Browsing Google

SAN FRANCISCO — I spent two hours browsing around Google. Don’t laugh, thinking you’ve already done it yourself a million times. The difference is I was not at Google’s Web site; I actually visited the company in person.

Being at Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley (the town in northern California is actually called Mountain View, although I saw only hills in the distance) might not sound exciting but, believe me, it looked totally different from various other enterprises I had been to before. The company looked more like a university campus, with lots of leisure and sports facilities, than a typical corporate office complex. The most amazing thing was the friendly working environment.

The campus of Google’s corporate headquarters has a decidedly friendly feel. Photo by Matthias Bernold, WPI ’05

The first surprise came immediately after entering one of the several Google buildings. The old-fashioned visitor logbook was replaced by a computer. When a visitor entered their data and signed electronically (it looked like scratches on the monitor), the computer immediately printed their visitor name badge. A big screen overhead revealed what Google users all over the world were searching at that moment. Even from this small feature I could sense how global the search engine company was. In mere seconds, words in at least 10 different languages appeared, from Asian hieroglyphs to Cyrillic letters.

“Worker’s paradise” was what I was thinking a few minutes later when our Google guide, Daniel Lemin from the public relations department, explained all the benefits the company’s employees got: doctors, childcare, transportation, meals, beverages, even washing machines. While browsing through one of the Google buildings I passed by pool tables, comfortable sofas and a massage room. (The massage service was not free, Lemin explained.) All of the amenities were in use although it was only 11 a.m.

“Everyone sets their own working hours. It’s flexible and what matters is productivity," explained Richard Chen, an international business product manager at the company.

The work environment looked casual, even cool. The dress code seemed to be totally unofficial. Outside the buildings on the Google grounds some people walked dogs, parents pushed strollers and others rode bicycles. The area between the buildings was landscaped with small gardens and playgrounds. I passed by a beach volleyball facility and a strange small swimming pool where the water moved so swimmers could swim in place.

Dining alfresco is one of many agreeable options available to employees at Google. Photo by Pilar Conci, WPI ‘05

All the Googlers (the way the employees referred to themselves) were provided with numerous cuisine choices for free. Most of the meals offered seemed to be healthier than traditional U.S. fast food. According to the company’s Web site, all the food was organic.

Lunchtime looked like another opportunity to have fun. Several dozen young people gathered at noon both indoors and outdoors. The place looked more like a luxurious cafeteria on the campus of nearby Stanford University than part of a business property. Most of the engineers were young, male and white or Asian-looking. They did not look like the nearsighted geeky hackers portrayed in Hollywood movies. To the contrary, the Googlers were fashionably dressed and, more important, I was sure they were selected from the brightest people in this field.

During lunch I imagined a young millionaire looking like all the others might be seated at a nearby table. After the company went public in 2004 some Googlers became rich. Salary.com Vice President Bill Coleman estimated that 60 percent of the company’s 1,900 employees held stock or stock options worth more than $1 million. The shares of the company performed incredibly well and in little more than a year their value increased almost fourfold. By late 2005 there were about 5,000 employees and although there was no official information about their salaries or stock options, I doubted the situation was different.

I googled for salary data but couldn’t find how much the employees at the Internet company were paid. According to a survey by the online job-posting service Dice Inc., the average salary of a technology worker in the United States in 2004 was about $67,800. This to me looked far above the median earnings of a man ($40,800) or woman ($31,200) in the U.S. for the same year.

I come from an ex-communist country and, to me, the Google environment with all those perks strongly resembled the positive side of the communist utopia, which Bulgaria and a lot of other countries didn’t achieve at all. Even now, in order for my country to be competitive and attract foreign investments, all those perks are a dream. I hope the future for employees all over the world will be in the Google style.

Good news, bad news

Apart from the employees and the investors in Google shares, Internet users also were happy about the company’s performance. After gaining a strong position in the search-engine competition, Google presented numerous new products: software for searching personal computer files; an e-mail service; telecommunication tools; maps; satellite images; instant messaging; blogging tools; specialized searches for news, video, shopping and so on. The good news was that everything was free; the bad, that some of the services could be used only in the U.S. or a few countries. Language was another obstacle.

“About 67% of world’s Internet users do not speak English. We’re making efforts to develop Google’s own translation technology,” pointed out Richard Chen, the international business product manager.

The only annoying thing was that some ads appeared while users searched the Internet or checked their e-mails, but this was the Google way to prosper. Another thing that concerned some users was that the search engine was not perfect. A statement by Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed that it would take Google quite a long time to index the world’s information.

“We did a math exercise and the answer was 300 years,” Schmidt said in response to a question about how long the company’s mission would take. Of the approximately 5 million terabytes of information out in the world, only about 170 terabytes had been indexed, he said in a speech.

“Sometimes information is not available because some webmasters forbid indexing the content of certain Web pages,” explained Chen.

Despite this Google was one of the preferred search engines worldwide. And I left the company’s headquarters with the feeling that so many smart engineers provided with such incredible perks would be able to perfect the service sooner or later.

If you are reading this article that means, first, that you read English and, second, that you are an Internet user and most probably have been to Google’s website at least once. So the next time you are there you will have some idea of what stands behind it. At least that is what happened to me.