chinese language. As users started entering less number of key-strokes, the algorithm that worked so well in US faltered. The results produced were mostly risque.

3) Larry Page himself Okays each new employee before an offer is extended. Levy's book ends when Google had 24,000 employees. Larry Page wanted Google to have 1M employees.

4) Google usually asks for SAT scores from job applicants.

5) OKR - Objectives and Key Results is a key management tool in Google. It leads employees to set measurable and optimum targets. A bad example is 'I will improve search in next quarter'. A good example would be 'I will improve average search page performance by 100 ms next quarter'. OKRs are cascaded from individual to team to department levels. The sweet spot is 0.7 to 0.8 of OKR target. Exceeding OKR may mean one has 'sandbagged' it.

6) Larry Page cares about latency at his core. Rather, he hates latency and always consciously tries to remove it 'like Lady Macbeth washing guilt off her hands'. 'If your product could be measured in seconds, you'd already failed'. Performance is a feature. Page's law dictates software slows down 2x every 18 months. Google's war room like 'Code Yellow' to tackle product performance should be a mandatory case study for all technology leaders.

A OKR for performance was measured in human lives. e.g., A human life is measured in 2B seconds. If a product has 100M users and is 4 sec slower for everyone each day, it is equivalent to 100 people killed a year! Now, try to live with that in your conscience if you are a developer ;-) To save the situation, Google has introduced 'Cap and Trade' for wasted performance. You can 'trade' 10 'lives' from another team that may have lived well within its target latency.

8) In data centers you can save about 20% just by raising the thermostat from 68 to 80 degrees. No issue with life here, unlike we just saw with bad performance.

9) At one point, one of the founders (guess who?) argued there should be no landlines in the company. The other one gave an idea to the author to release a chapter of this book at a time.

10) As of August 2010, there were about 130M different books published in the world in all languages.

With its global reach, driverless automobiles, plethora of digital platforms, dizzying arrays of real-time algorithms, and density of computational expertise and server farms -- not to mention its great and growing wealth -- Google is a coevolving innovation ecosystem par excellence. Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin do more than just listen to the technology; they've turned their company into a most fluent translator of its every hiccup, whisper, and utterance. Even bats must envy their flair for echolocation. They'll hire the world's best specialists, deploy microphones anywhere and everywhere, and do whatever it takes to ensure maximum technological intelligibility. But the genius of Page and Brin lies not in their own acuity, but with their ability to evoke it in others. They hunger for techno talent that listens even better than they do.

In the Plex flawlessly describes Google's unique culture, which is dedicated to getting the world's greatest technologists to innovate beyond disciplinary boundaries. Although Steven Levy does not quite offer -- or create -- fully rounded views of the many Googlers mentioned in his pages, his descriptions of their design sensibilities and innovation ethos are without peer. This is the best book about Google yet written, because Levy gets the "push the envelope until it rips" intellectual extremism that defines Google's most effective intrapreneurs. Sure, they're very smart. But their drive and ambition have to get Page and Brin hot and bothered, or they will not have much impact.

"Page once said that anyone hired at Google should be capable of engaging him in a fascinating discussion should he be stuck at an airport with the employee on a business trip," Levy writes. "The implication was that every Googler should converse at the level of Jared Diamond or the ghost of Alan Turing. The idea was to create a charged intellectual atmosphere that makes people want to come to work. It was something that Joe Kraus [a top-tier Google hire] realized six months after he arrived, when he took a mental survey and couldn't name a single dumb person he'd met at Google. `There were no bozos,' he says. `In a company this size? That was awesome.'"

Serious readers will come away from In the Plex knowing in their heart of hearts that their own organizations aren't as passionately committed to technology, technologists, and their creative coevolution as Google. Recruiting the very best quants and software jocks was simply the most obvious element in the coevolutionary equation. What really made the difference was the founders' relentless emphasis on creating the fastest possible and best user experience. Milliseconds mattered. The fastest search had to be the best; the best search had to be the fastest. That is an innovation imperative requiring exquisite skills in listening to technology.

But Google's founders -- intuitively, analytically, or alchemically -- thoroughly grasped that they had launched not a company but a global innovation ecosystem that technologically transformed value creation. The company's culture evolved around the interaction of brilliant people with brilliant technology. It wasn't just that smart Googlers made innovative technology; innovative technology made Googlers smarter. Google was as much a hive mind as an innovation ecosystem.

In the words of publisher and digital entrepreneur Tim O'Reilly, Google was the first real Web 2.0 enterprise: "The real heart of Web 2.0 is harnessing collective intelligence." This was Google's transcendental essence. Google understood and exploited the innovation ecosystem of network effects faster, better, and cheaper than anyone else. Virtually every successful investment the company made was based on the belief that the economics of network effects ensured that great innovation would be great business.

This proved true. From Page's PageRank (pun intended) algorithm that made links the center of search to Google's expropriation of rival GoTo's auction business model for keyword search, Levy observes, everything was engineered around exponential expectations.

To succeed, Google would ultimately have to manage billions of queries and petabytes of data. To sustain success and growth, Google would inherently need to think not just big but huge. The firm would need to listen for and exploit network effects wherever it could find or create them. As Levy documents with relish, from Android mobile phones to Gmail to YouTube videos, Google literally and figuratively enjoyed an embarrassment of digitized riches.

What a fantastic innovation environment. Network effects meant that the innovation paradigm could shift away from linear research and development to more iterative experimentation and scale. Business experimentation soon converged and coevolved with technical and computational experimentation. Google's ecosystem became an economy. So the company hired innovative Berkeley professor Hal Varian as its chief economist; Varian has proved adept at designing market mechanisms for monetization and using Google searches as forecasting tools for the global economy.

Levy holistically captures Google as a global business; a data-driven, experimentation-oriented innovation culture; a cutting-edge technologist; a pop culture icon; and the living extension of its founders' vision. He strikes these balances remarkably well, although he is, perhaps, a little too generous to a company that clearly offered terrific access.

That said, Levy doesn't flinch in describing Google's difficult moments, such as the souring of relations with Apple's late CEO Steve Jobs, who felt betrayed by the top management at Google when that company introduced the Android phone. Indeed, Levy's earlier books on Apple -- The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness (Simon & Schuster, 2006) and Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything (Viking, 1994) -- give him great insight into and context for writing about idiosyncratic technical geniuses worth billions of dollars.

Levy also points to the struggle of retaining exceptionally talented people who invariably chafe at the technical and business conflicts that emerge in every fast-growing global enterprise. As dominant and influential as Google may be now (wasn't that true of Microsoft barely a decade ago?), Schumpeterian reality suggests that today's Googlers may be the firm's most serious rivals tomorrow. To its credit, Google recognizes this. It knows that some of its best people may listen to the technology in a different way -- and choose to do their translating elsewhere.

Google came into being with lofty and ambitious goals to dominate the Internet as an artificial intelligence company; to make the world a better place. The founders' Montessori naiveté and hubris led them to challenge preconceived notions and "authority" that would have otherwise halted global-scale ambitions. They would eventually persevere as one of the most disruptive and profitable companies the world has ever seen. Google went big -- and they succeeded, albeit with some well-publicized missteps in both China and social.

This book is the definitive story of that journey. It covers the very earliest days as a garage operation right through to 2011. Levy is masterful at capturing the awe and ire that the founders' impactful vision has imparted on the world. I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking the true inside story of Google from within the Googleplex.

What is up with these tech authors? They are such fans it seems that all objectivity goes out the window. I read Nicholas Carlson's Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo! and thought that was written by too much of a fan but at least the book was entertaining (if written in a way too chatty blog style). While reading reviews for that book, someone said this book, In the Plex, was much better. I really cannot see how. I am having trouble getting through it. It is clear that by getting access to Google, this person was very much wooed and it worked. Yes, maybe these guys are really smart but certainly the story is more interesting than the way it is written here. It is like these writers are covering some new frontier and are just excited to be allowed at the table. I would like to know more about Google but dont know if this is the book for me.

This is a long and well-designed biography of Google. Having also read Googled, I would recommend this book as your first choice, despite its longer length. They are more or less identical (don't read both like I did), but In the Plex takes a deeper look into the product-by-product history of Google, tracing it to ~2011. Google is an exciting company and anyone in business using their products should read this.

Admission of Bias: I work in the CS Department at Stanford, where Google got its start. I feel this has given me a special positive view of all things Google, but was not paid or incentivized in any way to give this book a positive review.

This book will give you a decent understanding of what google is-- how it makes money, what it's products are, how it was founded etc... I liked this element of the book and I certainly have a better understanding of google's timeline now. Personally I would have preferred the author to try and go into more details about the psychology of the Google founders-- Serge Brin and Larry Page-- and also the CEO-- Eric Schmidt. My impression is that the author was not able to spend enough time with these people to truly understand how they think. Instead the author tries more generally to explore the culture of Google.

There is an interesting section in this book about Google's expansion in China and Google's various problems with copyright laws. These sections gave me a better understanding of the problems currently facing technology firms. In general, however, I don't think there's anything in this book that can't be found through a Google search.

In the Plex, Steven Levy's opus about "how Google thinks, works and shape our life" is the kind of book that makes you realize that you have not been at the right place in the past 10 years, and that you should have been thinking "BIGGER"!

"Boys be ambitious!" is probably something that was ingrained in the Montessori education received by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Google founders.

The book is captivating in its description of how, within a short period of 10 years, the lives of billions of people on the planet have been changed by the Googlers' inventions. We now "Google" a word to know what if refers to, we use GoogleMap to find our destination, we use Gmail with quasi unlimited storage space for our emails, and we use Androïd based smartphone (at least some of us do), to stay in touch.

A captivating business book!

Journalist Steven Levy's previous books about Macintosh computers and about hackers make him the perfect insider-outsider, with the knowledge to write a detailed history of famously private Google. Granted unprecedented access, Levy appears to have insightfully interviewed everyone about every moment of Google's history to present this canonical version of the company's saga. Levy seems a little too close to his subject, so perhaps his book is not a warts-and-all chronicle, but most of the stories are fascinating, and it is all well reported. getAbstract recommends this heavily anecdotal history to readers who are launching a start-up, intrigued by computers and cultural history, or interested in a nice, detailed dose of the truth behind all those Google rumors.

Although this book has some interesting background and behind the scenes information about Google. It mostly feels like the author is pandering to Larry page and Sergey Brin. Steven talks about these two as if they are literal gods and can do absolutely no wrong. They are of the highest intelligence and should be the golden standard for the human race. It just goes on and on about how amazing they are with some tidbits about Google scattered in.

I thought it was deeply insightful and telling of the making of Google plus their history from inception to early 2011. I did find that Stephen Levy may have lost some journalistic objectivity by his wonderment of the company and their significant accomplishments. I didn't feel he represented the reasonable criticisms of Google's practices such as stealing wifi data from their Streets View project, their acquisition spree (much like a Microsoft pre-Anti Trust) of smaller and competing technologies, and their desires to dominate every aspect of the internet. Or even how they are getting their ass kicked by Facebook. Also, he idolizes Google's significant perks like doctor onsite, meals, gyms, showers, day care, doggy service, etc where I see that as a way to have their employees working longer hours and effectively less time to personal development/families/personal hobbies (Don't Be Evil!). Still, the book was quite exceptional in telling the Google story.

In a very detailed, well-sourced account of Google, one of the best known tech writers- Levy, provides a fascinating, unique look at one of the most written-about companies. No other book on Google has been able to articulate the evolution of Google's business model - the growth of AdSense and AdWords, in a crisp manner. Moreover, the initial chapters on the evolution of search at Google is one of the succinct yet complete exposition on the topic. Interspersed with all these discussions, are character peeks into the key personalities that drove these initiatives - and it is surprising how much more details on the founders and the key players continue to emerge...after all these books.

Levy is also artfully tap into more recent trends - the push towards cloud computing, the issues facing data centers, Google's foray into phones and when it almost became another telecom company. In each of these topics, Levy's narrative style will enable even a reader with no tech background appreciate the technology challenges. Levy is also able to portray Google China's challenges and its standing up to censorship in a way no other author has. The narration of the "fall-out" between Apple and Google is also a very interesting read and provides a unique glimpse into Steve Jobs.

It is perhaps in the last few chapters, Levy seems to have run out of patience and focus. The chapter on anti-trust issues and another on "google.gov" seem very hastily written and do not provide a suitable end point for this painstakingly researched tome. The conclusion of the book seems a little forced and perhaps it is an reflection of Google itself - a story still in the making. (Hence the 4.5*)

Overall, an excellent, informative, detailed look at a company that clearly has shaped our views on what information means or at least what accessibility to information should mean... Undoubtedly, the book to beat on Google.

This book has taken me through a series of fascinating internal debates, no only within Google, but within my own mind. The book details how the people working in and around Google have debated issues of privacy, human rights and corporate culture, among others.

While we all enjoy the advantages of finding any factoid in milliseconds, the book details horror stories from the complaints department of Google that a former abusive spouse was able to catch up with a person who had hoped to hide from them forever. This is a side of search I'd never considered. Of course, the book goes deeply into the debates around restrictions requested on the Internet by various countries, but which countries and why is surprising.

Most of all, I was captivating by the idea of creating a non-hierarchical leadership structure without chaos. I served 13 years in the Marine Corps and have worked in universities and embassies, both as a part of the State Department and as a local hire. Historically, militaries, universities and embassies from any country have been top-down hierarchical structures. However, when the Marine Corps put me in Staff Academy, a four-week mid-level management training course, we were all the same rank of staff sergeant. In that scenario, various people in the 23-man group volunteered to lead various segments of our course according to their unique expertise. I came away from that course amazed by how fluid and operationally effective this technique was. However, until In The Plex, I had never believed it possible to implement this concept on a broader scale.

Google appears to have intentionally made its program managers new, inexperienced members who had to collect data and appeal to the logic of their ... uh, subordinate? engineers with more experience both in Google and in the business. Subsequently decisions were made more on data than on power struggles. Like so many aspects of the Google story, this seems too idealistic to be true. If I didn't have the all staff sergeant Marine experience, I wouldn't have believed it possible. But I lived it once and I think that thick-skinned people who are openly honest with themselves and their teammates about their abilities really could revolutionize what has been corporate culture in the United States since Ford. I'd like to see that.

This is a great thought-provoking book.

I just finished listening to "In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives". I liked it. While it may not be as good as Steve Jobs' biography or Steven Levy's other book, "Hackers", I still really enjoyed it. It really helped me put my experiences at Google into context. It's amazing how little Google has changed, how much it continues to work on, and how much Steven Levy was allowed to get an inside look at Google.

It is almost the complete biography of Google. The writer will take you through the journey of time within the world of Google. How did it start? How the founder thought and think about it, their problems with China and the story of other products like you tube, Google map, gmail, ad works and etc. How they raised financially. Their relations with other companies like Yahoo, Microsoft and apple. How thy turn their new ideas into big projects to establish them, what they did to make google book true was breath-taking! And finally they will take about their relation with the new big names in world of internet like facebook and tweeter.

Long book sometimes boring but interesting to read.

Google is hardly perfect, but it is the perfect example of the world's first true "information economy" company. You can't help but realize, when reading this, that the corporate model and strategies that Google developed are the future, and corporations who are risk-averse, slow, or weighed down by bureaucracy don't stand a chance in the early part of the 21st century. Highly recommended.