In the Plex
How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
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Narrated by:
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L. J. Ganser
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By:
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Steven Levy
About this listen
Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes listeners inside Google headquarters - the Googleplex - to explain how Google works.
While they were still students at Stanford, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google's earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow (until Google's IPO, nobody other than Google management had any idea how lucrative the company's ad business was), Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open-source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more.
The key to Google's success in all these businesses, Levy reveals, is its engineering mind-set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After it's unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers with free food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseuses, and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire.
But has Google lost its innovative edge? It stumbled badly in China. And now, with its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be "evil" still compete?
No other book has turned Google inside out as Levy does with In the Plex.
This edition of In the Plex includes an exclusive interview with Google's Marissa Mayer, one of the company's earliest hires and most visible executives, as well as the youngest woman to ever make Fortune's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" list. She provides a high-level insider's perspective on the company's life story, its unique hiring practices, its new social networking initiative, and more.©2011 Steven Levy (P)2011 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Don't be evil. That's Google's official motto. But what's really going on behind that simple little search box? Wired's Steven Levy guides us through a history of the rise of the internet, the development of complicated search algorithms, and, in many ways, a who's who of Silicon Valley — all beautifully narrated by L.J. Ganser.
What started as two geeks obsessed with improving internet search engines rapidly ballooned into a company eager to gobble up other useful startups (Keyhole Inc., YouTube, Picassa) as well as larger, more obviously valuable companies (most notably the marketing goliath, DoubleClick). Google's strategy has also been a game-changer in regards to the way we use data and cloud computing. Thanks to its highly lucrative AdWords and AdSense programs, the company exploded the way people think about the internet and the way people think about making money on the internet.
In the Plex gives listeners a real idea of what it's like to exist within the company's quirky culture. And Ganser knows when to keep it serious, but that doesn't stop him from adding just the right amount of snark to the “like” and “um”-ridden quotations from various engineer types. This edition also includes a fascinating interview between the author and early hire Marissa Mayer, the youngest woman to ever make Fortune's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" list.
Levy dedicates a large section of the book to Google's controversial actions in China, the ultimate test of the company's “don't be evil” philosophy. Here, In the Plex takes an unexpected turn from company profile to a technology coming-of-age story for notorious “founder kids” Larry Page and Sergey Brin. How does “don't be evil” play out in a real world that is sometimes, well, evil? Results are mixed.
In addition to China, Levy touches on some of Google's failures, flubs, and flops, like the company's book scanning project and its development of Google Wave and Google Buzz. However, he seems to miss the point when he makes excuses for their inability to compete in the social space. It seems particularly obvious why a corporation completely run by data-obsessed engineers would have trouble making inroads in the world of social media, which is by nature more organic and subtle.
From the early days as a gonzo-style startup to the massive corporate giant that has quickly integrated itself into almost everything we do, this is an essential history of Google. —Gina Pensiero
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An intimate and profound reckoning with the changes buffeting the $2 trillion global advertising and marketing business from the perspective of its most powerful players, by the best-selling author of Googled. Advertising and marketing touches on every corner of our lives, and is the invisible fuel powering almost all media. Complain about it though we might, without it the world would be a darker place. And of all the industries wracked by change in the digital age, few have been turned on its head as dramatically as this one has.
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Good; not for beginners
- By DV on 10-05-18
By: Ken Auletta
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No Better Time
- The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet
- By: Molly Knight Raskin
- Narrated by: Christine Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
No Better Time tells of a young, driven mathematical genius who wrote a set of algorithms that would create a faster, better Internet. It's the story of a beautiful friendship between a loud, irreverent student and his soft-spoken MIT professor, of a husband and father who spent years struggling to make ends meet only to become a billionaire almost overnight with the success of Akamai Technologies, the Internet content delivery network he cofounded with his mentor.
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An Overlooked Hero of 9-11
- By Jean on 05-27-16
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The Starfish and the Spider
- The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
- By: Ori Brafman, Rod Beckstrom
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
If you cut off a spider's leg, it's crippled; if you cut off its head, it dies. But if you cut off a starfish's leg it grows a new one, and the old leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: "spiders", which have a rigid hierarchy, and "starfish", which rely on the power of peer relationships.
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Centralized and decentralized models
- By Chan Meng on 12-07-07
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What Would Google Do?
- By: Jeff Jarvis
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Story
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Shallow and one-sided
- By JimmiJ on 02-04-09
By: Jeff Jarvis
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The World Is Flat
- Further Updated and Expanded
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Story
When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, what will they say was the most crucial development in the first few years of the twenty-first century? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations?
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If you like cliches...
- By Jonathan Shultz on 09-08-07
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Where Wizards Stay Up Late
- The Origins of the Internet
- By: Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon
- Narrated by: Mark Douglas Nelson
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
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Overall
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Story
Twenty-five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, 20 million people worldwide are surfing the Net. Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone. In the 1960s, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communications devices.
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Absolutely fascinating and we'll researched
- By Elsa Braun on 10-01-16
By: Katie Hafner, and others
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Technically Wrong
- Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech
- By: Sara Wachter-Boettcher
- Narrated by: Andrea Emmes
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Buying groceries, tracking our health, finding a date: whatever we want to do, odds are that we can now do it online. But few of us ask how all these digital products are designed, or why. It's time we change that. Many of the services we rely on are full of oversights, biases, and downright ethical nightmares. Chatbots that harass women. Signup forms that fail anyone who's not straight. Social media sites that send peppy messages about dead relatives. Algorithms that put more black people behind bars.
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Pretty good but not complete
- By Casey on 10-29-17
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The Friendly Orange Glow
- The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture
- By: Brian Dear
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 21 hrs and 6 mins
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Overall
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At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers - some of them only high school students - in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was not only years but light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers.
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Memory lane for the cyberist.
- By Robert C. Hickcox on 08-08-18
By: Brian Dear
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You Only Have to Be Right Once
- The Unprecedented Rise of the Instant Tech Billionaires
- By: Randall Lane
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Overall
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Story
Over the last three years, Forbes has published in depth profiles of this new batch of billionaires, including the founders of Spotify, Dropbox, Tumblr, and Twitter. Now, in a compilation introduced and updated by Forbes editor Randall Lane, fans and critics alike will get a comprehensive look at who these super-entrepreneurs are and what they say about their own success and their plans for the future.
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Awesome book!
- By Jamal Love on 06-17-15
By: Randall Lane
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The Art of the Start 2.0
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Whether you're an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur, or a not-for-profit leader, there's no shortage of advice on such topics as writing a business plan, recruiting, raising capital, and branding. In fact there are so many books, articles, and websites that many startups get bogged down to the point of paralysis, or they focus on the wrong priorities and go broke before they discover their mistakes.
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Like a collection of about.com articles
- By Lee on 06-15-15
By: Guy Kawasaki
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Machine, Platform, Crowd
- Harnessing Our Digital Future
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Second Machine Age, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson predicted some of the far-reaching effects of digital technologies on our lives and businesses. Now they’ve written a guide to help listeners make the most of our collective future. Machine | Platform | Crowd outlines the opportunities and challenges inherent in the science fiction technologies that have come to life in recent years, like self-driving cars and 3D printers, online platforms for renting outfits and scheduling workouts, or crowd-sourced medical research and financial instruments.
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Both How AND Why for Techies
- By Dan Collins on 08-11-17
By: Erik Brynjolfsson, and others
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Becoming Facebook
- The 10 Challenges That Defined the Company That's Disrupting the World
- By: Mike Hoefflinger
- Narrated by: Nicholas Techosky
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Facebook's founding is legend: In a Harvard dorm, wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg invented a new way to connect with friends...and the rest is history. But for the people who actually molded this great idea into a game-changing $300 billion company, the experience was far more tumultuous and uncertain than we might expect. Mike Hoefflinger was one of those Facebook insiders.
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mainly a tribute to the success of FB
- By Anonymous User on 10-07-18
By: Mike Hoefflinger
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The Science of Growth
- How Facebook Beat Friendster - and How Nine Other Startups Left the Rest in the Dust
- By: Sean Ammirati, Richard Florida - foreword
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
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Overall
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The lean entrepreneurship movement has captivated Silicon Valley and entrepreneurs across the country. It provided an agile framework to develop the right product solution for a given target market and is now used by almost every fledgling company to do just that. The next challenge is growth - to achieve the financial returns and, more importantly, the impact they dreamed of when starting off on their adventure.
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Awesome book
- By Josh on 04-29-16
By: Sean Ammirati, and others
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Alibaba's World
- How a Remarkable Chinese Company Is Changing the Face of Global Business
- By: Porter Erisman
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In September 2014, a Chinese company that most Americans had never heard of held the largest IPO in history - bigger than Google, Facebook, and Twitter combined. Alibaba, now the world's largest ecommerce company, mostly escaped Western notice for over 10 years, while building a customer base larger than Amazon's and handling the bulk of ecommerce transactions in China. How did it happen? And what was it like to be along for such a revolutionary ride?
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Not bad
- By Daniel on 09-12-15
By: Porter Erisman
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What listeners say about In the Plex
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Asit
- 04-29-11
Excellent Book about Google
There are many things about google and its founder which is well described. Good information on how the founder thinks about google. Excellent work by Steven Levy.
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16 people found this helpful
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- TM
- 12-05-13
A Reporter Reporting, not a Writer Writing
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
The narrator does the best he can with the material, but it is dry stuff and slow-going.
Any additional comments?
Having enjoyed "I'm Feeling Lucky", and assuming it was a single persons perspective on the amazing start-up story, I thought I would try another book about Google. However, this book had no narrative arc. It was just a series of reported events with dry quotes from Google employees. I did my best to stay engaged, but about half way through the second part I found other books to listen to.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Nina Donnard
- 07-12-11
Creation of the Information Future Giant
The book is a history of Google creation, Google policies and Google functioning. It reads like a novel and a fiction. But I know that everything is real in Google: ideas, accomplishments and management skills. The process of company management is the most exciting part of the whole story. It is not a surprise that Google as a tool became a part of most people life that are using computers, cell phone and look for most of information on web. It is a Must read for information technologists. I loved it...
Michael Bergelson
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
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- David Dietrich
- 09-04-14
Don't Be Evil*
If you could sum up In the Plex in three words, what would they be?
Interesting, amazing and disturbing. It's great American entrepreneurial tale, but in the back of my mind I couldn't escape the realization that the core of their business is selling ads. Billions of dollars in ads, and said billions they spend like drunken sailors.
What other book might you compare In the Plex to and why?
Barbarians at the Gate, because that book features a similar value toward large sums of money and the desire to own everything.
What three words best describe L. J. Ganser’s voice?
Neutral, bland and unexciting. There were a few pronunciation curiosities... "DEC" is usually pronounced "Deck," and to the best of my knowledge, "Vista" in "Alta Vista" is not pronounced "Vee-stuh." Small quibbles, though.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
It's worse than you think.
Any additional comments?
I enjoy Steven Levy's books. Hackers is one of my all-time favorites. BUT it's clear that the cost of the level of access to Google that Levy was granted came at a cost of objectivity. Still, it's an interesting story.
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- Kevin
- 10-11-12
The Definitive Book on Google
This book is way better than "What Would Google Do". I particularly like the sections that talked about Google's data centers: the machines they use, the cooling systems, the locations, etc. Techies and non-techies will get enjoyment out of this book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Pauly Morefuss
- 03-02-13
20 Hour Infomercial?
Smart. They're all super smart. Big. Google is big. It's very big. Everyone at Google is smart. It's very smart. Big and smart.
Did I mention they're all smart? Yes, it's smart. And it's really big.
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- Mikeyxote
- 07-29-12
Fascinating recap of Google's history
What made the experience of listening to In the Plex the most enjoyable?
I enjoy technology and learning about how innovations made it from concept to full integration. For the longest time Google did a great job hiding their internal workings. Now it's possible to catch up on all that happened behind the curtain. This book not only tells the story of each of the key Google people, but also tells the story of how their ideas were implemented. It goes into great depth about Google's corporate culture and how it fostered so many changes in the IT industry.
Any additional comments?
If you're looking for a book on Google or even just to learn more about how the internet has developed, you can't go wrong with this book.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-30-16
Thought provoking
Interesting insight into the company that is so pervasive in our daily lives. Left me wondering who's in control now?
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- TMeade
- 11-13-13
This is a MUST for anyone in the software world
Would you listen to In the Plex again? Why?
I had no idea. Yes I thought I understood google since I've been in software design for 20 years. Then I listened to this. Now I get it. Googly is IMPORTANT. People are IMPORTANT. It's all about the engineering.
What did you like best about this story?
Total behind the scenes breakdown of Google and how they became the behemoth they are.
Any additional comments?
First section is about algorithms. If you are a coder its fascinating. Others may find it tedious but get past it. It's needed to 'get' Google. The rest of the book more than makes up for it.
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- Dan Buckland
- 01-23-15
Such an amazing story
I listened to this book almost every day - in the car, on the way to work, whilst cooking dinner - it's genuinely inspiring! The book strikes the right balance between being entertaining and informative and I don't think you'd need to be technical at all to understand or enjoy what is way more than a chronological record of events. I'll certainly be gifting it to friends!
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