Managing Google's Idea Factory

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 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.

BRIDGING THE GAP Mayer "is a geek, but her clothes match," says an ex-employee

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 bn this year.

It's increasingly important, too. Google's rocket ride has attracted a

swarm of competitors, from giants Microsoft and Yahoo! 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 am 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.

Office Hours



At 4 pm, her three-times-a-week office hours begin. It's a tradition Mayer

brought over from her days at Stanford, where she taught computer science to

undergrads. Over the years, such meetings have spawned some big ideas, including

Google's social-networking site Orkut.

First to enter her office are a pair of techies-a man and woman in their

mid-20s. Sitting across from Mayer, separated by a desk with a Dilbert coffee

mug and a toy robot still in its box, they forgo the pleasantries and launch

into hushed banter. The duo is stumped over which languages the Google Web site

should be available in. Although it is already translated into more than 115

tongues, from Arabic to Zulu, they wonder whether they should proceed with more

obscure choices. Before one minute elapses, Mayer interjects. Google shouldn't

be the arbiter on languages. Just include anything considered legitimate by a

third-party source, such as the CIA World Fact Book, she says. "We don't

want to make a large geopolitical statement by accident."

In ones or twos, all the visitors get a brief hearing, typically five

minutes. She gently rebuffs one group seeking to put a link to Hurricane Katrina

information on Google's home page. The site for hurricane victims, she argues,

isn't useful enough yet. She brainstorms with a product manager on how to

measure and compare the freshness of Google's search results against its

rivals'.

One of the final groups marches in to discuss a personalized search product.

Many pundits describe personalization as the Holy Grail in search. An engine

that knows your preferences and interests intimately could tailor the

information delivered to improve results. Google has been offering rudimentary

personalization for a year, but more is expected in the future. With two people

in Mayer's office and another on speaker phone, she grills the trio about the

service's name. She's not enthusiastic about the initial suggestions.

"You're killing me," she says.

After a few minutes of discussion, Mayer presses the group on the product's

features. Google's top brass is having its next product-review session

shortly, in which nascent ideas get either fast-tracked or sent back for further

tinkering. So Mayer asks the big question: "OK, let's take it to Larry

. Are you guys ready to product review tomorrow?" They assure her

that they're set to go.

What Mayer thinks will be essential for continued innovation is for Google to

keep its sense of fearlessness. "I like to launch early and

often. That has become my mantra," she says. She mentions Apple Computer

and Madonna. "Nobody remembers the Sex Book or the Newton. Consumers

remember your average over time. That philosophy frees you from fear."

It's just one way Mayer tries to maintain the search company's original

culture. That's no easy task. Movie night, for instance, used to be a piece of

cake when perhaps 100 employees descended on a local cinema. Today, organizing

such an event is a full-time job. Yet Mayer handles several of these a year,

from picking a movie with the right geek cred (say, Star Wars: Episode III) to

ordering thousands of tickets to writing the software that lets her track who

has received them. "She still walks around with a laptop, handing out all

the tickets beforehand," marvels Google's Silverstein.

It makes sense for Mayer to stay in such close touch with the swelling ranks

of Googlers. She may need every one of their bright ideas to keep the search

giant ahead of the competition.

By Ben Elgin in Mountain View, Calif in New York in BusinessWeek. Copyright 2005 by The McGraw-Hill

Companies, Inc

How Google Innovates

The search leader has earned a reputation as one of the most innovative

companies in the world of technology. A few of the ways Google hatches new

ideas:

Free (Thinking) Time



Google gives all engineers one day a week to develop their own pet projects, no
matter how far from the company's central mission. If work gets in the way of

free days for a few weeks, they accumulate. Google News came out of this

process.

The Ideas List



Anyone at Google can post thoughts for new technologies or businesses on an

ideas mailing list, available companywide for input and vetting. But beware:

Newbies who suggest familiar or poorly thought-out ideas can face an

intellectual pummeling.

Open Office Hours



Think back to your professors' office hours in college. That's pretty

much what key managers, including Mayer, do two or three times a week, to

discuss new ideas. One success born of this approach was Google's personalized

home page.

Big Brainstorms



As it has grown, Google has cut back on brainstorming sessions. Mayer still

has them eight times a year, but limits hers to 100 engineers. Six concepts are

pitched and discussed for 10 minutes each. The goal: To build on the initial

idea with at least one complementary idea per minute.

Acquire Good Ideas



Although Google strongly prefers to develop technology in-house, it has also

been willing to snap up small companies with interesting initiatives. In 2004 it

bought Keyhole, including the technology that let Google offer sophisticated

maps with satellite imagery.