Larry and Sergey: A Valediction
It&#x27;s funny how much public perception is tied to the media pulse of a company. If you read comments on online boards today, you&#x27;d think Google was one of the worst companies out there.<p>And yet, I think it is safe to say that Google basically defined the post-dot-com-bubble era, in a good way. So many things that comprise &#x27;company culture&#x27; today and that have been emulated (whether willingly or out of pressure to stay competitive to other companies in the hiring market) by tech and non-tech companies around the world were pioneered by Google. Anyone who has actually worked in other industries will attest how much a breath of fresh air Google brought to corporate life. It&#x27;s a separate matter how some of it is coming back to bite them now that they have hired too many people who are more interested in activism than doing their job.<p>So many of Larry&#x27;s and Sergey&#x27;s ideas were truly about organizing the world&#x27;s information. That vision statement wasn&#x27;t just words. It affected how Google and Googlers thought of things. My favorite example is Google Books. Is it an obvious ad-funnel? I doubt it. Or Google Street Maps, for that matter. And yet it has provided so much value to the world.<p>It&#x27;s almost never a good idea to make gods out of people. But it is at the same time a terrible idea to make absolute demons out of them. And I think we stray too much into the latter territory just because it has become fashionable to shit on Google for the tiniest of things.