Google's Mayer: Staying Innovative In a Downturn

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Google's sometimes unusual management methods, such as encouraging engineers to spend 20% of their time on projects of their choice, have gotten a lot of attention. But I sense that other corporate departments try to do things differently, too. How well has that worked?

The other groups at Google aren't willing to accept that the only people who get to have fun and be innovative are the product managers and the engineers. It's innovation envy. So what happens is, the Human Relations department wants to be innovative. They want to build HR policies like no one's ever had before. Some of these people want to build facilities like no one's ever had before. The finance team wants to bring the company public in a way that no one ever has before.

A lot of other companies wonder if they can adapt Google's methods. Is that tough for them to do, given Google's unique success?

I don't think so. You don't need to build brightly colored campuses filled with toys and then offer free food. It's important to realize each company is different and the benefits they offer their employees need to customized to their culture and their unique situation.

But there clearly are things that can be replicated, like having small teams, awarding a lot of ownership to those teams so you stretch and grow those people. Or really focusing on and demanding that innovation come from everyone and everywhere throughout the organization. One of the worst things you can do in a company is to have an R&D segment or an innovation group. Once you have some people whose job it is to innovate, everyone else stops innovating.

Given some push back by advertisers and even by government antitrust regulators, is Google now too influential? How are you contending with this?

Our influence comes from the end-users and the trust that we've built with them. If we stop putting their needs first, that will stop.

But given that the Justice Dept. came within hours of filing an antitrust lawsuit in October before Google cancelled its proposed search ad deal with Yahoo, isn't Google's influence becoming a problem for the company?

We believe that more competition is better for the Web. It became clear through a series of events that happened this spring that there was going to be a form of consolidation in the industry. We really felt that we could help Yahoo stay independent. [Chief executive officer] Eric Schmidt said several times an independent Yahoo was better for Google…and better for the Web.

Yet that decision set off a number of actions that resulted in a lot of push back against Google. Is there a new reality in the marketplace that Google needs to deal with?

Our footprint on the Web and on the world is significant. When the footprint is this large, you need to be very thoughtful and responsible about what you're doing. But I do think the actions we took there had the users at heart.

How has Google changed the way it does business to contend with the economic downturn?

The mantra we're hearing here around the Googleplex is "Scarcity brings clarity." We are looking at how we can be frugal and how we can be prudent. Google is doing better than most companies, but we don't want to be wasteful. We're looking at different processes we have running here, what makes sense and what doesn't. But for me, this doesn't feel that different than when we were a very small company.

Our first gym was actually built by myself and one of the engineers—Ray Sidney, during October 1999—because we had worked six 130-hour weeks in a row. We weren't able to go home, shower, or sleep, and we were getting in really bad shape. And we went to Sergey and said: "Can we have $5,000 to buy weights and a used treadmill?" And Sergey said, "Sure, but try to get them for less than $5,000." We found this Web site called BigFitness.com that had very cheap fitness equipment.

People think, "Gosh, Google has a gym, isn't that a luxury?" But that first one really came from the scarcity of money. We did it in a really cheap way using all used equipment.

So you're saying this new focus on containing costs at Google isn't all that new?

Those values have always been there at Google. But the economy if anything is a return to those core values.

Why do we serve food on campus? One, it is a way to encourage more communication here on campus. People sit down and eat together and exchange ideas. Two, it makes it so people can be productive because they don't have to take time and go somewhere else. So even these things that are considered a luxury, if you look at why and how we're doing them, we do them in really cost-effective ways and we do them because they make sense in the unique culture of Google.

Business Exchange related topics:
Google
Business Innovation
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Advertising in a Recession