The Google Story

Brevity  |Author : David A. Vise.                                                                   Rate : ****/5
  Though the book is mild in pace and is repeating along with too many supporting citations , but if one remembers that this is not a novel rather biography or instead success saga of Google , one can easily give up annoyance faced in reading the book. Moreover, if one is techno geek, or is looking for some business strategy – Like Google, this book too, is not going to give any clue.

The two Stanford’s Ph.D students -Sergey Brin and Larry Page , faced trouble to search the related contents (on newbie internet) during their pedagogies; and motivation imbued thereafter  to garner all the related information together. Unlike Yahoo, famous AltaVista and other search engine , that were based on  alphabetized directory edited by people . they devised PageRank model, whereby a search returns web pages in order of their popularity (based on how many other pages linked to it and value is sum of all pointing) . They believed from the start that better organization of information is a public good, and any commercial gain was secondary at best, a distraction at worst.  Google epitomize its motto “ Do not evil “

Google means a very large number.It is the number 5 followed by 100 zeros. It’s wrongly pronounced for mathematical term ‘g-o-o-g-o-l.'

They started with self assembled rack of PCs to 2 lacs inexpensive PCs , and then to small super computer.  On Bechtolsheim funding, Google devised two data center equipped with 500 million variables and two billion terms. Google worked on keyword targeted text ads to the target users only in right side of page.

Google cares a lot for innovations and free thoughts, being only company to provide 1 day a week  to employee for pursuing their interest , regardless of its commercial viability.

The founder duo did not want any one to interfere but on Bechtolsheim, Moritz and other venture capitalist’s emphasis and later on Eric Schmid’s experience made them to assign CEO post to him. However, the duo kept all important keys to them. Brin , Page and  their CEO Eric Schmid faced a lot of troubles to get make Google Public into IPO and to Wall Street.

 After Sun Microsystem has challenged Microsoft by leading the development of Java, an independent programming language – Google turned next to challenge Microsoft in browsing (Windows associated Internet Browser) and email system (MSN).

 Like all successes,the journey was not rosy to Google’s success too.

The new Gmail service faced a lot of controversies even though it was providing 1 GB database to each user, because Google was looking for targeted users ads in the mail service and people were concerned with their privacy while scanning (happens in any mail service) the mails for related ads .  

Google emphasized initially to block all porns , but could not do absolutely as it was hampering the search result too. Instead they preferred to give ‘ Safe search ‘option to users.

They faced a lot to beat Yahoo to get ads contract for AOL (American Online Internet SErvice) Europe users. And finally grabbed it , later they got ads contract for AOL US too.

 They had to visit courts for complaints against trademark infringement and Click crowding of ads without purchases(driving up ads cost).

They invested hefty for digitization of 7 millions books of University of  Michigan.

They had to bow down against their ‘no evil’ motto and to go for Censored search results (with notification to users) in socialist China – a big growing market in Asia.

Starting with 85$ per share at the time of IPO August 2004, now Google share is 300$. Google has 8 billion indexes almost twice of Microsoft’s. Google is growing with the same pace , but one thing is still a mystery to most of people that what funds it so much when browsing is free and ads per click revenue are just in cents.

Google does not unveil its marketing strategy. We can simply guess it as :

Youth + freedom + transparency + new model + the general public’s benefit + belief in trust = The Miracle of Google.

Fooled by Randomness

Book Review | Author : Nassim Nicholas Taleb                                         Rate : **.5 /5

The first thing that I would say,  I did not like the authors style of writing. The things could have been interpreted in much better way.  One should not write anything didactic in first person pronoun provided it’s mandated. The inconceivable use of author’s own words of wisdom, his boasts of qualifications, ideologies etc present wrong notion and ask for more patience to go through.  

The author calls ‘ the black swan event’  i.e that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and that would be extremely difficult to predict. This randomness in situation play extremely important role in our life wielded with luck factor. It’s weird to see that most of us attribute the success obtained in this randomness to our skill. People don’t understand randomness and probability. Besides, people who continues to be successful out of this randomness , act (due to wrong way of understanding probability) if something really big and unusual (devastating) will never happen to their strategy.

The author has tried his best to support his points by numerous examples excerpted from daily life. However, sometimes the ideology becomes so much stringent and imposed that it becomes hard to gulp in.

Overall, the book hardly copes to draw reader’s interest throughout the pages and present the point vividly.