Google’s official birthday is in September 1998. If Google were a person, it would be 8 years old today and would have started elementary school two years ago. Today it would have just finished the second grade. In other words, Google’s just getting started.
Co-founders Larry E. Page and Sergey Brin have long declared Google’s mission is to "organize the world’s information." Google is moving to digitize the world’s libraries, to offer all comers free voice calls, to provide satellite images of the world, and perhaps to give away wireless broadband service to millions of people. Google really seems to believe it can make every bit of information available to anyone anywhere, and direct all those bits — whether text, audio, or video — through its computers before they hit users’ brains.
One of the key reasons for Google’s success is a belief that good ideas can, and should, come from anywhere. Page and Brin insist that all engineers in the company have one day a week to work on their own pet projects. An ideas mailing list is open to anyone at Google who wants to post a proposal. What Mayer does is help figure out how to make sure good ideas bubble to the surface and get the attention they need. The task is becoming more complex as Google grows, with a workforce of 4,200 now and revenues on track to hit $3.7 billion this year.
Cindy LIU 