In the Plex

the annual trip of Google associate product managers, a select group pegged as the company’s future leaders. We began our journey in San Francisco and touched down in Tokyo, Beijing, Bangalore, and Tel Aviv

This is how I put it in the February 22, 1999, issue of Newsweek: “Google, the Net’s hottest search engine, draws on feedback from the web itself to deliver more relevant results to customer queries.”

Google also became known for its irreverent culture and its data-driven approach to business decision making;

The people who clicked on its ads made Google wildly profitable and turned its founders into billionaires—and

“We invest more into our APMs than any other company has ever invested into young employees…. We envision a world where everyone is awed by the fact that Google’s executives, the best CEOs in the Silicon Valley, and the most respected leaders of global non-profits all came through the Google APM program.”

It announced its intention to scan all the world’s books. It became involved in satellite imagery, mobile phones, energy generation, photo storage.

Teams of APMs were each given $50 to buy the weirdest gadgets they could find.

In Bangalore, there was a different shopping hunt—an excursion to the market area where the winner of the competition would be the one who haggled best. (Good training for making bulk purchases of computers or even buying an Internet start-up.)

Kai-Fu Lee, talked of balancing Google’s freewheeling style with government rules—and censorship.