The Return of Larry Page

BusinessInsider Nicholas Carlson has published new details about the history of Google and its founder, Larry Page. It turns out that his career is much like the career of another legendary CEO Steve Jobs. For example, in the same way he founded the company at a young age, the company quickly achieved success, then investors removed him from management for “immaturity”, and, in the end, he returned and took control.

It was 22-year-old Stanford student Larry - whose father and mother were professors of computer science at the University of Michigan - who came up with the idea to download all sites from the Internet and index links to show search results in a new form. In his student years, he invented the PageRank algorithm and wrote BackRub, the first prototype of a search engine, which was later renamed Google.



Classmate Sergey Brin helped found the company and collect the first investments among friends and relatives, but the real founder is Larry Page. But he experienced great difficulties in communicating with people, so a friendly and sociable co-founder was necessary for business, without him nothing would have happened.

Having become the owner of the company at such a young age, Larry did not avoid mistakes. For example, in July 2001, Page suddenly decided to fire all project managers. The fact is that from the very beginning Google tried to hire only the most talented programmers. At first, the company did not have managers at all, but as the staff grew, they had to be hired to coordinate work on various projects. But at some point, Larry Page decided that they only interfere, because they represent an extra layer between him and the developers, distort his instructions and incorrectly prioritize. In particular, Page found that not a single person was working on his idea of ​​mass scanning books, which he entrusted to managers. It was a very important project for Larry: he always dreamed that Google would become bigger, than a search engine on the internet. In general, he always had ambitious plans: for example, in 2005, he came up with the idea of ​​putting a Google search engine in the pocket of every inhabitant of the Earth - and ordered to buy some startup that develops such technology. So Google bought a small Android company for $ 50 million. The deal was so insignificant that Page didn’t even notify its CEO Eric Schmidt about it. Sergey Brin knew about her, but was not particularly interested, and also did not say anything to Eric. However, Schmidt was not interested in such an exotic project and he did not pay attention to the whim of Larry. who is developing such a technology. So Google bought a small Android company for $ 50 million. The deal was so insignificant that Page didn’t even notify its CEO Eric Schmidt about it. Sergey Brin knew about her, but was not particularly interested, and also did not say anything to Eric. However, Schmidt was not interested in such an exotic project and he did not pay attention to the whim of Larry. who is developing such a technology. So Google bought a small Android company for $ 50 million. The deal was so insignificant that Page didn’t even notify its CEO Eric Schmidt about it. Sergey Brin knew about her, but was not particularly interested, and also did not say anything to Eric. However, Schmidt was not interested in such an exotic project and he did not pay attention to the whim of Larry.

Returning to the past, in July 2001, Larry Page brought together all the developers (then about 130 programmers worked at Google) and announced that they no longer have managers. The managers themselves also came to the meeting and learned about the dismissal right there.


Google Work Team in 1999

At that time, Eric Schmidt was not yet an official CEO, although he planned to appoint him to this position in the near future, as soon as he was relieved of his obligations as CEO of Novell, so he could not do anything.

In fact, the next day the managers were not fired, but simply transferred to another department. Soon, by decision of investors, Eric Schmidt was appointed to the post of executive director of Google. He was instructed to look after the young founders of the company Larry and Sergey, who were clearly not ripe for managing a big business. In fact, Larry was removed from management, as happened to Steve Jobs for the same reasons - he was too young, hot, sometimes made reckless decisions and was, frankly, a sociopath. Although in reality he simply evaluated people according to their thoughts and statements, and not emotionally, as ordinary people do. As a result, the company developed in a “combat” atmosphere of ongoing disputes.

Once, Larry Page said that the best way to solve a problem is to simplify it to a binary option and choose the right answer.

Investors managed to remove Larry Page from the post of executive director under pressure: they said that in exchange for additional investments (which were absolutely necessary for expanding the business), the founders would be allowed to retain a majority stake in the company only if Page temporarily delegated authority. Larry agreed to a deal. But then he changed his mind and said that he agreed to appoint another CEO only if it was Steve Jobs. Subsequently, investors still managed to convince him, they persuaded Larry to meet other candidates, including Eric Schmidt, a former programmer and author of the program that Google itself used in its work. Larry Page approved Schmidt because he was a “burner,” that is, a regular visitor to the Burning Man psychedelic festival in the Nevada desert.


Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt

Schmidt immediately invited Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of development, who was intensively engaged in hiring a large number of project managers. In the end, Larry Page admitted his mistake and realized that it was impossible to control all programmers on their own. In the next few years, Larry was partially removed from direct management of the company, and in some cases his opinion was completely ignored. For example, when Google reached the first place on the Internet in terms of advertising revenue, Larry Page announced his desire to completely destroy the “extremely inefficient” industry of advertising agencies. Eric Schmidt and other top managers not only did not enter this battle, but also did everything possible to prevent advertising agencies from learning about the crazy idea.

One day, Larry Page decided that he spent too much time at meetings. To prevent secretaries from adding meetings to his calendar, he simply fired all his secretaries. From now on, to invite Page to the meeting, you had to find him and personally tell the time. Communication with people was a great inconvenience to Larry Page. He practically did not give an interview. In 2008, Page told the press service of Google that they have eight hours of his time this year.

Leaving direct management of the company, Larry Page almost completely devoted his time to a third-party Android project. For him, a big shock was when Apple launched the iPhone in 2007. I had to significantly speed up the development, and Page worked, in fact, as a project manager and leader.

Apparently, it was the success of Android that gave confidence to Larry Page and convinced investors that the founder of the company would be useful as an executive director. If he managed to adequately manage the Android division, then he must cope with the work of CEO for the whole company. Larry Page himself saw that Google with tens of thousands of employees is turning into a bureaucratic machine with inefficient processes. On January 20, 2011, he finally returned to the position of Executive Director. Schmidt tweeted that very day: "Adult control is no longer required."

Larry Page believes that the future of Google is the development of artificial intelligence systems, self-learning algorithms, self-propelled cars and other important technologies. Like his childhood idol Nikola Tesla, Larry Page wants to change the world for the better by solving problems with the help of science. Unlike Tesla, Page can really do it. “Everything you can imagine can probably be done,” said Larry Page, speaking at a conference for investors in 2012. “You just need to imagine this - and get started.”