GQ on Google's Road to Riches

prostoalex writes "John Heilemann writes the untold story of Google IPO in GQ magazine (out of all tech publications out there). It's a story about Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google CEO Eric Scmidt and Silicon Valley venture capitalists that guided Google in the startup phase to take it public later. The article answers many questions that readers perhaps had about Google. Why go IPO when your earnings are just fine? How much power do Sergey and Larry have inside the company? What's the reason for so much secrecy? One interesting episode describes an engineer squatting CEO's office seeking solutide from the noise surrounding him in the cube area."

Comments

Re:liked fuckedgoogle.com says- "assloads of money

[googisgod]

http://www.fuckedgoogle.com/

would be the correct link. :-)

Re:IPO

[aapold]

Because it makes a relatively decent assload of money for your employees that have been with you making this happen.

Re:Slashdot Poll

[AkaXakA]

*Raises hand*

And no, I'm not new here.
So yes, hell has just fronzen over :P

PS. The site is quirky...you can't text-zoom or the end of the article drops off the page.

Insightful????

[jmichaelg]

They didn't go public for either of your reasons. The founders wanted to remain a private company so they didn't have to disclose what they were thinking or doing. Having taken more than $25 million from investors, their hand was forced.

Had you read the fine article, you would have read this:

But the end of Google's adolescence wasn't optional. The boys had obligations to their investors and underlings. Doerr and Moritz, both sitting on funds that had been hammered by the collapse of the bubble, were keen to cash in their Google chips, while employees who'd been slaving for years were eager for a payday that would put rental housing behind them. On top of that, there was an SEC rule that would require Google (due to the number of shares it had given out) to start publishing its financials in April 2004. Public or private, the veil of fiscal secrecy was about to be lifted.

Re:I've always wondered

[bleckywelcky]

The first and primary location of Google is in Mountain View, CA. This is near Palo Alto, Los Altos Hills, Atherton, Menlo Park, etc ... these names sound familiar? Well maybe not if you don't pay attention to the real estate market much. But if you do, you'll know that an empty 1/4 acre lot in those areas can easily go for $0.5 million. A 1500 ft^2 bland house on a lot with minor mechanical/structural problems will go for $1.0 million easily. It is one of the most expensive places to live in the entire country. In fact it's so expensive to live there that nearly 80% of the residential property in the area is rental property. Still, a 4 or 5 bedroom dorm-style house will fetch $450 to $600 per room; people stand to make more money buying a house and renting it there (and then living somewhere else) than they do just living in the area. And even at these prices property moves at light speed! I've seen cases where a homeowner lists a 2000 ft^2 house on a 1/4 lot for $1.2 million or $1.3 million and it's gone within 3 or 4 days. The market is crazy out there.

Doerr is smart

[danila]

I am sure that Larry and Sergey are smart fellas. But they don't know everything. Nobody does. John Doerr is a very smart guy and when he says something about how a business should be ran, smart people listen, I bet even Bill Gates does.

Doerr also has many stories when genius inventors completely fucked up their companies based around revolutionary inventions. Segway flopped primarily because Dean Kamen ignored everything that Doerr said. And that included Kamen's obstinate desire to micromanage everything and to prevent the CEO from doing his job. In its short history Segway has already lost 3 CEOs, two presidents and three top marketing execs!

CEOs are people who run businesses. If your company has several thousand people working for it and is worth a few billions dollars, you need a CEO, and you need to give him the authority to do things. Otherwise you will fail.

If Larry and Sergey do not grow wiser, the company will fail, PageRank or not. You can't build a business on technical ideas alone.

Note: Yes, I know that there are lame overpaid CEOs. And hiring a CEO doesn't necessarily mean changing the corporate culture.