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By Root 779 0

their talent, and how you nurture it. Rishad Tobaccowala, an advertising executive you’ll hear from in the chapter, “Advertising,” says the genius of Google’s 20 percent rule is that if you enable people to follow their passions, they’ll as much as work for free. Google, he said, knows how to find smart people and give them what they want: “They want to work for a winner. They want to have the ability to feel special. They want to have the ability to follow their passions. They want the ability to make money. And they want to have the ability to increase their external market value—it helps me build a brand: myself.” Mayer said just working with smart people challenges other people in the company—and besides, they’re easier to manage.

Google’s lesson is clear: Make innovation your business.

Simplify, simplify

Once you decide what business you’re really in, once you settle on your strategy, once you figure out how to execute it in the new architecture and realities of the Google age, once you cast a new relationship with your world, once you absorb new ethics of this new era into your company’s culture, once you make innovation a keystone of that culture, then there’s one more important thing to do, another vital lesson to learn from Google: simplify.

In their 2005 history of Google, authors David A. Vise and Mark Malseed recounted the story of Google testing an early version of its spare and spartan home page with users:

The testers were told to use Google to find the answer to a trivia question: Which country won the most gold medals in the 1994 Olympics? They typed www.google.com, watched the homepage come up on the screen, and then they waited. Fifteen seconds went by…twenty seconds…forty-five. [Marissa] Mayer wondered what was going on, but didn’t want to interfere. Finally, she asked them, “What are you waiting for?” “The rest of the page to load,” they answered. The same thing kept happening all day, Mayer recalled. “The web was so full of things that moved and flashed and blinked and made you punch the monkey that they were waiting for the rest of it to show up.”

Mayer’s team changed the design to make the copyright notice at the bottom of the page stand out, just to let users know the page was done loading so they could get started.

I had to learn the lesson of simplicity myself when I debated about the title of this book with my editor and publisher. My original title was WWGD? (What Would Google Do?). It was a joke that I knew would work only in America, inspired by bumper stickers and bracelets that ask, WWJD? (What would Jesus do?) In this equation Google was God. But the publishing company thought this double title was too complicated. They wanted to simplify. I argued with them, holding dearly to my gag. To my editor’s discomfort, I decided to take the debate to my blog readers, as is my reflex now. A great discussion ensued with a few dozen comments, a majority disagreeing with my argument. Then a commenter named Ellen advised: “To me, it doesn’t matter what we all think. You should decide based on What Google Would Do, since that is the point of your book.” Right. What would Google do? It would simplify. I had to follow my own rules. I simplified the title.

Google is perhaps the most powerful single tool that can be used by anyone on earth. But it is also the simplest. Compare Google’s home page with a TV remote control, a clock radio, a tax form, an insurance policy, any legal document, many ecommerce sites, Microsoft Word’s toolbar, most companies’ org charts, and the last five memos you wrote. Google is simple.

Google shares its design aspirations on the web for all to see. “The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable,” the team wrote on a Google blog. “Achieving a harmonious balance of these 10 principles is a constant challenge. A product that gets the balance right is ‘Googley’—and will satisfy and delight people all over the world.” Their key design principle: