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This divide-and-conquer approach even informed the basic algorithms running Google search. Rather than basing search results solely on a single source—the content of individual web pages—Google looked at links created by millions of people to determine a site's importance. Sergey called it "the dem…

Insofar as we had a clear strategy, a big part of it seemed to be getting other people to do our work for free. Nowadays that's known as "crowd-sourcing." We just called it "cutting costs." Self-service AdWords, porn cookies, affiliate programs, viral marketing—all were based on many hands lighteni…

Composing a list of new CRM vendors didn't take long. Fewer than half a dozen major players offered stable, well-tested systems. Google's tech evaluation team would ensure we weren't sold a bill of goods (though they hadn't kept us from choosing Miasma), and Larry had a college friend who would adv…

When Karen took a vacation, we ordered a thousand plastic playground balls and filled her cube with them. They were still being thrown from office to office and rolling around under desks a year later.

Google didn't acknowledge outside firms that served the company—not even for client references. As the company grew in size and stature, suppliers begged for permission to announce their ties to us, often offering steep discounts if they could just display Google's logo on their client lists. Almos…