“Google It”

Google, the world’s most-used search engine that processes over 3.5 billion online search requests per day, has become an indispensable part of our daily lives. All we see now is how Google is successful and influential, but not the arduous course of its founders’ early stages of developing it. The nonfiction book, “Google It” written by Anna Crowley Redding, explores the true history of Google transforming from a school project to the most popular search engine. Google’s two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, dropped out of Stanford while getting their graduate degrees to proceed with their journey of developing the company. The moment Larry and Sergey first met during the summer of 1995, they started arguing about “anything and everything”, which made their first meeting a disaster. “The only thing the two agreed on was their opinion of the other: In a word? Obnoxious.” What brought them together was the common interests they had and a school assignment in which they would team up months after their first meeting that changed their lives——and ours. At first, they created what used to be known as “BackRub” (not Google), which suddenly became viral around their campus. Larry and Sergey started with hardly any resources, turning the company from only 2 people to a global technology company with more than 174,000 employees. What supported Larry and Sergey was their dreams of organizing all the information in the world.

Notebook pages:

Lesson 3: Tracking Complexity

In this notebook page, I focused on using evidence from the book to identify the theme of the first 100 pages (part 1). During the first part of the book, Larry and Sergey are facing the major issue of not having sufficient resources for the continuously developing company, because of the massive demand for electricity, server space, and internet connection. The quotes mentioned on pages 42 and 21(on the post-it notes) adequately reflect the central idea: Larry and Sergey overcame the roadblocks of having insufficient resources and no support during their entrepreneurial period. 

The coincidence that no research companies (during that time) accepted the deal of buying “BackRub” (the earlier version of Google) for $1 million, led Larry and Sergey to drop out of Stanford and continue their business. It seemed like bad news for Larry and Sergey when none of the big companies accepted their deal, but it motivated them to work harder as the companies (AltaVista, Excite, Yahoo) made it clear that research wasn’t important for the development of their company. This eventually led to the theme statement: Setbacks may lead us to greater success. 

Lesson 4: Reading Strategies for Information + Narrative Texts

On this page, I mainly focused on defining the central ideas in parts of the book. I’ve extracted supporting details from the book to explain the central idea and why it is important. One of the social issues mentioned in this book is anti-Semitism, which brought trouble to Sergey’s family during their time in Russia (they later moved to the U.S.). However, this experience later not only shaped Sergey’s views but also the company’s. 

Larry and Sergey’s innovative mindset prompted them to continue developing more and more features to satisfy the users’ needs. This led their company to great success because they are making great progress even though they are the most successful search engine, which prevents them from getting surpassed by Google’s competitors. As mentioned in the book, “If the company stops improving for a year, it will soon be forgotten by the world.” 

A few examples of the features Google developed (there are lots more):

Lesson 7: Making Connections

In this lesson, I focused on thinking about how parts from “Google It” connect with the big ideas that appear repeatedly throughout the book. For example, one of the topics I identified, innovation, is a keyword that arises throughout the book, and the author frequently reminds the reader that innovation is what led to the accomplishments Google made.

Lesson 8: Descriptive passages

In this page, I found the descriptions of two contrasting environments (Google’s “old” and “new” headquarters). The two different descriptions of the headquarters indicate the progress Google has made from a school project to a global company. The initial headquarters in Susan’s garage (YouTube’s CEO) is the first office that Larry and Sergey had for Google. As “Old, stained turquoise shag carpet” was used to describe some of the furniture in the garage, it made a significant contrast with “three-million-square-foot” and “the Googleplex has pianos, a rock-climbing wall and it’s all free.” These descriptions reflect the arduous and tough environment Larry and Sergey started with, and the comfortable/encouraging environment they established for their employees.

Lesson 9: Cause and Effect

In this page, I focused on the different features Google developed for its users. I came up with the conclusion that the cause of developing these features is the inconvenience people are facing in real life, and Google’s mission of “making the user’s lives better”. However, the cause of coming up with that mission relates back to the topic: innovation. Innovation is what started Google, kept Larry and Sergey to continue developing Google, and made the company keep on finding solutions to the issues people are having. I made two diagrams for two of Google’s features, Google Maps and Google Shopping. The causes and effects all have connections with each other, as one cause could lead to multiple effects, a certain effect could have multiple causes, or one cause/effect could lead to another, creating “domino” effects (on page 1 of cause and effects).

Conclusion:

“Google It” narrates the process of Google transforming from a small school project to a globalized company, and illustrates the issues and roadblocks Larry and Sergey have come across while pursuing their careers. This book contains a very comprehensive account of Google’s history, therefore I recommend it to everyone interested in learning how two graduate students from Stanford established one of the most influential companies in the world.