I'm Feeling Lucky (61 page)

"The thing I remember about the IPO," Paul Bucheit told me recently, "is how much of a non-event it was. I was at Microsoft the day Windows 95 went gold,
^*
and that was a huge party. I got in a little late, and the place was just destroyed. The carpet was torn up because someone brought a motorcycle inside. Tables were smashed and they had gone through some enormous amount of alcohol. It was a big deal. The IPO was not that big a deal. Everyone was just working. Kind of remarkable."

Larry and Sergey did all they could to keep the company culture as it had been. Wayne Rosing told the engineers that he would personally greet anyone who showed up the next day driving a Ferrari, and that he would gladly redecorate the new car with his baseball bat. That didn't worry engineers Ed Karrels and Chad Lester. They hadn't bought sports cars; they had purchased airplanes.

"It's not a Ferrari," Chad told Ed. "It's not a Lamborghini. Let's bring our planes in and land them on the road outside Google."

They didn't. And anyone else who had splurged on a new toy left it at home. But things did change.

Bart, the advertising operations guy who had so eagerly anticipated the IPO, took to practicing his putting on the lawn outside the front door at every opportunity. People tucked stock tickers discretely into corners of their laptop screens, though Larry and Sergey threatened to fine anyone they caught doing it. It became harder to hold meetings because the conference rooms were occupied by Googlers huddled with people wearing polished shoes and toting expensive leather briefcases.

I was back at work and busy, but not as crazily busy as before. I had seniority plus a large group of product managers eager to pick up any slack. Cindy agreed to send me to China to learn the market and find a new Chinese name to replace our current brand there. While Yahoo's name translated as "elegant tiger," ours was rendered with characters that meant "old dog."
^*

In October, Cindy asked me to run the logistics for our first earnings call, in which we would reveal our quarterly results and take questions from brokers and analysts. It would be our first time talking directly to investors, and the desire for perfection was amped even higher than usual. Larry, Sergey, Eric, and George, our CFO, sat in a conference room with an armed guard outside. I was next door, looking through the window with Cindy, Jonathan, and our operations and legal teams. There was a last-minute breakdown in communication with the outside investor-relations firm, but we established an instant messenger link and no one was the wiser. To the rest of the world the event came off flawlessly, keeping the focus on the reported numbers, which stunned the market. Google's stock shot up to almost two hundred dollars over the following week.

Also stunned were my colleagues, when, at a party at Zibbibos after the earnings call, Cindy announced she was leaving Google. I had seen it coming. In fact, I had entertained thoughts along the same line. It seemed as if we had come to the end of a long story, and I wasn't sure I wanted to begin a new one. Cindy said she would stay another two months and leave in January. I decided to wait at least that long to see what the future held.

Cindy had been my last and strongest ally in defending the role of branding that went beyond research, analytics, testing, and iteration—and now she was heading out the door. After her departure, I would report to the director of product marketing. He seemed very well-qualified for the job. He had earned degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, had worked as a business strategist for a consulting firm, and had been a VP of global product marketing for a major networking company. He was exactly what Google was looking for, and that meant I no longer was.

Three weeks after Cindy left, the director of product marketing called me into his office. I knew he wanted to talk about slotting, the process established in product management to determine where on the org chart an individual best fit.

"Doug," he said, "I'm having a hard time slotting you. I don't really see where you fit. There doesn't seem to be a place for, 'brand management' in the organization as a functional role."

I could have made the case that I deserved one of the predefined jobs in product marketing and negotiated for the most senior position available. I had no desire to do that. I could have protested, tried to explain the value of my work, and insisted a slot be created for my function. I knew I would never be able to provide sufficient data to back that up. Instead, I agreed with him. There was no longer a role at Google for what I did. I would wind things down as Cindy had, and leave in two months.

I picked March 4, 2005, as my last day: "Three. Four. Five." I liked the architectural purity of it.

When the day arrived, I said my farewells. There were many people at my sendoff I hadn't seen in a long while. Larry shook my hand and wished me well. Charlie baked me a cake. Marissa surprised me by giving me a hug and saying she had always respected my judgment, though she hadn't always agreed with it. I surprised myself by admitting I felt the same about her.

I went back to my office to finish some edits on Sergey's letter for the annual report, emailed it to him, then shut down my computer and turned it in to the help desk. I cut up my corporate credit card and left it on my manager's chair.

My exit interview was brief and with an HR staffer I had never met before.

It was late when I went out to the parking lot and climbed into the Taurus. I put the key in the ignition and turned it. I sat for a moment, breathing. In my mirror loomed a large array of buildings occupied by a powerful global enterprise. Its logo stared at me from across a grassy embankment, a motley assortment of brightly colored letters on a white signboard.

I had started at a small startup as a big-company guy. Now I was leaving a big company as a small-startup guy.

I put the car in reverse, backed out of the slot, and drove home.

A cold fog wafted out of the open freezer in front of me. It was a week after my last day at Google, and Kristen had sent me on a night run to Safeway to pick up some milk for the next day's breakfast. As always, I was going off-list; picking up a few items with more sugar and fat than nutrition. I squinted at the tags on the shelf below the different brands of ice cream. What I really wanted was Starbucks Java Chip, but I only bought that when it was on sale. I reached for the Safeway store brand.

My hand froze, but not from the cold. "I want Java Chip," a voice said inside my head.

"It's not on sale," another voice answered automatically, in a monotone.

"It's. Not. On. Sale," the first voice replied with mimicking sarcasm. "So ...," it went on, spacing the words for emphasis, "
what?
" I picked up a carton of Java Chip and put it in my cart.

For the very first time, I was doing something differently because of Google's success.

Hitting the startup jackpot was like leaving Flatland, the world hypothesized in a geometry-based novel I had read as a kid.
^*
In Flatland, the characters moved along a single, two-dimensional plane and only perceived objects as points or lines. That had been my life, and I had never realized it. Go to work, make money, come home, sleep. Repeat. Now, though, I had the ability to move in all dimensions. The tethering constraints of grocery bills and mortgage payments had been severed and I was floating free.

Some Googlers used their new freedom to change their lifestyles, their cars, their homes, their careers, their spouses. For me, all that open sky was disconcerting. I clung to the familiar to anchor myself. It was surprisingly hard to do that without a job.

I had practiced the marketing arts in one form or another for twenty-five years, and I didn't want to do it anymore. The position I left at Google had been the pinnacle—the best job I could imagine for someone in my field. I had watched over a brand that exploded from obscurity to dictionary definition in five short years. My colleagues were some of the most brilliant people on earth. I traveled the globe and made my fortune. I learned things about my limits and my capabilities. And I like to think that, in some small way, I helped advance the human condition. Or at least that I did more good than harm.

I've heard the speculation about Google since I left. That it's a monopoly. That it's tracking users. That it's in cahoots with the government. That it spies on people. That it's evil. Well, maybe it is all that. I haven't worked there in more than five years. Things change. But from what I know about my coworkers in the Plex—many of whom are still there, putting in long hours perfecting a product used by millions every day—I'd say that's highly unlikely.

Is Google secretive? No question. Arrogant? Maybe. Tone-deaf to the concerns of the very users it claims to serve? Occasionally. But evil? I don't think so.

I started my career working at ad agencies. It was fun, challenging, and potentially well paying. I quit because I didn't like the idea I might have to sell something I didn't believe in. I worked in public broadcasting and then newspapers, where I found coworkers who sacrificed material rewards to be part of something connected to the common good. I got that same sense at Google, but with greater intensity and urgency. And stock options. This was no institution continuing a long tradition of public service. This was a headlong rush to reshape the world in a generation. And therein lies the company's biggest flaw, in my estimation: impatience with those not quick enough to grasp the obvious truth of Google's vision.

"When were we ever wrong?" Larry asked me.

Not often. But "not often" is not never. If Google's leaders accepted that reality, they might understand why some people are unwilling to suspend skepticism and surrender to Google's assurances the company can be trusted.

After Google, I find myself impatient with the way the world works. Why is it so hard to schedule a recording on my DVR? Why aren't all the signal lights synched to keep traffic flowing at optimum speed? Why, if I punch in my account number when I call customer service, do I have to give it to them again when I get a live person? These are all solvable problems. Smart people, motivated to make things better, can do almost anything.

I feel lucky to have seen firsthand just how true that is.