Sunday, June 14, 2009

The Google Corporate Culture


Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures

Wave and Android promise to be the two biggest technology news items for the rest of this year. That makes me take a renewed look at a company I have always been excited about: my interest has gone deeper. Google looks like is about to beat the likes of Twitter and Facebook in the buzz department. And Wave and Android promise to take over this blog. When I first launched this blog, I talked about Google often. Then I wandered away to talk about other things. Now Google is back with a vengeance.

Google Wave: Organizations Will Go Topsy Turvy
Google Wave: Enormous Buzz
Possible Google Wave Applications And Innovations
Google Wave Architecture: Designed For Mass, Massive, Global Innovation
The Google Wave Architecture
Google Wave Ripples
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Of Waves And Tsunamis
Google Wave: Wave Of The Future?
Google Wave: If Email Were Invented Today

The Android Architecture
Android Netbook
Donut Android: Android 2.0
Android
Taking The Number 2 Spot On Google Search For Donut Android
Hitting Number 4 For Google Search Results on Cupcake Android
Donut Android: Windows 95, Android 2009?
Cupcake Android Delay Reason: Donut Android
Google Analytics Says I Am Paul Krugman Friend, Cupcake Android Expert
Cupcake: Android 1.5

Today I wanted to take a look at the Google corporate culture. What makes it stand out? How can a company start big, grow bigger and still stay at the cutting edge of innovation? Google might go the IBM and the Microsoft way down the line, but for now it reins supreme.

Look at how the work on Wave was done. It was done not by Google Corporate. It was done by a startup inside Google. Google Corporate incubated Wave. I am going to argue that is the only way it could have been done.

It is that same principle that gets applied to two other core ideas.
  1. Small teams of three or four.
  2. 20% time.
Offering meals is another great idea they have. It is not a perk by a rich company. It makes business sense. They are a more productive, more close knit company because of that.

The in-house child care at Google, unfairly, is futuristic.

There are some things Google does that only a very rich company peopled by the best and the brightest can do. There are some things that Google does that make sense for a company of coders, hard core knowledge workers. But there are many other things that Google does that most companies could emulate because they make productivity sense. It is an attitude thing.

Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures

On The Web

Corporate Information - The Google Culture we still maintain a small company feel. ...... Our commitment to innovation depends on everyone being comfortable sharing ideas and opinions. ....... each employee is a hands-on contributor, and everyone wears several hats. ....... no one hesitates to ask Larry or Sergey a pointed question in our weekly TGIF meetings, or spike a volleyball over the net at a corporate officer. ........... hiring policy is aggressively non-discriminatory ........ a staff that reflects the global audience the search engine serves. ............ dozens of languages are spoken by Google staffers, from Turkish to Telugu. ........ an obsessive commitment to creating search perfection ........ Bicycles for efficient travel between meetings, dogs, lava lamps, and massage chairs. ....... Googlers sharing cubes, yurts, and huddle rooms (few single offices!) with three or four team members. ....... Laptops in every employee's hand (or bike basket), for mobile coding and note-taking. ....... Foozball, pool tables, volleyball courts, assorted video games, pianos, ping pong tables, lap pools, gyms that include yoga and dance classes. ........ Grassroots employee organizations of all kinds, such as meditation classes, film clubs, wine tasting groups, and salsa dance clubs. ........ Healthy lunches and dinners for all staff at a wide variety of cafés, and outdoor seating for sunshine brainstorming. ........ Snack rooms packed with various snacks and drinks to keep Googlers going throughout the day.

Corporate Information - Our Philosophy Google's culture is unlike any in corporate America, and it's not because of the ubiquitous lava lamps and large rubber balls ...... "The perfect search engine," says Google co-founder Larry Page, "would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want." .......... growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another. ........ As we continue to build new products* while making search better, our hope is to bring the power of search to previously unexplored areas, and to help users access and use even more of the ever-expanding information in their lives. .......... Google may be the only company in the world whose stated goal is to have users leave its website as quickly as possible. .......... Others assumed large servers were the fastest way to handle massive amounts of data. Google found networked PCs to be faster. Where others accepted apparent speed limits imposed by search algorithms, Google wrote new algorithms that proved there were no limits. ......... Google ranks every web page using a breakthrough technique called PageRank™. PageRank evaluates all of the sites linking to a web page and assigns them a value, based in part on the sites linking to them. ............ The world is increasingly mobile ....... an on-the-fly translation system that converts pages written in HTML to a format that can be read by phone browsers. ....... No one can buy better PageRank. ....... The popularity of PDF results led us to expand the list of file types searched to include documents produced in a dozen formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. ........ we maintain dozens of Internet domains and serve more than half of our results to users living outside the United States ........ Google's interface can be customized into more than 100 languages. ........ work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun ........ Google Inc. puts employees first when it comes to daily life in our Googleplex headquarters. ......... an emphasis on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments ........ Ideas are traded, tested and put into practice with an alacrity that can be dizzying. Meetings that would take hours elsewhere are frequently little more than a conversation in line for lunch and few walls separate those who write the code from those who write the checks. ........... highly communicative environment fosters a productivity and camaraderie fueled by the realization that millions of people rely on Google results. Give the proper tools to a group of people who like to make a difference, and they will. ...... Google does not accept being the best as an endpoint, but a starting point. Through innovation and iteration, Google takes something that works well and improves upon it in unexpected ways. ...... anticipating needs not yet articulated by our global audience, then meeting them with products and services that set new standards. This constant dissatisfaction with the way things are is ultimately the driving force behind the world's best search engine. ..... the farther we travel toward achieving it, the more those blurry objects on the horizon come into sharper focus (to be replaced, of course, by more blurry objects)
Google - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Google is known for its informal corporate culture, of which its playful variations on its own corporate logo are an indicator.
Building a 'Googley' Workforce - washingtonpost.com To understand the corporate culture at Google Inc., take a look at the toilets....... Every bathroom stall on the company campus holds a Japanese high-tech commode with a heated seat. If a flush is not enough, a wireless button on the door activates a bidet and drying......... Generous, quirky perks keep employees happy and thinking in unconventional ways, helping Google innovate as it rapidly expands into new lines of business. .............. new offices in such cities as Beijing, Zurich and Bangalore. ...... a new product nearly every week, including some widely regarded as flops ........ culture of fearlessness ......... indoor gym and large child care facility ........ private shuttle bus service to and from San Francisco and other residential areas ....... employees are encouraged to propose wild, ambitious ideas often ....... All engineers are allotted 20 percent of their time to work on their own ideas. ...... corporate counterculture ...... plans to launch a free wireless Internet service in San Francisco. ........ "Maybe there will be a few that take off spectacularly. And maybe they're smart enough to realize no one is smart enough to tell which lottery card is the winner five years out." ........... a market value of about $140 billion and $2.69 billion in quarterly revenue ........ "If you're not failing enough, you're not trying hard enough" ........ just move, move, move. If it doesn't work, move on .......... In addition to glass cubicles, some staffers share white fabric "yurts," tentlike spaces that resemble igloos. ........ would install 9,000 solar panels on its buildings ......... Along interior hallways, employees scribble random thoughts on large whiteboards strung together. Outside, they whiz by on company-provided motorized scooters or mingle on grassy areas and chairs under brightly colored umbrellas. ......... Innovation reaches one corner of Google that most companies neglect: food. Each of its 11 campus cafes is run by an executive chef with a theme catering to the culture of people working in that particular building. This year Google opened Cafe180, a cafeteria that supports local organic farming by serving only products from within 180 miles of the campus. .......... rigorous hiring procedure similar to those used for admission to elite universities ........ "whether someone is Googley," said chief culture officer Stacy Sullivan. ...... not someone too traditional ........ Learning continues on the job across a wide range of subjects through Google's "tech talks" ........ In the back, a Google employee with a long silver braid held his pet African Grey parrot on his finger. ........ Our culture is one of our most valuable assets.
Organizational Culture: Corporate Culture in Organizations
Google's Corporate Culture
Real Estate Broker's Survival Kit Tool #4: Google's Corporate ... The perks at Google are Disneyland like and the compensation is lucrative to say the least. ......... Google disdains hierarchical order. ...... small creative teams highly flexible and extremely motivated

Thoughts.com Blogs - google corporate culture Google is one of the fastest growing companies today. One of the reasons why they are successful is they have a unique corporate culture ...... allows employees to freely discuss any topic with any other employee. Because of this, google has a small company feel which allows employees feel like they are important to the company.
How Google is changing corporate culture | Republic Publishing
JD on EP: Elop, culture But the corporate culture which scares me most is Google's. I don't personally associate with people who work there, and haven't even visited their campus ....... It's really scary that Google has web beacons on the majority of the Web's pages, controls the navigational reality of the majority of web searchers, and owns secret ad-personalization databases which are bigger than any FBI spying program ever could be. ...... I hope Google turns out okay, for all our sakes.
The Next Evolution: Corporate Culture for Innovation their culture of innovation is tailored to attract and most importantly retain a target talent pool ....... When we are talking about a corporate vision requiring innovation to grow revenue, it requires a much different culture than the vision for an industry that is going through a consolidation phase. ......... transparency. A culture centered on innovation seems best served by this management style.

From The Official Google Blog

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Tour the homepages of your favorite celebrities
Search billions of documents with the Google Search Appliance 6.0
The Local Business Center dashboard opens its doors
Blog search and beyond
The Day in the Cloud Challenge featuring Google Apps on June 24th
Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.
Search engineer stories
Kicking off 2nd annual Google I/O developer gathering
New Logo Look
Netlog integrates with Google Friend Connect
Put the pedal to the metal with a faster Google Chrome
Faster is better on Google Suggest
Congratulations Eric Yang, winner of the 2008-2009 National Geographic Bee
Announcing the 2009 Doodle 4 Google Winner
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This is your pilot speaking. Now, about that holding pattern...
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Vote for the national Doodle 4 Google winner
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The 2008 Founders' Letter anywhere there is a working web browser and Internet connection ..... the Internet will reach billions more in the coming decade.

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