In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

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In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

by Steven Levy (Goodreads Author), L.J. Ganser

3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 · rating details · 3,959 ratings · 458 reviews

Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes readers inside Google headquarters ? the Googleplex...more Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes readers inside Google headquarters ? the Googleplex ? to show how Google works. While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google's earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow (until Google's IPO nobody other than Google management had any idea how lucrative the company's ad business was), Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open-source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more. The key to Google's success in all these businesses, Levy reveals, is its engineering mind-set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers ? free food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseuses ? and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire. But has Google lost its innovative edge? It stumbled badly in China?Levy discloses what went wrong and how Brin disagreed with his peers on the China strategy?and now with its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete? No other book has ever turned Google inside out as Levy does with In the Plex.(less)

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Published May 17th 2011 by Brilliance Audio (first published 2011)

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Nov 04, 2011 Arun rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: business

It was interesting to read the history of one of the most innovative tech companies of the 21st century, but I would have loved to learn more about the influence of Larry Page and Sergei Brin on Google. As is, "In the Plex" outlines the founding of Google to current-day Google, from the Montessori ideals of Google's founders, to some brilliant acquisitions (e.g. Android, YouTube). There are only cursory mentions of failures. The closest this book comes to a critical analysis was during the secti...more

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Sep 18, 2011 Danny rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: listened-to, library-book

As an information professional, I read this book as a way to better know our future information overlords.

I'm not anti-Google, but I do think that having one company in charge of all the information will inexorably lead to that company being EVIL, despite Google's cute little "Don't Be Evil" motto.

That said, I was most troubled in the book during the discussion of privacy, which as a librarian I've taken a blood-oath to defend. (No actual blood was spilled during the taking of this oath. Also, n...more As an information professional, I read this book as a way to better know our future information overlords.

I'm not anti-Google, but I do think that having one company in charge of all the information will inexorably lead to that company being EVIL, despite Google's cute little "Don't Be Evil" motto.

That said, I was most troubled in the book during the discussion of privacy, which as a librarian I've taken a blood-oath to defend. (No actual blood was spilled during the taking of this oath. Also, no actual oath took place.) And I think that's important! Privacy and the protection thereof, that is. But Google through all their creepy spying and data-mining actually is improving our lives in various ways, making things easier, and making sense of reality bit by bit. Of course, this is all in the service of targeted advertising, which I think does throw a bit of a wrench into the works, but then again everybody's got to make a living and knowing the auto shop down the street is having a special on brakes could help out, even if it is creepy that it shows up to the side of an e-mail you're sending to a friend about your ruined brakes. But still, this use of personal information is...useful!

Which puts me in a quandary because I also think it's important that there are people out there arguing that we should be more careful with our information. Why doesn't the library keep a list of every book you've ever checked out? Because if the government ever comes looking for that list we don't want to be able to give it to them. (The government has and will do this.) If you think that's bad, then the government already has your brain in a jar, and I'm sorry for you. Because we should all feel free to look up whatever information we like at the library without fear of government reprisal. Want to know about communism? Go to the library! Want to find internet sites on bomb-building? Go to the library! (But don't build bombs, mkay? That's bad. Even so...you know, freedom!)

So that's why the library is all about privacy. Google, not so much. And what would Google do if the government came asking for a person's search history? I dunno. There's probably precedent I could research. But anyway. There you have it. Privacy is the thing I noticed most.

Also Montessori school, which both of Google's founders attended, which you'll hear about over and over again if you listen to the book.
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May 19, 2011 Alan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Reading this book reminds me to understand the background of the author. Are they a journalist, academic, business exec etc? How has their context shaped their presentation of ideas within their book?

In this case I think that Steven Levy shows his journalism background. He paints a picture of a company obsessed by the numbers but not necessarily willing to understand perceptions. And he does it by a series of parts and chapters based around a specific topic or idea that you could easily imagine...more

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Jan 01, 2012 Nicholas rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fascinating. I tore through this one this week. Partly because I had the time and partly because it was so interesting. This book presents the history of Google from inception to today. But it does so by 'vertical' as opposed to a linear history. Thus, the first section is about Google Search, the second about Adwords. There is a section about Google's culture, the shift toward data in the 'cloud', even a section on Google relating to government (primarily about anti-trust legislation and head-b...more Fascinating. I tore through this one this week. Partly because I had the time and partly because it was so interesting. This book presents the history of Google from inception to today. But it does so by 'vertical' as opposed to a linear history. Thus, the first section is about Google Search, the second about Adwords. There is a section about Google's culture, the shift toward data in the 'cloud', even a section on Google relating to government (primarily about anti-trust legislation and head-butts with privacy advocates).

If nothing else, I have a greater appreciation for how Google has shaped the world of the internet over the past fifteen years. Reading some of the early chapters was like a walk down memory lane (into the dark ages technologically speaking) as I encountered such words like Altavista, Lycos, Infoseek, and other pioneers of Search that Google systematically made irrelevant through constant improvement to their search algorithms that had the effect of actually giving people what they wanted.

Pair that methodology with advertising and it is no wonder they make billions per year. They singlehandedly changed the way internet ads are done. The previous conventional wisdom was to show an ad to as many people as possible to get them familiar with brand even if the brand had nothing to do with the content. Google said no, lets use our algorithms to show people stuff they might actually want based on what they are searching for. And people actually started clicking on the ads and buying things.

Two thoughts:
1) I am grateful for a lot of what Google has done. They have made the internet better in many ways. They have made data more accessible. This book heightened my appreciation of what Google has done.
2) If ever there was a place where the centralization of data and artificial intelligence would culminate in the creation of Skynet (a la The Terminator movies) it would be at Google. If you read the book you will see what I mean.

Why not 5 stars?
1) The book covers about 15 years in the history of the internet (a lifetime or more in tech terms). It is extremely relevant and interesting today. But will probably be only a novelty in a year or two. No longevity.
2) There were a couple of sections that seemed to end abruptly. Most notably the section about Google Print. The book is discussing proposed settlements about this product and then the section just ends with no word of the outcome. A quick wiki search revealed that the settlement still isn't finalized. A quick "No settlement has been reached at the time of this writing", or something similar would have been very helpful in these situations.(less)

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May 12, 2013 Leon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolution

...more

While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google’s earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow (until Google’s IPO nobody other than Google management had any idea how lucrative the company’s ad business was), Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open-source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more.

The key to Google’s success in all these businesses, Levy reveals, is its engineering mind-set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers—free food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseuses—and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire.

But has Google lost its innovative edge? It stumbled badly in China—Levy discloses what went wrong and how Brin disagreed with his peers on the China strategy—and now with its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete?

No other book has ever turned Google inside out as Levy does with In the Plex.

From Publishers Weekly

The contradictions of the Internet search behemoth are teased apart in this engaging, slightly starry-eyed business history. Wired magazine writer Levy (Hackers) insightfully recaps Google's groundbreaking search engine and fabulously profitable online ad–brokering business, and elucidates the cutting-edge research and hard-nosed cost-efficiencies underlying them. He also regales readers with the "Googley" corporate culture of hip techno-capitalism: the elitist focus on braininess, the campus game rooms, the countercultural rectitude of billionaire founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin (which can read more like puerile arrogance as they roller-blade into meetings with business-suited squares). Levy's narrative updates a familiar portrait of the company, with breathless accounts of recent innovations. He offers a smart analysis of the tensions between Google's "âÇÿDon't Be Evil'" slogan and its censorship of its Chinese Web site and the privacy implications of its drive to sponge up all information—but he accepts Google's blinkered conception of e-ethics and its demands for huge tax breaks with too much complacency. (Apr.)
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Review

"Dense, driven examination of the pioneering search engine that changed the face of the Internet.

Thoroughly versed in technology reporting, Wired senior writer Levy deliberates at great length about online behemoth Google and creatively documents the company’s genesis from a 'feisty start-up to a market-dominating giant.' The author capably describes Google’s founders, Stanford grads Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as sharp, user-focused and steadfastly intent on 'organizing all the world’s information.' Levy traces how Google’s intricately developed, intrepid beginnings and gradual ascent over a competitive marketplace birthed an advertising-fueled 'money machine' (especially following its IPO in 2004), and he follows the expansion and operation of the company’s liberal work campus ('Googleplex') and its distinctively selective hiring process (Page still signs off on every new hire). The author was afforded an opportunity to observe the company’s operations, development, culture and advertising model from within the infrastructure for two years with full managerial cooperation. From there, he performed hundreds of interviews with past and current employees and discovered the type of 'creative disorganization' that can either make or break a business. Though clearly in awe of Google’s crowning significance, Levy evenhandedly notes the company’s more glaring deficiencies, like the 2004 cyber-attack that forced the removal of the search engine from mainland China, a decision vehemently unsupported by co-founder Brin. Though the author offers plenty of well-known information, it’s his catbird-seat vantage point that really gets to the good stuff.

Outstanding reportage delivered in the upbeat, informative fashion for which Levy is well known."

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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Mar 24, 2013 Gwern rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I learned a great deal from this book about Google, which put some of my own experiences with Google products in context. Levy has information, anecdotes, quotes, and interviews which no one else does, which, like the recent Steve Jobs biography, makes his book indispensable for anyone interested in the topic regardless of the book's other merits.

To continue the Jobs analogy, I *think* Levy is more independent of his subject and more willing to criticize it and poke holes in their narratives - h...more I learned a great deal from this book about Google, which put some of my own experiences with Google products in context. Levy has information, anecdotes, quotes, and interviews which no one else does, which, like the recent Steve Jobs biography, makes his book indispensable for anyone interested in the topic regardless of the book's other merits.

To continue the Jobs analogy, I *think* Levy is more independent of his subject and more willing to criticize it and poke holes in their narratives - he covers the criticisms I expected, doesn't drop any particularly glaring issues, and more than once undermines their narratives with contrasting quotes & observations. In particular, Page repeatedly comes off as a narcissistic paranoid asshole, possibly due to his father's death, who cannot empathize with others or understand their points of views (a trait perhaps endemic of Googlers, to judge by the Buzz fiasco).

But to compensate for all the great info and explanations (more than once I thought to myself, 'ah, so *that* is what happened!'), there are downsides to the book. The principle one being:

Levy's writing/presentation is extremely journalistic and dumbed down. I'm not sure whether Levy simply doesn't understand programming & computers very well despite his long career covering the tech industry, or if he deliberately treats technical topics simplistically. (A description of JavaScript prefixes it with the undefined buzzword 'dynamic', although dynamic runtime typing is far from the most important aspect of JS; someone writing an early web spider is described as having a break through when they realize they can make it multithreaded, while I'm sitting back and thinking "there is no way that even in ~1995, any programmer, upon noticing that their web spider was not crawling as many URLs as he needs, would not instantly reach for multiprocessing/multithreading".) Similar simplisticness applied to the legal discussions as well (you won't come away with a real understanding of all the legal issues at play in the Google Books contretemps), and the economic ones fared much the same (I was glad Levy covered the auction innovations at Google, but couldn't he explain *why* second-price auctions are so elegant and effective?).(less)

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Oct 08, 2012 Remo rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, empresa, historia-reciente, informatica

Para compensar mi anterior lectura sobre Google, bastante negativa, me leo ahora un libro claramente pro Google. Está escrito por un periodista que ha estado dedicado 10 años a escribir sobre la empresa y que obtuvo un permiso especial para colarse en todas las instancias de la misma, incluidos los comités estratégicos con los fundadores. Steven Levy es amigo de Google y se nota. Siempre que hay una cagada (y Google ha cometido unas cuantas, entre las que están despreciar Facebook, despreciar Tw...more

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Sep 14, 2012 Robert Chapman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: technology

This books tells the story of Google from before day zero all the way through to Larry Page taking over as CEO. As someone who uses a number of Google products and follows the company in the news, I found this to be a very enjoyable and educational read.

I don’t think it’s news to anyone that the founders of Google have their own unique style. Learning how that style built the company culture and lead to so many of the breakthroughs which Google is well known for was inspiring to say the least.

Ev...more

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Sep 12, 2012 Sean rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Well done; an intriguing read.

It's a bit too soft and squishy in places – in particular I would have liked to see more critical analysis of some of the China missteps (I mean, how many dissidents died as a result of their identities being revealed to Beijing in the hacker attack? Could Google have done more to investigate and publicize that? etc.) and the partial abandonment of the net neutrality principles that are so core to Google's DNA. Then again, when a journalist is entrenched in a compa...more

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Aug 11, 2012 Chris Johnson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

First, - bravo to Steven Levy to be able to write like this. Holy cow. Few tech journalists get it, and I felt like he took the time to develop a nuanced understanding.

Second: this would be a 3.5 star review. I round up. I know, I know.

This was an audiobook I listened to while on a cross country drive.

I got a crystal clear picture of "the best of Google." That is to say the aspirational view of what Google seems like it can become, having a layer of software for our minds, having high caliber pe...more

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Jul 04, 2012 Gina rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have been a fairly close student of things Google, but learned a great deal from Levy's book--which makes perfect sense given his unprecedented access to Googlers (that is, those who make up the company, not those who use their products) and his exhaustive research (over 200 interviews, not to mention many hours spent in the Googleplex, the Mountain View headquarters of what, by the time of publication, was a company earning some $28 billion annually). Levy gives lucid explanations of the key...more

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Jun 18, 2012 Zhifei Ge rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, entrepreneurship

Several stories of Google are really inspiring to potential or active entrepreneurs.

The first story is that Google did not monopolize the search engine patent. Instead, Google has many competitors with similar value proposition. Even Yanhong Li, Baidu's founder, had the search engine patent two years' earlier than Google. Other competitors in the US are Goto and others. This fact that the vision is shared by many independent entrepreneurs tells us that great companies start not by monopolizing...more

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Jun 16, 2012 Ty rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book traces the growth of Google from Larry Page and Sergey Brin's days at Stanford through ~2010, post-Obama election. the author, Steve Levy, is a writer for Wired, so he has been writing about Google for the whole time. his long term relationship with the founders and with Eric Schmidt got him "unprecedented" access to the inner workings of Google, so the book does come across as an in depth look at the company. The most fascinating aspect of the book for me are Brin and Page...they domi...more

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Apr 09, 2012 Richard rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Interesting, entertaining, and rather thorough for a mass market book. Lots of things I didn't know about Google. Other things I did know but only shallowly. There are a lot of things one might criticize Google for. Levy isn't much into criticism here, but he does present the information and the reader can draw his own conclusions. There are a few gag-inducing sections regarding President Obama and his administration that I read as expressing Google's corporate view of Obama, as opposed to an ob...more

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Mar 08, 2012 Vince rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Levy offers a handy summary and commentary on Google's growth. Having conducted extensive interviews at every stage of the company's life, he is well positioned to describe and comment on the breadth of Google's history.

Levy provides the standard history, discussing and describing each product, idea, and initiative. Readers (like me) are probably more interested in how he handles the China issue, copyright and privacy debacles, and former-friends' growing unease with Google's dominance. Levy tra...more

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Jan 21, 2012 Boris Limpopo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Levy, Steven (2011). In The Plex. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2011.

Una biografia – viene spontaneo dire – documentata e simpatetica di Google. Levy ha letteralmente vissuto per molti mesi dentro la sede di Google (il plex del titolo), con un accesso senza precedenti alla vita e alla documentazione di una delle imprese più “chiuse” e misteriose, per scrivere questo libro. Che, nonostante qualche sospetto di eccesso di simpatia (scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours o sindrome di Stoccolma?)....more

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Jan 07, 2012 Terry rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, technology, audiobook

I thought this book would prove to be mostly hagiographic but Steven Levy does a good job of reporting rather than editorializing about Google. The book follows the history of Google with periodic highlights about technological advances and cultural changes and then goes back to discuss specific projects that were running concurrently. There is little correlation between importance of a topic and the degree to which it is covered except as it pertains to Google's core values. Google in China is...more

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Jan 01, 2012 Charles rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy

Levy is one of the best informed and best connected journalists writing about tech companies, and this book is the result of more than two hundred interviews with Google staff past and present and his following of the company since 1999. It is, therefore, a uniquely authoritative account of the business and the key people behind it.

Levy paints a picture of a relentlessly rational company - a culture in which you'd be best...more In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy

Levy is one of the best informed and best connected journalists writing about tech companies, and this book is the result of more than two hundred interviews with Google staff past and present and his following of the company since 1999. It is, therefore, a uniquely authoritative account of the business and the key people behind it.

Levy paints a picture of a relentlessly rational company - a culture in which you'd be best advised not to make any assertion without a set of numbers to support it. But Google is also a company with imagination, reinventing American corporate conventions unless they can be proved to be a good idea. So, for instance, there was a move to do away with management altogether until it was found, to the surprise of founders Brin and Page, that people actually like to have someone as their boss: it gives structure, and allows them to understand how their work and their problems are part of the company's wider ambitions.

Of the founders, it is Page who emerges from Levy's profile as the surprising natural leader. Introverted yet almost unnaturally ambitious, he is prepared to consider any project as long as it seems impossible. How about harnessing the content of all books ever written? Sure, let's take a quick guess at the numbers says Page: supposing there are 30 million books. Page and senior Googler Marissa Mayer try scanning one as an experiment: 40 minutes for 300 pages. Back-of-an-envelope cost: $10 a book. Total cost: $300m. As Levy puts it: "that didn't sound like too much money for the world's most valuable font of knowledge."

There are wonderful insights like this on every page. Levy is also great on the political and legal problems - with the copyright of books, Google's tortured dilemmas over its presence in China, and over video rights for Google Video and YouTube. And there's an interesting section on how Obama and Google found themselves strangely compatible. But Obama and the ex-Googlers who had joined him in Washington after he became President found that Google's rational approach to problem-solving didn't translate into Washington life as easily as they had hoped.

And for anyone using Google, there are many interesting titbits. You might have already known how Google's initial breakthrough was the PageRank mechanism whereby search results are weighted by the 'authority' of a page as measured by the number and authority of the pages that link to it - like a kind of academic citation measurement.

But the book explains how that is only the start of Google's ever-expanding knowledge about its users and the websites they are searching for. So, for instance, Google assesses the success of its own search results by noting how long it takes each user to click on a result, where it is in the list presented, and whether the user comes back to try another link from the list (which shows they weren't satisfied with the first one). Through such self-educating mechanisms, Google continually improves its performance and makes it harder and harder for rivals to catch up.

Since Google has become so central to our lives, In the Plex is a kind of instruction manual to the modern world. If you don't want to understand the company that has all but succeeded in its ambition to "organise the world's information and make it useful and accessible" you aren't really showing an interest in where we are, and where we're being taken, for better or worse.

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Sep 06, 2011 Judy is currently reading it · review of another edition

This book focuses on lots of details which add up to the story of how Google developed to the point where its tentacles touch all of us internet users. I had to take a break from the section on how Google "learned" to make money from advertising--so much data data data and money money money--but I think the part that really made me step back was realizing how I had watched it develop on the sidebar of my computer monitor, day by day, week by week, as it came to "know" more and more about ME and...more

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Aug 29, 2011 Seth rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book did a great job of describing Google's DNA and the thought process behind their decisions. As I read current news on Google, I can now see each move they make in light of their overarching mission to catalog the world's information and make it accessible, and I can also see each move from the perspective of incredibly smart engineers who think that data is always right. So from that perspective, the book succeeded.

However, there were a couple big goofs. It took a while to get into the...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Peter McCarthy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a very well written book. Steven Levy's prose is crisp, concise and clear and he carries the narrative along at a good pace, all the while maintaining a really fascinating almost-but-not-quite insider's look at Google. He clearly had access to Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt whenever he needed it and he also had lots of access to the other rock stars in the Google Experience, most notably Matt Cutts, Marissa Mayer and Vic Gundotra. There are plenty of direct quotes from everyone...more This is a very well written book. Steven Levy's prose is crisp, concise and clear and he carries the narrative along at a good pace, all the while maintaining a really fascinating almost-but-not-quite insider's look at Google. He clearly had access to Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt whenever he needed it and he also had lots of access to the other rock stars in the Google Experience, most notably Matt Cutts, Marissa Mayer and Vic Gundotra. There are plenty of direct quotes from everyone who did something that Levy recounts.

This is a primer for anyone who wants to know anything about Google- how it started, what its successes were, what its failures were and what Google the company is all about. Levy is not a cheerleader and this is not a fawning biography of Sergey and Larry. He gives failures the same treatment as successes and he never falls back on any inevitability arguments or implies in any way that something just happened- he always provides good background and solid insights on each of the sub-stories told throughout the book.

Sergey and Larry aren't treated as heroes but as the complex men they are- you get a good sense of what they are good at it and what they are not so good at. They disastrously tried to eliminate managers from their engineering force at one point in Google's history for no better reason than they didn't like managers stifling the creative capabilities of their engineering team. But the author also gives them credit where it is due to them- where they saw value that no one else saw, where they pushed relentlessly for ideas that others told them they were crazy to pursue or where they stuck with their instincts and made good, sound business decisions.

The last couple of chapters and the epilogue devolve in to a little unfocused criticism of the company in that almost every thing that Google did in 2009-2010 was riddled by the once formerly search giant being no longer nimble enough to get out of its own way. You get the sense that Levy has bet on the hunch that Google is destined to fail because the things that made it so successful in the early part of the decade were the things that cursed it in the later part of the decade. That remains to be seen and may ultimately determine where this book places in history. If Google does indeed fail over the next ten years- Levy's book will be part one of the primer on the lesson of Google. If it does not, this book is still valuable in terms of the great writing and the excellent story telling that Levy does throughout.
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Jul 07, 2011 Jim Borwick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Energetic, generally well written and very positive informal history of Google. I found a lot of the book interesting and informative, not having read much before about the company. Steven Levy is at his best when writing about people. When the book focuses on Page and Brin and some of the company's projects it was downright fun. And Levy covers a lot of territory, from Google's advertising auctions to its acquisitions to its personalities and food. I found his explanations of more technical thi...more

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Jul 01, 2011 Hinch rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In The Plex provides an engaging insight into the evolution of Google. Steven Levy uses his unprecedented access to the "inner workings" of the organisation to deliver a detailed commentary of both the triumphs, and also the failings, of this internet juggernaut.

The book is arranged into a series of topic-based chapters that cover the search engine, online advertising, corporate culture, infrastructure, media, Google's foray into China, and finally, their involvement in US domestic politics. An...more

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Jun 16, 2011 Arvin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Very interesting book about how Google has always been and still for most part is a different sort of company (in particular, its main goal is NOT directly to make money). Even for people in the tech industry (especially those of us in Silicon Valley), this book provides a lot of interesting anecdotes and details that give a lot of depth and color to the traditional start-up success story of two super-smart iconoclast dreamers building a company that changed the world and continues to do so.

Now...more

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Jun 06, 2011 Rick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The first half, the early years, is super interesting and had lots of things I didn't know. And I do admire how this thing went right to the current time - it touched on all of the recent anti-trust stuff, etc. It's a pretty friendly account of google, but it frankly talks about the problems. There were some pretty choice passages in there that made me chuckle about some stuff. And it was funny to see a little Foursquare mention. The Google Books saga was SO interesting. So was the China stuff....more

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Apr 13, 2011 Bojan Tunguz rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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...more 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. (less)

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Jul 13, 2011 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If you have an interest in finding out how Google ticks, this is the book for you. Steven Levy provides a very well balanced explanation for both the personalities and the corporate psyche for Google. We all know what Google has done, but when Levy pointed out the trials and tribulations of the small company trying to do good things, and later, the big company trying to do good things, I found it fascinating that the size of the business had such a big impact on the difficulty of the company to...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Sarah by: Peter Roybal

First, let me say that I view google uneasily. One the one hand, they've allowed me to shift nearly all of my to-do lists to an online document, get rid of my rolodex, and also keep emails that I haven't read in 7 years. On the other hand, they record all my keystrokes, my houses, all my searches. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and noone knows anymore whether google is a friend or an enemy. As for closeness, they probably know more about me than my best friends or my family. Th...more First, let me say that I view google uneasily. One the one hand, they've allowed me to shift nearly all of my to-do lists to an online document, get rid of my rolodex, and also keep emails that I haven't read in 7 years. On the other hand, they record all my keystrokes, my houses, all my searches. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and noone knows anymore whether google is a friend or an enemy. As for closeness, they probably know more about me than my best friends or my family. Thanks goodness there are billions more people on Earth. I'm happy to be a needle in their haystack.

I want to love them. I admire their idealism, their impossible tasks, their bigness, their ability to shift processes along orders of magnitude, their engineering excellence. So I read this paper book (I didn't want google to know I was reading about google) about a company which is constantly shifting its mission, runs secret research projects which have no definable payoff, possibly has strong military connections and intelligence connections now to the US government.....even yesterday, I read an article that Google is financially supporting NASA's latest project to establish a colony on Mars. And today, I finished this book.

It took a while to get through not because the book is long (it's about 300 pages) or tedious. It's fascinating, timely and important. I think everyone with a gmail account should consider reading it.

But, the limitations of a printed thing about a company which exists so much in the virtual realm are evident. There's not a chapter (of course) on google's recent decision to prevent anyone from opting out of their new privacy policy. There's no chapter on how tightly woven 'search' must now be with general intelligence gathering. Having finished Area 51 a few months ago, I believe firmly that the US government has (and has to) maintain healthy and deep network connections with technology companies, just to remain relevant in this era. There's not a discussion of any of this sort of possibility, but Obama's frequent trips to Mountain View, and his known consultations with industry leaders mean that the ties have to be there. So, where's the investigation? Yes, it would be *wonderful* to see what Annie Jacobsen could do with this topic. Annie, are you listening? Anyway, drones are here, Street View is here. The difference is one of intention.

Perhaps because I read the chapter on their struggles with facebook most recently, one good conflict which would have made for a great starting point is the conflict of whether effective 'search' is done through logic and links (google) or social networks (facebook). I like the idea of a search toolbox which internet users of the world have at their disposal...and there is not much discussion of user empowerment, google's commitment to not providing user support, how search plays out for third world countries, etc. There are lots more books (I hope) to come on this topic, with more investigation of the inner workings and ruminations on implications and the future. Did google tie the hands of this reporter? It's likely. As a result, In The Plex is less rich and thoughtful than it could be, more of a history of the start of this crucial, audacious behemoth. It's a great place to start. Next, I'm hoping for an expose on their secret underground lair/Mars plans/ways of monetizing that plan to scan every book ever printed.

(less)

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Oct 31, 2011 Joshua Steimle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A decent biography of Google's history up to the beginning of 2011. Having read The Google Story previously, I prefer a narrative that is entirely chronological, whereas this book is divided by topic with each topic developing from the founding of Google up through the modern day. This results in a bit of confusion during the reading since one is not always entirely sure where one is in the timeline, nor how the events in one area of the business match up with the events in another area of the b...more

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Jan 02, 2012 Josh Pinkerton rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In The Plex was good but it was a little long and wasn't especially focused. Google is super important and interesting though, so I'm glad I read it. Some thoughts:

1. Google is the company most likely to invent real Artificial Intelligence. It's an explicit goal and they have the data and computer power to do it. "From the very start, it's founder saw Google as a vehicle to realize the dream of artificial intelligence." Google is the largest manufacturer of computer servers in the world and the...more In The Plex was good but it was a little long and wasn't especially focused. Google is super important and interesting though, so I'm glad I read it. Some thoughts:

1. Google is the company most likely to invent real Artificial Intelligence. It's an explicit goal and they have the data and computer power to do it. "From the very start, it's founder saw Google as a vehicle to realize the dream of artificial intelligence." Google is the largest manufacturer of computer servers in the world and they are all linked together using Google File System. Larry Page is a supporter of Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity University. They even say that they see the future of Google as an implant in your brain. They have become super paranoid about leaking details about this kind of thing though, especially after some of the recent PR failures around privacy.

2. Google is incredibly fucking full of itself. They alllways see themselves as the underdog, which makes them defensive. Tim Armstrong tells a story about how they tried to sell ads to GM in 2005 and they said "Who does car research online?" I mean it is possible GM was that dumb, but by 2005 I think the internet and Google were pretty widely known and even someone at GM would have been embarrassed to have zero internet strategy.
They are also rude and almost a parody of bratty internet entrepeneurs. There is a story about Larry going to a formal dinner with Prince Phillip and then eating the souffle incorrectly. When Marissa politely tells him he's doing it wrong he tells her "Who says?" Seriously? Grow the fuck up. Also: Larry and Sergey made the building engineers redo the air filtration systems because they are "very sensitive people" and "they smell things most of us don't smell." It is possible if everyone had this advanced sense of smell we would all realize that Google's shit actually doesn't stink.
They also seem to ignore people that don't look like them - engineers from traditional prestige schools. It takes everyone to run that company and failing to recognize that just makes it harder to achieve your ultimate goals. They even kept asking people for SAT scores even after their own internal data proved that it had a poor correlation with success at the company, which was the only time I can remember in the whole book when they explicitly over-ruled a piece of data. This leads to embarrassing problems during the dogfooding process - like when they released Chrome and nobody realized it didn't work with Hotmail, or when they released Buzz and didn't realize people would freak out if their top email contacts were made public.

3. Building a search engine is really hard and Bing, etc will have a tough time catching up. "Crawling, indexing, relevance of results and speedy delivery" are the four core steps in a search and they are really hard to do right and take a ton of computer resources to do. I wish it had actually gone more in depth into exactly how this works, but Google has a huge lead because the more searches you process the more data you have about what people click on and the more you can improve your results. You need a ton of these searches to get anything meaningful. Even then, 1/3 of all searches are virgin requests.

4. Lessons for Newsroot: Google focuses on data, simplifies things in the minds of 1) consumers and 2) its own engineers. The initial Google layout succeeded partially because it was so simple and clear and it had a great brand. Internally, its very clear what people should be trying to improve - speed and the "long clicks" that indicate people have found what they want. When Google gets away from easily measured results like in +1, Orkut, Buzz, Wave, etc it does a lot worse. Give people simple, clear goals that are measurable with a single number and they will continually improve.
They designed their offices for human density, like a trading floor or a successful city. They use the "corporation as housewife" model - they take care of people's laundry, etc as much as possible to recreate the dorm because they view the American university system as the greatest incubator of innovation in history.
People want to be managed. They like it when they have direction and goals. Google thought people didn't and tried to implement that in their organizational structure but it failed.
Being born of the web and focusing on that is a huge advantage. It helped Google beat Microsoft. It will help us.
Speed is a feature, and something that is even a little faster will often feel better and win users.
Don't get ahead of yourself - Google had GDrive, which sounded like an awesome Dropbox competitor, but killed it because they thought everything should be on the cloud and nobody would care about individual files. Don't kill something that's good now because your philosophy says people shouldn't like it.
"You don't want to buy companies that want to sell."
"Freshness" of search results is huge.
Recruiting people: everyone wants to work on changing the world and where their product and ideas can gain traction and affect people. (less)

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About Steven Levy

Steven Levy (born 1951) is an American journalist who has written several books on computers, technology, cryptography, the Internet, cybersecurity, and privacy. Levy is chief technology writer and a senior editor for Newsweek, writing mainly in the "Science & Technology" section. He also writes the column "Random Access" in the monthly feature "Focus On Technology." Levy is also a contributor...more

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“Epstein came up with an elaborate plan, including TV ads, and presented it to the board. The board rejected it.

“It really came down to this,” McCaffrey later said. “We have a limited budget. Do we want to put that money into the technology, into the infrastructure, into hiring really great people? Or do we want to blow it on a marketing campaign that we can’t measure?” Larry and Sergey told Epstein that his interim stint was over” — 1 person liked it

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