In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
he was one of the youngest students ever to start the Stanford PhD program. “He skipped a million years,”
Steven Levy • In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
I didn’t want to just invent things, I also wanted to make the world better, and in order to do that, you need to do more than just invent things.”
Steven Levy • In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
No one at the web search companies mentioned using links. The links were the reason that a research project running on a computer in a Stanford dorm room had become the top performer.
Steven Levy • In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
They were among the brightest and most ambitious of a generation that was better equipped to handle the disruptive technology wave than their elders were. Their minds hummed like tuning forks in resonance with the company’s values of speed, flexibility, and a deep respect for data.
Steven Levy • In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
“We are focused on our users. If we make them happy, we will have revenues.”
Steven Levy • In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
If the pages for a given query were not quite in the proper order, they’d go back to the algorithm and see what had gone wrong.
Steven Levy • In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
Google also became known for its irreverent culture and its data-driven approach to business decision making;
Steven Levy • In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
But an outlandish mind was a valuable asset,
Steven Levy • In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
Both felt most comfortable in the meritocracy of academia, where brains trumped everything else. Both had an innate understanding of how the ultraconnected world that they enjoyed as computer science (CS) students was about to spread throughout society. Both shared a core belief in the primacy of data.