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Jonathan's new division shoehorned itself into a crack in the org chart between Cindy's corporate marketing group and engineering. When product management had been ad hoc, my colleagues and I had worked directly with engineers to prepare products for launching into the open market. Now PMs would formally coordinate that activity and draw on the PR specialists and brand management (that is, me) as they did on other corporate resources in their tool kit.

As the product-management wedge grew wider with the influx of new hires, resistance to being displaced intensified within Cindy's world. I, for one, was willing to be integrated, but I didn't want to be shoved aside. In a growing, engineering-driven organization, the power of product management could easily become an unstoppable force. Cindy's reports, including brand management, played a secondary role. We added the clear-coat finish on a precision automobile—our efforts invisible save for a glossy shine highlighting the beauty of the machine that lay beneath. My role still had value, because I worked on the language that went into the product itself. But thinking about how users perceived the product, and the company as a whole, was a low priority. The product would speak for itself, so what mattered most was the technology and the cool things that could be done with it.

The building's population density increased, even after we pushed finance and the ads team into an adjacent office, quickly dubbed the "MoneyPlex." Stacy in HR sent out multiple memos about office hygiene and our duty to respect the micro-kitchens, load our dirty dishes, put away the milk, throw out half-eaten bananas, recycle whenever possible, leave conference rooms clean, wash hockey gear, and keep animals out of the café, the kitchens, and the bathrooms. There were policies regulating dogs left alone, animal hair, and barking, barfing, and biting.

Charlie warned Larry, Sergey, and long-suffering facilities manager George Salah that he would expire without more space. A compromise was reached. A semitractor showed up one morning belching diesel and dragging a monstrous white trailer custom outfitted with ovens, dishwashers, pothooks, and prep counters. The leviathan was unhitched and beached in the parking lot adjacent to the café to bake in the sun like the victim of a drive-by harpooning.

The trailer contained a fully equipped mobile kitchen designed for use at large outdoor events. All it required was hookups to electricity and water. Those we had, though we lacked the permits that would have allowed us to use them legally. But what's a piece of paper compared with the happiness of hundreds of Google employees? Facilities plugged the trailer in and fired it up. With its painted sheet metal glinting in the harsh summer light and smoke pouring out of its vents, the "auxiliary kitchen" immediately lowered property values throughout the manicured office park in which Google was situated. All that was missing was a rusty Ford pickup on concrete blocks and an ugly mutt chained to a lawn chair. Charlie promptly had his crew run up the Jolly Roger on a pole jutting from the trailer's roof, proclaiming the auxiliary kitchen an interference-free zone. Charlie's outlaw kitchen crew operated unperturbed except for a lone fire truck that rolled up to investigate the smoke perfuming Mountain View with the aroma of a rib joint. Its crew left without citing us. Firemen. They do love barbeque.

Chapter 20

Where We Stand

USERS WERE COMPLAINING again. We heard a rising chorus of annoyance with pop-up ads appearing when people did Google searches. The ads opened new windows, cluttered users' desktops, and irritated the hell out of them. Either we stopped running pop-up ads, our users demanded, or they were prepared to stop using Google.

Google never did run pop-up ads. Others just made it look as if we did. A number of companies distributed free software for file sharing, media playing, and the adding of smiley faces to email. When