Author: Steven Levy File Type: pdf 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 readers inside Google headquartersthe Googleplexto show how Google works. While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Googles earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow (until Googles IPO nobody other than Google management had any idea how lucrative the companys 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 Googles 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 its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineersfree food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseusesand 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 ChinaLevy discloses what went wrong and how Brin disagreed with his peers on the China strategyand 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 ever turned Google inside out as Levy does with In the Plex.From Publishers WeeklyThe contradictions of the Internet search behemoth are teased apart in this engaging, slightly starry-eyed business history. Wired magazine writer Levy (Hackers) insightfully recaps Googles groundbreaking search engine and fabulously profitable online adbrokering business, and elucidates the cutting-edge research and hard-nosed cost-efficiencies underlying them. He also regales readers with the Googley corporate culture of hip techno-capitalism the elitist focus on braininess, the campus game rooms, the countercultural rectitude of billionaire founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin (which can read more like puerile arrogance as they roller-blade into meetings with business-suited squares). Levys narrative updates a familiar portrait of the company, with breathless accounts of recent innovations. He offers a smart analysis of the tensions between Googles aCyDont Be Evil slogan and its censorship of its Chinese Web site and the privacy implications of its drive to sponge up all informationbut he accepts Googles blinkered conception of e-ethics and its demands for huge tax breaks with too much complacency. (Apr.) (c) PWxyz, LLC. ReviewLevy is Americas premier technology journalist. . . . He has produced the most interesting book ever written about Google. He makes the biggest intellectual challenges of computer science seem endlessly fun and fascinating. . . . We can expect many more books about Google. But few will deliver the lively, idea-based journalism of In the Plex.Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Washington PostullullullulAlmost nothing can stop a remarkable idea executed well at the right time, as Steven Levys brisk-but-detailed history of Google, In the Plex, convincingly proves. . . . makes obsolete previous books on the company.Jack Shafer, The San Francisco ChronicleullullullulThe rise of Google is an engrossing story, and nobodys ever related it in such depth.Hiawatha Bray, The Boston GlobeullullullulDense, driven examination of the pioneering search engine that changed the face of the Internet. Thoroughly versed in technology reporting, Wired senior writer Levy deliberates at great length about online behemoth Google and creatively documents the companys genesis from a feisty start-up to a market-dominating giant. The author capably describes Googles founders, Stanford grads Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as sharp, user-focused and steadfastly intent on organizing all the worlds information. Levy traces how Googles intricately developed, intrepid beginnings and gradual ascent over a competitive marketplace birthed an advertising-fueled money machine (especially following its IPO in 2004), and he follows the expansion and operation of the companys liberal work campus (Googleplex) and its distinctively selective hiring process (Page still signs off on every new hire). The author was afforded an opportunity to observe the companys operations, development, culture and advertising model from within the infrastructure for two years with full managerial cooperation. From there, he performed hundreds of interviews with past and current employees and discovered the type of creative disorganization that can either make or break a business. Though clearly in awe of Googles crowning significance, Levy evenhandedly notes the companys more glaring deficiencies, like the 2004 cyber-attack that forced the removal of the search engine from mainland China, a decision vehemently unsupported by co-founder Brin. Though the author offers plenty of well-known information, its 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 (starred review)An instructive primer on how the minds behind the worlds most influential internet company function.Richard Waters, The Wall Street Journalullullullul[Steven Levy] spent much of the past three years playing anthropologist at one of the Internets most interesting villages and set of inhabitants -- the Googleplex and the tribue of Googlers who inhabit it. . . . A deep dive into Googles culture, history and technology.--Mike Swift, San Jose Mercury NewsThe wizards of Silicon Valley often hype their hardwaresoftware breakthroughs as magical for the products ability to pull off dazzling stunts in the blink of an eye. And true to the magicians code, these tech talents rarely let mere mortals peer behind the curtains. . . . Thats what makes Levys just-out tome so valuable.Jonathan Takiff, The Philadelphia Daily NewsullullullulThe most comprehensive, intelligent and readable analysis of Google to date. Levy is particularly good on how those behind Google think and work. . . . Whats more, his lucid introductions to Googles core technologies - the search engine and the companys data centres - are written in non-geek English and are rich with anecdotes and analysis. . . . In The Plex teems with original insight into Googles most controversial affairs.Andrew Keen, New ScientistullullullulSteven Levys new account [of Google], In the Plex, is the most authoritative to date and in many ways the most entertaining.James Gleick, The New York Review of Booksull*lul