ColinSick
September 24th, 2005, 05:35 PM
Managing Google's Idea Factory
Friday September 23, 3:58 pm ET
By Ben Elgin in Mountain View, Calif.
In late 1998, when Marissa Mayer first heard about a small outfit called Google, she barely batted an eye. The Stanford University grad student was urged by her adviser to pay a visit to two guys on the computer science building's fourth floor who were developing ways to analyze the World Wide Web.
But Internet startups were as common as hay fever in Silicon Valley. Mayer, then 23, was leaning toward taking a teaching gig at Carnegie Mellon University. And the thought of joining up with the university's techies wasn't exactly appealing. "I knew about the Stanford PhD types," she muses. "They love to Rollerblade. They eat pizza for breakfast. They don't shower much. And they don't say 'Sorry' when they bump into you in the hallway."
Fortunately for both Google Inc. (NasdaqNM:GOOG - News) and Mayer, she had a change of heart. A headhunter persuaded her to reconsider the search startup, and she ended up joining Google in early 1999, as a programmer and roughly its 20th employee. Since then, Mayer has emerged as a powerful force inside the high-flying company. Her title, director of consumer Web products, belies her power and influence as a champion of innovation. Mayer has her hands on virtually everything the average Google user sees -- from the look of its Web pages to new software for searching your hard drive. And she helps decide which new initiatives get the attention of the company's founders and which don't.
It's no small task. Co-founders Larry E. Page and Sergey Brin have long declared their mission is to "organize the world's information." Yet only in recent months has the staggering scope of their ambition come into full relief. Google is moving to digitize the world's libraries, to offer all comers free voice calls, to provide satellite images of the world, and perhaps to give away wireless broadband service to millions of people. Google really seems to believe it can make every bit of information available to anyone anywhere, and direct all those bits -- whether text, audio, or video -- through its computers before they hit users' brains.
Rocket Ride
Mayer doesn't handle all this herself. One of the key reasons for Google's success is a belief that good ideas can, and should, come from anywhere. Page and Brin insist that all engineers in the company have one day a week to work on their own pet projects. An ideas mailing list is open to anyone at Google who wants to post a proposal. What Mayer does is help figure out how to make sure good ideas bubble to the surface and get the attention they need. The task is becoming more complex as Google grows, with a workforce of 4,200 now and revenues on track to hit $3.7 billion this year.
It's increasingly important, too. Google's rocket ride has attracted a swarm of competitors, from giants Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT - News) and Yahoo! (NasdaqNM:YHOO - News) to upstarts like Technorati and Exalead. They're all aiming to take away a chunk of Google's search traffic, which puts a premium on the company's ability to develop other technologies. "People are used to typing in Google to search," says Chris Sherman, editor of the industry newsletter SearchDay. "But its competitors are doing a really good job of rolling out quality features and products." Microsoft Corp. has even explored taking a stake in America Online Inc. so that it can claim for itself the millions in revenues that Google gets from providing AOL with its search technology.
The woman charged with helping come up with Google's response is a tall, striking blonde with blue eyes. At 30, Mayer still carries herself with the erect posture of the ballet dancer she was in her youth. She grew up in Wausau, Wis., a city of 40,000 about 3 1/2 hours northwest of Milwaukee. She aspires to live up to the example of her grandfather, who served as mayor of Jackson, Wis., for 30 years, despite being crippled by polio as a child.
In Wausau, Mayer was one of the top debaters on her high school team. Then the brainy teenager decided to try out for pom-pom squad and made that team, too. To some who knew her, Mayer was making a point. "She wanted to smash the image of the airhead cheerleader," says Jim Briggs, Mayer's high-school debate coach. Her debate team ended up winning the Wisconsin state championship; her pom-pom squad was the state runner-up.
A large part of Mayer's success at Google is due to her ability to travel easily between different worlds. When she first joined, the company had something of a high-school cliquishness, albeit in reverse. At lunch, the coolest kids -- in this forum, the smartest geeks -- sat together. On the periphery, sales and marketing folks gathered. Mayer could hold her own in either realm. "She's a geek, but her clothes match," says one former employee.
Mayer continues to bridge the gap between MBAs and PhDs. She helps decide when employees' pet projects are refined enough to be presented to the company's founders. Such decisions are often made through an established process, with Mayer giving ideas a hearing during her open office hours or during brainstorming sessions. Yet she is also good at drawing out programmers informally, during a chance meeting in the cafeteria or hallway.
During a casual chat in 2003, a worker told her about the project of an Australian engineer, Steve Lawrence. He was developing a program to track and search the contents of his computer, which ran on the Linux operating system. Knowing Google had to figure out a way for people to find stuff on their own computers, Mayer tracked Lawrence down and asked him about developing a version of his software to search any PC. He was enthusiastic, so she helped assemble a team to work with him. The result: Google introduced its desktop search in October, 2004, two months before Microsoft. "Marissa has been very successful as the gatekeeper for a lot of these new products," says Craig Silverstein, director of technology at Google.
Part of Mayer's challenge is realizing when certain formulas falter. For years she ran the company's Top 100 priorities list, which ranked projects by order of importance. But as Google's workforce grew, the list soared to more than 270 projects. Last year Google execs decided it had run its course, and shut it down. "People don't get attached to the processes themselves at Google," says Bret Taylor, product manager for Google Maps. "It's very unusual. Even at small companies, people tend to say: 'This is the way we do X."'
Mayer's typical workday starts at 9 a.m. and doesn't end until about midnight. Her glass-walled office is intentionally situated across from the engineering snack area, where programmers grab evening coffee or munchies. Often on these late nights, engineers will bend her ear as they take a breather from their work, bringing her up to date on the countless ideas percolating through the ranks. "I keep my ears open. I work at building a reputation for being receptive," she says.
This theory is in action on a sunny Friday afternoon in September. Mayer walks around her office, shared with an assistant and two other employees. Outside the door, seven or eight programmers and product managers have been milling about since 3:30. Most wear jeans, tennis shoes, and checkered or striped shirts, all untucked. Some pace the hall and talk quietly on their cell phones. Others sit on chairs, their arms folded, waiting patiently.
Friday September 23, 3:58 pm ET
By Ben Elgin in Mountain View, Calif.
In late 1998, when Marissa Mayer first heard about a small outfit called Google, she barely batted an eye. The Stanford University grad student was urged by her adviser to pay a visit to two guys on the computer science building's fourth floor who were developing ways to analyze the World Wide Web.
But Internet startups were as common as hay fever in Silicon Valley. Mayer, then 23, was leaning toward taking a teaching gig at Carnegie Mellon University. And the thought of joining up with the university's techies wasn't exactly appealing. "I knew about the Stanford PhD types," she muses. "They love to Rollerblade. They eat pizza for breakfast. They don't shower much. And they don't say 'Sorry' when they bump into you in the hallway."
Fortunately for both Google Inc. (NasdaqNM:GOOG - News) and Mayer, she had a change of heart. A headhunter persuaded her to reconsider the search startup, and she ended up joining Google in early 1999, as a programmer and roughly its 20th employee. Since then, Mayer has emerged as a powerful force inside the high-flying company. Her title, director of consumer Web products, belies her power and influence as a champion of innovation. Mayer has her hands on virtually everything the average Google user sees -- from the look of its Web pages to new software for searching your hard drive. And she helps decide which new initiatives get the attention of the company's founders and which don't.
It's no small task. Co-founders Larry E. Page and Sergey Brin have long declared their mission is to "organize the world's information." Yet only in recent months has the staggering scope of their ambition come into full relief. Google is moving to digitize the world's libraries, to offer all comers free voice calls, to provide satellite images of the world, and perhaps to give away wireless broadband service to millions of people. Google really seems to believe it can make every bit of information available to anyone anywhere, and direct all those bits -- whether text, audio, or video -- through its computers before they hit users' brains.
Rocket Ride
Mayer doesn't handle all this herself. One of the key reasons for Google's success is a belief that good ideas can, and should, come from anywhere. Page and Brin insist that all engineers in the company have one day a week to work on their own pet projects. An ideas mailing list is open to anyone at Google who wants to post a proposal. What Mayer does is help figure out how to make sure good ideas bubble to the surface and get the attention they need. The task is becoming more complex as Google grows, with a workforce of 4,200 now and revenues on track to hit $3.7 billion this year.
It's increasingly important, too. Google's rocket ride has attracted a swarm of competitors, from giants Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT - News) and Yahoo! (NasdaqNM:YHOO - News) to upstarts like Technorati and Exalead. They're all aiming to take away a chunk of Google's search traffic, which puts a premium on the company's ability to develop other technologies. "People are used to typing in Google to search," says Chris Sherman, editor of the industry newsletter SearchDay. "But its competitors are doing a really good job of rolling out quality features and products." Microsoft Corp. has even explored taking a stake in America Online Inc. so that it can claim for itself the millions in revenues that Google gets from providing AOL with its search technology.
The woman charged with helping come up with Google's response is a tall, striking blonde with blue eyes. At 30, Mayer still carries herself with the erect posture of the ballet dancer she was in her youth. She grew up in Wausau, Wis., a city of 40,000 about 3 1/2 hours northwest of Milwaukee. She aspires to live up to the example of her grandfather, who served as mayor of Jackson, Wis., for 30 years, despite being crippled by polio as a child.
In Wausau, Mayer was one of the top debaters on her high school team. Then the brainy teenager decided to try out for pom-pom squad and made that team, too. To some who knew her, Mayer was making a point. "She wanted to smash the image of the airhead cheerleader," says Jim Briggs, Mayer's high-school debate coach. Her debate team ended up winning the Wisconsin state championship; her pom-pom squad was the state runner-up.
A large part of Mayer's success at Google is due to her ability to travel easily between different worlds. When she first joined, the company had something of a high-school cliquishness, albeit in reverse. At lunch, the coolest kids -- in this forum, the smartest geeks -- sat together. On the periphery, sales and marketing folks gathered. Mayer could hold her own in either realm. "She's a geek, but her clothes match," says one former employee.
Mayer continues to bridge the gap between MBAs and PhDs. She helps decide when employees' pet projects are refined enough to be presented to the company's founders. Such decisions are often made through an established process, with Mayer giving ideas a hearing during her open office hours or during brainstorming sessions. Yet she is also good at drawing out programmers informally, during a chance meeting in the cafeteria or hallway.
During a casual chat in 2003, a worker told her about the project of an Australian engineer, Steve Lawrence. He was developing a program to track and search the contents of his computer, which ran on the Linux operating system. Knowing Google had to figure out a way for people to find stuff on their own computers, Mayer tracked Lawrence down and asked him about developing a version of his software to search any PC. He was enthusiastic, so she helped assemble a team to work with him. The result: Google introduced its desktop search in October, 2004, two months before Microsoft. "Marissa has been very successful as the gatekeeper for a lot of these new products," says Craig Silverstein, director of technology at Google.
Part of Mayer's challenge is realizing when certain formulas falter. For years she ran the company's Top 100 priorities list, which ranked projects by order of importance. But as Google's workforce grew, the list soared to more than 270 projects. Last year Google execs decided it had run its course, and shut it down. "People don't get attached to the processes themselves at Google," says Bret Taylor, product manager for Google Maps. "It's very unusual. Even at small companies, people tend to say: 'This is the way we do X."'
Mayer's typical workday starts at 9 a.m. and doesn't end until about midnight. Her glass-walled office is intentionally situated across from the engineering snack area, where programmers grab evening coffee or munchies. Often on these late nights, engineers will bend her ear as they take a breather from their work, bringing her up to date on the countless ideas percolating through the ranks. "I keep my ears open. I work at building a reputation for being receptive," she says.
This theory is in action on a sunny Friday afternoon in September. Mayer walks around her office, shared with an assistant and two other employees. Outside the door, seven or eight programmers and product managers have been milling about since 3:30. Most wear jeans, tennis shoes, and checkered or striped shirts, all untucked. Some pace the hall and talk quietly on their cell phones. Others sit on chairs, their arms folded, waiting patiently.