Google: Success and controversy - 2

"Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain" to be released Sept. 17, 2009

Google now employs about twenty thousand people, but just two of them set the pace and guide its evolution. Larry and Sergey work together like two halves of a well-balanced machine. CEO Eric Schmidt is responsible for growing revenues, but the decisions that Larry and Sergey make are the fuel that powers that revenue growth. Everybody in the company refers to them by their first names—sometimes as the single unit LarryandSergey—but treat them like emperors, the final arbiters of all important decisions.

A young, smart, and athletic kid whose family escaped the oppression of the communist Soviet Union and a clever young geek from Michigan with a fondness for Legos would seem a very unlikely pair to create a business revolution. Asked by reporter John Ince in early 2000 what Google’s biggest challenges were, Sergey admitted it was learning to run a business:

“The most difficult part has been learning to deal with organizational challenges. We have over 70 people now. It’s a more complicated beast. It’s not very clear how to keep everybody productive and focused. That’s been more of a learning process. Business dealings . . . have been a little bit new to us.”

But they’ve turned Google into more than just a great company. They almost single-handedly revived Internet businesses and changed the rules of commerce on the Internet. They have commercialized the Internet and started an Information Revolution the way Thomas Edison helped start the Industrial Revolution by harnessing electricity and saying, Let there be light bulbs.