America pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever the hell they want.
What's wonderful about Google is that as long as you bring ideas to the table, it doesn't matter what else is going on.
I always Google myself. It's horrible.
People ask me all the time: 'What is it like to be a woman at Google?' I'm not a woman at Google, I'm a geek at Google. And being a geek is just great. I'm a geek, I like to code, I even like to use spreadsheets when I cook.
I'm able to bring business expertise but, more importantly, operating experience. The people here at Google are young. Every day there are lots of new challenges. I keep things focused. The speech I give everyday is: "This is what we do. Is what you are doing consistent with that, and does it change the world?"
People think, 'Well, because you're at Google, you can work from anywhere.' Yes, you can work from anywhere, but many just commute to offices... Working from the office is really important.
When I joined Google, they asked me what title I wanted. I said, 'What about archduke?' They said, 'Well, that didn't meet our nomenclature. Why don't you be our Chief Internet Evangelist?' This was in 2005.
A lot of the Google inventions came from engineers just screwing around with ideas. And then management would see them, and we'd say, 'Boy, that's interesting. Let's add some more engineers.'
In Google's world, public space is just something that stands between your house and the well-reviewed restaurant that you are dying to get to.
If you fall in love based on zero hours spent with me? That's maybe something to be aware of. That will fade fast. You can't be in love with a google search.
Eric Schmidt looks innocent enough, with his watercolor blue eyes and his tiny office full of toys and his Google campus stocked with volleyball courts and unlocked bikes and wheat-grass shots and cereal dispensers and Haribo Gummi Bears and heated toilet seats and herb gardens and parking lots with cords hanging to plug in electric cars.
Life is a beta. Voltaire said that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Google lives the rule as it introduces every new product as a beta. That is Google's way to say that it trusts us to help it finish its products. It is Google's way to open up its design process to our wisdom.
A feeling I got from working at Google was that technology could solve any problem. Yes, it's fantastic, but what I realized later was there's technology, and there's people. Google had its list ordered: Technology. People. And I think the right order is: People. Technology.
I have Googled myself, yeah, I think everybody has. I try not to make a habit of it - in fact I made a rule once never to Google myself, which made me happy.
I have tried to be a leader. I have tried in my role of being one of the first women at Google, let alone the first woman to have a baby, to really try to set the tone that this is a great place to work for diversity reasons.
First there's my role just as an executive being responsible for advertising, regardless of gender. I think that's a position that I take seriously. That's the first role. But I think for my role as a woman at Google, you try to set a good example and be a role model for the other women in the organization.
I have tried in my role of being one of the first women at Google, let alone the first woman to have a baby, to really try to set the tone that this is a great place to work for diversity reasons.
I can't, for example, Google myself, because I am very sensitive.
The chicest thing is when you don't exist on Google.
Google teams have lots of autonomy, including from people like me.
When you work at Google and tell these engineers that their skill set is relevant to somebody in Iran who doesn't have access to information in their country or the rest of the world, it really inspires them to want to do something about it. There is a genuine altruism that exists at this company, and that's why I'm here and not anywhere else.
I saw a '60 Minutes' piece on Google as a place to work. It was such a foreign concept from what I understood as a regular job. There's free food, sleeping pods, Ping-Pong. I'm the kind of guy who likes to get involved in everything - I'd be all over the Ping-Pong.
When you can literally Google anything, you don't feel like you have to go see it in person. You can do a lot of traveling in your bedroom, but you're not touching anything and you're not feeling it.
I hate it when other people think they're better than you because they know your name because they can Google you.
