Do You Google?
An inside look at the Google search engine, the last refuge of Silicon Valley zaniness. (pre-IPO)
Do You Google? Some use it to get lovers. Some to save lives. Some to find pictures of Britney Spears. It’s called Google, and it’s much more than just another Internet search engine; it’s a phenomenon.
The words scroll up a wall behind the receptionist, a 24-hour, real-time display of what ordinary people around the world want to know—husker du, Italia, stuffed animals, Clifford, Sweden homes, Deustche moviez, London piano removal, moon pictures, French pigtail catheter multi, wedding dress trends. This ever-changing barometer of curiosity represents the millions of daily searches performed by Google, the internet’s hottest search engine. I’m standing in the lobby of Google’s Silicon Valley offices, aka the “Googleplex”, attempting to understand the company’s goofy office culture. And that means I should count the number of lava lamps in the lobby (16). I should take note of the baby grand piano (Yamaha, with Elton John sheet music). I should sit on one of the brightly-colored inflatable plastic balls (over 100) which litter the hallways.
“These are just cultural,” says Google spokesman David Krane, nudging a ball with a foot. “We kick it at each other. One night I was here around 1:30 in the morning. Someone came downstairs and started lying on it, kind of like a seal in a circus show.”
Sound like your office? It might be, if you worked at a high-tech company in the late 1990s, when dotcom’s Golden Age meant inflated IPOs, expensive launch parties, and New Economy headlines. In this sense, Google appears a rarity, a living fossil from an earlier time when workplaces looked like children’s playpens. But the company is no time capsule. It’s flush with cash and growing every month. In this building, over 230 employees enjoy perks ranging from an onsite chef and masseuse to saunas, ice cream, and a weekly hockey game played in the parking lot. And of course, there’s all the plastic balls.
Like so many other startups, Google’s funding came from venture capitalists. But its founders had something else their peers didn’t—a tangible, easy-to-use product which is actually beneficial to the home consumer. And they were also cautious. They never took the company public. They never bought any advertising. Popularity spread solely through word of mouth and positive press. In a year when failed dotcoms have closed up and sold off office furniture, Google is offering new services and expanding into another building.
Search engines have changed people’s lives, demystified the complexities of the web for the average computer owner. Exploring a topic of interest no longer means going to the library and poring over microfiche. Anyone can be an amateur researcher, journalist, geneologist, or procrastinator. Out of the mix of Altavista, Yahoo!, and other popular search engines, Google is by far the most user-friendly. Load the page, type in what you want to search, hit a button, and read the results. In this regard, Google leads all competitors, with over 150 million unique searches every day. The word has even entered our vocabulary. “Googling” someone has come to mean that you run a Google search on that person’s name, especially if you’re interested in dating them. I’ve Googled for that reason. I’ve Googled my friends. I’ve Googled myself and my books. I Google for work. Google Google. I don’t know why. Because I can?
The receptionist admits she rarely looks at the scrolling list of queries. I stand mesmerized by the display and nearly get trampled by employees, who traipse through the building like an episode of the West Wing. One passing Googler recognizes the familiar gaze on my face, and remarks over her shoulder, “Oh yeah, someone who was here saw her own name.”
(First published in The Independent Sunday Review)