The Google Guys (24 page)

Another favorite obsession Larry and Sergey share is dealing with climate change. They had started initiatives to explore those problems before Brilliant arrived. Larry is the one who is particularly interested in this issue. In 2007 he gave a talk at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in which he argued that the scientists should make it a point to look for solutions to global warming and to make sure the public knows about them.

He then decided to show them how to do it. This led to two initiatives: developing utility scale renewable energy that's cheaper than coal-based power plants, dubbed RE

These programs provide grants to, and make investments in, organizations working on these goals. But Google takes it further than that. Some of the things the company spends money on make no sense for a software company. For one, Google has its own renewable energy R&D group, complete with engineers and energy experts to work on technologies such as solar thermal power, wind power, and geothermal energy. Within a few years, Larry wants to build a one-gigawatt plant, enough to power a city the size of San Francisco.

Notably, the types of research Google is focusing on are the ones most likely to produce quick results. Solar thermal power, for example—one of the items Larry touted at the AAAS meeting—consists of using mirrors to focus the sun on vats of water or oil, generating steam to run electrical turbines. Solar electric cells are still too inefficient to convert the sun's energy directly into electricity on a large scale.

To say the least, it's an unusual task for a software company to tackle. But that's Larry for you. In a blog posting, he explained the reasons he felt it was something Google should take on: “Our new initiative isn't just about Google's energy needs; we're seeking to accelerate the pace at which clean energy technologies are developing, so they can rival the economics of coal quickly. We've gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building data centers that lead the industry in efficiency. We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating inexpensive renewable electricity at scale. By combining talented technologists, great partners and large investments, we have an opportunity to quickly push this technology forward.”

The philosophy is “hybrid philanthropy,” with Google both funding others and trying to develop the technology itself. “It's not a tangent,” insists Brilliant. “The independent charge to
Google.org
is to try to address some of the greatest problems by using the fortune Google has, and this is one of the gravest crises. How could we do less? If all we did was give money, we would be falling short of hybrid philanthropy. For the people who say it doesn't make sense, I would point out that we do lots of hardware stuff at Google. This company, because of its success, touches on every controversial aspect of life. The darkest and brightest of our species flow through Google.”

And this collaboration between
Google.org
and
Google.com
is only going to increase. A big part of the reason Brilliant turned over daily management of
Google.org
to Megan Smith, Google's vice president of New Business Development, was to better link Google technologists to
Google.org
programs. In a blog posting announcing the change, Brilliant wrote, “[O]ur greatest impact has come when we've attacked problems in ways that make the most of Google's strengths in technology and information.” Smith will provide that bridge.

This is the serious, altruistic side to Larry and Sergey and their desire to do great things for the world. They also have a more whimsical side, and a side that thinks there's almost no end to what they can do with their unexpected, extraordinary wealth.

Larry and Sergey like to think big. They pursue their own interests no matter how remote they are from Google—or even this planet. Some are as flighty as space travel; others are as grounded as the DNA that makes them who they are.

Larry and Sergey have a keen interest in space travel. They have even reached an agreement to build a new corporate campus on NASA's Ames Research Center nearby in Mountain View, with a promise to cooperate with the organization on research projects. There's no word yet on what those projects may be, but Google has already started working with NASA on some fun mapping projects—providing space enthusiasts with images that simulate virtual flyovers of the moon and Mars—just as Google Maps can do virtual flyovers of your local neighborhood.

In 2008, Sergey made a $5 million investment in a Virginia company called Space Adventures, which plans to buy flights on Russian Soyuz rockets to the International Space Station and sell them to wealthy tourists. Expect Sergey to be on the first tourist flight, scheduled in 2011. He's no doubt driving his life insurance company apoplectic.

In 2007, Google announced the Google Lunar X Prize, in which Google will award up to $30 million for any projects that successfully land an unmanned rover on the moon and send back a gigabyte of images to earth. Larry and Sergey have also bandied about an idea for a “space elevator,” a serious proposal that some scientists have promoted, in which a cable is tethered from the ground to a counterweight in geosynchronous orbit in space. The idea is that, rather than using rockets to launch payloads into space, the satellites or other items can simply be run up the cable. Part of Schmidt's job is to keep some of these more fanciful ideas from getting too much publicity.

And then there's the planned trip to Mars, called Project Virgle. This one was announced on April 1, 2008. It's described on Google's Web site: “Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.”

Google has a “one-hundred-year plan” for this project and offered to let people participate by submitting thirty-second YouTube videos explaining why they want to live on Mars. Says Sergey, “If you're chosen you're going to get to join Larry, Richard and myself on the planet Mars sometime in the next 20 years.
¹
”

On a more serious side, Larry and Sergey have both invested in Silicon Valley's Tesla Motors, feeding their desire to see cars hit the market without polluting the air (and perhaps their desire to drive a really snazzy zero-emissions sports car). Tesla is building electric-powered convertibles that look like a cross between a Porsche Boxster and a Maserati. The first vehicles, which every wealthy Silicon Valley executive drools over (zero to sixty in four seconds), cost over $100,000. Both Larry and Sergey bought at least one. Later versions will go for $50,000 to $65,000.

Sergey has also combined his love life and interest in science with another Google investment. In May 2007, Google made a $3.9 million investment in 23andMe, a biotech company cofounded by his wife, Anne Wojcicki. Regulatory filings on that investment were the first confirmation that the pair was actually married. 23andMe creates a system that allows individuals to learn about their own genetic makeup, make sense of their genetic information, accelerate research into customized drug delivery systems, and help personalize the field of medicine. One more piece of metadata to add to the list.

It's just more of the founders' love of exploring radical ideas. The culture at Google encourages far-out thinking, on the philosophy that one never knows what might turn out to be something really interesting that the founders actually want to pursue.

Google brainstorming includes the purely fanciful. A couple of years ago, venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, on a visit to Google, took a picture of a whiteboard labeled “GOOGLE'S MASTER PLAN,” and posted it on his blog. It appears to be a real outline of Google's interests—some of them have come to pass or are well within the realm of possibility, including searches for TV, games, reviews, ski conditions, sports, traffic reports, music, comics, and gossip—but other Googlers had added their own graffiti to the whiteboard to suggest other ideas, apparently as another April Fool's Day joke. Some samples: “Hire rogue scientists” with a link to “Hire Richard Branson.” Other trajectories included “Space Station,” “Space travel,” “Teleportation,” “Orbital mind control,” and “Weather control.” And two of the entries that appear with the grouping of genuine items are a “Google operating system” (presumably for PCs) and an entry simply labeled “Casino.”

Certainly, some unusual ideas have already become Google products. Take Mail Goggles, for example, an idea dreamed up by Google engineer Jon Perlow and introduced within Google Labs in October 2008. The press has labeled it Gmail's “drunk e-mail protector.” When enabled, it checks to see if you're really sober enough to send that e-mail to your girlfriend, your boss, or anyone else late on a Friday night, requiring you to solve some simple math problems before it will send your e-mail. It's active only on late weekend nights.

Some ideas are more practical. Google is working on software that will analyze energy use from “smart meters” in homes, in order to provide people with suggestions on how to cut their energy bills (and to provide another product that dovetails with
Google.org
). Other projects are merely fanciful. In February 2002, Google added Klingon to the list of languages used for search results.

And rumors of new Google products are rampant. Aside from the Google PC, Google is said to be working on a communications router to compete with Cisco Systems, which will help speed up Internet communications. In February 2008, the stock of struggling CNET Networks, which provides tech news and product reviews, rose 7 percent on rumors that Google was thinking of investing in the company. (So far, it hasn't happened.) There have even been rumors that Google was interested in buying Sprint and
really
getting into the cell phone business.

Everyone likes to speculate, but there's no telling where Larry and Sergey will take their company next. There's one thing that's certain: they are going to be breaking rules, pissing people off, and trying to make the world a better place for decades to come. Love them or despise them, everyone must contend with them. They are having greater impacts on the business world and on people's lifestyles than any other business executives in the world. Their hearts are in the right place, even if their heads are sometimes not.

But then, Larry and Sergey have always been difficult to figure out. Venture capitalist Mike Speiser will attest to that. In early 2000, when Speiser was still an entrepreneur at online ratings site Epinions, he met Larry at a social gathering for entrepreneurs called Round Zero. The conversation turned to politics, and he was taken aback by Larry's attitude. “I'm all for questioning the current orthodoxy,” says Speiser. “But Larry effortlessly ignored all of the laws and customs of the day. I remember thinking that Silicon Valley is loaded with self-proclaimed Libertarians, but this guy is an anarchist.”

Larry was so unusual, in fact, that he made Speiser uncomfortable. At the time, Speiser had difficulty seeing Google succeeding with Larry as one of the company's top leaders. But he has since come to appreciate that much of Google's success is likely a result of Larry's lack of respect for authority. “My parents taught me that many of the great scientists throughout time succeeded because they ignored conventional wisdom and followed their own instincts. I now realize that entrepreneurship is no different. The people who break the current orthodoxy make others uncomfortable. And they are also the ones who change the world.”

With Google and their sudden wealth at their disposal, Larry and Sergey now have enormous power to make those changes, and they will continue to do so for decades to come. They're like Harry Potter after he discovered he was a wizard and got his wand. You can expect great things from them.

L
arry and Sergey's magic wands just got more powerful. In January 2011, the company announced that CEO Eric Schmidt was handing the reins back to the cofounders. Larry Page is now the CEO, and will focus on product development and technology strategy. Sergey Brin will devote his time to “strategic products,” particularly new product development. Schmidt becomes “executive chairman,” an unusual title that has led to a lot of speculation that he will eventually leave the company altogether, but will remain a strategic adviser to the pair.

Why the changes? Nobody knows for sure. But Google has been struggling to be dominant in a few new arenas, social networking in particular, an area the team sees as critical to its future. Interestingly, Sergey's new devotion to strategic products seems to suggest that he's taken the most important product development away from Larry. Perhaps it's a move to make the product development process work faster with better results. It's hard to say if Schmidt wanted to leave or if Larry and Sergey wanted to regain control. Schmidt has nothing left to prove and walks away with a new, $100 million stock bonus. It will be granted over four years, as long as he remains with the company, indicating that Larry and Sergey want him to stay a while.

The new structure does seem likely to streamline the decision-making process, something Google needs right now. Instead of a three-person team agreeing on major decisions, Larry will focus on the basic products and running the company, while Sergey will focus on getting the company into the most important new areas. That may be the most significant change—getting new products out the door faster, with smaller teams and better coordination.