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Douglas Edwards

I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 Paperback – Bargain Price, April 3, 2012

by Douglas Edwards (Author)

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“An exciting story [that] shines light on the inner workings of the fledgling Google and on the personalities of its founders.”—The Daily Beast

In its infancy, Google embraced extremes—endless days fueled by unlimited free food, nonstop data-based debates, and blood-letting hockey games. The company’s fresh-from-grad-school leaders sought more than old notions of success; they wanted to make all the information in the world available to everyone—instantly. Google, like the Big Bang, was a singularity—an explosive release of raw intelligence and unequaled creative energy—and while others have described what Google accomplished, no one has explained how it felt to be a part of it. Until now.

As employee number 59, Douglas Edwards was a key part of Google’s earliest days. Experience the unnerving mix of camaraderie and competition as Larry Page and Sergey Brin create a famously nonhierarchical structure, fight against conventional wisdom, and race to implement myriad new features while coolly burying broken ideas. I’m Feeling Lucky captures the self-created culture of the world’s most transformative corporation and offers unique access to the emotions experienced by those who virtually overnight built one of the world’s best-known brands.

“Edwards does an excellent job of telling his story with a fun, outsider-insider voice. The writing is sharp.”—Boston Globe

“An affectionate, compulsively readable recounting of the early years of Google.”—Publishers Weekly

Print length

432 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Mariner Books
Publication date

April 3, 2012
Dimensions

5.52 x 1.08 x 8.28 inches
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Editorial Reviews

Review

I’m Feeling Lucky is funny, revealing, and instructive, with an insider’s perspective I hadn’t seen anywhere before. I thought I had followed the Google story closely, but I realized how much I’d missed after reading—and enjoying—this book." —James Fallows, author of Postcards from Tomorrow Square

"Douglas Edwards is indeed lucky, sort of an accidental millionaire, a reluctant bystander in a sea of computer geniuses who changed the world. This is a rare look at what happened inside the building of the most important company of our time."—Seth Godin, author of Linchpin
"This is the first Google book told from the inside out. The teller is an ex-employee who joined Google early and who treats readers to vivid inside stories of what life was like before Google became a verb. Douglas Edwards recounts Google's stumble and rise with verve and humor and a generosity of spirit. He kept me turning the pages of this engrossing tale." —Ken Auletta, author of Googled: The End of the World as We Know It

About the Author

DOUG EDWARDS was the director of consumer marketing and brand management at Google from 1999 to 2005 and was responsible for setting the tone and direction of the company’s communications with its users. Prior to joining Google, Edwards was the online brand group manager for the San Jose Mercury News, where he conceived and led development of the technology news site siliconvalley.com.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B009F7CVP6
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books; Reprint edition (April 3, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.52 x 1.08 x 8.28 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,829,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,830 in Computers & Technology Industry
- #4,628 in Company Business Profiles (Books)
- #7,245 in Business Professional's Biographies

Customer Reviews:
233 ratings

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Douglas Edwards

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From 1999 to 2005 I was director of consumer marketing and brand management for Google. Before that I was online brand manager for the San Jose Mercury News, communications director for KQED FM in San Francisco, an ad agency copywriter, an admission officer for Brown University, and the Novosibirsk correspondent for the public radio program Marketplace. During that last gig, I got involved in a drunken Saturday night brawl at a mafia-owned bar, had dinner at the home of the Novokuznetsk KGB chief and almost died a mile underground in a coal mine. None of that made it into this book however.

Customer reviews

5 star		48%
4 star		27%
3 star		19%
2 star		4%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Gadgetry Guy

Haha, see what the author did there, while naming his book?

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2017

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UPDATE: After giving this book another chance by suffering through the first few chapters of "Oh golly gosh" sentiment, I'm glad I did. The writing style of the initial chapters really irritated me to the point of abandoning this book with a two-star rating. But after sticking with it a little longer, I'm glad I did - this book is an incredibly fascinating and well-written look at how Google evolved through various phases of maturity, even while being haltered to the idefatigable egos of Larry and Sergey.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: If I have to read, one more time, about how this old guy thought Sergey Brin and Larry Page would look up to his erudite wisdom, I'm gonna lose my spit. I get it, the author was extremely proud about how valuable he thought his wisdom would be, and he was wrong. That said, I stopped reading the book fairly early because the writing style just really irritated me. I'm going to try to return to this book again later, and will update this review if I find anything of value. But until then, maybe you can Google for stories instead.

4 people found this helpful

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Rocky Sunico

An Inside Perspective On Google's Greater Mission

Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2011

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This isn't just some factual account of events in Google's history. After all, Doug has been known as "the voice of Google" given his involvement in most of Google's user interactions and communications. Thus the book is written in that particular voice - a narrative that is able to address even the most technical concerns related while still making it approachable to the average user. After all, Doug is a marketing guy at heart and never claimed to be an engineer. Some have found the language to be too simplistic at times, but I found it vibrant and refreshing in tone and thus a pleasure to read even when discussing the more stressful situations Doug had to deal with.

Thus the book flows along two lines. On the one hand, it provides a striking inside look at Google's early history including milestone events such as their first search deal with AOL and the development of AdWords. But at the same time it's really just the tale of a marketing guy trying to redefine the job based on the technically-driven and data-obsessed engineers that were fundamental to growing Google to the company that it is today.

The book has certainly given me a lot to think about in terms of both my own marketing job and Google as a company. While Doug makes sure to tell all sides of the story and not just the warm and fuzzy stuff, he does seem to have a particular slant here - one last message as Google's voice that he has to deliver. If anything, this feels like Doug's last message to us users - an attempt to explain how Google operates at its core and thus presents a different view of the company given the big decisions it makes that get splashed all over the news. Google isn't quite the information monster and privacy villain that many present it to be. But it is moving solely to the beat of its own drum and its own concept of what they feel is in the best interests of the user.

At the same time, it's an amazing exploration of marketing and how the old concepts may not quite work in the increasingly product-aligned world that we live in. Branding goes beyond just thinking of the company as a whole but building images and ideas around individual product lines, especially in a tech world.

2 people found this helpful

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Mark Merryfield

Hi ho it's of to work I go

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2012

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This a very good look at this technology in its early years. We get a inside view at the conflicts, successes , strategies , and competitive landscape that they had to confront. The pace of change is quite breathtaking and means everyone is working all the time. There is some effort to address this issue of being at work all the time with out meaningfull time off and how that affects the authors personal relationships. We are told that there is a price to pay for the all encompassing work schedule. This is the confession to wife, children and family that work comes first. Many careers are like that and it takes some major juggling to make it work for the author and his family.

I thought the comparsison and contrast of his previous employment in less stressfully environment was insightfully. Older established companies he had worked for we're not at the cutting edge of technology and were losing the race . They had grown complacent and falling further behind these juggernauts. But he did get two weeks paid vacation and holidays off to be with the family. We don't get a clear answer on where the balance comes in between work and play.

Gourmet food keeps the troops happy and many other perks makes the long hours more palitable. Giving employees time to work on there on projects is a stroke of genius. It gets workers to buy more into the bigger goals of the firm and there own projects as well.

This is a worthwhile read of the life and times of one of the original employees.

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K. Newcomer

Google Myself

Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2011

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I was hoping for a little more insight on the company and wanted to be taken on the ride of start up to billion dollar company. The author is a good writer so the book does flow nicely, but lacks any real in depth stories about the company and how it grew. I could tell right away, and not surprisingly, the author was not able to get into fine details, nor does he know everything that went on in the company (he is 55, not 1-10).

I enjoyed the chapters toward the end "The Sell of a new Machine, "Don't Let Marketing Drive", and "Mistakes we Made". These chapters offered some good information that some will certainly find helpful as the author takes you through some of the thought processes and setting up some functions.

My favorite of the "Ten Things We've Found to be True":
1) Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2) It's best to do one thing really, really well.
3) There's always more information out there.
4) The need for information crosses all borders.
5) You don't need a suit to be serious.

Silicon Valley start ups are still an exciting and foreign word to many, so keep learning and exploring. This book does provide some good insight on working at one of the best on the web.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

tallmanbaby

well worth sticking with

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 9, 2014

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You would have to be very interested in the early days of Google, the search giant, to know who Douglas Edwards is. Apparently he looks just like Skinner from The X-Files, and he led the distinctly off centre and goofy Google version of PR and engaging with the wider world. His story runs up to when Google went public, so it goes from 1999 to 2005. Accordingly some of this is ancient history, but interesting nonetheless. As a non-techie Edwards does a more than decent job of explaining the issues and technology in language that anyone could understand. He is clearly not your typical PR person either, it is difficult to think of a worse title than the one that he chose for this book.

This is certainly not hugely critical of Google, or the people there, nor is it just a puff piece singing their praises. It is a very personal view of his life there, and it would seem that for those six years he had very little life at all outwith Google. It does not offer a huge insight into the people there, Edwards writes about himself a lot, but apart from working at Google there does not seem to be anything terribly remarkable about him. Perhaps his self effacing, gee shucks, approach was the early Google brand.

If you are interested in the early days of Google, then this is a first rate insider’s account, very well done for the Kindle, and written with a real attention for detail and affection for the subject.

Jim 8888

Fully Vested

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 7, 2011

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Why write a self-effacing book about your relatively ineffectually input into the Google phenomenon? About how your ideas were put down, laughed at and ignored while you had sleepless nights about just how rubbish your contribution was? Well, because you made one good decision. You bought your Google share options on offer at twenty cents each. Today, as I write, each of those options are worth five hundred and seventy dollars each. Let's say you bough $10,000 worth from the money you borrowed from your folks. Let google do the math. Meanwhile, go and write a book about the insanity of it all. It's not like you'll ever have to work again, is it!?
Still, it's hard to have sour grapes over a bloke who admits he lucked into it all and is happy just to record what it was like to be there. This is a nice easy read about the time and place that was the dot com boom, from one of the very few companies that survived it all to emerge with the spoils. Why Google, and why not Alta Vista, Hotbot, Yahoo and all the others? You won't find the answer here, except maybe in the title. After all, for every failed project Google have launched, and there must be hundreds, they lucked in with one. It's hard to see Google as being lucky, but this book helps you do it.

One person found this helpful

S. P. Kindlen

Lose your self in the flex

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 23, 2012

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The booked flowed along, at the right pace.

The book ends with him leaving and in a away I felt like I was leaving Google with him. Sad not to be in the loop and out on my own.

Putting characters behind those names you see tagged at the end of Google Blog.

In away it really makes you want to work for Google but in another way could you take the stress of working such a company with the cumulative stress of everyone stressing back. The politics sucked as well for our man Dougie.

If Doug had been more into politics would he still be at Google after building his empire to give himself purpose.

I wonder how much he made, does anyone know?

RolyM

Nothing special....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 13, 2016

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The book gives an account of Google growth, politics and personalities in its early days. Little if any technical content. Describes the endless detail, personalities and petty politics around decision-making in Google from the perspective of a mid-level Comms/PR manager. Not a great read I'm afraid! And certainly not 'hilarious' as suggested by the front cover!

One person found this helpful

Mr Lee Rudd

Google's growing pains

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 8, 2013

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Although ancient history - in IT terms - the years covered by this book are the formative period of one of the most successful, and omnipresent, companies of our time. The subjects covered include some good work, some surprisingly naive, but they are always interesting

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