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Cindy seemed on edge, though not more so than anyone else, and not just with me. Sergey got singed when he repeated a rumor suggesting that PR had missed an opportunity to defend Gmail.

I began dreading Cindy's late-night emails asking for updates on all the projects she thought I should be leading more forcefully. I had set up my inbox to color her messages bright red so I'd be sure not to miss them in the sea of spam. Now I switched the color to a subdued maroon and began taking deep breaths before opening each note. Still, I was unprepared for the missive she fired at me at three in the morning one Saturday, telling me a full plate was no excuse for letting the product-management team assume ownership of the Gmail privacy issue. User communication was my job, and once we lost control of it we would never get it back. There was more, and none of it was pleasant to read. I felt as if I had moved back to square one—with a difference.

One of the tasks keeping me too busy to lead every charge was rewriting the language of our S-1 filing document. Google was finally ready to go public, and I knew that would change everything.

PART IV

CAN THIS REALLY BE THE END?

As Google blossoms,

We grow together, then part.

I'm feeling lucky.

Chapter 26

S-1 for the Money

WHY, 'TECHNOLOGY' AND not, 'technologies'?" asked the lawyer sitting ten bankers down from me.

"We always refer to technology in the singular," I replied leaning forward so I could see him. "As a collective noun." I had no idea if that made any sense. I prayed there weren't any other English majors among the thirty attorneys, bankers, and venture capitalists in the room, all of whom were looking down at their own copies of our S-1 filing statement and following word by word with mechanical pencils and highlighters. If there were, they didn't speak up. We moved on to the next line of the text.

The printing firm RR Donnelley had been putting ink on paper for almost as long as the Mercury News. Their facility in Palo Alto, however, bore little resemblance to my former place of employment. The conference room we met in was packed with the latest communication electronics and decorated in muted contemporary tones. A fully stocked kitchen was just down the hall, as were an entertainment lounge, a pool table, a gym, showers, and rollaway beds. A massage therapist was on duty in case the stress of editing became overwhelming. Located directly behind Silicon Valley's premier law firm, RR Donnelley was the place companies went when they were ready to go public.

I had arrived late on Tuesday afternoon, April 27, and parked down the street from the Mission-style building as instructed. The license plate frame on my Taurus sported Google's logo and the words "I'm Feeling Lucky." If seen near Donnelley's, that could be enough to give away the secret we wanted to keep; that Project Denny's—our public filing-was under way.*

I had not expected to be involved, but late the night before, Cindy had emailed me a draft of a letter Larry had written to Google's future stockholders. In it, he laid out the principles by which he, Sergey, and Eric intended to run Google after it went public. The sentiments were true, but the sentences stacked together like computer commands. Cindy asked if I wanted to take a pass at putting it in "Google voice." I made some quick edits and sent it back to see if I was on the right track. At eleven-thirty p.m., Larry sent me an instant message asking me to keep going. He was in his office with Salar, Susan, and Marissa hashing out the text. I kept going. At around one-thirty a.m., I sent my finished draft and went to bed.

Larry's revised draft was waiting for me the next morning. Not much had changed. The style was still all Larry's. Cindy let me know that, at the board's urging, he had also asked Kara Swisher, the lead reporter covering Internet companies for the Wall Street Journal, to take a stab at improving it. Larry regarded Kara as family because