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Up Next: Favorite In The Plex excerpts
Last month I kicked off my Independent Study with Professor Paul Jones in the School of Information and Library Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. Over the course of the month I have been focusing primarily on Google- for a couple of reasons. The first is that I am extremely interested in learning more about the algorithms that guide Google’s structure and organization of information. Their mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, and over the past month I have learned a great deal about how they plan on doing so. In one of my Information Systems classes, INLS 200: Retrieving and Analyzing Information, we have been comparing search engines and analyzing why many of us default to Google opposed to other search engines. The second reason I have been focusing on Google is because in November I applied for a product marketing summer internship position with them. I was delighted to make it to the final round of interviews and ultimately receive an internship offer, but these opportunities only made me more curious about the company. During the interview process I began reading In The Plex by Steven Levy. The book offered immense insight into the inner workings of Google and provided a particularly good foundation about the company’s beginnings. ![]() Left: Google's headquarters, dubbed "The Googleplex," is located in Mountain View, California. I will spend eleven weeks there this summer working on a product marketing for a specific Google product. I will dedicate this post to a few things that struck me about the way that Google was founded and how they plan to evolve as a company. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with them, and by the end of the semester I hope to be able to compare what I learn about Google to what I learn about other companies and their founders. Professor Jones has recommended a few business-oriented books that will augment my knowledge on the ways that these tech companies have chosen to structure their growth. But before I get ahead of myself, let’s talk about In The Plex… The first chapter of the book is titled “The World According to Google: Biography of a Search engine.” Within the initial seventy pages I had already learned an immense amount about the company. I read these chapters much slower than I normally would, taking time to annotate the pages and conduct additional research. Steven Levy begins the book with a background on Google’s opportunity, giving perspective on what the budding Internet industry was like when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were developing Google. “In retrospect, the web was to the digital world what the Louisiana Purchase was to the young United States: the opportunity of a century,” explains Levy (16). As the Internet gained traction, university students were given the unique opportunity to interact with cutting edge technologies and to help the industry evolve. If I were ever going to be a computer science student I would have wanted to be one in the mid-nineties, a time in which there was ample bustle and unlimited potential. This is the time period in which Larry Page and Sergey Brin were PhD students at Stanford, working in a building named after Bill Gates to build a company that would one-day rival Gate’s own company, Microsoft (14). ![]() Left: The Gates Building at Stanford, where Larry Page and Sergey Brin initially began their Google project. One of the first things that stuck out to me when reading about Larry Page was the way that his thesis advisor described his way of thinking. “It was science fiction more than computer science,” said Terry Winograd, “but an outlandish mind was a valuable asset, and there was definitely a place in the current science to channel wild creativity.” This one quote encompasses one of the core traits that draws me to Google- it is place of great technical strength and intellectual rigor, but there is still ample room for creativity. In a sense I think that this is what sets Google apart from other search engines, what draws us away from competitors and has created its own cult of followers. Google was built in a way that valued diversity of thought and appreciation of unconventional thinking. “Looking at things from different perspectives could lead to unexpected solutions,” explained Page (39). When Page and Brin began developing Google, they strayed from their academic work as they devoted more and more time to the budding search engine. Levy hit the nail on the head by explaining that Larry and Sergey were product-oriented, not paper-oriented, people (32). They set high goals from the beginning, something that I admire about the duo. Although many of these goals seemed initially impossible, they chose to redefine impossible rather than settling for what seemed attainable at the time. Arthur Clarke once described the best technology as “indistinguishable from magic,” providing a framework for what Brin and Page hoped to achieve. “We want Google to be as smart as you- you should be getting an answer the minute you think of it,” said Brin when explaining Google’s future goals (35). They aimed to achieve such goals by placing an emphasis on artificial intelligence. This was done in many ways, particularly when hiring new employees. Marissa Mayer, one of my favorite Googlers, was the 20th employee at Google and has a strong background in artificial intelligence. As the first woman engineer, Mayer continues to be a face of the company and now serves as Vice President of Location and Local Services. I am dying to meet Marissa during my internship this summer because I share her interest in location-based services and would love to hear her advice on being a woman in a male-dominated field. Alongside Mayer, Peter Norvig was influential in shaping the way that Google would leverage artificial intelligence. He believed that instead of creating an artificial intelligence department within Google that Sergey and Brin should spread AI everywhere in the company- a decision that has probably helped facilitate innovation across all departments (62). ![]() Left: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google. Google was wildly successful for innumerable reasons, but my research has focused on Larry and Sergey’s appreciation and implementation of creative business practices and their creation and regulation of a unique corporate culture, despite rapid growth in company size and profitability. I am going to attempt to keep the remainder of my blog posts short, focusing on one element of the company or one employee that I admire. As I said earlier, reading In The Plex prompted a heavy load of additional research and I have tried my best to match these findings with what I learned from Steven Levy’s work to create posts that stem from multiple sources.
Up Next: Favorite In The Plex excerpts
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As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently finished Steven Levy's In The Plex. I have spent the past few weeks reading Roger Martin's The Opposable Mind, which has given me valuable insight into the art of reaching collaborative conclusions in the business world. I have been drafting a post that compares many of these lessons to the tech giants that I am studying during this semester, and am hoping to wrap that up and post it this evening. The past few weeks have been quite hectic but I am proud to say that I landed my dream Google internship and will be spending eleven weeks at the Googleplex this summer. Now that I have that resolved I will be able to devote more time to this blog, which I look forward to. I read these two books at an appropriate time because Levy's work discusses Google's culture and campus while Martin presents many business models and paradigms that are utilized in the company's daily decision making. Above: Google's Mountain View campus, dubbed the "Googleplex." Look at all of those beautiful solar panels!
Over the next two days I will post more about what I liked and disliked about both of the books mentioned in this post. Stay tuned :) This semester I am doing an independent study with Paul Jones, one of my favorite professors at UNC. I had planned to spend the first chunk of my time studying Google, which is convenient because I was lucky enough to receive an interview for their summer internship program. The first round of interviews were two weeks ago and I am flying to NYC on Thursday for the final round. It has been a unique experience to have my personal academic interests mesh perfectly with what I am doing extracurricularly, and my fingers are crossed for the final round! That being said, I have spent a large sum of time over the past month taking notes on Google and the plethora of products and programs that they have created, and it has caused me to get a bit behind on my independent study blogging. I have designed this page to evolve into a blog that I post on frequently- ideally once every three to four days. I would like my posts to be diverse in both form and subject matter, although most of it for the time being will focus on Google. I am currently finishing up In The Plex by Steven Levy, which has been a fascinating read about the inner workings of Google. I have also been reading a lot about specific Googlers- Marissa Mayer in particular. Mayer joined Google in 1999 as the 20th employee and first female engineer and I believe that she is the quintessential Googler. Does it really matter what a quintessential Googler is? Why would someone care? The core of these questions is one of the things that draws me to the company-- no one cares about what the quintessential Wells Fargo or Microsoft employee is like- so why am I fascinated by what Mayer represents? This question ties back to the essence of Google's brand and the fact that although they have grown into a massive corporation, they have yet to lose [much of] their start-up spunk. Studying symbolic systems and computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence at Stanford, Mayer has an academic background that reeks of Google. But she has much more than intellect. She is quirky, well-spoken and has a wide range of interests beyond the computer screen. I am going to do an entire post about her contributions to the product management team at Google (she gets to make some fascinating decisions about design) later this week. "Passion is gender neutralizing".. What a great perspective. I will have a post up in the next few days about my favorite parts of In The Plex.. Stay tuned!
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Started restructuring this site on 12/24/2011 by adding this page. It will mainly consist of technology ramble and things that you probably won't read.
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