
The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback - wozniacki
http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-the-untold-story-2014-4?op=1
======
pk2200
Early Googler here. It's funny how often the story of the mass-firing is
misreported. This article gets two basic facts wrong:

1) Larry was targeting engineering management, not project management.

2) Nobody was fired. The engineering managers shifted to pure engineering
roles (an easy move, since they all had technical backgrounds).

On many teams, the managers continued managing, but they did it more
discreetly, taking care to stay out of Larry's way. A year or so later, after
the engineering staff had doubled in size, it became clear hat it wasn't
practical for one VP (Wayne Rosing) to have 200 direct reports, and
engineering management came back out of the shadows.

~~~
mapgrep
#2 is actually in the story. Unless you're saying they got the particulars
wrong?

"The project managers Page had intended to fire that day were instead brought
into Google’s growing operations organization, under the leadership of Urs
Hözle."

~~~
pk2200
I think even that part is mostly wrong. The author confuses project and
engineering managers, but more importantly, this notion that Larry wanted to
fire all of them is just not true. The managers all had technical backgrounds
(CS degrees, usually) so the plan was for them to go back to writing code. I
also don't remember a bunch of people moving to Urs' team. Maybe one or two?
Most stayed with their teams.

------
gilgoomesh
I realize that it's an aside in the article but I wanted to contradict
something:

> What’s less well understood is that Apple’s board and investors were
> absolutely right to fire Jobs. Early in his career, he was petulant, mean,
> and destructive

This idea (Jobs needed to be away from Apple to improve himself) gets
mentioned a lot but I think it's nonsense.

First: Jobs was petulant, mean and destructive to people he disagreed with –
for his whole life. He never dropped this trait. It might have appeared that
he mellowed but he really just left an Apple that he no longer controlled and
started another company where he had full control (he owned Pixar as well as
NeXT but never exerted full control there).

Second: Was Apple really right to fire Jobs? In his first 7 years at Apple,
Jobs oversaw (not designed or engineered) the only successful product lines in
Apple's first 20 years: the Apple 2, the Mac and the Laserwriter. The latter
two happened against the best wishes of the board who only wanted to focus on
the Apple 2. In the 12 years after Jobs left, Apple never launched another
successful hardware product line, it merely upgrading the existing products
(Mac II, PPC Mac or unsuccessful ideas like the Newton). The early 90's at
Apple's R&D in particular was completely chaotic and directionless sinking
billions into Pink, Taligent, OpenDoc, CHRP and other doomed initiatives.

Jobs didn't need to leave Apple to fix himself. He left Apple because he
disagreed with everyone (in hindsight: probably rightfully so) and he couldn't
fire them. When he returned, he had the authority to fire everyone he disliked
(and he did).

As for the comparison to Larry Page – I don't think they were as similar as
the article implies. Jobs – for better and worse – was his own special brand
of crazy.

~~~
pmelendez
>"Second: Was Apple really right to fire Jobs? In his first 7 years at Apple,
Jobs oversaw (not designed or engineered) the only successful product lines in
Apple's first 20 years"

I would argue that Jobs had any influence in the Apple II whatsoever, in fact
according to Wozniak in iWoz, Jobs attempts to influence the Apple II
originated the only fights the two of them ever had.

On the other hand, Apple II was originating the vast majority of the revenue
and in comparison the original mac had a very limited success.

~~~
gdubs
Well, except for the idea that it should be packaged and marketed like an
appliance, which arguably is what brought it to the mass-market.

------
bshimmin
There are some truly strange and incongruous turns of phrase in this article -
"Google's human resources boss, a serious woman with bangs named Stacey
Sullivan", "Finally Rosing, a bald man in glasses, began to speak", "Though he
was an appealing presence with above-average height and nearly black hair",
etc.

It strikes me the author would far rather be writing Mills & Boon novels than
articles for Business Insider.

~~~
nicholascarlson
I just deleted the comment about the bangs. Really does read awkwardly.

~~~
bshimmin
I should clarify that I didn't think the article badly written - just not
quite in the style I'm used to from a publication like Business Insider. That
said, I probably haven't read many other long-form pieces on there.

Others here clearly enjoyed the writing style very much!

~~~
mishimin
You seem to have a very high opinion of the Business Insider

------
pavanky
Are there any articles about Sergey's role in the company ? There have been a
few since Larry took over as CEO, and I feel this article greatly downplays
Sergey's role.

~~~
ckenst
I agree. The article makes it seem like Larry is the driving force behind
Google and Sergey is just along for the ride (aside from the meetings they
take together and the ability to argue out points). Maybe that wasn't what the
author intended but it seems like a side-effect.

------
cliveowen
"With little emotion, speaking in his usual flat, robotic tone[...]As Page
talked, he kept his gaze averted, resisting direct eye contact."

Journalists have a tendency of portraying figures in tech circles as being on
the spectrum, while very often that isn't the case.

~~~
gtirloni
Just to clarify what you mean by "on the spectrum", do you mean the mental
illness one? It's a new expression for me and searching only came up with
things related to autism, etc.

~~~
lutusp
It normally means on the Autism spectrum, which, if you understand
contemporary clinical psychology, can mean anything or nothing:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_spectrum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_spectrum)

For a time about ten years ago, it seemed as though everyone would be placed
on the Autism spectrum, but psychologists realized what that would mean (i.e.
if everyone is mentally ill, then no one is), so they threw out Asperger's,
said it wasn't a real mental illness after all, thus postponing the day or
reckoning. Rinse, lather, repeat.

~~~
mpyne
> so they threw out Asperger's, said it wasn't a real mental illness after
> all, thus postponing the day or reckoning.

Say what you want about Asperger's, but my son has autism and I can assure you
it's a _real_ mental health disorder, however many kids might somehow get
diagnosed with it.

~~~
lutusp
> Say what you want about Asperger's, but my son has autism ...

Yes, but you're mixing different things. Autism is a category that includes a
"Rain Man" level of functioning, but Asperger's was a diagnosis du jour that
picked out brighter-than-normal kids, plus a raft of historical figures
including Albert Einstein, in a way that made it seem like an attractive
diagnosis, such that now, we have people objecting, saying, "No! I'm an Aspie
and I don't care what you psychologists say!"

Such a thing has never happened before -- there has never been a reverse
stigma to a mental illness diagnosis. When psychologists saw people lining up
to get this cool new diagnosis, they knew they had gone too far, so they
started a process to remove Asperger's from the diagnostic manuals before
their credibility was further eroded.

Remember when you read about Asperger's that psychologists, who have every
reason to hold onto established diagnoses, couldn't wait to get rid of
Asperger's and the embarrassment it caused them.

~~~
speeder
I am a guy that is probably an aspie, but recently I decided to stop using
that label (or any other label).

There is a sort of "aspie boom" and now everyone is a aspie, and claiming
(rightfully or not) to be one makes people think you are a narcissistic or
egoistical liar instead.

What I do is just try to fix my social problems as I can, and say sorry when I
do something bad (that happily, is becoming more and more uncommon after I
learned that Asperger's existed, plainly because it helped me become self
aware of what exactly I was doing wrong that piss off other people).

Also recently I started to think that maybe almost everyone of the MBTI type
INTP (and some INTJ) are aspies (not that they have a disorder, but in their
sense that their normal behavior gets labelled as a disorder symptom), but
that idea is too new on my head for now, I did not dwelled too much on it.

~~~
meej
I've had that idea about INTPs and INTJs too.

I am in the camp that being aspie is a different way of being, not a disorder.

------
cm2012
That was one of the best articles I've ever read, with regards to new
information and excellent story telling.

~~~
MrJagil
Wow, i thought it was appalling!

"he expected he’d have to make a choice between becoming an academic and
building a company. Choosing the former would mean giving up the opportunity
to become the inventor of widely used applications. But building a company
would force him to deal with people in a way he didn’t enjoy."

How overly simplistic and descriptive that is. Going academic, would, in it's
most 2014'ish, pop-cultaral-way, mean that you probably wouldn't go on to make
any cool apps. I mean, yeah, obviously? And how weird it is to have such a big
life choice distilled down to the possibility of creating popular apps or not.
Such black and white-ification with the intention of creating a conflict heavy
narrative, with a healthy dose of current tech mindset splashed onto it.

And that whole "Page is the Jobs of Google" section was entirely grasping at
reader-revelations, without actually creating any. It's lazy thinking to
compare two iconic tech heads, especially if one of them is Jobs. Another one
in the long row of heirs (cook, ive, musk etc etc).

"Forty-one years after those words were published, in 1985, a 12-year-old in
Michigan finished reading Tesla's biography and cried.

This was Larry Page."

If you manage to get through the introductory number slalom, it reads like the
script for a trailer to a new action flick!

I appreciated the info in the article, but the writing was so sloppy.

~~~
ertdfgcb
> How overly simplistic and descriptive that is. Going academic, would, in
> it's most 2014'ish, pop-cultaral-way, mean that you probably wouldn't go on
> to make any cool apps.

I read that as the dilemma that Page was facing, not an absolute truism. This
is an article about Larry Page at Google. It seems silly to be annoyed at the
author for simplifying the dichotomy between academia and industry to move us
through his life.

> If you manage to get through the introductory number slalom, it reads like
> the script for a trailer to a new action flick!

Oh shut up, that was a nice piece of writing. It was an interesting hook, a
nice way to introduce a main theme of the article; Larry Page's admiration of
Nikola Tesla. It may have been flashy but considering how well it fits into
the rest of the article (and indeed, the quality of the writing) I'd hardly
call it sloppy. Although maybe we just have different standards.

~~~
MrJagil
> I read that as the dilemma that Page was facing, not an absolute truism.
> This is an article about Larry Page at Google. It seems silly to be annoyed
> at the author for simplifying the dichotomy between academia and industry to
> move us through his life.

No, I get that it was about Larry, and I see why the author set it up like
that. But writing "...the opportunity to become the inventor of widely used
applications", seems like such a simplification of what it's actually about: A
choice between two very different ways of expressing your creativity (granted
you do research/publicise in academia). I really hope Larry built a company
with more thought behind it than making the next Flappy Bird. I.e. SpaceX
wasn't founded because Musk wanted to be an "inventor" of top 40 apps, and it
seems like Larry didn't either, judging from the article.

And the other phrase "... would force him to deal with people in a way he
didn’t enjoy". Something about that rubs me the wrong way as well. Maybe it's
a bit too soft? I mean, sucks to be you Larry, not enjoying socialising, but
welcome to the real world.

I don't want to seem too harsh, I'm only replying because it's nice to put
ones thoughts into writing once in a while.

> Although maybe we just have different standards.

Maybe, but starting that discussion means that we'll probably start talking
about "high/low" standards, and I try not to think like that.

~~~
ertdfgcb
I don't really have much else to say about this, except that I definitely
didn't take "applications" to mean Flappy Birds, because that seems
ridiculous. Obviously the guy who they introduced as crying at the end of a
Tesla biography doesn't want to spend his life making mobile games.

> Maybe, but starting that discussion means that we'll probably start talking
> about "high/low" standards, and I try not to think like that.

I was thinking more in terms of the entertainment/pragmatism scale. I think
this is good writing more because it made me go "wow, I enjoyed reading that",
whereas it seems like you're coming from more of a "this was kinda lame
because some of the things they said were questionable" standpoint. Nothing
wrong with that, but if we didn't recognize it we'd be yelling at each other
for hours.

------
skkbits
Larry is truly amazing and no question about that. To me though, this comes as
less surprise. His contributions can certainly be attributed to few not so
well known facts.

1\. Highly educated parents. His father has Ph.D. and is considered pioneer in
computer science and artificial intelligence ( source : wikipedia) 2\. Mother
: Comp. Science professor 3\. His brother Carl Page Jr. sold company called
eGroups to Yahoo!. So when you consider all this facts together, with kind of
upbringing he had it less surprise that he followed the suit and created
search engine. I bet this sort of environment must have played crucial role
when he went for VC capital. If you have read crossing the chasm it talks
about how a company with few hundered people can go mainstream. Larry
leveraged all his background, upbringing and knowledge he had to create one of
great software product.

------
zhemao
I find it funny that Page complained about Gmail taking 600 milliseconds to
load back when it was created. It probably takes longer than that these days
unless you have a really fast connection.

~~~
Tarang
If they had to check the server logs wouldn't they be referring to something
more related to generating the html? This would remain the lowest response
even on the fastest possible connection.

~~~
paul
At the time, the server was probably about 30 feet away, so network latency
wasn't a big issue :)

The article gets the timeline wrong though. This anecdote happened very early
in the development of gmail -- it was rewritten several times between then and
launch.

------
riggins
It's pretty cool that someone who cried about Nikola Tesla as a kid is now
running one of the world's most valuable companies.

------
627467
An hagiographic piece posted on the same day that 2 set-back stories are
announced (major strategic shift on "social" and no-poaching settlement)...

------
vijayboyapati
The one interaction I had with Larry that I remember was when we were moving
from the old Google building (the "googleplex") to a much larger building in
the old Silicon Graphics campus. I went there on a Sunday night to check out
my desk and where I would be sitting and I ran into Larry (there was no one
else around). He gave me a tour of the building and we walked up to a window
where we could see the whole campus, with several other huge buildings. I
asked him "how on earth are we going to fill this building?", which could have
held several times the size of the company at the time, and he pointed at the
other buildings and said we're going to fill all of them. Holy f*ck, I
thought.

------
argumentum
This article kind of oddly goes out of its way to erase Sergey from Google's
history (and present and future). It's always seemed to me that they have a
very beneficial symbiosis.

The idea of investors bringing in a "professional" CEO has largely died,
thankfully. It must have been incredibly frustrating for Sergey/Larry to see a
younger Mark Zuckerberg go from strength to strength as Founder/CEO while they
had to pretend Schmidt was in charge for "adult supervision".

------
yeukhon
This is a great biography of Larry Page. Though there are some misreport facts
and one-sided opinjon, the article captures my pulse. Only a few lengthy
articles could ever retain my full attention till the end.

In particular the whole "Larry as a visionary", "Larry is socially awkward",
"Larry is not traditional" makes me feel more welcome in this world. I too am
that kind of person (it is up for future to judge whether I am visionary :)).
But this is the exact article I need to pursue my dream of making things
"happening". If you want to carry out your vision, you need to delegate. You
need to set the tone "this is what we do, and we do this this way."

Ideas just happen to come to us every minute but we are too caught up in
fighting the current. That's the big Google problem: it is too huge too slow
too bureaucratic to get things done, even after Larry is back as CEO. This is
why I am more leading toward startup environment (I am about to graduate
soon), this is why people leave big corporations. I wasn't appreicating why
Google was moving in so many directions. But it is true. I long know Google is
outside my tech tweets. Not enough hype for me to notice until special events.
Nothing exciting. I hope one day they realize simplicity is the key (please
fix your UX). Outside of privacy and security worries, I believe Google does
have the collective power and sum to make a life-dependent integrated
platform. It is up to Google executives to decide whether they will make such
platform as open as possible, as friendly as possible, to both end users,
sales and engineers.

I truly envy him being a genius and intelligent at making things. I hope one
day I too will be recognized. Enough said, there is always an opportunity for
everything. Only I can make that happen.

------
n72
"Page once told a room full of Google’s first marketing employees that their
profession was built on an ability to lie."

Oh come on. As owner of history's largest ad platform and someone who's made
ungodly amounts of money from it, this seems like a massively hypocritical and
un-self-aware thing to say.

~~~
chris_mahan
Marketing isn't about lying. It's about telling the truth* that gets you to
buy the product, not the whole truth. Who has time to tell the whole truth?

* for varying definitions of the truth.

~~~
Joeri
I always thought marketing was about convincing people that they wish to buy
the product that the marketeer has, by whatever means necessary, whether it be
whole truth, half truth or bare lie.

A good product can be marketed with the truth, a bad product however ...

------
mkattam
What are some of Sergei's accomplishments contributing to Google in a big way?

------
blazespin
And this is how a child tries to describe how his parent does his job.

------
Zelphyr
I feel like there are so many stories of tech leaders being assholes that
perhaps maybe its just a way for the author to sex up a story. That's not to
suggest Page didn't act like a dick. But given that its a thread in just about
every story about tech founders I have to question the severity of many of the
reported actions.

------
bsaul
I'm curious : anyone here remembers google defining its strategy as an
"hypercube" ? I'm pretty sure i read about that a looong time ago, but i can't
find any article about it now.

------
dosh
This is a really helpful article to learn about the early days of Google and
the challenges in scaling your organization. Thanks for sharing.

------
mark_l_watson
+1 a great article

I had the privilege/fun of consulting at Google for four months last year and
getting a glimpse inside the company was more than interesting.

I think the filter that projects should offer 10x improvements sets high
expectations. If Google is the first to develop a general purpose AI then
their valuation will approach infinity.

------
snarfy
Google was a better company when Eric was at the helm. Now we get G+.

~~~
jenno
Yes, let's point to this one failed example as how the entire company has been
misled by Page...

~~~
snarfy
I never said misled. If you need an example of misleading the company (and
industry), look no further than the no poaching lawsuit, where Larry
specifically mentions to keep the deal out of email and off the books. Don't
be evil. Sure Larry. Sure.

~~~
asdfologist
What? That was Schmidt.

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906310/the-no-hire-
paper-...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906310/the-no-hire-paper-trail-
steve-jobs-and-eric-schmidt-didnt-want-you-to-see)

~~~
snarfy
Ah, I stand corrected. With the additional news that they are scaling back G+,
now I'm not sure what to think.

------
simplemath
50, 100 years from now, Larry Page (if he's even dead yet) will be remembered
as one of the more impactful people in human history.

~~~
whoismua
Why specifically? History is long, think of Einstein, the person that invented
the penicillin, vaccines, the transistor....

Search engines existed before Page, granted not as good but they existed.
Google rode the internet explosion, whereas Jobs and (drumroll...) Gates
brought a computer in every home.

What he will be remembered is for tainting the Google brand. It was golden,
now in many circles they see them as biased, full of ads
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7600532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7600532)
, deceiving consumers and a behemoth deserving to be taken down. Downhill has
started

~~~
simplemath
Honestly, I think widespread automated cars will be enough (And I am going to
go out on a limb and say that Google technology will be in a huge number of
automobiles 25 years from today), but if G has its way, and GFiber transforms
ISP/Content delivery, their energy initiatives with windblimp turbines, deep
machine learning for medicine, actual robotic assistants, G Books... The list
goes on and on. Search is just the cash engine for the truly transformative
tech.

There has rarely been an industrial force with the ambition Page gives to
Google. If they succeed in even half measures on some of these initiatives, it
will be transformative.

~~~
whoismua
_And I am going to go out on a limb..._

Everything you said is in early stages or very limited markets. Sure Google
has bought a lot of things and rushes to do press releases but what can be
bought in the store right now? GFiber in a few cities? That's all.

 _Search is just the cash engine for the truly transformative tech._

Got any numbers on ho much Google spent on "transformative tech"? It looks
peanuts to me, everything they spend real money and resources on seems to be
linked to getting users click those ads.

~~~
simplemath
Edit: Do you seriously think that GFiber isn't going to be a major player
nationally? Or that automated cars will never see market? On the second part I
think we're a lot closer than you might imagine:
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/04/09/autonomou...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/04/09/autonomous_vehicle_regulations_washington_d_c_s_dmv_prepares_for_self_driving.html)

As for R&D spending:
[http://ycharts.com/companies/GOOG/r_and_d_expense](http://ycharts.com/companies/GOOG/r_and_d_expense)

Over 2.1b quarterly.

Not exactly peanuts.

~~~
whoismua
Fiber, NO! Google will discontinue it soon, they just want to force AT&t and
others to offer higher speeds. It cost a fortune and even if they get their
money back, it messes up their margins.

Everyone and their mom has a self-driving car prototype.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#2010s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#2010s)

I guess Microsoft is "beating" Google with $2.74 Billion a year.
[http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/r_and_d_expense](http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/r_and_d_expense)

I think that R&D is too wide of an entry, a breakdown would be useful.

~~~
simplemath
[https://fiber.google.com/newcities/](https://fiber.google.com/newcities/)

I've seen nothing to suggest that Google is only doing this to force AT&T's
hand - and even if that IS the case, they are the entity responsible for
catalyzing FTTH on a national scale.Edit: Also - why would G aquire massive
amounts of dark fiber backbone starting way back in 05 if they just wanted to
astroturf AT&T into doing the dirty work? Unless its just all just long con to
meter the other isps on backbone traffic. Doubtful.

Oh, so MSFT is "beating" GOOG in R&D - MSFT's research isnt prototyping
autonomous cars or actually planning space elevators, or acquiring Boston
Dynamics. It's hardly"peanuts" by any definition.

Yes, there are lots of companies now rushing for a driverless car, but G is
recognized as by far the industry leader and will likely license its
technology to Toyota starting in 2016.Protype Prius's and Lexus RX SUVs have
been logging hundreds of thousands of miles the past couple of years. They
will beat GM to market most likely. Others will follow with licensing.

Since I cant reply to you below - You said G was investing "peanuts" in R&D.
This is demonstrably false. Anyhow, you can brandhate on them all you want,
but they are pushing the envelope in ways that few other companies in
industrial history ever have. I see no reason to continue this conversation.

~~~
whoismua
_" MSFT's research isnt prototyping autonomous cars"_

Ah, so it's autonomous cars or you're R&D-ing.

 _" or actually planning space elevators" _ Tell us about it, how much did
Google spend on it and far did they go? Oh, someone at Google thought about
it.

 _" or acquiring Boston Dynamics."_ so what? You said that Google is spending
a fortune on R&D and I used the same criteria to show that MSFT is spending
more. My point was to say that "R&D" as reported may include a lot of normal
existing product development.

 _" Yes, there are lots of companies now rushing for a driverless car, but G
is recognized as by far the industry leader"_

By whom? Have they actually miniaturized it yet and how much does it cost per
car?

------
h1fra
Very long, surprisingly easy to read.

Great article !

------
shreeshga
very well written.

------
EGreg
That's quite a long story. This was my reaction:

[http://twitter.com/GregMozart](http://twitter.com/GregMozart)

The last 4-5 tweets

