{"id":9700,"date":"2013-08-27T09:22:51","date_gmt":"2013-08-27T09:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=9700"},"modified":"2013-08-27T09:25:33","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T09:25:33","slug":"in-the-plex-how-google-thinks-works-and-shapes-our-lives-by-steven-levy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=9700","title":{"rendered":"In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Larry<\/a>
Larry Page and Sergey Brin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes readers inside Google headquarters\u2014the Googleplex\u2014to show how Google works. Want to work at Google?\u00a0Here\u2019s how<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"intheplex\"<\/a>While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google\u2019s earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow (until Google\u2019s IPO nobody other than Google management had any idea how lucrative the company\u2019s ad business was), Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open-source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more.<\/p>\n

The key to Google\u2019s success in all these businesses, Levy reveals, is its engineering mind-set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers\u2014free food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseuses\u2014and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire.<\/p>\n

But has Google lost its innovative edge? It stumbled badly in China\u2014Levy discloses what went wrong and how Brin disagreed with his peers on the China strategy\u2014and now with its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete?<\/p>\n

No other book has ever turned Google inside out as Levy does with In the Plex.<\/p>\n

About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Author<\/a>
Author Steven Levy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Steven Levy is a senior writer at Wired, and was formerly senior editor and chief technology correspondent for Newsweek. He is the author of six previous books, including Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which was voted the best sci-tech nonfiction book of the last twenty years by readers of PC magazine, and Insanely Great, the definitive account of the Macintosh computer. A native of Philadelphia, Levy lives in New York City with his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Teresa Carpenter, and their son.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes readers inside … Continue reading “In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3600,782],"tags":[5568,2130,5564,5565,5566,5567],"class_list":["post-9700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-features","tag-book","tag-google","tag-in-the-plex","tag-larry-page","tag-sergey-brin","tag-steven-levy"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Larry-Page-Sergey-Brin-650x488.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9706,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700\/revisions\/9706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}