

‘How Google Works,’ by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg - sonabinu
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/books/review/how-google-works-by-eric-schmidt-and-jonathan-rosenberg.html?mabReward=RI%3A12&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine&_r=0

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xexers
I bought this book, started to read it, then returned it because it was so
bad. It reads like an advertisement and it seems to be aimed at old ladies who
occasionally use "the googles". People in the industry will find it to be a
lot of information that you already know.

If you want to read about the war between Google & Microsoft, I'd suggest this
one:

[http://www.amazon.ca/Digital-Wars-Google-Microsoft-
Internet/...](http://www.amazon.ca/Digital-Wars-Google-Microsoft-
Internet/dp/0749464135)

~~~
omouse
Honestly to me, this book is great because there are so many fucking clueless
managers and executives out there and they make work miserable. Thinking 10X
bigger is something that rarely happens in a typical company. The recruitment
process is shit as well, we have at our company an inexperienced inhouse
recruiter and tech interviewers who are basically looking for bare minimum
skills, fresh out of university people who can't find jobs elsewhere. Pumping
out projects as fast as possible with inexperienced people is great for short-
term profit but horrible for any longevity. This book would turn around and
give them evidence and proof that the new world is _smart_ people who want to
work on _hard_ problems.

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cromwellian
I don't like these kind of MBA driven business advice books because they all
suffer from survivorship bias.

But I think the NYTimes review at the end imparts its own bias over the
Gundotra story. I don't have any information but speculation, but I don't
think either Gundotra or Marissa Mayer left because of 'failure', I think they
simply had risen as far as they could and had no internal political
opportunity for advancement. At one point, Gundotra was apparently in the
running to be Microsoft's CEO (Gundotra was an ex-MS VP), and with Sundar
taking over everything, Vic may have just decided to do other things.

Besides, Google Plus didn't fail, no matter how often this is repeated. It
failed only if you assume the goal was to beat Facebook's news feed. However,
if you consider the other things it does, it achieved a lot: Unified login, G+
now has 34% of logins across mobile and the web compared to Facebook connect
at 46%. G+ photos became Google's photo hosting service. Even the G+ "stream"
has hundreds of millions of active users posting. It's nothing compared to
Facebook, but if it is not #2, it is #3, and who wouldn't want a business with
a few hundred million people posting to it every day?

Google doesn't fire people for trying something bold and then failing,
especially not execs. If Gundotra was "let go", it wasn't because G+ wasn't a
roaring success.

~~~
TheTaO
Yes I think people often mistake that the goal of G+ was to compete or replace
FB in people's daily lives. I think it was to make sure that Google has enough
data to provide socially relevant targeting that FB claimed only they could
provide at that time. And another was to establish a beachhead in social space
as a contender should FB make a privacy or any other faux pas as they grow.

I think Google has largely succeeded in doing that.

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josefresco
Pretty critical review - although I already discount "how to" books written by
widely successful people as often their new-found business _wisdom_ cannot be
tied directly to their success.

