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"Write a haiku describing possible methods for predicting search traffic seasonality," I suggested for one.

"This space left intentionally blank. Please fill it with something that improves on emptiness," I offered for another.

For Wei-Hwa's question about the number of different ways to color an icosahedron with one of three colors on each face, I added, "What colors would you choose?" There were also nods to Chef Charlie, "Don't be evil," and an old computer game involving twisty, turny passages that I had played as a kid.

As we rolled out new elements in the campaign over 2004, the press ate it up. NPR, ABC, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Sixty Minutes, and the Associated Press gave us widespread positive coverage and extended the reach of our effort substantially. Our own engineers praised the effort as fun and Googley. We received more than four thousand job applications at the specific email address we had set up. Everything worked exactly as I had hoped except for one small glitch.

We only hired one engineer because of the ads.

We had problems tracking applicants who sent in GLAT forms on paper and no way of knowing how many people the ads inspired to apply through our normal jobs@google channel. The ultimate number of hires may have been substantially greater, but I didn't have data to prove it. The branding effort worked. The recruiting component didn't.

Alan Eustace, the engineering director overseeing recruitment, didn't care. He wanted to run a modified campaign the following year. Urs liked the idea as well. The new head of business operations, however, didn't see it that way. The budget had come out of her department, and she had nothing concrete to show for it. I understood why she concluded it was a "complete waste of money," but I saw it differently.

For the rest of the year I tried to find a way to put Crispin back to work on promoting our brand, but the Google world had changed again. Now HR had recruiting specialists and Jonathan's product-marketing managers owned promotion of individual products. I could advise on branding, but they were responsible for the bottom-line performance. The PMMs were shopping for ad agencies, primarily to help with international promotion, which was a weak point for Crispin. And managers in Jonathan's domain—thinking outside the box—proposed we trade user data in aggregate for agency services. The agency would get inside information on the booming search-advertising market and we would get cheap ads. Win-win.

I disliked the idea. Giving out user data to cut costs seemed like a bad trade to me. But the loudest voice against it came from Marissa. For once we were standing on the same side of the fence. We had bickered in the past over issues of style, but we had never disagreed that our relationship with users was sacrosanct. Nothing should jeopardize their trust in us. Google's growth had brought in a new wave of managers, who were not "the bozos" Eric Schmidt had feared, but neither were they grounded in our core values. The PMs were impressed by the big international agencies that came wearing suits and bearing lofty titles. I wasn't. Crispin did some test campaigns for us, but their lack of global capabilities kept them out of the running. They moved on.* So did I.

Chapter 25

Mistakes Were Made

WE FIND OURSELVES today at the forefront of tremendous opportunity and worldwide attention," Sergey announced in October 2003. "This is, of course, an enviable position, yet it comes with substantial costs and risks."

Sergey wanted us to know that he understood how overwhelmed we might be feeling by the demands and issues coming at us from all angles. He didn't want us to become reactive and lose our ability to maintain the edge that had brought us so far. Prioritize, he instructed us. Don't let projects linger. Say no clearly when the answer is no. Don't create needless work for others or send emails that aren't worth reading. And he urged us to take care of our health and our families. Google, he assured us, wanted us to be productive and happy.

I was