I'm Feeling Lucky_ The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - Douglas Edwards [186]
Can't We All Just Get Along?
Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk. Over the rest of 2003, the product-development group under Jonathan worked with engineering to stamp out a series of features, services, and infrastructure updates.
Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk. The business-development group punched out partnership deals for toolbar distribution and advertising syndication.
I too ratcheted up my productivity. Writing copy for products and promotions was my primary activity, but there were other items on a list that perpetually expanded.
Set branding guidelines for partners who kept trying to use our logo in unapproved ways.
Arrange product placements. For example, I used Google to track down an email address for Sex and the City's props guy on a German website and the brother of a West Wing producer in Los Angeles. Google appeared in both shows at no cost to us.
Negotiate co-branding deals. Among other partnerships, I worked with DK books in England to release a set of Google-branded reference works for kids, with Time magazine to do an Internet search guide for use in classrooms, and with the World Puzzle Federation to sponsor their international championship.
Develop product identities. To brand our AdSense ads, I proposed "Ads by GOOOOOOOGLE," an idea that was rejected at first but implemented the following year.
No matter how efficient and productive I was, however, I felt hampered by the one thing that seemed to be moving backward. While I was communicating well with others in product management, my relationship with Marissa became more strained with each new project we worked on together. And we worked on an increasing number of projects together.
We disagreed about how to promote the Webby award won by Google news, which I thought was nice but no more exceptional than the four other Webbys Google had won and never acknowledged. Marissa wanted—and got—a special logo, a dedicated thank-you page, and a team picture on the site. Cindy stopped her from including the Webby in our online FAQ as well.
We had different views on Project Miles, a frequent-searcher program Marissa developed with no marketing input because, she claimed, Larry didn't want to use any resources to make it happen. In a test, the program put counters under the Google search box for some users. The number the counter displayed increased each time the users searched with Google. When Project Miles launched, someone from EPIC, a privacy rights organization, asked a New York Times reporter, "Do users know that Google is spying on them?"* Given Larry's hatred for frequent-flyer programs and his fears about raising privacy concerns, the test program was quickly canceled.
I argued against her idea to have staffers give away five thousand Google pens on the streets of Tokyo, which was opposed by our Japanese office and members of her own team. The promotion moved ahead anyway. Most of the Japanese pedestrians refused to acknowledge the Googlers, other than a handful of women who seemed quite comfortable accepting gifts from strangers.
All these instances of ignored or overridden input were eroding my authority to make decisions about our marketing. Worse, I had become a Cassandra—I could see bad things on the road ahead but couldn't stop us from recklessly rolling over them. Instead of having more credibility after the Froogle fiasco, I seemed to have less. I finally went to Larry to ask how we in brand management could align our efforts more closely with the company's goals. Work more closely with product management, he advised me. I assured him I would redouble my efforts to do so.
Two weeks later, Marissa closed the best window I had into Larry and Sergey's thinking about our brand strategy and the products in the development pipeline. She announced that Larry's weekly product-review meeting henceforth would be limited to Larry and