I could not have told this story without their cooperation. I made many weeklong visits to the Google campus in Mountain View, conducted a total of about 150 Google interviews, including 11 with CEO Eric Schmidt. I recorded each of these interviews; names and dates are contained in the endnotes. With the sole exception of one vice president, I interviewed everyone I asked to see, including Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Google directors, often more than once. With the blessing of his superiors, David Krane, who was one of Google’s early hires, orchestrated and attended most interviews. He was a fountain of historical facts, and not once did he interrupt or intrude on an interview.
I was frequently asked by Google employees whether they would like this book. I always said that if I did my job there would be things that would displease them. No one at Google saw this book before publication. I am grateful to Google for its willingness to risk transparency. I am also grateful to about 150 individuals outside Google who granted interviews, many of them representatives of traditional media.
At Penguin Press, Ann Godoff has championed this project and been an irreplaceable partner on this as on previous books. Nick Trautwein lent his appreciable surgical skills to the editing of this book and stayed on top of everything. I am grateful to the rest of Ann’s team, including her competent assistant, Lindsay Whalen; the marketing team assembled by Tracy Locke, especially the ever-industrious and cheerful Sarah Hutson; to copy editor Susan Johnson, who meticulously pored over every syllable; and to attorney Gary Mailman, who carefully vetted this book.
This book began at my journalistic home, The New Yorker, which published my initial 2007 magazine piece, “The Search Party.” Editor David Remnick bestows on his writers the luxury of time, a keen editorial eye, and a sense that he is in the managerial dugout cheering. The editorial support writers receive at The New Yorker, from senior editors who read and comment on galleys to fact checkers who exhaustively exhume every sentence to copy editors who meticulously smooth prose-and from my longtime editor there, Jeffrey Frank-fills me with awe.
Lisa Chase gave a careful and close initial reading of the manuscript and reminded me what a gifted editor she is. Lawrence Lessig read the manuscript with the care he brings to legal briefs, and his comments were acute. Barry Harbaugh meticulously fact checked the manuscript. I wrestled for months to come up with a title. It took my friend Nora Ephron about thirty seconds to cut through my morass and suggest, “Googled.” Another old friend, Milton Glaser, who designed the jacket of my first book, volunteered to design this jacket, and did so overnight. Kenneth Lerer offered valuable advice, as did his business associate, Jonah Peretti. I have received generous help from many other friends, including Tully Plesser, Susan Lyne, and John Eastman. My agent, Sloan Harris, has been a stalwart; you want him in your foxhole. Amanda Urban, as always, was my most demanding and provocative reader.
These are the folks who share credit; any blame is all mine.
NOTES
Preface
xi YouTube, with ninety million unique visitors: Nielsen VideoCensus, April 2009.
xi “The Internet… makes information accessible”: author interview with Hal Varian, April 1, 2009.
xii “Our goal is to change the world”: author one-on-one interview with Eric Schmidt at a forum sponsored by the New Yorker and the Newhouse School at Syracuse University June 11, 2008.
xiii Google could become a hundred-billion-dollar media company: author interview with Eric Schmidt, September 12, 2007.
CHAPTER 1: Messing with the Magic
3 With his suit and tie: Karmazin Google meeting described in author interviews with Karmazin, May 13, 2008, and August 22, 2008; Nancy Peretsman, May 1, 2008; Eric Schmidt, April 16, 2008, and September 15, 2008; Sergey Brin, September 18, 2008; and Richard J. Bressler, September 26, 2008.
3 Short and pugnacious: Ken Auletta, “The Invisible Manager,” The New Yorker, July 27, 1998.
4 Google’s private books revealed: from August 2004 Google IPO registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
4 Karmazin’s destination: description of 2400 Bayshore Parkway offices from visit by author, April 18, 2008; author interviews with David Krane, April 18, 2008, and with Marissa Mayer, September 18, 2008; and from Google video of headquarters, provided by Google.
6 25.2 billion Web pages: WorldWideWebSize.com, February 2, 2009.
7 It was Google’s ambition: Schmidt and Page speech at Stanford on May 1, 2002, as seen on YouTube.
7 several hundred million daily searches: Schmidt and Page speech at Stanford on May 1, 2002, as seen on YouTube.
7 the number of daily searches is now 3 billion: internal Google documents.
7 “our business is highly measurable”: author interview with Eric Schmidt, September 15, 2008.
8 $3 million spent: Advertising Age, September 11, 2008.
8 $172 billion spent in the United States on advertising, and the additional $227 billion spent on marketing: Zenith OptimediaReport, April 2009.
9 Mayer… remembered the meeting vividly: author interview with Marissa Mayer, September 18, 2008.
9 “If Google makes”: author interview with Eric Schmidt, April 16, 2008.
9 “the long tail”: Chris Anderson, the Long Taiclass="underline" Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, Hyperion, 2006.
10 “aggregate content”: author interview with Larry Page, March 25, 2008.
10 from a peak daily newspaper circulation: Nicholas Carr, Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google, Norton; and The Project for Excellence in Journalism, “State of the News Media Report,” March 2007.
10 those networks… attract about 46 percent of viewers: Nielsen data on the 2008-9 season, May 2009.
12. “The innovator’s dilemma”: Clayton M. Christensen, Innovator’s Dilemma, Harvard Business School Press, 1997.
12. “Your choices suck”: author interview with Mel Karmazin, May 13, 2008.
12 “I will believe in the 500-channel world”: Sumner Redstone speech before the National Press Club, October 19, 1994.
13 Vinod Khosla… once told: “An Oral History of the Internet,” Vanity Fair, July 2008.
13 “a tsunami”: author interview with Craig Newmark, January 11, 2008.
14 Nielsen reported: The Nielsen Company, “Three Screen Report,” May 2008.
14 In 2008, more Americans: press release from the Pew Research Center for People amp; the Press, December 23, 2008.
14 the number one network teleuision show: Nielsen Media Research.
14 an estimated 1.6 billion: Universal McCann study, “Wave.3,” March 2008, and John Markoff, the New York Times, August 30, 2008.
14 newspapers, which traditionally claimed nearly a quarter: JackMyers.com.
14 lost 167,000 jobs: Advertising Age report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, February 18, 2008.
14 two hundred billion dollars: Myers Advertising and Marketing Investment Insights, annual advertising spending forecast, September 15, 2007.
14 plunge below 20 percent: McCann Erickson Worldwide chart of percentage of ad dollars by media, 1980-2007.
15 it took telephones seventy-one years… just five years: Progress amp; Freedom Foundation report, January 16, 2008, and “The Decade of Online Advertising,” DoubleClick, April 2005.