Who has seen Larry Page?
A month after Donald Trump's election, Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, was invited, along with other leading figures in the tech world, to a meeting with the President at Trump Tower.
This was one of Larry Page's rare public appearances. He wore a tan suit, sat between Jeff Bezos and Sheryl Sandberg. “I'm very happy to be here,” Page said, when it was his turn to talk about him. In reality he didn't seem at all happy to be in that place with those people.
When he was summoned again in 2018, this time, to testify before the Senate of the United States Congress, he didn't even appear. Commission members then affixed a sign with his name on the conspicuously empty chair alongside those of the other witnesses. As many observers noted the next day, Page appeared to have, in fact, retired from the leadership of one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world.
Resignation from operational roles
In early December 2019, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the other founder of Google, communicated their willingness to leave all operational roles in Alphabet, the company that controls Google. Sundar Pichai, a trusted person and former CEO of Google since 2015, has assumed the roles that were of the two co-founders.
The transfer of power appeared to be a sudden and, in some ways, unexpected decision. In reality it was the culmination of a separation that has been going on for more than a year between two of the most important figures in Silicon Valley and the company they founded 21 years ago.
Page and Brin had already reduced their involvement in the day-to-day management of the company, gradually handing over their managerial duties to other subjects. They wanted to be able to focus on a variety of projects, such as self-driving cars, robotics, life-extending technologies, and so on.
However, they remained on Alphabet's Board of Directors. Page and Brin still own 51 percent of Alphabet's voting stock, which gives them effective control of the company.
Proud parents
Their resignation letter, posted on the Google blog on December 3, 2019, reports this significant passage:
“Today, in 2019, if the company were a person, it would be a young adult of 21 and it would be time for him to leave the nest. While it has been an enormous privilege to be deeply involved in the day-to-day running of the business for so long, we believe the time has come to take on the role of proud parents — who offer advice and love, but don't complain on a daily basis!
With Alphabet well established and Google and its other ventures operating effectively as independent companies, it's time to streamline our organizational chart. We have never been attached to our managerial roles when we think there may be those who do it better. And Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a president. Going forward, Sundar (Pichai) will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet.
Sundar will assume the leadership of Google and investment management of Alphabet and our other ventures. We will remain deeply committed to Google and Alphabet over the long term and will continue to participate actively as board members, shareholders and co-founders. We will also continue to speak with Sundar on a regular basis, especially on the topics we are most passionate about!”
Parents also of the Internet
Page and Brin have contributed to making the Internet and Silicon Valley a cultural and commercial phenomenon unparalleled in the world. Over the past two decades, they have inspired and directed a company that has been the focal point of one of the most important periods in the history of business and technology. But something has broken in the meantime in the relationship with society and governments.
While this is happening, two of the main protagonists of these events leave. Why?
They're not running away from their responsibilities, but they're leaving, most likely, to pursue new projects, funded by the billions of dollars they've earned with Google. They are always driven by the belief that technology can solve the planet's major problems.
Is Google like Bill Gates' Microsoft?
Google's initial motto, coined with Microsoft's role in mind, was "Don't be evil", which later became an integral part of Google's code of conduct.
Today there are many who wonder if the sentence should be amended of the negative form.
Indeed, Google faces immense legal and regulatory challenges on several continents. His own employees are in an upheaval like never before. The barometer of public opinion is scoring stormy weather. The issue of privacy is no longer a shrug. However, it will be up to Pichai, and not the founders, to steer Google through this turbulence.
"It's become an impossible job," said Shane Greenstein, a Harvard Business School professor who has studied Google and the role of its founders. He then added:
“Page and Brin are brainy, technological thinkers. The problems facing the company are not just problems of technology or science. These are problems related to corporate policy issues with an essentially legal and political profile. Subjects from which the two founders are light years away in terms of interests and also in terms of ability”.
Casual Entrepreneurs
Page and Brin met after graduating from Stanford University and in 1996 they developed an algorithm (PageRank) to best classify the results of an Internet search. It was a simple school project at the time.
Since then Google has become the dominant search engine almost everywhere except China. Its search engine handles nine out of ten searches. Android software, owned by Google, powers about three-quarters of the world's smartphones. And for an entire generation of young people, YouTube, which Google acquired in 2006, has virtually supplanted television.
But it so happens that the more powerful Google became, the less its founders seemed interested in managing it.
They are casual entrepreneurs,” comments Greenstein. Given their origins, this is no wonder. They probably still have the desire to become a professor or work in a research laboratory.
The fact is, however, that Page and Brin, in these 20 years, have shown that they are capable businessmen and have great business intelligence. It's not really naive, dreamers or idealists.
Shrewd entrepreneurs
For example. When investors feared the founders weren't ready to manage what they, quite rightly, believed could become one of Silicon Valley's biggest companies, Brin a Page made room for an outside manager. In 2001 Eric Schmidt, formerly CEO of Novell, a software house, arrived as CEO of Google.
This too happened almost by accident. Page, Brin, and Schmidt met and bonded over Burning Man, a quirky community festival of free expression and self-actualization. Held annually in the fiery Nevada desert, the BM challenges participants to extreme trials of survival.
No cash is allowed at Burning Man, bartering rules, cell phones are banned, and the only thing available in the nearby town of Black Rock is ice and coffee. It is a vision that comes quite close to that of Brin and Page, both of Montessori education.
The benefits of creative freedom
Brin and Page hit it off immediately with Schmidt. A rather curious episode is told about the acquisition of Android. One day Page came to Schmidt to promote the acquisition of a company with an operating system for smartphones, Android. To which Schmidt replied: "Larry, but we already closed the Android acquisition a month ago!". Page didn't flinch. He was fine with that.
In one of Page's last public interviews, reporters asked him about Google's interest in China, a country Google exited a few years ago for political reasons.
“I have also delegated the matter to Sundar – replied Page -. I helped him think about it. But I don't have an answer right now." She smiled as she said it, and so did the people who were with him.
One benefit of no longer being CEOs was that Brin and Page would no longer have to perform operational tasks such as negotiating acquisitions, talking to advertisers, investors, journalists and regulators.
The founders were thus able to devote themselves to other activities, the so-called "moonshots", i.e. absolutely futuristic projects such as the one they were already working on with encouraging results, the self-driving car.
The birth of the self-driving car project
In 2005 Page took part in the DARPA Grand Challenge, a driverless vehicle competition in the California desert. There she met Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford professor specializing in the development of self-driving technologies, which were then just starting out. Trun himself recalls:
“I'm still amazed to have seen the founder of a company like Google at an automaton race. It wasn't long before Larry pushed me to start a team to build a system for self-driving vehicles. I didn't think of Google as an automobile company,” Thrun added. But Larry saw Google as a company that pushes innovation in any industry.
Chauffeur in 2009 thus became Google's secret project for the automotive sector. Thrun initiated it in close coordination with Brin and Page. Today, an ever-increasing number of big tech companies are experimenting with it. Even the great historic car manufacturers seem to have nothing else on their mind. But when news of the project broke in 2010, there was much wonder to see an Internet company intent on building a car. It was a clear sign that the Internet is not just a technology, but an overall economic system.
Il moon shot
Thrun led the Chauffeur project under the Google X umbrella, the so-called "moonshot lab," where multiple teams of engineers work to build sci-fi projects that conventional wisdom deems impossible. In fact, many of these projects have gone down the drain, such as space elevators, rocket packs and teleportation. But there are others that are more promising, such as delivery drones, energy-producing kites and Internet balloons.
Like most of Google's futuristic projects, the lab was the brainchild of the founders. Brin especially wanted something to work on because he was getting bored with management stuff.
“He was always frustrated with what he had to do; you can't plan from above, he said. He wanted to go build things with his hands,” said Michael Jones, co-creator of Google Earth, who spent 11 years at Google.
Brin moved his desk to the Google X offices and began experimenting with new projects like Google Glass, delivery drones and data center barges docked in San Francisco Bay.
Page's Sorrows
In 2011, Page resumed his role as CEO of Google. He received a warm welcome like that of a returning hero. But his pattern hadn't changed: okay to stay there, but don't do management stuff.
He no longer seemed interested in the day-to-day aspects of a boss's job. He was frustrated with growing executive rivalries and competition for office. All aspects that are an inevitable part of corporate life. This was reported by three former Google executives to the "New York Times".
Well before the recent union and political troubles with employees, Page had become disillusioned with the behavior of some of Google's engineers. This was reported by two other Google executives to the "New York Times".
He has also started to suffer from health problems, in particular a form of paralysis of the vocal cords which, at times, renders him deaf. Some people who have met Page have reported that he sometimes uses a hearing aid to speak.
The aversion to the short termism
“Larry is a professor turned business star. I don't think he has any interest or love or desire to run a company. The thing that interests him is to push in the direction of innovation”.
said Jones, a former Google manager.
In 2013, financial analysts asked him if the resources involved in the moonshot could ever generate any revenue. Page reproached them for their short termism when they should have asked them to spend more. It was the last conversation he had with the analysts.
In fact, Page spent a lot of time on side projects. For years, Page and Thrun have been discussing a new type of vehicle: the personal electric aircraft. But rather than try to build one funded by Google, they carried out an independent project, backed by Page's personal fortune. “We knew the flight was too far away from Google and its shareholders,” Thrun said.
Thrun now operates Kitty Hawk, which produces three electric aircraft models. Page is the main funder. He visits there a few times a month. Page is also funding three startup of flying machines.
Montessori training
The somewhat erratic and unusual attitude of the two founders of Google, for a captain of industry, has its roots in their Montessori training. Something that, according to many, leaves a deep and indelible mark on the personality of whoever received it.
If the first generation of innovators had the imprinting of the counterculture of the sixties and seventies, in the generation of the Internet it was the Montessori education that determined the behavior and vision of the business. That lineup is also a very strong binder.
Peter Sims is a successful entrepreneur and author of an important book like Little Bets:How Breakthrough Ideas It emerges from Small Discoveries. In an intervention on the "Wall Street Journal" in 2011 he even spoke of a "Montessori Mafia". According to the writer, the Montessori educational method is the best viaticum and the most suitable approach for creative thinking. It is also to enter that technological elite in which the alumni of Montessori schools are over-represented.
Professors Jeffrey Dyer (Brigham Young University) and Hal Gregersen (INSEAD) have conducted a survey on creativity in the business world. They surveyed more than 3000 managers and interviewed 500 people, founders of innovative companies or inventors of new products. The two professors, to their amazement, discovered that a large number of these people had attended a Montessori school. Both Brin and Page went to one of these schools.
Montessory kids
In an interview with Barbara Walters of ABC, the two founders of Google said about their education (to speak is Page):
“We met at Stanford and hit it off right away. Both of our parents were college professors, but they didn't refer us. Much of the credit for our success is due to the education we have received. We both went to a Montessori school. Not having to necessarily follow rules or schemes, being able to manage ourselves, being able to question things that were taken for granted has allowed us to act a little differently from others and become who we are”.
In fact, the Montessori method, absolutely hierarchical, pushes students towards discovery, exploration and free sharing. It is what the two founders have transferred into the DNA of Google, at least of the original Google.
Montessori goes to Googleplex
Brin and Page wanted to graft the Montessori method into Google. They wanted all employees to devote one day a week to developing projects outside of work. They can self-manage their time with company resources. Important projects such as Google Maps were born from this programme.
Google, even physically, is a company unlike any other. The Mountain View Googleplex is full of ping pong tables, foosball tables and video games, bicycles and colorful hats, outdoor swimming pools and gyms, sports facilities, synthetic grass lawns with wooden tables and refrigerators full of food. The salary also covers part of the free time.
They are all ways to stimulate creativity, feel comfortable and escape the stress that the most admired company in the world (after Apple) inevitably produces.
