The return of Larry Page

Nicholas Carlson of publication BusinessInsider опубликовал New details of the history of Google and its founder Larry Page. It turns out, his career is a lot like a career of another legendary CEO Steve Jobs. For example, the same way he founded the company at a young age, the company has quickly achieved success, then investors have to remove him from the control of the "immaturity" and, in the end, he came back and took control over.

That 22-year-old Stanford student, Larry - whose father and mother were professors of computer science at Michigan State University - had the idea to download all the sites from the Internet and indexed links to display search results in a new form. He is a student invented the PageRank algorithm and wrote BackRub - the first prototype of the search engine, which then renamed to Google.



Classmate Sergey Brin helped found and build the company's first investment among friends and relatives, but it is the real founder Larry Page. But he had great difficulty in communicating with people, so friendly and sociable co-founder was needed for business without it would not have happened.

Becoming the owner of the company at such a young age, Larry did not avoid mistakes. For example, in July 2001, Paige suddenly decided to dismiss all project managers. The fact that Google has from the beginning tried to hire only the most talented programmers. At first, the company did not have managers, but with an increase in staff had to hire them to coordinate work on different projects. But at some point, Larry Page decided that they only interfere because the extra layer are between him and developers distort his instructions and properly prioritize. In particular, Paige found that not a single person and not working on his idea for the mass scanning of books, which he ordered managers. For Larry, it was a very important project: he always dreamed that Google will be more than a search engine on the Internet. He's generally always had grandiose plans: for example, in 2005 he came up with what you need to put the Google search engine in the pocket of every inhabitant of the Earth - and instructed to buy any startup that is developing such technology. Since Google bought Android small company for $ 50 million. The deal was so insignificant that Paige does not even informed about her executive director Eric Schmidt. Sergey Brin knew about it, but is not particularly interested in, and also did not tell Eric. However, Schmidt is not interested in such an exotic project and he did not pay attention to the whim of Larry.

Going back in time, in July 2001, Larry Page has collected all developers (then in Google employed about 130 programmers), and announced that they have no more managers. Managers themselves also came to the meeting and learned about the dismissal right there.



The Google Operating in 1999. i>

At the time, Eric Schmidt has not yet been an official CEO, although it was planned to appoint him to the post in the near future, as soon as he is free from the obligation CEO Novell, so he could not do anything.

In fact, the day manager was not fired, but simply transferred to another department. Soon, by the decision of investors to the post he was appointed Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt. He was appointed to look after the young founders Larry and Sergey, who is clearly not mature enough to control big business. In fact, Larry was removed from the management as at the time happened to Steve Jobs for the same reasons - he was too young, hot, sometimes taking reckless decisions and was, frankly, a sociopath. Although in reality it just judge people on their thoughts and statements, not emotionally, as do ordinary people. As a result, the company has evolved into a "battle" atmosphere of constant debate.

Once Larry Page said that the best method of solving the problem is to simplify it to binary options and choose the correct answer.

Investors failed to dislodge Larry Page as chief executive under pressure: they said that in exchange for the additional investments (which were urgently needed for business expansion) will allow founders to retain a majority stake in the company only if Paige temporarily delegated powers. Larry agreed to the deal. But then he changed his mind and said that he agreed to appoint a CEO of another only if this is Steve Jobs. Subsequently, investors still managed to convince him, they persuaded Larry to meet other candidates, including Eric Schmidt, a former computer programmer and author of the program, which Google itself has used in his work. Larry Page endorsed Schmidt, because he was "Borner," that is a regular visitor to the psychedelic Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. In March 2001, Eric took over as executive director, and in August 2001 became CEO.



Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt i>

Schmidt immediately invited the vice president of design, Jonathan Rosenberg, who strenuously engaged in the hiring of a large number of project-managers. In the end, Larry Page admitted his mistake, and realized that it is impossible to control all the programmers themselves. In the next few years, Larry partially removed from the direct control of the company, and in some cases his opinion generally ignored. For example, when Google came out on top in the online advertising revenues, Larry Page said the desire to completely destroy "extremely inefficient" industry advertising agencies. Eric Schmidt and other top executives not only did not come into this battle, but did everything possible to advertising agencies do not hear about a crazy idea.

One day, Larry Page decided that too much time is spent in meetings. The secretary of the meeting was not added to his calendar, he just fired all of his secretaries. From this point to Page's invitation to the meeting had to find him and personally tell the time. Talking to people gave great inconvenience Larry Page. He almost did not give interviews. In 2008, Page said the press service of Google, which they have eight hours of his time this year.

After retiring from the direct management of the company, Larry Page is almost entirely devoted his time to an outside project Android. For him it was a great shock when Apple released the iPhone in 2007. It was necessary to greatly accelerate the development, with Paige worked, in fact, as the project manager and the head.

Apparently, the success of Android it gives confidence to Larry Page and convince investors that the company's founder will benefit the post of executive director. If he was able to adequately manage the division of Android, has to cope with the work of CEO for the company. Larry Page himself saw that Google has tens of thousands of employees turns into a bureaucracy with inefficient processes. January 20, 2011, he finally returned to the position of Executive Director. The same day, Schmidt has published a tweet: "Adult supervision is no longer needed».

Larry Page said that the future of Google - the development of artificial intelligence, machine learning algorithms, self-propelled vehicles and other major technologies. Like his idol children Nikola Tesla, Larry Page wants to change the world, solving the problems with the help of science. Unlike Tesla, Paige it can really happen. "Everything that you can imagine, you can probably do - said Larry Page, speaking at a conference for investors in 2012. - You just have to imagine it - and start working. "

Source: habrahabr.ru/post/220967/