Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain [Hardcover]

Richard L. Brandt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2009

An in-depth look at the strategies of Google's shockingly successful founders

You've used their products. You've heard about their skyrocketing wealth and "don't be evil" business motto. But how much do you really know about Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin?

Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain skips past the general Google story and focuses on what really drives these men and where they will take Google in the future. Richard L. Brandt shows the company as the brainchild of two brilliant but individual men and looks at Google's business decisions in light of its founders' ambitions and beliefs.

Larry is the main strategist, with business acumen and practical drive, while Sergey is the primary technologist and idealist, with brilliant ideas and strong moral positions. But they work closely together, almost like complementary halves of a single brain. Larry is more socially awkward and rarely volunteers to answer questions. Sergey is more poised but is also shy with outsiders.

Through interviews with current and former employees, competitors, partners, and senior Google management, plus conversations with the founders themselves, Brandt demystifies the secret society that is Google, as well as clarifying a number of misconceptions.

For instance, it may seem more and more that Google wants to be something other than a search company as it expands into e-mail, cell phones, Web browsers, wiki information sites, social networks, and photo editing. But actually, Larry and Sergey just define search a little differently from everyone else. They also like to act as catalysts for change in industries (such as telecommunications) that affect their business.

Theoretically, any of half a dozen competitors could have gotten where Google is today. But in reality, none of them could have been Google, because they didn't have Larry and Sergey.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Author and technology journalist Brandt provides an in-depth look at famously brainy Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, whose radically positive "do no evil" corporate philosophy has achieved astounding success. Though competitors and copyright lawyers may not trust them, one insider goes so far as to say, "never once... have they failed to make the correct moral decision." Brandt follows the genesis of Google during the duo's Stanford years through their impressive entrepreneurial trajectory to current operations. Hiring and managing policies are trusting and aspirant; they look for employees with "a slight disdain for the impossible," and give their engineers and scientists a day a week to work on their own ideas. One chapter focuses on a joint project between Google Book Search and Oxford University to digitize a collection of more than one million 19th century books, concluding that "there is logic behind most of the company's... diversification. Put at the top of the list 'Because they can.'" In this must-read for anyone who deals seriously with cyberspace, Brandt has a remarkable profile in present-day innovation and potential.

Review

"Author and technology journalist Brandt provides an in-depth look at famously brainy Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, whose radically positive "do no evil" corporate philosophy has achieved astounding success. Though competitors and copyright lawyers may not trust them, one insder goes so far as to say, "never once...[have] they failed to make the correct moral decision." Brandt follows the genesis of Google during the duo's Stanford years through their impressive entrepreneurial trajectory to current operations. Hiring and managing policies are trusting and aspirant; they look for employees with a "slight disdain for the impossible", and give their engineers and scientists a day a week to work on their own ideas. One chapter focuses on a joint project between Googel Book Search and Oxford University to digitize a collection of more than one million 19th century books, concluding that "there is logic behind most of the company's...diversification. Put at the top of the list 'Because they can.'" In this must-read for anyone who deals seriously with cyberspace, Brandt has a remarkable profile in present-day innovation and potential."
-Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; First Printing edition (September 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159184276X
• ISBN-13: 978-1591842767
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #981,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I have over 20 years' experience writing about science, technology and business, currently a freelance journalist and book author. My most recent book is "One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com (Portfolio/Penguin, October 27, 2011.) It's the story of how Jeff Bezos got started, his impact on retailers, and what he's like as an entrepreneur and a manager (tough!) I'm also author of "Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain" (Portfolio/Penguin, 2009) which was released in paperback as "The Google Guys: Inside the Brilliant Minds of Larry Page and Sergey Brin." (Do you know how few people recognize the names "Larry and Sergey" without additional info? We found out.) I'm also co-author of "Capital Instincts: Life as an Entrepreneur, Financier and Athlete" (John Wiley & Sons, 2003.)

Having written two books in which the subjects would not give me interviews (interesting that the founder of a book-selling site does not give interviews for books) and one book in which the subject had too much control over the manuscript, my next book will be one in which I have direct access to the subject AND complete control over the content.

Not that it's impossible to write a biography without the cooperation of the subject -- it just takes a lot of research and interviews with people who know him or her well -- but I want to be able to really dig into the psyche of the subject. I'd like to ask Jeff Bezos, for example, why he never gives interviews any more unless he hits the talk shows with a product to sell, like a movie star hawking his new picture. I'd like to draw Larry and Sergey into a thoughtful discussion of privacy issues, their deep thoughts on the importance of Web search engines with honest results and how they maintain it.

Executives at public companies whose policies create controversy should get out into the world and explain themselves. They shape our society and affect our lives. I mean, come on! I've interviewed Bill Gates, Andy Grove, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, scientists and top academics extensively over the years, and I don't do hatchet jobs.

Still, the book of which I'm most proud is "The Google Guys." I spent four years on it, off and on, most often on. One blogger claimed it was a hagiography, but that's just because I refuse to attack Larry and Sergey simply because that's a popular thing to do these days. I stand behind everything in the book. Most of the reviews were terrific.

Before the internet (temporarily) destroyed the business of journalism, I was editor-in-chief and columnist for technology/business magazine Upside from 1995 to 2001. From 1981 to 1995 I was a technology correspondent for Business Week Magazine. My freelance articles have appeared in CNBC.com, L'Express, Science magazine, Technology Review, Science/Business magazine, Stanford magazine and Working Woman. The Wall Street Journal did an excerpt of "One Click."

My awards include a National Magazine Award, Deadline Club Award; Washington Monthly Award; Atlantic Monthly Award; Computer Press Association Award; Acer/Boston Computer Museum Awards; I was a Knight Science and Technology Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991, and a Science Journalism Fellow from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1981. I've been a speaker on programs for BBC, CNN, NPR and industry events.

I studied engineering and journalism at the University of Delaware, received a BA in biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and studied mathematics at Harvey Mudd college.

I live in San Francisco with my wife and daughter, dog and two cats. My hobbies include carpentry, ocean kayaking, scuba diving, gardening and running. I re-roofed my own house.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy Read, Interesting Material, November 1, 2009

By 

Tom Gee (Apex, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain (Hardcover)

This book was fascinating in that it is an unauthorized documentary of the thought processes of the Google founders and their adult supervision, CEO Schmidt. The author does a comprehensive job of analyzing each decision made by "the Google Guys" and how it fits into the overall strategy of the company. These guys come off as being brilliant because they more often than not get it right. It takes other companies weeks, months or maybe never to realize that what Larry and Sergey are doing is the right way to monetize something if it's possible. From their early rejection of paid search placement that was not rejected by the clueless at AOL (AOL actually tried it thus lowering revenues) to their clear vision that Google is a search company (something that Yahoo lost along the way), the guys consistently get it right. It's not that they were correct on every single product, but they are smart and figure this stuff out very early on. This book is a homage to the brilliance of the Google founders. The Google guys correctly have high regard for engineering and engineers and much lower "tolerance" for most other professionals. Google puts money into engineering and shuns advertising which is why their company leads the pack. While not an advice book, any company can lead in their field if they only applied some of the principles and thought processes of the Google Guys.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The "roadrunners" of Silicon Valley, October 30, 2009

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain (Hardcover)

This is one of the volumes in the "Inside [Someone's] Brain" series published by Portfolio, a division of the Penguin Group. Although each volume has a different author, the primary objective of all of them seems to be the same: To explain the multiple of mindsets that prominent business thinkers such Peter Drucker, Steve Jobs, Rupert Murdoch, Barack Obama, and in this instance, Larry Page and Sergey Brin possess. The reader is also provided with substantial biographical information as well as selections from their published works (if any) and correspondence as well as comments by those who know them best. If and when possible, there are also interviews during which important insights are frequently revealed.

The title of my review refers to observations that Richard Brandt shares on Pages 175 and 176 when discussing Google's supernetwork and its significance (and potential vulnerability) as a competitive advantage. "Anyone who uses an application from Google is tapping into this incredible store of computing power. This is the main reason Google's competitors have such a hard time matching the company's capabilities. And it allows Google to enter any business that Larry, Sergey, or their ambitious team of computer scientists find interesting...Google is changing the rules of business, from news delivery to PC computing to books to watching video...And business that deals in the collection and dissemination of information is in danger of having its infrastructure collapse its feet like Wile E. Coyote standing on an overhanging cliff. Larry and Sergey move like roadrunners, charging ahead with their visionary plans, saying nothing about where they're headed, or why. There's a good reason for that. They often don't know where they're going until they get there."

Brandt probably had about as much access as could be obtained to Page and Brin, to their past and current Google associates, and to the shared journey that Page and Brin took from when they first met at Stanford until Brandt provided the manuscript of this book to his publisher.

These are among the questions I was most eager to have answered...and Brandt does so while carefully examining (no small feat) the interdependence that continues to guide and inform, indeed drive the collaborative efforts of Page and Brin.

1. What do they share in common? How are they significantly different?
2. How and why have they worked so effectively together for so many years?
3. What do their respective family backgrounds reveal about their values?
4. What were their expectations when Google was launched in December of 1998?
5. How has it since then become a media giant?
6. When and why was Eric Schmidt hired to become Google's CEO?
7. What is his division of authority and responsibility with Page and Brin?
8. To what extent (if any) have Page and Brin changed in terms of their ambitions for Google?
9. What are the most serious challenges that Google now faces?
10. How will it probably respond to them?

While working my way through Brandt's lively and eloquent narrative, I highlighted more than one hundred brief passages and now provide a representative selection that, hopefully, will suggest the thrust and flavor of his thinking and writing.

"It seems today that it was always inevitable that Larry and Sergey would turn their search engine into a company. But that was not the case. `Larry has a million ideas,' says his early partner Craig Silverstein. `If he didn't make a company out of this, he'd be happy to make it out of something else later. If they had found someone who took their work seriously, and wanted to own it and offered the right price, they would have sold. We didn't find that so we said, `OK, we'll do it ourselves.' In 1998, they began looking for investors to get them started." (Page 48)

"Computer scientists and engineers are infected with the desire to do something incredible, the disease propagated by Larry and Sergey. Sergey has emphasized this fact, noting that it's especially important as the stock retreats. `This is where you want to be sure you are hiring employees because they love to work here, they love to create things, and they're not here primarily for the money,' he says. `Although when they do create something valuable, you want to reward them. That's when these things really pay off.'" (Pages 55-56)

"It is now extraordinarily difficult for any competitor to catch up to the infrastructure and deign of Google's advertising system. Google had too much of a head start and never stops refining and advancing its system. The system was obviously doing something right and filling an unmet need; Google has captured the overwhelming share of all revenue on the Internet, and regulators and competitors are warning that it has become an Internet advertising monopoly." Page 105)

"Larry and Sergey see their task as nothing less than creating a new Hellenistic Age. `We did not think necessarily we could make money' off Book Search, says Sergey. `We just feel this is part of the core mission. There is fantastic information in books. Often when I do a search, what is in a book is miles ahead of what I find on a Web site.'" (Page 167)

"Everyone likes to speculate, but there's no telling where Larry and Sergey will take their company next. There's one thing that's certain: they are going to be breaking rules, pissing people off, and trying to make the world a better place for decades to come. Love them or despise them, everyone must contend with them. They are having greater impacts on the business world and on people's lifestyles than any other business executives in the world. Their hearts are in the right place, even if their heads are sometimes not." (Page 227)

Of all the volumes in the "Inside [Someone's] Brain" series, I think this one provides more and better information about its subject than do any of the others. Not only does Richard Brandt explore (to the extent anyone can) the two minds that have created what Google has become thus far; in addition, he has examined the global as well as historical context within which that process of creation occurred. Bravo!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written, well reported, October 12, 2009

By 

Joan Hamilton (Menlo Park, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain (Hardcover)

Richard Brandt's use of vignettes drawing parallels to the Great Library of Alexandria created by Ptolemy I is a nice device for humanizing the scope and desires of much of what's afoot at Google, "the de facto head librarian of the world's information." Don't be put off by the "brain" construct of the title. This book is well written, well organized and is grounded in serious and intelligent reporting about what Sergey Brin and Larry Page actually do, not any sort of imagining of what they must be thinking. This book leaps past the wealth factor and the gourmet kitchens to offer a fascinating run-down of how Google is using massive, massive scale to change the world.