In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives [Hardcover]

 

 

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Ever since its inception, and in many cases even before it became incorporated, Google has been referred to mainly in the superlatives. The briskness with which it became the dominant player in online search, the sheer size of its operations and the infrastructure, the incredibly short time within which it became one of the largest companies in terms of market capitalization - all of these are the stuff of legends. It is unsurprising then that Google would attract a high level of media attention, and there are literally hundreds of articles written about it every day. (I know this because I just did a quick search for Google in Google News.) Over the years there has also been no shortage of books on Google. However, in terms of the depth and breadth of its research, as well as the amount of first-hand information that it provides, Steven Levy's "In The Plex" stands in a category of its own.

In the minds of its founders and most of the early employees, Google is first and foremost a technology company. The business model of online advertising came about almost as an afterthought, and one continuously gets the sense that its purpose is to pay the bills so that Google geeks can have a free reign in pursuing their latest techie interest. This attitude is an integral part of Google's DNA, and any book that aims to provide the reader with a better sense of what Google is all about needs to get this point across. Unfortunately, there have been several books in recent years that were more concerned with all the intangible aspects of life in the age of Google and had almost completely missed this point. "In The Plex," I am happy to say, did not fall in that trap. Steven Levy comes across as an extremely competent and well-informed technology journalist who clearly relishes the opportunity to write about all the intricacies of Google's engineering prowess. In this respect as well, this is a quintessentially Google book. If Google were a person, this is probably what its autobiography would look like. Levy, who currently works for Wired magazine, literally embedded himself deep within Google and over the course of two years or so interviewed hundreds of Google employees. The result is a very comprehensive book on almost all aspects of Google's technology and business.

The book is very informative, probably more so than all the other books on Google out there combined. Even some of the already widely familiar stories about Google's origins and early years have been given new details. The book is also remarkable in that it provides a lot of information on some very specific technical details and innovation that Google has accomplished over the years. Granted, much of it is many years, or even over a decade, old, but for the longest time Google has been extremely cagey about revealing any of that information to the wider audience. The fact that most of the information in this book has been obtained directly from Googlers, including the notoriously secretive founding duo, may signal that Google has come to the point where it has become confident in its own strength and comfortable with the idea that revealing certain information about itself will not jeopardize its business model.

I relished the opportunity to find out more about some of the Google's early "magical" features and projects. For instance, even though I had been relying on it for years, I finally understand how Google's famous spell-checker works. The reader can also learn more about the early days of Google's book scanning technology, the development of its massive data centers, the rise and fall of Google video, and several other Google projects and initiatives that have been undertaken over the years. All the stories are to the point and are not laden with techie jargon.

The part of the book that I liked the most was the one that dealt with Google's abortive efforts to gain a foothold in China. China's government is notorious for its online censorship and the very restrictive measures that it used when dealing with foreign companies on its soil. Nonetheless, it was very hard for Google to forgo the world's second largest economy (third at the time) and the world's most populous nation with well over billion and a half of inhabitants. Google tried to compromise and work out some sort of rapprochement with the Chinese government, but this attitude was so antithetical to almost all of Google's core beliefs and business practices, that it was doomed from the get-go. One person that was particularly uncomfortable with the whole situation was Sergey Brin, who immigrated with his family to the United States from Soviet Union when he was just six years old. His family's experience with totalitarian regime shaped his thinking, and it proved decisive in the long run. What finally triggered Google's pullout from China was a Chinese government's hacking into Google Chine's servers and accessing of some highly classified information. The showdown with China reads almost like a spy thriller, and it highlights all the complex interconnections between business, technology, policy and politics that will dominate life in the twenty-first century.

This book's laser-like focus on Google is actually one of its weaknesses. Many of Google's main rivals are mentioned, but mostly just in passing. There is also very little discussion of Google within the larger online economy. All of this has an effect that it is sometimes hard to put many of the interesting facts and stories in this book within a larger context. Another one of the book's weaknesses is the lack of critical assessment and analysis of various products, projects, policy decisions, and inevitable failures. The author appears a bit too eager to present Google's version; any criticism remains of the mildest variety. One gets a sense that this book was thoroughly vetted by Google's PR department. I guess that is the price one has to pay for having unprecedented access to Google's own internal information. However, for the most part it was worth it.

One thing that did surprise me with this book was the very limited attention that it gave to some of the most headline-grabbing issues that currently grip Google: Android OS and social networking. Android is mentioned in one of the earlier chapters, but only in terms of its early development and the fallout that it engendered with Google's relations with Apple. Since those early days Android has become a major player in its own right, a very viable alternative to iPhone, and very likely the dominant mobile operating system in the near future. And as was hinted at one point in the book, it also brings in very healthy revenue. Social networking fares even worse than Android. It has been relegated to the epilogue, even though companies like Facebook and Twitter are threatening the very model of the web that is at the core of all of Google's services.

CONCLUSION

This is by far the most thorough and informative book on Google that is currently available. If you are interested in learning more about Google and are going to use just one source then this book should be it. It is well written, interesting, and free of puff pieces. It has a few shortcomings, but overall they are insignificant compared to the amount of material that one can glean from it.

In the late 90's a young Larry Page, enrolled at Stanford in Computer Science, needed a subject for his Phd dissertation. His was a razor sharp engineering mind, but he was in need of something big, something worthy of his geek brain. They say technology lies on the edge of complexity, and thus, in those days, the most complex thing was the Internet, just a few years from launching into the mainstream. The web was growing at an amazing rate, truly a worth challenge for Page. That Stanford project became Google (not Googol), and today, the web is sprawling more than it ever has, making a Search engine, on the face of it, worth more than it ever was. Amidst infinite complexity, Google's algorithm has incredible value precisely because the world, and the web, is incredibly complex.

The story of Google turns out to be a nice little summary of the last 15 or so years of Computing, picking up right about the time our last gen Silicon Valley Royals (those being Steve Jobs and Bill Gates) buried the hatchet (that story, by the way, is depicted nicely in the great 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' TV Movie by Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall, respectively).

So why read a book about Google anyway? Well the truth is, most people won't. Most people will find this stuff incredibly dry. Everyone wants a Google business card, but few of us actually want to actually work at Google and stay up for 14 hours discussing search algorithms, Gmail Spambots and Google Streetview. Engineers, however, love this stuff. The simple act of saying, 'This is hard, it's never been done before, it's probably impossible' is the equivalent of telling Schwarzenegger in the late 70's that he couldn't pick up a huge boulder. He's going to pick that rock up or die trying.

The other thing Engineers like is money. It turns out that if you go back to Apple in the 80's, Microsoft in the 90's, and Google in the 2000's (and now Facebook in the 2010's), Engineers go wherever the IPO tells them to go. And thus we find ourselves in an interesting position: Google has lost some of its smartest people, and Facebook is the coolest kid on the block. Despite all the bad press, Mark Zuckerberg (who famously had more Facebook plaintiffs than Friends) is the most popular kid on Google Plus (Google's Facebook wannabe).

But before we get into that, let's take a step back and try to understand what really drives this company: Google was never about making money. In fact, the founders taunted the business guys, mostly because they weren't smart enough to be Engineers. To be an MBA with no Engineering experience at Google is to be, in a way, a second class citizen. And yet Google gets richer and richer, almost as if to say, 'We can do this stuff without even trying. What do we need you for?'

So how does Google make money? By saving the logs of everything everybody on the Internet searches for, they can track incredibly detailed patterns of behaviour (like the way our brains have muscle memory and habits). If Google understands what you want, maybe Google can anticipate what you're looking for. And thus, perhaps they could actually give you an ad that you didn't hate. This is the point. You're not supposed to hate Google Ads. You're supposed to like them. And for that, Advertisers pay big money. Ideally, it's a win-win. If an advertiser starts talking to you about something you want, they're not annoying; they're actually useful.

Here's where it gets really interesting: you may have heard that Google's mission is to organize the world's information. As such, it's inextricably tied to the growth of the Web. And thus, Google will do anything that promotes Web usage. This is why almost all Google services are free.

Who could argue with this great business model? You take something that people are looking for, and give it to them for free. They never pay anything (like TV commercials), and we get big businesses to foot the bill. But Google does have its critics, namely Privacy advocates. Google often responds to criticism by calling upon the Invisible hand of the market: 'If we do something wrong, people will tell us, and they'll stop using our stuff, and thus, the product will fail.' It's the kind of undeniable and irrefutable logic that almost suggests the Governments step away from all consumer protection. There's just one problem: a similar defence could be used for Drug Dealers. After all, the addicts keep coming back, they obviously like the product right? (What's the emoticon for sarcasm again?)

And what's Google's drug in this analogy? Free (as in Beer). By getting the users hooked on free, they can pull in the advertisers. And it turns out, as long as you have lots of white space (Google's most preferred design language. Ahem.) you can put ads there. And if you suggest Google is exploiting people, they will respond that they are merely anticipating what their users are looking for and suggesting solutions. We users should be so lucky.

Don't think of Google as a Search Engine, or a business; think of Google as a Brain. And where is that brain? Strewn around the world in Google's top secret Data Centres of course, where it holds indexes of everything on the Web, with its own fibers engineered to bring you the fastest results it possibly can. Like a man made Cerebral cortex connected to the worlds most efficient and genetically perfect spinal cord. Zero Downtime, Unlimited Memory and Super-Speed.

You see, human brains are great, but they have this little problem of wearing down and expiring every 80 or so years.

So if you're going to build a mechianical brain that can live forever, first you have to teach it stuff (Indexing the world's Information), and you have to give it a great memory (aforementioned Data Centers). As the brain becomes more intelligent, soon you'll want it to learn to speak (Google Translate) and develop feelings and social skills, which brings us back to Google+, Google's 'Facebook-killer'.

So Social turns out to be the next phase in building a brain. Ironically, such technology only helps Google anticipate the users' wants and needs, feeding them better ads. Your friends know you.. they know what you like. That's why Apple integrated something called Ping into iTunes.. they figured your friends knew what kind of music you like better than a computer algorithm (previously known as iTunes Genius).

And Mark Zuckerberg figures your friends who actually know you know what kind of cola you drink, what kind of shoes you like, better than some computer. Your friends have actual brains. They're humans. As Business Guru Tom Peters famously said, the soft stuff is the hard stuff.

The next level of search will come full circle, riding on the back of actual humans who know you. After all the fiber-optic cables have been laid and multi-million dollar data centres have been built, Zuckerberg, Brin and Page are the guys at the party, asking your friends what you want for your birthday, then handing you a brightly coloured package. As you tear off the wrapping paper, you can't believe it: 'Wow! This is perfect! How did you know I was looking for a new Tennis Racquet? I love it!'

I guess some questions are better left unanswered. ;)

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This book really helps you understand how Google became the company it is today. It gives you a great analysis of their way of doing things and why they have been successful in areas where others have failed. It give us an insight into where Google is heading in the future. Exciting stuff!

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