Google

By: Chuck SalterThu Feb 14, 2008 at 6:35 PM

Andy Rubin | photo by Russ Quackenbush

The faces and voices of the world's most innovative company.

Enlarge

Larry Brilliant | photo by Russ Quackenbush

Enlarge

Marissa Mayer | photo by Russ Quackenbush

Related Content

It's too good to be true. That's what Andy Rubin was thinking back in 2005. He'd worked for more than a decade at various tech outfits, including a stint at Apple, and now Google was interested in acquiring Android, his latest venture. When he dug around to see if the Internet giant would be a good fit, Rubin met with what he assumed was the usual Silicon Valley spin: lots of talk about boundless freedom, perfect perks, a culture that prizes spectacular failure more than middling success. Right.

But now he works forGoogle, and Rubin knows something new: It's true. Google is different.

When you visit the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, what's special is elusive. The company looks like the standard-issue Wii-in-the-lounge, hieroglyphs-on-a-whiteboard, code-until-dawn tech shop. But the difference isn't tangible. It's in the air, in the spirit of the place.

Talk to more than a dozen Googlers at various levels and departments, and one powerful theme emerges: Whether they're designing search for the blind or preparing meals for their colleagues, these people feel that their work can change the world. That sense is nonexistent at most companies, or at best intermittent, inevitably becoming subsumed in the day-to-day quagmire of PowerPoints, org charts, and budgetary realities.

The marvel of Google is its ability, after 10 years, to continue to instill a sense of creative fearlessness and ambition, even as it has grown to more than 16,000 employees. Prospective hires are often asked, "If you could change the world using Google's resources, what would you build?" But here, this isn't a goofy or even theoretical question: Google wants to know, because thinking--and building--on that scale is what Google does. This, after all, is the company that wants to make available online every page of every book ever published. Smaller-gauge ideas die of disinterest.

The marvel of Google is its ability to instill a sense of creative fearlessness.

With $14 billion in annual revenue, Google has evolved to become far more than an "Internet search and advertising company." Google's singular worldview sees information as a natural resource, one that should be mined and refined and sorted and universally distributed. Information is a necessity, like clean water. That idea stands at the center of all Google does, unifying what can appear to be wildly disparate projects: mapping the world, searching the Web on a cell-phone screen, providing an early-response system for epidemics and natural disasters, developing cheap renewable energy. Android, for instance, isn't simply a universal platform for mobile-phone applications. It's a new pipe--and a far bigger pipe--to serve a parched landscape.

In the end, the resources and liberty Google entrusts to its workers infuse them with a rare sense of possibility--and obligation: "Are we taking advantage of what we've got here?" they ask. "Are we doing enough? Are we doing everything we can?"

They're thrilling questions, ones we all should ask more often.

Douglas Merrill

CIO and VP of engineering

"I was deaf as a child, and I am dyslexic. I spent a lot of my childhood struggling to do things that everybody else found easy. I adapted by finding tools to make things simple. I'm still fascinated by tools that make it easier for people to explore their worlds.

During the carpool this morning, we heard a song on the radio, and the driver asked, 'When did that come out?' I whipped out my iPhone and did a Google search. That's what drew me here, the idea that we can take the world's information and render it all available and useful.

Organizations that exist for a long time almost always have strong cultures. But any sociologist will tell you it's rare for people to talk about the elements of their culture. Google lives out loud. We argue about strategy and whether our products are good or bad. We argue about everything. But you want conflict to thrive in a supportive way. At heart, I'm an introvert, but I've learned to enjoy the give and take of ideas here. We work hard to protect people who argue.

Our hiring process is legendary. We have hiring committees that are checked by other committees. An engineering candidate talks to an average of eight engineers. I talked to 20 people before I was hired.

I'll ask candidates who aren't engineers how to build a Web crawler. The right answer doesn't matter. I want to hear you think the problem through, because the odds are good that since we're an innovative company, you're not going to know how to do what you're going to be asked to do. You're going to have to figure it out."

From Issue 123 | March 2008

Print Newsletters

Browse current issue ›

Subscribe to Fast Company ›

Recent Comments | 56 Total

February 20, 2008 at 5:01pm by Richard Lipscombe

It is true Googlers tell great stories even though they are repetitive - but then they do have great achievements to talk about and so this thing is a feel good advertisement for Google. Nevertheless there is a real issue lurking for the future of innovation at Google - it is simply that the Googleplex has become a limiting factor for innovation. The C21st is all about networked or distributed models for business and their innovators. Let us hope therefore that Google projects in India, China, New York, Ireland, etc come to rapidly outpace and outstrip the innovations homegrown in Mountain View. By 2012 my innovation for Google would be to have the Googleplex concentrating on running and innovating passive revenue models while the engineering and product development is done in clusters offshore or out of the State of California...

Google

Related Content

Douglas Merrill

Recent Comments | 56 Total

Sponsored Links