29 ms·

The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

403 points by wozniacki 13y ago

mark_l_watson 13y ago
+1 a great article I had the privilege/fun of consulting at Google for four months last year and getting a glimpse inside the company was more than interesting. I think the filter that projects should offer 10x improvements sets high expectations. If Google is the first to develop a general purpose AI then their valuation will approach infinity.
cm2012 13y ago
That was one of the best articles I've ever read, with regards to new information and excellent story telling.
- ghshephard 13y ago
  What's interesting is the style of writing - very short sentences, words of few syllables. https://readability-score.com/ https://readability-score.com/ indicates it has a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 7.9 - it read fast, and I thoroughly enjoyed the journey it took us on.
- MrJagil 13y ago
  Wow, i thought it was appalling! "he expected he’d have to make a choice between becoming an academic and building a company. Choosing the former would mean giving up the opportunity to become the inventor of widely used applications. But building a company would force him to deal with people in a way he didn’t enjoy." How overly simplistic and descriptive that is. Going academic, would, in it's most 2014'ish, pop-cultaral-way, mean that you probably wouldn't go on to make any cool apps. I mean, yeah, obviously? And how weird it is to have such a big life choice distilled down to the possibility of creating popular apps or not. Such black and white-ification with the intention of creating a conflict heavy narrative, with a healthy dose of current tech mindset splashed onto it. And that whole "Page is the Jobs of Google" section was entirely grasping at reader-revelations, without actually creating any. It's lazy thinking to compare two iconic tech heads, especially if one of them is Jobs. Another one in the long row of heirs (cook, ive, musk etc etc). "Forty-one years after those words were published, in 1985, a 12-year-old in Michigan finished reading Tesla's biography and cried. This was Larry Page." If you manage to get through the introductory number slalom, it reads like the script for a trailer to a new action flick! I appreciated the info in the article, but the writing was so sloppy.
  - ertdfgcb 13y ago
    > How overly simplistic and descriptive that is. Going academic, would, in it's most 2014'ish, pop-cultaral-way, mean that you probably wouldn't go on to make any cool apps. I read that as the dilemma that Page was facing, not an absolute truism. This is an article about Larry Page at Google. It seems silly to be annoyed at the author for simplifying the dichotomy between academia and industry to move us through his life. > If you manage to get through the introductory number slalom, it reads like the script for a trailer to a new action flick! Oh shut up, that was a nice piece of writing. It was an interesting hook, a nice way to introduce a main theme of the article; Larry Page's admiration of Nikola Tesla. It may have been flashy but considering how well it fits into the rest of the article (and indeed, the quality of the writing) I'd hardly call it sloppy. Although maybe we just have different standards.
    - MrJagil 13y ago
      > I read that as the dilemma that Page was facing, not an absolute truism. This is an article about Larry Page at Google. It seems silly to be annoyed at the author for simplifying the dichotomy between academia and industry to move us through his life. No, I get that it was about Larry, and I see why the author set it up like that. But writing "...the opportunity to become the inventor of widely used applications", seems like such a simplification of what it's actually about: A choice between two very different ways of expressing your creativity (granted you do research/publicise in academia). I really hope Larry built a company with more thought behind it than making the next Flappy Bird. I.e. SpaceX wasn't founded because Musk wanted to be an "inventor" of top 40 apps, and it seems like Larry didn't either, judging from the article. And the other phrase "... would force him to deal with people in a way he didn’t enjoy". Something about that rubs me the wrong way as well. Maybe it's a bit too soft? I mean, sucks to be you Larry, not enjoying socialising, but welcome to the real world. I don't want to seem too harsh, I'm only replying because it's nice to put ones thoughts into writing once in a while. > Although maybe we just have different standards. Maybe, but starting that discussion means that we'll probably start talking about "high/low" standards, and I try not to think like that.
      - 13y ago
simplemath 13y ago
50, 100 years from now, Larry Page (if he's even dead yet) will be remembered as one of the more impactful people in human history.
- keeptrying 13y ago
  He won't unless he builds libraries and other public institutions. You need to build things with your name on it in big letters for people to remember you. Larry has not as of yet done this in a big way at least not given his present net worth.
  - oh_sigh 13y ago
    Just like Socrates
    - massappeal 13y ago
      or Einstein
- whoismua 13y ago
  Why specifically? History is long, think of Einstein, the person that invented the penicillin, vaccines, the transistor.... Search engines existed before Page, granted not as good but they existed. Google rode the internet explosion, whereas Jobs and (drumroll...) Gates brought a computer in every home. What he will be remembered is for tainting the Google brand. It was golden, now in many circles they see them as biased, full of ads https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7600532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7600532 , deceiving consumers and a behemoth deserving to be taken down. Downhill has started
  - simplemath 13y ago
    Honestly, I think widespread automated cars will be enough (And I am going to go out on a limb and say that Google technology will be in a huge number of automobiles 25 years from today), but if G has its way, and GFiber transforms ISP/Content delivery, their energy initiatives with windblimp turbines, deep machine learning for medicine, actual robotic assistants, G Books... The list goes on and on. Search is just the cash engine for the truly transformative tech. There has rarely been an industrial force with the ambition Page gives to Google. If they succeed in even half measures on some of these initiatives, it will be transformative.
pk2200 13y ago
Early Googler here. It's funny how often the story of the mass-firing is misreported. This article gets two basic facts wrong: 1) Larry was targeting engineering management, not project management. 2) Nobody was fired. The engineering managers shifted to pure engineering roles (an easy move, since they all had technical backgrounds). On many teams, the managers continued managing, but they did it more discreetly, taking care to stay out of Larry's way. A year or so later, after the engineering staff had doubled in size, it became clear hat it wasn't practical for one VP (Wayne Rosing) to have 200 direct reports, and engineering management came back out of the shadows.
- magicalist 13y ago
  Humans need their narrative. It doesn't make for good storytelling if a situation is muddled and people's changes of heart are only by a small degree.
  - nutjob2 13y ago
    Why not just call it what it is: sloppy journalism? Ignoring the facts to further a pre-determined narrative would more commonly be called a lie.
    - ust 13y ago
      Agreed. One more factual error is mentioning Tesla as a Croatian immigrant, but actually he was born in then Austrian Empire (which today is Croatia). His parents were Serbian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
      - nl 13y ago
        Whether Tesla was Serbian or Croatian is one of the most controversial topics on Wikipedia[1]. As is typical for Wikipedia he has been added and removed from the list of famous Croats a number of time[2]. I don't think that can be classed as a factual error [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_controversial_issues#Science.2F_Biology.2F_Health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_controversial... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Croats#Tesla http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Croats#Tesla
cliveowen 13y ago
"With little emotion, speaking in his usual flat, robotic tone[...]As Page talked, he kept his gaze averted, resisting direct eye contact." Journalists have a tendency of portraying figures in tech circles as being on the spectrum, while very often that isn't the case.
- gtirloni 13y ago
  Just to clarify what you mean by "on the spectrum", do you mean the mental illness one? It's a new expression for me and searching only came up with things related to autism, etc.
  - dpeck 13y ago
    it relates to autism.
  - nutjob2 13y ago
    Yes, he means autism.
  - yid 13y ago
    Autism and asperger's are now on the "autism spectrum disorder": http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disorders-asd/index.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disord...
    - lutusp 13y ago
      For the record, Asperger's is gone. It was cast out because it seemed that everyone was "suffering" from it. http://www.autismspeaks.org/dsm-5/faq#asperger http://www.autismspeaks.org/dsm-5/faq#asperger The above means people can use the word "Asperger's" if they want, but it has been denied any clinical meaning. The reason is that it didn't have a clearly defined clinical meaning to begin with.
      - whoismua 13y ago
        That crap bothers me, autism is hip, especially Aspergers. If this continues, soon 50% of the children will have it. Then 10 years later, they'll come up with a new syndrome. Not to say that autism doesn't exist, just saying that, IMO, far too many 'normal' kids are being labeled as autistic.
bshimmin 13y ago
There are some truly strange and incongruous turns of phrase in this article - "Google's human resources boss, a serious woman with bangs named Stacey Sullivan", "Finally Rosing, a bald man in glasses, began to speak", "Though he was an appealing presence with above-average height and nearly black hair", etc. It strikes me the author would far rather be writing Mills & Boon novels than articles for Business Insider.
- nicholascarlson 13y ago
  I just deleted the comment about the bangs. Really does read awkwardly.
  - bshimmin 13y ago
    I should clarify that I didn't think the article badly written - just not quite in the style I'm used to from a publication like Business Insider. That said, I probably haven't read many other long-form pieces on there. Others here clearly enjoyed the writing style very much!
    - mishimin 13y ago
      You seem to have a very high opinion of the Business Insider
  - diziet 13y ago
    I enjoyed the piece and it's long form content and flow - some of the descriptions of the people (of people I'd met, people I'd heard of many times and people I'd never known existed) were nice additional things in the story.
- paulrademacher 13y ago
  "Woman with bangs." I cringe any time I see a writeup of a female engineer or executive where attention is drawn to her hairstyle, clothes, or shoes. It's unnecessary and undignified.
riggins 13y ago
It's pretty cool that someone who cried about Nikola Tesla as a kid is now running one of the world's most valuable companies.
shreeshga 13y ago
very well written.
pavanky 13y ago
Are there any articles about Sergey's role in the company ? There have been a few since Larry took over as CEO, and I feel this article greatly downplays Sergey's role.
- ckenst 13y ago
  I agree. The article makes it seem like Larry is the driving force behind Google and Sergey is just along for the ride (aside from the meetings they take together and the ability to argue out points). Maybe that wasn't what the author intended but it seems like a side-effect.
bsaul 13y ago
I'm curious : anyone here remembers google defining its strategy as an "hypercube" ? I'm pretty sure i read about that a looong time ago, but i can't find any article about it now.
mkattam 13y ago
What are some of Sergei's accomplishments contributing to Google in a big way?
argumentum 13y ago
This article kind of oddly goes out of its way to erase Sergey from Google's history (and present and future). It's always seemed to me that they have a very beneficial symbiosis. The idea of investors bringing in a "professional" CEO has largely died, thankfully. It must have been incredibly frustrating for Sergey/Larry to see a younger Mark Zuckerberg go from strength to strength as Founder/CEO while they had to pretend Schmidt was in charge for "adult supervision".
h1fra 13y ago
Very long, surprisingly easy to read. Great article !
snarfy 13y ago
Google was a better company when Eric was at the helm. Now we get G+.
- jenno 13y ago
  Yes, let's point to this one failed example as how the entire company has been misled by Page...
  - snarfy 13y ago
    I never said misled. If you need an example of misleading the company (and industry), look no further than the no poaching lawsuit, where Larry specifically mentions to keep the deal out of email and off the books. Don't be evil. Sure Larry. Sure.
    - asdfologist 13y ago
      What? That was Schmidt. http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906310/the-no-hire-paper-trail-steve-jobs-and-eric-schmidt-didnt-want-you-to-see http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906310/the-no-hire-paper-...
      - snarfy 13y ago
        Ah, I stand corrected. With the additional news that they are scaling back G+, now I'm not sure what to think.
zhemao 13y ago
I find it funny that Page complained about Gmail taking 600 milliseconds to load back when it was created. It probably takes longer than that these days unless you have a really fast connection.
- kevinqi 13y ago
  Agreed, but to be fair, people have a lot more email these days.
  - zhemao 13y ago
    Yeah, but Gmail's inbox view is paginated. I don't think the number of conversations shown on a single page has changed since then. Maybe the conversations themselves have gotten longer? I'm sure Google's engineers could get the page load time down if it was a priority. I think at this point everyone is so invested in Gmail they just aren't that worried about losing users because of slower UI load times.
    - joncalhoun 13y ago
      I would imagine this is due to user behavior. How often do you refresh a gmail tab? I leave mine open for days, so having it load the entire app slowly isn't an issue. What is important is updating in realtime when a new email comes in and opening those almost instantly when I select them. If that is the norm, then initial page loads aren't nearly as important.
      - zhemao 13y ago
        Hmm, perhaps I'm atypical. I generally don't leave my email open and respond in real time. I tend to do it in batches, so I reopen gmail multiple times a day.
- Tarang 13y ago
  If they had to check the server logs wouldn't they be referring to something more related to generating the html? This would remain the lowest response even on the fastest possible connection.
Zelphyr 13y ago
I feel like there are so many stories of tech leaders being assholes that perhaps maybe its just a way for the author to sex up a story. That's not to suggest Page didn't act like a dick. But given that its a thread in just about every story about tech founders I have to question the severity of many of the reported actions.
n72 13y ago
"Page once told a room full of Google’s first marketing employees that their profession was built on an ability to lie." Oh come on. As owner of history's largest ad platform and someone who's made ungodly amounts of money from it, this seems like a massively hypocritical and un-self-aware thing to say.
- chris_mahan 13y ago
  Marketing isn't about lying. It's about telling the truth* that gets you to buy the product, not the whole truth. Who has time to tell the whole truth? * for varying definitions of the truth.
  - Joeri 13y ago
    I always thought marketing was about convincing people that they wish to buy the product that the marketeer has, by whatever means necessary, whether it be whole truth, half truth or bare lie. A good product can be marketed with the truth, a bad product however ...
627467 13y ago
An hagiographic piece posted on the same day that 2 set-back stories are announced (major strategic shift on "social" and no-poaching settlement)...
gilgoomesh 13y ago
I realize that it's an aside in the article but I wanted to contradict something: > What’s less well understood is that Apple’s board and investors were absolutely right to fire Jobs. Early in his career, he was petulant, mean, and destructive This idea (Jobs needed to be away from Apple to improve himself) gets mentioned a lot but I think it's nonsense. First: Jobs was petulant, mean and destructive to people he disagreed with – for his whole life. He never dropped this trait. It might have appeared that he mellowed but he really just left an Apple that he no longer controlled and started another company where he had full control (he owned Pixar as well as NeXT but never exerted full control there). Second: Was Apple really right to fire Jobs? In his first 7 years at Apple, Jobs oversaw (not designed or engineered) the only successful product lines in Apple's first 20 years: the Apple 2, the Mac and the Laserwriter. The latter two happened against the best wishes of the board who only wanted to focus on the Apple 2. In the 12 years after Jobs left, Apple never launched another successful hardware product line, it merely upgrading the existing products (Mac II, PPC Mac or unsuccessful ideas like the Newton). The early 90's at Apple's R&D in particular was completely chaotic and directionless sinking billions into Pink, Taligent, OpenDoc, CHRP and other doomed initiatives. Jobs didn't need to leave Apple to fix himself. He left Apple because he disagreed with everyone (in hindsight: probably rightfully so) and he couldn't fire them. When he returned, he had the authority to fire everyone he disliked (and he did). As for the comparison to Larry Page – I don't think they were as similar as the article implies. Jobs – for better and worse – was his own special brand of crazy.
- pmelendez 13y ago
  >"Second: Was Apple really right to fire Jobs? In his first 7 years at Apple, Jobs oversaw (not designed or engineered) the only successful product lines in Apple's first 20 years" I would argue that Jobs had any influence in the Apple II whatsoever, in fact according to Wozniak in iWoz, Jobs attempts to influence the Apple II originated the only fights the two of them ever had. On the other hand, Apple II was originating the vast majority of the revenue and in comparison the original mac had a very limited success.
  - gdubs 13y ago
yeukhon 13y ago
This is a great biography of Larry Page. Though there are some misreport facts and one-sided opinjon, the article captures my pulse. Only a few lengthy articles could ever retain my full attention till the end. In particular the whole "Larry as a visionary", "Larry is socially awkward", "Larry is not traditional" makes me feel more welcome in this world. I too am that kind of person (it is up for future to judge whether I am visionary :)). But this is the exact article I need to pursue my dream of making things "happening". If you want to carry out your vision, you need to delegate. You need to set the tone "this is what we do, and we do this this way." Ideas just happen to come to us every minute but we are too caught up in fighting the current. That's the big Google problem: it is too huge too slow too bureaucratic to get things done, even after Larry is back as CEO. This is why I am more leading toward startup environment (I am about to graduate soon), this is why people leave big corporations. I wasn't appreicating why Google was moving in so many directions. But it is true. I long know Google is outside my tech tweets. Not enough hype for me to notice until special events. Nothing exciting. I hope one day they realize simplicity is the key (please fix your UX). Outside of privacy and security worries, I believe Google does have the collective power and sum to make a life-dependent integrated platform. It is up to Google executives to decide whether they will make such platform as open as possible, as friendly as possible, to both end users, sales and engineers. I truly envy him being a genius and intelligent at making things. I hope one day I too will be recognized. Enough said, there is always an opportunity for everything. Only I can make that happen.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
blazespin 13y ago
And this is how a child tries to describe how his parent does his job.
EGreg 13y ago
That's quite a long story. This was my reaction: http://twitter.com/GregMozart http://twitter.com/GregMozart The last 4-5 tweets
skkbits 13y ago
Larry is truly amazing and no question about that. To me though, this comes as less surprise. His contributions can certainly be attributed to few not so well known facts. 1. Highly educated parents. His father has Ph.D. and is considered pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence ( source : wikipedia) 2. Mother : Comp. Science professor 3. His brother Carl Page Jr. sold company called eGroups to Yahoo!. So when you consider all this facts together, with kind of upbringing he had it less surprise that he followed the suit and created search engine. I bet this sort of environment must have played crucial role when he went for VC capital. If you have read crossing the chasm it talks about how a company with few hundered people can go mainstream. Larry leveraged all his background, upbringing and knowledge he had to create one of great software product.
vijayboyapati 13y ago
The one interaction I had with Larry that I remember was when we were moving from the old Google building (the "googleplex") to a much larger building in the old Silicon Graphics campus. I went there on a Sunday night to check out my desk and where I would be sitting and I ran into Larry (there was no one else around). He gave me a tour of the building and we walked up to a window where we could see the whole campus, with several other huge buildings. I asked him "how on earth are we going to fill this building?", which could have held several times the size of the company at the time, and he pointed at the other buildings and said we're going to fill all of them. Holy f*ck, I thought.
dosh 13y ago
This is a really helpful article to learn about the early days of Google and the challenges in scaling your organization. Thanks for sharing.

403 points by wozniacki 13y ago

+1 a great article I had the privilege/fun of consulting at Google for four months last year and getting a glimpse inside the company was more than interesting. I think the filter that projects should offer 10x improvements sets high expectations. If Google is the first to develop a general purpose AI then their valuation will approach infinity.

cm2012 13y ago

That was one of the best articles I've ever read, with regards to new information and excellent story telling.

ghshephard 13y ago
What's interesting is the style of writing - very short sentences, words of few syllables. https://readability-score.com/ https://readability-score.com/ indicates it has a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 7.9 - it read fast, and I thoroughly enjoyed the journey it took us on.
MrJagil 13y ago
Wow, i thought it was appalling! "he expected he’d have to make a choice between becoming an academic and building a company. Choosing the former would mean giving up the opportunity to become the inventor of widely used applications. But building a company would force him to deal with people in a way he didn’t enjoy." How overly simplistic and descriptive that is. Going academic, would, in it's most 2014'ish, pop-cultaral-way, mean that you probably wouldn't go on to make any cool apps. I mean, yeah, obviously? And how weird it is to have such a big life choice distilled down to the possibility of creating popular apps or not. Such black and white-ification with the intention of creating a conflict heavy narrative, with a healthy dose of current tech mindset splashed onto it. And that whole "Page is the Jobs of Google" section was entirely grasping at reader-revelations, without actually creating any. It's lazy thinking to compare two iconic tech heads, especially if one of them is Jobs. Another one in the long row of heirs (cook, ive, musk etc etc). "Forty-one years after those words were published, in 1985, a 12-year-old in Michigan finished reading Tesla's biography and cried. This was Larry Page." If you manage to get through the introductory number slalom, it reads like the script for a trailer to a new action flick! I appreciated the info in the article, but the writing was so sloppy.
- ertdfgcb 13y ago
  > How overly simplistic and descriptive that is. Going academic, would, in it's most 2014'ish, pop-cultaral-way, mean that you probably wouldn't go on to make any cool apps. I read that as the dilemma that Page was facing, not an absolute truism. This is an article about Larry Page at Google. It seems silly to be annoyed at the author for simplifying the dichotomy between academia and industry to move us through his life. > If you manage to get through the introductory number slalom, it reads like the script for a trailer to a new action flick! Oh shut up, that was a nice piece of writing. It was an interesting hook, a nice way to introduce a main theme of the article; Larry Page's admiration of Nikola Tesla. It may have been flashy but considering how well it fits into the rest of the article (and indeed, the quality of the writing) I'd hardly call it sloppy. Although maybe we just have different standards.
  - MrJagil 13y ago
    > I read that as the dilemma that Page was facing, not an absolute truism. This is an article about Larry Page at Google. It seems silly to be annoyed at the author for simplifying the dichotomy between academia and industry to move us through his life. No, I get that it was about Larry, and I see why the author set it up like that. But writing "...the opportunity to become the inventor of widely used applications", seems like such a simplification of what it's actually about: A choice between two very different ways of expressing your creativity (granted you do research/publicise in academia). I really hope Larry built a company with more thought behind it than making the next Flappy Bird. I.e. SpaceX wasn't founded because Musk wanted to be an "inventor" of top 40 apps, and it seems like Larry didn't either, judging from the article. And the other phrase "... would force him to deal with people in a way he didn’t enjoy". Something about that rubs me the wrong way as well. Maybe it's a bit too soft? I mean, sucks to be you Larry, not enjoying socialising, but welcome to the real world. I don't want to seem too harsh, I'm only replying because it's nice to put ones thoughts into writing once in a while. > Although maybe we just have different standards. Maybe, but starting that discussion means that we'll probably start talking about "high/low" standards, and I try not to think like that.
    - 13y ago

simplemath 13y ago

50, 100 years from now, Larry Page (if he's even dead yet) will be remembered as one of the more impactful people in human history.

keeptrying 13y ago
He won't unless he builds libraries and other public institutions. You need to build things with your name on it in big letters for people to remember you. Larry has not as of yet done this in a big way at least not given his present net worth.
- oh_sigh 13y ago
  Just like Socrates
  - massappeal 13y ago
    or Einstein
whoismua 13y ago
Why specifically? History is long, think of Einstein, the person that invented the penicillin, vaccines, the transistor.... Search engines existed before Page, granted not as good but they existed. Google rode the internet explosion, whereas Jobs and (drumroll...) Gates brought a computer in every home. What he will be remembered is for tainting the Google brand. It was golden, now in many circles they see them as biased, full of ads https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7600532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7600532 , deceiving consumers and a behemoth deserving to be taken down. Downhill has started
- simplemath 13y ago
  Honestly, I think widespread automated cars will be enough (And I am going to go out on a limb and say that Google technology will be in a huge number of automobiles 25 years from today), but if G has its way, and GFiber transforms ISP/Content delivery, their energy initiatives with windblimp turbines, deep machine learning for medicine, actual robotic assistants, G Books... The list goes on and on. Search is just the cash engine for the truly transformative tech. There has rarely been an industrial force with the ambition Page gives to Google. If they succeed in even half measures on some of these initiatives, it will be transformative.

pk2200 13y ago

Early Googler here. It's funny how often the story of the mass-firing is misreported. This article gets two basic facts wrong: 1) Larry was targeting engineering management, not project management. 2) Nobody was fired. The engineering managers shifted to pure engineering roles (an easy move, since they all had technical backgrounds). On many teams, the managers continued managing, but they did it more discreetly, taking care to stay out of Larry's way. A year or so later, after the engineering staff had doubled in size, it became clear hat it wasn't practical for one VP (Wayne Rosing) to have 200 direct reports, and engineering management came back out of the shadows.

magicalist 13y ago
Humans need their narrative. It doesn't make for good storytelling if a situation is muddled and people's changes of heart are only by a small degree.
- nutjob2 13y ago
  Why not just call it what it is: sloppy journalism? Ignoring the facts to further a pre-determined narrative would more commonly be called a lie.
  - ust 13y ago
    Agreed. One more factual error is mentioning Tesla as a Croatian immigrant, but actually he was born in then Austrian Empire (which today is Croatia). His parents were Serbian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
    - nl 13y ago
      Whether Tesla was Serbian or Croatian is one of the most controversial topics on Wikipedia[1]. As is typical for Wikipedia he has been added and removed from the list of famous Croats a number of time[2]. I don't think that can be classed as a factual error [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_controversial_issues#Science.2F_Biology.2F_Health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_controversial... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Croats#Tesla http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Croats#Tesla

cliveowen 13y ago

"With little emotion, speaking in his usual flat, robotic tone[...]As Page talked, he kept his gaze averted, resisting direct eye contact." Journalists have a tendency of portraying figures in tech circles as being on the spectrum, while very often that isn't the case.

gtirloni 13y ago
Just to clarify what you mean by "on the spectrum", do you mean the mental illness one? It's a new expression for me and searching only came up with things related to autism, etc.
- dpeck 13y ago
  it relates to autism.
- nutjob2 13y ago
  Yes, he means autism.
- yid 13y ago
  Autism and asperger's are now on the "autism spectrum disorder": http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disorders-asd/index.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disord...
  - lutusp 13y ago
    For the record, Asperger's is gone. It was cast out because it seemed that everyone was "suffering" from it. http://www.autismspeaks.org/dsm-5/faq#asperger http://www.autismspeaks.org/dsm-5/faq#asperger The above means people can use the word "Asperger's" if they want, but it has been denied any clinical meaning. The reason is that it didn't have a clearly defined clinical meaning to begin with.
    - whoismua 13y ago
      That crap bothers me, autism is hip, especially Aspergers. If this continues, soon 50% of the children will have it. Then 10 years later, they'll come up with a new syndrome. Not to say that autism doesn't exist, just saying that, IMO, far too many 'normal' kids are being labeled as autistic.

bshimmin 13y ago

There are some truly strange and incongruous turns of phrase in this article - "Google's human resources boss, a serious woman with bangs named Stacey Sullivan", "Finally Rosing, a bald man in glasses, began to speak", "Though he was an appealing presence with above-average height and nearly black hair", etc. It strikes me the author would far rather be writing Mills & Boon novels than articles for Business Insider.

nicholascarlson 13y ago
I just deleted the comment about the bangs. Really does read awkwardly.
- bshimmin 13y ago
  I should clarify that I didn't think the article badly written - just not quite in the style I'm used to from a publication like Business Insider. That said, I probably haven't read many other long-form pieces on there. Others here clearly enjoyed the writing style very much!
  - mishimin 13y ago
    You seem to have a very high opinion of the Business Insider
- diziet 13y ago
  I enjoyed the piece and it's long form content and flow - some of the descriptions of the people (of people I'd met, people I'd heard of many times and people I'd never known existed) were nice additional things in the story.
paulrademacher 13y ago
"Woman with bangs." I cringe any time I see a writeup of a female engineer or executive where attention is drawn to her hairstyle, clothes, or shoes. It's unnecessary and undignified.

riggins 13y ago

It's pretty cool that someone who cried about Nikola Tesla as a kid is now running one of the world's most valuable companies.

shreeshga 13y ago

very well written.

pavanky 13y ago

Are there any articles about Sergey's role in the company ? There have been a few since Larry took over as CEO, and I feel this article greatly downplays Sergey's role.

ckenst 13y ago
I agree. The article makes it seem like Larry is the driving force behind Google and Sergey is just along for the ride (aside from the meetings they take together and the ability to argue out points). Maybe that wasn't what the author intended but it seems like a side-effect.

bsaul 13y ago

I'm curious : anyone here remembers google defining its strategy as an "hypercube" ? I'm pretty sure i read about that a looong time ago, but i can't find any article about it now.

mkattam 13y ago

What are some of Sergei's accomplishments contributing to Google in a big way?

argumentum 13y ago

This article kind of oddly goes out of its way to erase Sergey from Google's history (and present and future). It's always seemed to me that they have a very beneficial symbiosis. The idea of investors bringing in a "professional" CEO has largely died, thankfully. It must have been incredibly frustrating for Sergey/Larry to see a younger Mark Zuckerberg go from strength to strength as Founder/CEO while they had to pretend Schmidt was in charge for "adult supervision".

h1fra 13y ago

Very long, surprisingly easy to read. Great article !

snarfy 13y ago

Google was a better company when Eric was at the helm. Now we get G+.

jenno 13y ago
Yes, let's point to this one failed example as how the entire company has been misled by Page...
- snarfy 13y ago
  I never said misled. If you need an example of misleading the company (and industry), look no further than the no poaching lawsuit, where Larry specifically mentions to keep the deal out of email and off the books. Don't be evil. Sure Larry. Sure.
  - asdfologist 13y ago
    What? That was Schmidt. http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906310/the-no-hire-paper-trail-steve-jobs-and-eric-schmidt-didnt-want-you-to-see http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906310/the-no-hire-paper-...
    - snarfy 13y ago
      Ah, I stand corrected. With the additional news that they are scaling back G+, now I'm not sure what to think.

zhemao 13y ago

I find it funny that Page complained about Gmail taking 600 milliseconds to load back when it was created. It probably takes longer than that these days unless you have a really fast connection.

kevinqi 13y ago
Agreed, but to be fair, people have a lot more email these days.
- zhemao 13y ago
  Yeah, but Gmail's inbox view is paginated. I don't think the number of conversations shown on a single page has changed since then. Maybe the conversations themselves have gotten longer? I'm sure Google's engineers could get the page load time down if it was a priority. I think at this point everyone is so invested in Gmail they just aren't that worried about losing users because of slower UI load times.
  - joncalhoun 13y ago
    I would imagine this is due to user behavior. How often do you refresh a gmail tab? I leave mine open for days, so having it load the entire app slowly isn't an issue. What is important is updating in realtime when a new email comes in and opening those almost instantly when I select them. If that is the norm, then initial page loads aren't nearly as important.
    - zhemao 13y ago
      Hmm, perhaps I'm atypical. I generally don't leave my email open and respond in real time. I tend to do it in batches, so I reopen gmail multiple times a day.
Tarang 13y ago
If they had to check the server logs wouldn't they be referring to something more related to generating the html? This would remain the lowest response even on the fastest possible connection.

Zelphyr 13y ago

I feel like there are so many stories of tech leaders being assholes that perhaps maybe its just a way for the author to sex up a story. That's not to suggest Page didn't act like a dick. But given that its a thread in just about every story about tech founders I have to question the severity of many of the reported actions.

n72 13y ago

"Page once told a room full of Google’s first marketing employees that their profession was built on an ability to lie." Oh come on. As owner of history's largest ad platform and someone who's made ungodly amounts of money from it, this seems like a massively hypocritical and un-self-aware thing to say.

chris_mahan 13y ago
Marketing isn't about lying. It's about telling the truth* that gets you to buy the product, not the whole truth. Who has time to tell the whole truth? * for varying definitions of the truth.
- Joeri 13y ago
  I always thought marketing was about convincing people that they wish to buy the product that the marketeer has, by whatever means necessary, whether it be whole truth, half truth or bare lie. A good product can be marketed with the truth, a bad product however ...

627467 13y ago

An hagiographic piece posted on the same day that 2 set-back stories are announced (major strategic shift on "social" and no-poaching settlement)...

gilgoomesh 13y ago

I realize that it's an aside in the article but I wanted to contradict something: > What’s less well understood is that Apple’s board and investors were absolutely right to fire Jobs. Early in his career, he was petulant, mean, and destructive This idea (Jobs needed to be away from Apple to improve himself) gets mentioned a lot but I think it's nonsense. First: Jobs was petulant, mean and destructive to people he disagreed with – for his whole life. He never dropped this trait. It might have appeared that he mellowed but he really just left an Apple that he no longer controlled and started another company where he had full control (he owned Pixar as well as NeXT but never exerted full control there). Second: Was Apple really right to fire Jobs? In his first 7 years at Apple, Jobs oversaw (not designed or engineered) the only successful product lines in Apple's first 20 years: the Apple 2, the Mac and the Laserwriter. The latter two happened against the best wishes of the board who only wanted to focus on the Apple 2. In the 12 years after Jobs left, Apple never launched another successful hardware product line, it merely upgrading the existing products (Mac II, PPC Mac or unsuccessful ideas like the Newton). The early 90's at Apple's R&D in particular was completely chaotic and directionless sinking billions into Pink, Taligent, OpenDoc, CHRP and other doomed initiatives. Jobs didn't need to leave Apple to fix himself. He left Apple because he disagreed with everyone (in hindsight: probably rightfully so) and he couldn't fire them. When he returned, he had the authority to fire everyone he disliked (and he did). As for the comparison to Larry Page – I don't think they were as similar as the article implies. Jobs – for better and worse – was his own special brand of crazy.

pmelendez 13y ago
>"Second: Was Apple really right to fire Jobs? In his first 7 years at Apple, Jobs oversaw (not designed or engineered) the only successful product lines in Apple's first 20 years" I would argue that Jobs had any influence in the Apple II whatsoever, in fact according to Wozniak in iWoz, Jobs attempts to influence the Apple II originated the only fights the two of them ever had. On the other hand, Apple II was originating the vast majority of the revenue and in comparison the original mac had a very limited success.
- gdubs 13y ago

yeukhon 13y ago

This is a great biography of Larry Page. Though there are some misreport facts and one-sided opinjon, the article captures my pulse. Only a few lengthy articles could ever retain my full attention till the end. In particular the whole "Larry as a visionary", "Larry is socially awkward", "Larry is not traditional" makes me feel more welcome in this world. I too am that kind of person (it is up for future to judge whether I am visionary :)). But this is the exact article I need to pursue my dream of making things "happening". If you want to carry out your vision, you need to delegate. You need to set the tone "this is what we do, and we do this this way." Ideas just happen to come to us every minute but we are too caught up in fighting the current. That's the big Google problem: it is too huge too slow too bureaucratic to get things done, even after Larry is back as CEO. This is why I am more leading toward startup environment (I am about to graduate soon), this is why people leave big corporations. I wasn't appreicating why Google was moving in so many directions. But it is true. I long know Google is outside my tech tweets. Not enough hype for me to notice until special events. Nothing exciting. I hope one day they realize simplicity is the key (please fix your UX). Outside of privacy and security worries, I believe Google does have the collective power and sum to make a life-dependent integrated platform. It is up to Google executives to decide whether they will make such platform as open as possible, as friendly as possible, to both end users, sales and engineers. I truly envy him being a genius and intelligent at making things. I hope one day I too will be recognized. Enough said, there is always an opportunity for everything. Only I can make that happen.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

blazespin 13y ago

And this is how a child tries to describe how his parent does his job.

EGreg 13y ago

That's quite a long story. This was my reaction: http://twitter.com/GregMozart http://twitter.com/GregMozart The last 4-5 tweets

skkbits 13y ago

Larry is truly amazing and no question about that. To me though, this comes as less surprise. His contributions can certainly be attributed to few not so well known facts. 1. Highly educated parents. His father has Ph.D. and is considered pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence ( source : wikipedia) 2. Mother : Comp. Science professor 3. His brother Carl Page Jr. sold company called eGroups to Yahoo!. So when you consider all this facts together, with kind of upbringing he had it less surprise that he followed the suit and created search engine. I bet this sort of environment must have played crucial role when he went for VC capital. If you have read crossing the chasm it talks about how a company with few hundered people can go mainstream. Larry leveraged all his background, upbringing and knowledge he had to create one of great software product.

vijayboyapati 13y ago

The one interaction I had with Larry that I remember was when we were moving from the old Google building (the "googleplex") to a much larger building in the old Silicon Graphics campus. I went there on a Sunday night to check out my desk and where I would be sitting and I ran into Larry (there was no one else around). He gave me a tour of the building and we walked up to a window where we could see the whole campus, with several other huge buildings. I asked him "how on earth are we going to fill this building?", which could have held several times the size of the company at the time, and he pointed at the other buildings and said we're going to fill all of them. Holy f*ck, I thought.

dosh 13y ago

This is a really helpful article to learn about the early days of Google and the challenges in scaling your organization. Thanks for sharing.