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The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

businessinsider.com

111–120 of 132 posts

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just deleted the comment about the bangs. Really does read awkwardly.

I should clarify that I didn't think the article badly written - just not quite in the style I'm used to from a publication like Business Insider. That said, I probably haven't read many other long-form pieces on there. Others here clearly enjoyed the writing style very much!

You seem to have a very high opinion of the Business Insider

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#112

I realize that it's an aside in the article but I wanted to contradict something: > 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 This idea (Jobs needed to be away from Apple to improve himself) gets mentioned a lot but I think it's nonsense. First: Jobs was petulant, mean and destructive to people he dis…

"This idea (Jobs needed to be away from Apple to improve himself) gets mentioned a lot but I think it's nonsense."

That's a very sweeping statement. I take it you have first hand experience (worked for Apple in the early days) or have extensive apple reporting experience. I don't think the point being made is that he "needed" to be away from Apple to improve himself. The point is that he was a very bad manager at Apple and had considerably improved when he came back. I think I read somewhere Woz saying he had to learn a lot about being a good manager from Mike Markula and others in the early days and I think in part John Sculley was brought in to correct these deficiencies. In that sense Larry Page and Jobs are similar - they were both green managers who made some awful decisions and had to learn a lot, if grudgingly from professional managers before becoming the great business leaders we see them to be.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#113
post #71

"Page once told a room full of Google’s first marketing employees that their profession was built on an ability to lie." Oh come on. As owner of history's largest ad platform and someone who's made ungodly amounts of money from it, this seems like a massively hypocritical and un-self-aware thing to say.

Marketing isn't about lying. It's about telling the truth* that gets you to buy the product, not the whole truth. Who has time to tell the whole truth? * for varying definitions of the truth.

I always thought marketing was about convincing people that they wish to buy the product that the marketeer has, by whatever means necessary, whether it be whole truth, half truth or bare lie.

A good product can be marketed with the truth, a bad product however ...

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#114
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said misled. If you need an example of misleading the company (and industry), look no further than the no poaching lawsuit, where Larry specifically mentions to keep the deal out of email and off the books. Don't be evil. Sure Larry. Sure.

What? That was Schmidt. http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906310/the-no-hire-paper-...

Ah, I stand corrected. With the additional news that they are scaling back G+, now I'm not sure what to think.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#115
post #104
post #54

I find it funny that Page complained about Gmail taking 600 milliseconds to load back when it was created. It probably takes longer than that these days unless you have a really fast connection.

If they had to check the server logs wouldn't they be referring to something more related to generating the html? This would remain the lowest response even on the fastest possible connection.

At the time, the server was probably about 30 feet away, so network latency wasn't a big issue :)

The article gets the timeline wrong though. This anecdote happened very early in the development of gmail -- it was rewritten several times between then and launch.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#116

I realize that it's an aside in the article but I wanted to contradict something: > 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 This idea (Jobs needed to be away from Apple to improve himself) gets mentioned a lot but I think it's nonsense. First: Jobs was petulant, mean and destructive to people he dis…

> Jobs was petulant, mean and destructive to people he disagreed with – for his whole life. He never dropped this trait.

I assume you know this from first hand interactions with him.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#117
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How overly simplistic and descriptive that is. Going academic, would, in it's most 2014'ish, pop-cultaral-way, mean that you probably wouldn't go on to make any cool apps. I read that as the dilemma that Page was facing, not an absolute truism. This is an article about Larry Page at Google. It seems silly to be annoyed at the author for simplifying the dichotomy between academia and industry to move us through his…

> I read that as the dilemma that Page was facing, not an absolute truism. This is an article about Larry Page at Google. It seems silly to be annoyed at the author for simplifying the dichotomy between academia and industry to move us through his life. No, I get that it was about Larry, and I see why the author set it up like that. But writing "...the opportunity to become the inventor of widely used applications",…

I don't really have much else to say about this, except that I definitely didn't take "applications" to mean Flappy Birds, because that seems ridiculous. Obviously the guy who they introduced as crying at the end of a Tesla biography doesn't want to spend his life making mobile games.

> Maybe, but starting that discussion means that we'll probably start talking about "high/low" standards, and I try not to think like that.

I was thinking more in terms of the entertainment/pragmatism scale. I think this is good writing more because it made me go "wow, I enjoyed reading that", whereas it seems like you're coming from more of a "this was kinda lame because some of the things they said were questionable" standpoint. Nothing wrong with that, but if we didn't recognize it we'd be yelling at each other for hours.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#118
post #15
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autism and asperger's are now on the "autism spectrum disorder": http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disord...

For the record, Asperger's is gone. It was cast out because it seemed that everyone was "suffering" from it. http://www.autismspeaks.org/dsm-5/faq#asperger The above means people can use the word "Asperger's" if they want, but it has been denied any clinical meaning. The reason is that it didn't have a clearly defined clinical meaning to begin with.

That's just plain stupid. Because it was being over-diagnosed and became fad mental illness of the day does not mean it doesn't exist. It most certainly does. There are specific behavioral and verbal traits and even physiognometric characteristics which as a bundle are unique and can be clearly distinguished.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#119

50, 100 years from now, Larry Page (if he's even dead yet) will be remembered as one of the more impactful people in human history.

Whether or not he is remembered for it, except for Tim Berners Lee no one else holds a candle to him in that regard. I had enough years "before" that the years "after" and what his work effected delineates it as the most profoundly disruptive period in history by a wide margin. It has become a sixth sense, so integrated with our cognition that we scarcely notice it. And he wants to take that integration much, much further.

From what the article discloses about his personality I don't much like him but will never deny his inestimable impact.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#120
post #22
post #2

That was one of the best articles I've ever read, with regards to new information and excellent story telling.

Wow, i thought it was appalling! "he expected he’d have to make a choice between becoming an academic and building a company. Choosing the former would mean giving up the opportunity to become the inventor of widely used applications. But building a company would force him to deal with people in a way he didn’t enjoy." How overly simplistic and descriptive that is. Going academic, would, in it's most 2014'ish, pop-cu…

I thought it was an excellent piece. Even while reading it, I was aware that it most likely wasn't completely accurate, and over-romanticized things. It also jumps back and forth through the timeline a bit much.

Certainly not perfect, but it really put into perspective a lot of the things I'd seen from Google. I never realized how much of it came directly from Larry Page until this article.

So while it may not be 100% accurate (could it ever be?), I found it to be extremely informative in a high level way.

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