Reviews of 'The Google Story' by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed and 'Tribes' by Seth Godin

Doing it big and doing it your way

The Google Story -  David A. Vise and Mark Malseed

This book, The Google Story, provides a remarkable insight into one of the most influential group of individuals, and it’s a must read for any young innovator and entrepreneur.

David A. Vise and Mark Malseed take us through the key stages in the evolution of this company that started out simply by a desire to download the internet. While the intricate mechanics of how the Google search engine operates and how it evolved is very interesting, what was more appealing was the way Sergey Brin and Larry Page did it their way.

Starting with a theory of ‘counting the number of links to a website’ as a way of ranking website popularity, the duo created a very novel approach to search. After developing a beta version of the tool they pitched their technology to AltaVista who passed on it (unbelievable). They approached Excite and other search engines as well, including Yahoo!, who also passed it over.

The beam of light came from an angel investor who reacted on gut instinct after a short presentation on a mate’s front porch. Investor Andy Bechtolsheim handed Larry Page a $100,000 check and Google Inc was born. Then they got more investment, serious investment, in the form of $25 million from two venture capital companies, Kleiner Perkins and Sequioa Capital. 

The google guys went hard to land a partnership with America Online. They gave key members of the Google team share options. They built the business systems to effectively support a company turning over billions. And they cleverly positioned themselves as a distributor of content rather than the producer.

While they preferred to keep the company private, which was a different approach during the dot.com era, they eventually went public. In doing so they went against the grain of the ‘typical IPO float’ managing the old school US sharemarket mentality. Uniquely google,  the company released a specific number of shares derived on a mathematical term, which tied into the Google story (Google being derived from the googol mathematical term, which means a number equal to 1 followed by 100 zeros and is expressed as 10 to the 100th power).

Then like all those that succeed, came the trademark lawsuits from Geico which they fought off. It’s a classic and a must read for anyone starting out and great insight into what it takes to secure big investment and roll out a innovation after innovation.