Into The Hallowed Walls Of Google’s Campus
So now the dust has settled on our TopDog Live event, I’ve been looking through my notes on our visit to Google’s Mountain View campus in Palo Alto earlier in the month. Truly incredible from the get-go: before we were allowed to settle into our seats we had a big myth exploded right up front:
“This is the most rigorously managed business I’ve worked in” said Thomas, our super-cool German-American host blowing the visuals of a lava lamp, take-your-dog to work, relaxed environment out the water. This was reinforced by what we heard and saw throughout the rest of our visit. This is a place full of engineers, analysis and more numbers than you could shake a stick at (internal Powerpoint presentations here are short on pictures and big on numbers!). AND the “people” stuff is cherished as well.
At the end of a really thorough visit we were all left feeling a mixture of awe and inspiration at what they’ve created so far and their aspiration for the future, as well as mildly scared at what they were doing that now seems so obvious and we weren’t even thinking about.
So what did we learn?
There’s lots of stuff you may have heard before – but here’s a quick re-cap:
- They have a mission to organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful.
- They employ a 70:20:10 strategy as to how they spend their time (70% on the core of search / ads / applications; 20% on extended areas e.g. Google maps/ Google news ; 10% on exploration – more of which later)
- They have an amazing environment (with lava lamps, bring your dogs to work, 19 cafes, swimming pools, gyms, yurts etc etc etc.
- They are assiduous in their recruitment of the very best talent (“we’d rather risk not employing someone who might fit than employ someone who wouldn’t if we’re not sure.” More easily done when you have thousands of people desperate to join you.
And there’s lots of stuff that you may not:
Competition: “While we keep an eye on Microsoft and Apple our real competition is for the best brains. We compete with NASA and more recently the Obama administration to get the very best people into our business. The biggest risk to our business is that we don’t get these people – we could be out of business in 4 years or so if we don’t.”
Freedom through trust / Organised chaos: “You get a load of freedom here. You pretty much set your own goals. You have a manager who leaves you to your own devices but you see him at the end of each quarter to review how you’ve done. All our objectives have measurements and you rank yourself against how well you’ve achieved them before hand.” All objectives feed into the broader company goals and objectives.
Launch and iterate (fail early and fail often): “You’re encouraged to prototype. If something’s not working then we often work on it in our spare time then share it when it’s scrappy. If it excites people they’ll build it and we’ll keep building it until we launch it.”
Openly open: “We’re incredibly open. Every quarter, Eric (CEO) shares the presentation that he takes the board through with the entire business at our TGIF (big town hall meeting) and talks about the response that the board gave the various elements – where they liked it and where they chewed him out.”
Fanatical user focus: “We’ll refuse advertising revenue (and have refused millions) if it’s not the right thing for the user. Everything we do has to make it easier for them to get what they’re looking for.”
Don’t listen the user: “The user can’t predict the future. Put new ideas in front of them and watch how they respond. Then iterate.”
Think Big in small teams: “If you’re thinking about something to do with movie reviews; why not reviews about everything.”
Predictive ability: “We knew 30 days before launch which movies will be a hit based on the hits we get trying to find out more about the movies.”
And the stuff that Google is ‘betting the ranch on’ for the future:
Energy: how can they ensure that renewable energy is cheaper than coal. (Like me, you may be wondering how this fits with their mission. For them it’s clear – it’s about the ‘usefulness of information’. And they’re impassioned about this!
Fibre cables: if they’re going to be able to communicate all this information there’s a need for infrastructure and “If we don’t do it then no one will.”
Health: “we want to use technology to help make the world healthier” – have a look at Google flu trends to see how they can spot flu breakouts 2 weeks before health authorities based on searches for associated key words.
Android: How to solve the issue of combining different but currently available applications to create really useful info. E.g. you’re walking down a street in Paris at lunchtime before a meeting you have at 2pm (all of which your phone knows because it’s got GPS, a clock, and your diary), so it points out to you 3 cafes that are close by and lets you know the waiting time, menus and prices for each so you can make a call. Google assures us this type of capability will be available within a year.
A real privilege to have had the chance to experience this today and I reckon it’s going to take a good couple of days to really assimilate the learning.