Max Mednik

I recently finished listening to the book I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 by Douglas Edwards. It was quite a long, detailed story, but I particularly enjoyed that level of detail, as hearing the "inside story" was what I was actually interested in.

I learned about Google around 2001, when a friend showed me a search engine he claimed worked better (and faster) than Yahoo (that's when they were just showing the milliseconds to complete a query, which they still do to this day). When I got to college, I had friends who worked at the headquarters and even invited me there for meals (it was like going to Disneyland). It was really neat hearing the detailed account in this book from an insider and correlating that with my own personal experiences of the company and people I knew there.

The story was written by a journalist who was tired of working at large corporations and wanted to experience the start-up life. He became Google's Brand Manager and continuously struggled with his own identity in the company and what his role was. It was humbling to hear about the internal politics and constant debates that took place between the initial members of the company on issues all over the board, like product features, EULA language, April Fool's jokes, logos, and UI design and copy. I felt like I could relate to the author because I too have experienced these types of debates and have felt similar frustration to his in the past.

Overall, I learned a lot more about Google and the bumpy, windy road it took to where it is today. It's so easy to think they had everything figured out from the beginning; this book explains that there could be nothing further from the truth.

Below are my main notes and takeaways from each part.

Introduction

• Started out complete opposite of a large corporation
  
• Operating principles: old rules didn't apply
• Was there 1999-2005
  
• Worked in marketing
  
• Brand actually built by engineers
  
• Yahoo was juggernaut but portal
  
• Google: obsession with efficiency
  
• Efficiency, frugality, integrity
  
• Joined when there were 50 engineers
  
• He was #59
  
• TGIF Weekly Meetings talking about accomplishments for the week
  
• Status blind culture (but engineers #1)
  

Part 1: You are one of us

Ch. 1: From whence you came

• Came from marketing at San Jose Mercury News
  
• Tired of big co. bureaucracy
  
• Huge dot-com bubble
  
• Google: huge focus on equations and algorithms
  
• Sergey interview question: after he comes back in 5 minutes, explain to him something complicated that he didn't know
  
• Started as online brand manager
  
• No org chart in company but they had a chef and massage therapists
  

Ch. 2: In the beginning

• Not clear what business vision was
  
• Focus on collecting smart people; figure out plan later
  
• Everyone volunteered in data center
  
• Global shortage of RAM
  
• Build machines to fail; use commodity parts
  
• Fix and replace later
  
• Crazy stories of mayhem inside data center
  
• Decided PR main method of marketing
  
• Little plan in marketing
  
• No structure of management
  
• Yahoo switched from Altavista to Inktomi, a Google competitor
  
• Inktomi did all search around web
  
• Go2 used free market to do bidding-based ranking
  
• First project of his: codifying UI
  
• Data-based divinity at Google, which he wasn't sure always made sense
  
• Not sure why he was there
  
• TGIF tradition: celebrate employee birthdays that week with cake
  

Ch. 3: A world without form

• Crawling
  
• Indexing
  
• Ranking
  
• Query analysis
  
• Anchor text analysis
  
• Disambiguation
  
• Speed vs. scale
  
• Focus on hiring only those as good as you; only way to double your productivity is to hire another person as good as you
  
• Mission to collect all smart people in world
  

Ch. 4: Marketing without marketing

• Google always believed product more important than marketing
  
• Sergey wanted to give donation against cholera to gain awareness
  
• Never want to take standard or approach
  

Ch. 5: Give a process its due

• Sort of sarcastic tone throughout book
  
• Kept wanting to do marketing but kept getting pushed aside
  
• Wanted to create product management group but faced resistance
  
• Google mantra: Just build cool stuff for its own sake
  
• Created OKR (Objectives & Key Results) system
  
• Products died by data alone, not sentiment
  
• Supposed to complete only 70% of OKRs
  
• Performance reviews separate from OKRs
  
• UI team growth and many debates
  

Ch. 6: Real integrity

• Decided to experiment with ad platform that is heavily targeted
  
• Started with Amazon affiliate ads, delivered first revenue of company
  
• Tried out selling CPM ads
  
• Built inventory estimation system
  
• Wanted to only do text ads to not be intrusive 
  
• Added color backgrounds to distinguish from search results
  
• Decided to move to CPC ads determined by realtime auctions
  
• Key difference was that they targeted keywords, as opposed to only the auction results like Go2
  
• Real ethical dilemma: pay for placement made founders angry
  
• Engineers cared about quality and ethics
  
• Search engines need to watch out for public by not letting people manipulate results
  
• Came up with term, "Don't be evil"
  
• Google Open Directory project versus search
  
• Volunteers added sites to directory
  
• Barter arrangements to swap ads to Google with other networks
  
• Wrote own banner ads when didn't hire freelance artist (hated hiring outside contractors, especially designers or ad agencies)
  
• Analyzed ad performance using data alone
  

Ch. 7: Healthy appetite for insecurity

• Author had insecurity about his own value
  
• Age 41, wife, 2 kids, unsure about what he's doing and why working long hours
  
• Self-doubt is always linked to ambition
  
• Google had leader boards internally for all sports and work
  
• Developed coding style guide
  
• Compiler warnings should never ignored
  
• Formal code review practice
  
• Elevated standards
  
• Cross-pollinated ideas over meals
  
• All perks and services provided
  
• To make decisions when people fought, had to duke it out in a video game
  
• Charlie was chef from Grateful Dead
  
• Emailed different menu every day
  
• TLA: three letter acronym
  
• Free food policy increased collaboration and saved employee time
  
• Made sure nothing went to waste
  
• Webcam monitoring cafeteria line length and servery conditions
  
• Cafe became circus with celebrities who visited over time
  

Ch. 8: Cheap bastards who can't take a joke

• Philosophy: launch first then iterate
  
• Created product review meetings with Larry
  
• April Fool's joke designed for site
  
• Mentalplex: Google searches when you think
  
• Joke of putting nav text in foreign language went bad, users complained, engineers didn't follow spec
  
• Learned that engineers are the true gatekeepers
  
• Hyperbolic ideas of founders
  
• Called competitors and press "bastards"
  
• Feedback always ambiguous: "think about it more," "not too sucky," "not Googley"
  
• Philosophy: Never pay retail
  
• Overpacked office with staff
  
• But then got SGI office
  
• Negotiators obsessed with cheap and getting discounts from vendors
  
• Put vendors on phone conference together to compete
  
• Expected 80-90% off list price
  
• No one talked about salary, just options
  
• Had to borrow money from parents to exercise options when granted for tax reasons
  
• Always put boss's idea as priority
  
• Larry killed marketing budget and focused on affiliate program
  
• Killed program when data didn't support
  

Ch. 9: Good enough is enough

• First Google Doodle of aliens
  
• Didn't think logo changing was good for brand
  
• Google makes you challenge every assumption
  
• Don't delegate, do all you can yourself to move forward
  
• Never stop others from doing something interesting
  
• Don't get in way of others doing something interesting
  
• Logo doodles became controversial
  
• Pressure from kids and family
  
• Pressure to perform
  
• Good enough is good enough
  
• Get 80% of a task done and then it becomes lower priority, so should switch to another task
  
• Hire based on ability over experience
  
• Google generalist hiring
  
• Everyone very sparse with praise
  
• Never derail launch of product for marketing reasons
  
• Patch and move on rather than fix underlying issue
  

Ch. 10: Rugged individualists

• Larry hated ad agencies, thought they were evil, stupid people
  
• Product should stand for itself
  
• Believed in simplicity as a benefit
  
• Must focus just on tech
  
• Larry read business books to prepare to run his company
  
• Founders set the terms of their VC valuations
  
• Never self-aggrandized
  
• Ideas valued based on merits, not source
  
• "Misc" email list with long funny threads
  
• Engineers don't stop asking why
  
• Don't let something go by when see something wrong
  
• Fight over everything
  
• Lots of unsolicited advice (sounds like Israeli culture based on Start-Up Nation)
  
• Founders always had laissez-faire style
  
• Listened at meetings, but let others decide
  
• Fought with data when cared
  
• Porn filter was difficult work
  
• Porn is a cutthroat business heavily using tech
  
• Learned about spammers that deceive search bots
  
• Google employee spoke on forums to correct rumors, could speak freely without PR approval
  
• Shut off unauthorized automatic queries, even to entire ISPs and countries (France) when had no other choice
  
• Spend time doing not deciding
  
• Individual engineers just do what they want
  

Part 2: Google grows

Ch. 11: Liftoff

• Not start-up and not search behemoth
  
• Awkward time
  
• Extremely long hours
  
• Became Netscape's default search engine
  
• Huge increases to server load from user growth way more than expected from Netscape
  
• Created pager service to monitor site after went down a couple times
  
• Couldn't add capacity fast enough
  
• Yahoo switched to Google
  
• Had contractual obligations on latency and index freshness (promised way more than could deliver at the time)
  
• Made them push hard to improve
  
• Problems with bad hardware and memory
  
• Had to write resilient code
  
• 1 billion URL indexed goal
  
• Built Google 2 infrastructure
  
• Made index format a lot more compressed
  
• Started ignoring the word "the" on pages
  
• Daily re-ranking and indexing much harder
  
• Incremental indexing huge problem
  
• Incestuous interconnected Silicon Valley companies
  
• Job hopping expected
  
• Office relationships and politics
  
• Larry and Marissa became a couple
  
• "Mixed marriages": spouses at competitor companies
  

Ch. 12: Fun and games

• Company camping trips
  
• Idea: ad self-serve
  
• No rules at all on filters, worried about it
  
• Have to love uncertainty to be in a start-up
  
• AdWords creation
  
• Was his name ("Edwards")
  
• Initial customers: lobster company and porn
  
• Injected humor into error messages and FAQ
  
• Developed Google voice
  

Ch. 13: Not the usual yada yada

• Google Toolbar privacy issues
  
• Talked about privacy up front
  
• Engage privacy explicitly
  
• Message said, "This is not the usual yada yada"
  
• The more you inform people, the more they trust you.
  
• Promoted to Marketing Director
  

Ch. 14: Google problems and mail fail

• Focus on search quality
  
• 10k machines dedicated to search quality
  
• Anchor text analysis
  
• Google bombs: weird results
  
• Huge customer service and email backlog
  
• Google acquisition of usenet company DejaNews
  
• Users rebelled but Google ignored because were actually helping them
  
• Vision of founders burned brightly and always ignored initial public reaction
  

Ch. 15: Managers in hot tubs and hot water

• Annual ski trip
  
• Shared all financials weekly with team
  
• Needed to find CEO to go public
  
• Eric became CEO
  
• Focus on cost cutting
  

Ch. 16: Is New York alive?

• 9/11/01
• Downloaded news articles and put on homepage without asking anyone permission
  
• People kept requesting them to add news links
  
• Not a soulless corporation
  
• Did whatever they could to help
  
• Sergey injected own personality into company
  
• Searched logs to help find terrorist names
  
• Had to go on instinct as added news sources
  
• Struggled with tone with users
  
• Worked on algorithmic news
  
• Controversy on showing US flag, mourning message
  
• Went back to focusing on functionality, not content portal
  

Part 3: Where we stand

Ch. 17: Two speakers and one voice

• Disagreements with Marissa Mayer
  
• Engineering just did what they wanted
  
• Larry really wanted to scan books
  
• Started with mail order catalog scanning
  
• Was tough
  
• Launch calendar meetings
  
• Approvers of various parts had to flip approval bit on project page
  

Ch. 18: Male enhancement

• CRM software update couldn't be installed by themselves
  
• Instead of getting reliable CRM vendor, invested in Larry's friend's CRM startup and then bought it
  
• Translation Console to translate services to other languages
  
• Crowdsourced translation of site pages
  
• Google way: break things into tiny solutions
  

Ch. 19: The cell of a new machine

• New system for AdWords using CPC not CPM
  
• Distribution of ads on others sites
  
• Epiphany: CPM * CTR based on quality ranking using historical data and other inputs
  
• CTR needed to be predictive and used black box/secret algorithms for ad scoring
  
• Second price auction model better than Go2's first price auction
  
• Care about best results for users, not advertisers
  
• Larry and Sergey were never much into the ad project
  
• Go2 changed name to Overture, which believed all search results will eventually be paid
  
• Endless struggle for search perfection; list of 10 principles; not portal
  
• Focus on user
  
• Do one thing well
  
• Fast is better than slow
  
• Open is better than closed
  
• Democracy works on the net
  
• Don't have to be at your desk to work
  
• Can make money without being evil
  
• Always more info out there to organize
• Need for information crosses borders
  
• Don't need a suit to be serious
  
• Great is not good enough
  
• Underpromise and overdeliver
  
• Tech company that solves hard problems
  
• Don't be evil
  
• Overture got Yahoo ad deal (juggernaut deal)
  
• Google got Earthlink ad contract
  
• Running own site was lab for advertising
  
• Lowered margins on distributed ads so partners on other sites could keep a lot more revenue
  
• Overture took 49% of revenue, so Google could undercut them by subsidizing through revenue off ads from own site
  
• 35 engineers reporting to 1 PM
  

Ch. 20: Where we stand

• Company vision: products that are work, are useful, and never evil
  

Ch. 21: Aloha AOL

• Aol was giant of Internet, partnered with Overture
  
• Approached AOL for business
  
• AOL very hard negotiator
  
• SWAG: Scientific Wild-Ass Guess
  
• Had to calculate guarantee payment to AOL if didn't get any ads clicked
  
• Thought had lost Yahoo and AOL deals to Overture
  
• But deal not yet final
  
• AOL canceled deal and did deal with Google
  
• Hired lots of AdWords reps, temps
  
• Lots of women hired (engineers got happy)
  
• Built up ad network bigger than Overture
  
• Focus on objective search results
  

Ch. 21: We need another billion dollar idea

• Introduced Associate PM and Product Marketing Manager positions
  
• Started becoming big company
  
• Google Logic: his brand identity idea
  
• Not well accepted
  
• No one cared about messaging strategy
  
• Next billion dollar idea: Gmail
  
• Thought would never do ads on email content
  
• Founders more open to it (just like spam filters/analysis)
  
• Used content targeting for ad results
  
• AdSense
  
• Shared revenue with publishers
  
• Project of moving all offline content online (started with books online)
  
• 20% time concept came out of this prototyping that wasn't assigned
  

Ch. 23: Frugal and friction

• 7-8 moves of his desk in 3 years
  
• Became Director of Consumer and Brand Marketing
  
• Marissa always prevailed in debates
  
• Froogle launch
  
• Wanted to use Google Product Search but overruled
  
• But won tagline battle
  
• Eventually named changed to what he said

Ch. 24: Don't let marketing drive

• Pop-up blocker in toolbar
  
• Privacy versus usability
  
• User search data on cookie/IP address combo
  
• Larry wanted to minimize public discussion of privacy and queries
  
• Google Zeitgeist
  
• Display in lobby of live searches (I remember that!)
  
• Strain in relationship with Marissa
  
• Marketing cast out of product review meeting
  
• Passed 1,000 employees
  
• Coordinated TGIF meetings introducing new employees, milestones reached, revenue
  
• Cash bonuses to employees
  
• Yahoo bought Overture
  
• Microsoft awakened to Google search
  
• New recruiting idea: billboards with coding challenges inside ads 
  
• Google Labs, Google Aptitude Test
  
• Used Crispin Bogusky ad agency for recruiting ads
  
• Googlers came up with the puzzles
  
• Press loved it, got Simpsons cameo
  
• Got 4,000 job applications
  
• Only hired 1 engineer through it directly because didn't have data to track
  

Ch. 25: Mistakes were made

• Bought SGI headquarters
  
• Fully vested options now
  
• Huge whiteboard of joke Google world takeover plans
  
• Intranet kept growing and had ton of data
  
• Slowly got locked down
  
• Preparation for IPO
  
• Yahoo dropped Google from search results but wasn't a problem
  
• Slips of information to press
  
• Orkut joined Google, created social network
  
• Invite-only
  
• Used Microsoft-based tech at first and then moved to Google tech
  
• Wanted to launch more quickly, skipped security review
  
• Users started spamming it
  
• Still huge in Brazil
  
• Google just let it die instead of working harder on it
  
• People internally found lots of problems in Gmail
  
• Bought Gmail domain
  
• Launched Gmail on April Fool's but was a mistake
  
• People freaked out over privacy (Google reading emails)
  
• Writing S1 document to go public
  

Part 4: Can this really be the end?

Ch. 26: S1 for the money

• RR Donnelly editing firm in Palo Alto reviewing S1 line by line with 20 lawyers
  
• Company meeting announcement of IPO plan
  
• Google wanted to do Ddutch auction which banks hated
  
• Everyone had laid back attitude; no one cared too much
  
• IPO not big deal
  
• Everyone kept working
  
• Worked to keep culture the same
  
• A few people started buying toys
  
• Had first earnings call
  
• His role in brand management not needed anymore
  
• Would wind down work after 2 months
  
• Thought founders sometimes too impatient, too proud
  
• Founders thought they never were wrong (he disagreed)
  
• Overall, had crazy ride and changed his life