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By Root 2089 0

enthusiasm for our tagline. Cindy heard feedback from her contacts in the press that our braggadocio was an unwelcome departure from our usual understated approach. "I don't like the tagline," one reporter told her. "I think Google as a search service never made any grand or best-in-the-world-type claims. The effect of this extreme form of, 'underpromise, overdeliver' philosophy has been to make me feel certain that Google is supremely well conceived and fully worthy of every bit of trust that users place in it." Our new tagline violated that principle, and did so for a product that "was not equally well conceived nor equally worthy of users' trust."

Ouch. When you start getting marketing advice from journalists, something is seriously out of whack. Cindy agreed and even admitted regret for not having supported my recommendation more forcefully. The executive staff conceded that "All the world's products" might have overreached. Pearl asked me to prepare another slide explaining why it was a bad tagline. To all the reasons I had listed previously, I added, "It's blatantly and provably untrue." At the January 2003 GPS meeting, the executive staff agreed to switch to the line I had recommended. Eric even raised the possibility of killing the Froogle name and integrating the service directly into Google.com results.*

These developments left me with an unaccustomed feeling. I had been right in an argument with Larry and Sergey and Eric. Sometimes you just get lucky. It did embolden me, though. My instincts for our brand had been correct. Perhaps this would open a door and give marketing more credibility and access to the product-development process earlier in the pipeline. That way we could avoid last-minute scrambles and apply the same intelligence to branding as we did to the product's features. Perhaps the tension between product management and my consumer-marketing group would diminish.

I looked forward to exploring areas of interdepartmental cooperation in 2003, but I wouldn't get the chance for a while. Cindy had asked me to go to Tokyo. We had won Yahoo Japan's search business in November, and we needed to understand more about promoting our product in that market. I'd be operating out of our new office in the Shibuya neighborhood and would interview some job candidates, consult with ad agency Dentsu, and meet with a marketing group that had done some work for us. All very straightforward.

I let Cindy know I could probably squeeze the trip in, though it would be a hardship for Kristen, home with our three kids before the holidays. Japan was familiar turf for me: I'd been a Rotary scholar in Nagoya for a year after college. But the idea of taking my first international business trip secretly thrilled me. At forty-four, I was experiencing the same excitement I had felt the first day of high school. I had graduated to a new status because my company valued me enough to send me five thousand miles away.

Imagine, then, my elation when a couple weeks after my return from Japan, Cindy asked me to leave again. This time it was to help Sergey and our international PR team open a new office in Milan. We hosted a press conference and party at a trendy nightclub. I ate a dozen different cheeses at a single meal and discovered that wearing a nice suit from Macy's put me three fashion steps behind the barista serving me cappuccino. And cappuccino didn't look at all like what I got at Starbucks, but tasted like foamy caffeinated ambrosia. I cut the epaulets off my London Fog overcoat with a razor because no one in Italy wore epaulets, and I cursed my slick-soled loafers because they gave me no purchase on the rain-soaked marble streets. I carried deflated exercise balls around half the city looking for a place with an air pump to fill them for our coming-out party. It was all fantastic. By the time I got home I had convinced myself I should focus all my attention on building our international brand and keep a packed suitcase under my desk for quick getaways.

"Maybe you could take me next time," Kristen suggested, ironing my shirts