I think the book was overly nice to Google and avoided any serious criticism. The Creativity Inc book had some good discussion about managing the creative process, and I wish this book could also explore more in to the dynamics at play at Google in terms of project and product management. Good intentions don't work, good systems work, and it is hard to implement good systems for scaling innovation and product creation. Through reading the book I got a new appreciation for the importance of managing for the success of a company, and how hard it is to manage teams and products. What made Google incompetent about productizing things? How much of it has to do with bad management due to big size, and how much of it is due to a culture problem? One thing I wished Levy did in this book would be to explore more and comment about what led to so many botched up products at Google. (I am halfway through it now.) That one feels more personal and intimate. If the author name was obscured, I would guess it came from a competent author, but not necessarily from Steven Levy. It has a raw bland reporting kind of narration. He had put a lot of his interpretation and insight in to the facts/narrative, and I really enjoyed that. He also weaved the narration together artistically around a handful of themes and related new information/events back to these themes. So much research went into each character in the book, and he made each character come alive. I have a dog-eared copy of the Hackers book he wrote. Steven Levy is one of my favorite authors.
It is always nice to read stuff from Steven Levy. I have seen things.Īs I anticipated, I didn't find many surprises in the book. I was quick to get on board with Gmail as well, and followed many Google services over the years. After I saw Google in action, I had switched to it immediately. After all, I have been following Google from outside since 1999. Going into this, I knew I wouldn't learn many new/surprising things.
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