The Google Guys Read Free

the technology that mattered. Larry and Sergey have been successful because they have completely rethought the process of catching mice. Not surprisingly, they’re upsetting a lot of business fat cats in the process.
    Their business model is completely transforming modern industries, including computer hardware and software, telecommunications, publishing, broadcasting, and entertainment. It is changing cultures and political systems. They have commercialized the Internet and started an Information Revolution the way Thomas Edison spurred the Industrial Revolution by harnessing electricity and saying, “Let there be lightbulbs.”
    But revolutions do not come easily. They arrive like an invading army, pillaging industries in their path. One group’s revolutionary is another’s corporate terrorist. Google’s fans see it as a corporate version of Thomas Jefferson, or a freedom fighter trying to spring dissidents from a Gulag work farm. Its enemies think of it more like Joseph Stalin, and are mobilizing to attack Google like capitalist idealists fighting the Red Menace. Competitors, Hollywood executives, book publishers, copyright holders, privacy advocates, civil rights activists, and government regulators are menaced by Google’s Leonid Brezhnev–like secrecy and enormous power.

Google Has Unique Strengths
    Google has two enormous strengths, neither of which is appreciated with nearly the awe it deserves. They have little to do with software, and almost everything to do with an Internetdominated culture and unparalleled computer power, both homegrown.
    Google’s success made it inevitable that it would become the most controversial company that does not currently have top executives facing criminal prosecution over creative accounting practices. Google’s view of what’s evil and what is not gets it into a lot of trouble.
    Much of the ire directed at Google is due to corporate resistance to the massive changes Google is thrusting upon the business world. Established companies, accustomed to a century of doing business in a certain way, are understandably confused by the rapid changes, and afraid of them. Google is the obvious target of anyone trying to stem the inevitable sea change in business. In the long run, fighting that change is akin to building a sandbar to try to hold back the coming tide. But that doesn’t stop them from trying.
    Larry and Sergey are wickedly clever. They break the mold. They challenge old industries and make a lot of enemies. They’re ruthless businessmen. Most of all, they’re idealists, believers in the power of the Internet to make the world a better place.
    They have a lot of fans and have been thrust onto the world stage. Larry and Sergey have become friends with Al Gore, Richard Branson, and San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, and they’re huge fans of Barack Obama. Mayor Newsom is one of the people greatly impressed with Larry and Sergey and what they’ve accomplished. “Google is a phenomenon the likes of which you rarely see in a lifetime,” he told me recently. “I just love these guys. They feel a profound responsibility to deliver great things because they’re capable of it. They want to have a life worth living. That’s what’s made them such a phenomenal success today.”
    They’re not infallible, and they’re not saints. They make mistakes and happily drive competitors out of business. They have, at different times, irritated their investors, their CEO, Wall Street, and business partners. Competitors say they have created a monopoly, with all the power and danger that this brings. That problem is exacerbated by the fact that they operate with almost paranoid secrecy, and have mostly retreated from the public spotlight. They rarely give interviews and have an almost mystically enigmatic reputation second only to that of Steve Jobs. Unlike Jobs, however, they’re shy and awkward around