Free The Google Guys by Richard L. Brandt Page B

launch the Web site MSN, and was boasting that it was now Internet savvy. The search engine Ask Jeeves had a multibillion-dollar valuation.
    But in reality, none of them could have been Google. They didn’t have Larry and Sergey or their deep understanding of the Internet, their evangelical zeal and dedication to “the search” as the savior of the Internet. Larry and Sergey had instincts that pointed them in the right direction, like an arrow flying toward dead center of a target. Those traits are what made Google so damnably successful.
    They’re also frustratingly stubborn, bold to the point of recklessness, and imbued with the sense of the infallibility of youth. They were the right people at the right time, online technologists at the start of the Internet Age.
    But it wasn’t just Larry’s and Sergey’s dedication to search that made the difference. They made the right business decisions as well. The surprising thing is that they succeeded despite their lack of previous business experience. Before starting Google, the sum total of that experience was the semester Larry spent working at a bagel stand at the University of Michigan.
    And yet, in ten years they managed to turn Google into a corporation with twenty thousand employees and $20 billion in revenues. That ratio of revenues per employee, at $1 million each, is one of the highest in the technology world. (Microsoft weighs in at about $700,000 per employee.)
    Larry and Sergey clearly did something right. That thing is based on their idealism and killer instincts. The mission statement they included in the prospectus for their public offering in 2004 was “To do great things for the world.” They knew, unlike most other companies that provided search and portal services, that there was a huge need for a better way to search, that they had it, and that it was important. This attitude has dominated their thinking from the beginning.
    Some people argue with the use of the term idealistic . In fact, Google’s first proclaimed mission statement did not mention doing great things for the world. Before June 1999, the mission statement hastily put up on the company’s Web site merely said, “To make it easier to find high-quality information on the Web.” 2
    But even that mission statement works. Finding high-quality information is something that changes the world. The key thing is that Larry and Sergey were dedicated to the mission, without compromise.
    When they filed for their first public stock offering in 2004, Sergey and Larry included the following statement in a letter to Wall Street: “Searching and organizing all the world’s information is an unusually important task that should be carried out by a company that is trustworthy and interested in the public good.”
    Says Jim Barnett, the CEO of Turn, “They’re really serious about building great products, the way Steve Jobs is. I wouldn’t use the word idealistic , but they’re on a mission and will stay true to their vision. They’re authentic and committed and valuesdriven.”
    That attitude spread from Larry and Sergey through the rest of the company, and has not changed. Craig Silverstein, Google’s first employee, describes it this way: “I believe we’re enabling the Information Age to continue to grow and continue to be useful. There is great potential for good there. My guess is that most people [at Google] would say something similar to that.”
    Could the founders have possibly imagined Google would get as big as it has? Yes, says Silverstein. He recalls a conversation with Larry as Google was just getting started: “I remember once saying something like, ‘Yeah, if we got this deal, and some other deals, maybe we can be a ten-million-dollar company.’ Larry said we should be a ten- billion -dollar company. I thought he was joking. But now I don’t think he was. [Larry and Sergey] have