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FEBRUARY 13: TIME EMEA COVER: INSIDE THE $100 BILLION EMPIRE OF GOOGLE

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FEBRUARY 13: TIME EMEA COVER: INSIDE THE $100 BILLION EMPIRE OF GOOGLE

Posted Thursday, February 16, 2006

Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Tells TIME: 'I worry about Microsoft. I don't worry about competing with them, but they've stated they really want to destroy Google. I feel like they've left a lot of companies by the wayside.'

'I would rather have people think we're confused than let our competitors know what we're going to do,' Larry Page tells TIME

Google Keeps Confidential List of The 100 Top Priorities;
Adding About 100 Employees Per Week

Brin and Page sometimes celebrate Google milestones by going out to Burger King
Obsessing About the Stock Price at Google Is Almost Evil:

Some Employees Fined If Caught Checking Stock Price

LONDON: 13 February 2006: The Google guys are feeling the heat as never before - especially as they face tough competition from big players like Yahoo!, which is making a dramatically different bet on the Internet's future, and Microsoft, which plans to challenge Google in search and advertising. "I worry about Microsoft," Google co-founder Sergey Brin tells TIME's Adi Ignatius in this week's cover story. "I don't worry about competing with them, but they've stated that they really want to destroy Google. I feel like they've left a lot of companies by the wayside."

TIME's cover story takes an exclusive inside look at the $100 billion empire that is dominating the internet. TIME talks extensively with the Google triumvirate of CEO Eric Schmidt and Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. TIME asks the trio how it plans to handle the major challenges facing Google, including criticism that there's a lack of focus, competition from Microsoft and Yahoo!, jittery investors who recently saw Google's stock price drop significantly, and Google's recent expansion into China.

TIME reports that Google keeps a confidential list of the 100-yes, 100-top priorities under development. That's a long list, and investors would love to know more about it and what Page, Brin and Schmidt are thinking. But secrecy is part of the culture. Google doesn't even invite analysts in for earnings-guidance sessions, so the resulting surprises can lead to big share-price swings like the big selloff this month. "We don't generally talk about our strategy ... because it's strategic," says Google co-founder Larry Page. "I would rather have people think we're confused than let our competitors know what we're going to do."

Inside the Googleplex:

Brin and Page's creation is a company that is quirky and practically shouts it out. The lava lamps and electric scooters that replaced the original Segways at the "Googleplex" headquarters in Mountain View have become iconic. There is also a sand-volleyball court, a pair of stationary lap pools and, for some reason, a ball pit with dozens of brightly colored plastic balls, like the one you throw the kids into at Ikea, TIME reports.

What's intriguing is that this slightly goofy, self-indulgent culture has proved so adept at nuts-and-bolts business. Schmidt says he intentionally propagated the perception of Google as a wacky place, to allow the company to build up its business under the radar. "With the lava lamps and scooters, everybody thought we were idiots, the last vestiges of the dotcoms," he says. "It worked until it leaked out how well we were doing." Many details didn't become known until Google had to file its financials just before going public in 2004, TIME reports.

Celebrating at Burger King:

Brin and Page are often accused of being arrogant, but to the extent that they are, it may not be egotism as much as an insistence on doing things their way. (They sometimes celebrates big Google milestones by going out to Burger King.) "We've obviously been successful," says Brin. "But there's been a lot of luck," TIME reports.

Employees Fined for Watching Stock Price:

It's part of the Google ethos to pretend, at least, not to care about the share price or let it affect strategy. "We're not a $100 billion company, in my mind. We're just Google," says CEO Schmidt, a soft-spoken former executive of tech firms Novell and Sun Microsystems who seems comfortable with his role as the third Google guy. Indeed, inside Google, obsessing about the stock price is almost evil. Marissa Mayer, a vice president, imposes penalties on anyone she catches tracking the latest tick. "If I see someone looking at the share price, they owe the cost of one share," says Mayer. A few have had to pay up, she says; early last week that could have meant a fine of nearly $400, TIME reports.

Adding 100 People A Week:

Even though few of Google's insta-millionaires have cashed in their stock options and quit since the 2004 IPO, Google is on a hiring binge, adding about 100 people a week. When Google hires someone, it generally isn't for a specific job. The idea is to bring in talent that can be slotted wherever there's a need. A new Googler might be placed on a team developing search applications for mobile phones and, when that project is done, help write code for, say, a video-search prototype, TIME reports.

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