The Untold Story of Larry Page’s Incredible Comeback
Everyone knows the Steve Jobs story—how he was fired from the company he founded, Apple, only to return from exile decades later to save the business.
What’s less well understood is that Apple’s board and investors were absolutely right to fire Jobs. Early in his career, he was petulant, mean, and destructive. Only by leaving Apple, humbling himself, and finding a second success—with Pixar—was he able to mature into the leader who would return to Apple and build it into the world’s most valuable company.
Larry Page is the Steve Jobs of Google.
.. Page eventually wrote down his rules for management:
- Don’t delegate: Do everything you can yourself to make things go faster.
- Don’t get in the way if you’re not adding value. Let the people actually doing the work talk to each other while you go do something else.
- Don’t be a bureaucrat.
- Ideas are more important than age. Just because someone is junior doesn’t mean they don’t deserve respect and cooperation.
- The worst thing you can do is stop someone from doing something by saying, “No. Period.” If you say no, you have to help them find a better way to get it done.
In 1998, Page and Brin decided to take all eight of Google’s employees on a company ski trip to Lake Tahoe. When they went to rent a van, they discovered they could save $2.50 per day if they designated a single driver. Page designated himself. He drove the whole way while everyone else played math games in the back.
.. Up front, an executive pitched a new product that helped users find the right offline store to do their shopping.
The executive was well into his pitch when, suddenly, Page interrupted him.
“No,” Page said emphatically. “We don’t do this.”
The room grew quiet.
“We build products that leverage technology to solve huge problems for hundreds of millions of people.”
He went on. “Look at Android. Look at Gmail. Look at Google Maps. Look at Google Search. That’s what we do. We build products you can’t live without.”
“This is not it.”
Page didn’t shout. He didn’t have to. The message was loud and clear.
.. In 2013, Page moved Andy Rubin from the top of Android and asked him to start working on robots. Page envisioned a world in which robots could do things like take care of the elderly and load our self-driving cars with groceries and household supplies while we’re busy at work... He is, at heart, a passionate utopian—one who believes that technology has overwhelmingly made life better for humans and will only continue to do so.