I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59

Google is an industry rebel. The rebel I probably shouldn't love, but which I love anyway.Here's why.From day one, the company defied convention and refused to play the marketing game. Larry and Sergei (Google's founders) don't trust marketers in general; they think the advertising industry propagates lies and preys on unsuspecting consumers. They didn't want to prepare PR packets for the press as was the common practice for most companies. They refused to hire an ad agency or pay for market research, at least in the early days. Engineering always took precedence over marketing when it came to the budget. This dismissive attitude towards marketing in general should insult anyone who works in marketing---someone like me. Except for the fact that Google managed to become one of the world's most well-loved brands on a shoestring marketing budget. I think all marketers have something to learn from the geniuses in the Googleplex.To date, this is the only book that gives a firsthand account of Google when it was still a fledgling startup, up to the few months after the company went public. The book is told from the perspective of Google's first brand/marketing manager. It's a compelling read, one that will appeal to anybody whose online life depends on Google, especially those who grew up with it.I personally think this book has the potential to annoy engineers. The author does a great job at explaining the specifics of Google technology in layman's terms---after all, he was an English major, and had to struggle to understand the concepts himself. But anyone familiar with search technology may grow impatient at the outsider point of view. Also, despite the fact that I work in the marketing industry, I started off feeling that Edwards whined too much about being undervalued as a marketer compared to the engineers in the company. His insecurities really come through in the first couple of chapters.Once I was several chapters in, though, I was hooked. Edwards takes us inside the world of Google, with all its eccentricities and radical work ethics. We see the energy and passion of Googlers who worked well past midnight on most nights and made countless other sacrifices to keep things running. We get a glimpse of the excitement of the battlefield where noble underdog Google was up against the search Goliaths of the time. Edwards has a hilarious tongue-in-cheek way of telling a story; there were parts that literally made me laugh out loud.I finished the book feeling rather inspired by the ride. The heart and soul of Google is a zealous, never-ending drive to make things easier, faster, more efficient---and, dare I say it, to make the world a better place. Often this requires challenging the status quo, not from a need to challenge authority like some angst-ridden teenager but rather from a real commitment to efficiency and tenacious loyalty to empirical data.Yes, Google is a rebel all right. One that's hard not to love.

This isn't just some factual account of events in Google's history. After all, Doug has been known as "the voice of Google" given his involvement in most of Google's user interactions and communications. Thus the book is written in that particular voice - a narrative that is able to address even the most technical concerns related while still making it approachable to the average user. After all, Doug is a marketing guy at heart and never claimed to be an engineer. Some have found the language to be too simplistic at times, but I found it vibrant and refreshing in tone and thus a pleasure to read even when discussing the more stressful situations Doug had to deal with.Thus the book flows along two lines. On the one hand, it provides a striking inside look at Google's early history including milestone events such as their first search deal with AOL and the development of AdWords. But at the same time it's really just the tale of a marketing guy trying to redefine the job based on the technically-driven and data-obsessed engineers that were fundamental to growing Google to the company that it is today.The book has certainly given me a lot to think about in terms of both my own marketing job and Google as a company. While Doug makes sure to tell all sides of the story and not just the warm and fuzzy stuff, he does seem to have a particular slant here - one last message as Google's voice that he has to deliver. If anything, this feels like Doug's last message to us users - an attempt to explain how Google operates at its core and thus presents a different view of the company given the big decisions it makes that get splashed all over the news. Google isn't quite the information monster and privacy villain that many present it to be. But it is moving solely to the beat of its own drum and its own concept of what they feel is in the best interests of the user.At the same time, it's an amazing exploration of marketing and how the old concepts may not quite work in the increasingly product-aligned world that we live in. Branding goes beyond just thinking of the company as a whole but building images and ideas around individual product lines, especially in a tech world.

You would have to be very interested in the early days of Google, the search giant, to know who Douglas Edwards is. Apparently he looks just like Skinner from The X-Files, and he led the distinctly off centre and goofy Google version of PR and engaging with the wider world. His story runs up to when Google went public, so it goes from 1999 to 2005. Accordingly some of this is ancient history, but interesting nonetheless. As a non-techie Edwards does a more than decent job of explaining the issues and technology in language that anyone could understand. He is clearly not your typical PR person either, it is difficult to think of a worse title than the one that he chose for this book.This is certainly not hugely critical of Google, or the people there, nor is it just a puff piece singing their praises. It is a very personal view of his life there, and it would seem that for those six years he had very little life at all outwith Google. It does not offer a huge insight into the people there, Edwards writes about himself a lot, but apart from working at Google there does not seem to be anything terribly remarkable about him. Perhaps his self effacing, gee shucks, approach was the early Google brand.If you are interested in the early days of Google, then this is a first rate insider’s account, very well done for the Kindle, and written with a real attention for detail and affection for the subject.

Why write a self-effacing book about your relatively ineffectually input into the Google phenomenon? About how your ideas were put down, laughed at and ignored while you had sleepless nights about just how rubbish your contribution was? Well, because you made one good decision. You bought your Google share options on offer at twenty cents each. Today, as I write, each of those options are worth five hundred and seventy dollars each. Let's say you bough $10,000 worth from the money you borrowed from your folks. Let google do the math. Meanwhile, go and write a book about the insanity of it all. It's not like you'll ever have to work again, is it!?Still, it's hard to have sour grapes over a bloke who admits he lucked into it all and is happy just to record what it was like to be there. This is a nice easy read about the time and place that was the dot com boom, from one of the very few companies that survived it all to emerge with the spoils. Why Google, and why not Alta Vista, Hotbot, Yahoo and all the others? You won't find the answer here, except maybe in the title. After all, for every failed project Google have launched, and there must be hundreds, they lucked in with one. It's hard to see Google as being lucky, but this book helps you do it.

The booked flowed along, at the right pace.The book ends with him leaving and in a away I felt like I was leaving Google with him. Sad not to be in the loop and out on my own.Putting characters behind those names you see tagged at the end of Google Blog.In away it really makes you want to work for Google but in another way could you take the stress of working such a company with the cumulative stress of everyone stressing back. The politics sucked as well for our man Dougie.If Doug had been more into politics would he still be at Google after building his empire to give himself purpose.I wonder how much he made, does anyone know?

The book gives an account of Google growth, politics and personalities in its early days. Little if any technical content. Describes the endless detail, personalities and petty politics around decision-making in Google from the perspective of a mid-level Comms/PR manager. Not a great read I'm afraid! And certainly not 'hilarious' as suggested by the front cover!

Although ancient history - in IT terms - the years covered by this book are the formative period of one of the most successful, and omnipresent, companies of our time. The subjects covered include some good work, some surprisingly naive, but they are always interesting