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Douglas Edwards

I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 Hardcover – 28 July 2011

by Douglas Edwards (Author)

189 ratings

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Comparing Google to an ordinary business is like comparing a rocket to a wheelbarrow. No academic analysis or bystander's account can capture it. Now Douglas Edwards, Employee Number 59, takes readers inside the Googleplex for the closest look you can get without an ID card, giving readers a chance to fully experience the potent mix of camaraderie and competition that makes up the company that changed the world. Edwards, Google's first director of marketing and brand management, describes it as it happened. From the first, pioneering steps of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company's young, idiosyncratic partners to the evolution of the company's famously nonhierarchical structure (where every employee finds a problem to tackle or a feature to create and works independently), through the physical endurance feats of the company's engineers (both on and off the roller-hockey field) to its ethos to always hire someone smarter than yourself, I'm Feeling Lucky captures for the first time the unique, self-invented, culture of the world's most transformative corporation. Welcome to the "Google Experience".

Print length

432 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Allen Lane
Publication date

28 July 2011
Dimensions

16.2 x 3.8 x 24 cm
ISBN-10

1846145120
ISBN-13

978-1846145124
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Product description

Review

Imagine a world where nerds reign supreme...That is the universe that Douglas Edwards stepped into in 1999...Edwards was a fish out of water from the outset...His inside story is thus told from an outsider's point of view. For you and me, it's no bad thing...His insight into the minds of Page and Brin is instructive...a front-row seat to one the most extraordinary success stories of recent memory (Danny Fortson Sunday Times)

Douglas Edwards spent six years in the Googleplex as Google's first brand manager, and I'm Feeling Lucky is a rare insider's account of the company's birth pangs and its early years. He can personally vouch for the goodies. (James Harkin Financial Times)

[An] extremely useful insider guide...Douglas Edwards...walks into the maelstrom of a start-up full of twenty-somethings where visitors genuinely wonder "who trashed the chairman's office?" (Pat Kane The Independent)

An enjoyable account of the struggles a creative marketing guy faced in the early days of Google, when the company was run by geeks with a messianic faith in "Efficiency, Frugality, Integrity" (Andrew Keen New Scientist)

About the Author

Douglas Edwards was director of consumer marketing and brand management at Google from 1999 to 2005 and was responsible for setting the tone and direction of the company's communications with its users.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Allen Lane; First Edition (28 July 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1846145120
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1846145124
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.2 x 3.8 x 24 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 734,454 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 2,019 in E-Business
- 4,386 in Business Biographies & Memoirs (Books)
- 4,693 in Entrepreneurship (Books)

Customer reviews:
189 ratings

About the author

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Douglas Edwards

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From 1999 to 2005 I was director of consumer marketing and brand management for Google. Before that I was online brand manager for the San Jose Mercury News, communications director for KQED FM in San Francisco, an ad agency copywriter, an admission officer for Brown University, and the Novosibirsk correspondent for the public radio program Marketplace. During that last gig, I got involved in a drunken Saturday night brawl at a mafia-owned bar, had dinner at the home of the Novokuznetsk KGB chief and almost died a mile underground in a coal mine. None of that made it into this book however.

Customer reviews

5 star		40%
4 star		33%
3 star		18%
2 star		3%
1 star		5%

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tallmanbaby

well worth sticking with

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 October 2014

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You would have to be very interested in the early days of Google, the search giant, to know who Douglas Edwards is. Apparently he looks just like Skinner from The X-Files, and he led the distinctly off centre and goofy Google version of PR and engaging with the wider world. His story runs up to when Google went public, so it goes from 1999 to 2005. Accordingly some of this is ancient history, but interesting nonetheless. As a non-techie Edwards does a more than decent job of explaining the issues and technology in language that anyone could understand. He is clearly not your typical PR person either, it is difficult to think of a worse title than the one that he chose for this book.

This is certainly not hugely critical of Google, or the people there, nor is it just a puff piece singing their praises. It is a very personal view of his life there, and it would seem that for those six years he had very little life at all outwith Google. It does not offer a huge insight into the people there, Edwards writes about himself a lot, but apart from working at Google there does not seem to be anything terribly remarkable about him. Perhaps his self effacing, gee shucks, approach was the early Google brand.

If you are interested in the early days of Google, then this is a first rate insider’s account, very well done for the Kindle, and written with a real attention for detail and affection for the subject.

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Fully Vested

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 August 2011

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Why write a self-effacing book about your relatively ineffectually input into the Google phenomenon? About how your ideas were put down, laughed at and ignored while you had sleepless nights about just how rubbish your contribution was? Well, because you made one good decision. You bought your Google share options on offer at twenty cents each. Today, as I write, each of those options are worth five hundred and seventy dollars each. Let's say you bough $10,000 worth from the money you borrowed from your folks. Let google do the math. Meanwhile, go and write a book about the insanity of it all. It's not like you'll ever have to work again, is it!?
Still, it's hard to have sour grapes over a bloke who admits he lucked into it all and is happy just to record what it was like to be there. This is a nice easy read about the time and place that was the dot com boom, from one of the very few companies that survived it all to emerge with the spoils. Why Google, and why not Alta Vista, Hotbot, Yahoo and all the others? You won't find the answer here, except maybe in the title. After all, for every failed project Google have launched, and there must be hundreds, they lucked in with one. It's hard to see Google as being lucky, but this book helps you do it.

One person found this helpful

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S. P. Kindlen

Lose your self in the flex

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 January 2012

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The booked flowed along, at the right pace.

The book ends with him leaving and in a away I felt like I was leaving Google with him. Sad not to be in the loop and out on my own.

Putting characters behind those names you see tagged at the end of Google Blog.

In away it really makes you want to work for Google but in another way could you take the stress of working such a company with the cumulative stress of everyone stressing back. The politics sucked as well for our man Dougie.

If Doug had been more into politics would he still be at Google after building his empire to give himself purpose.

I wonder how much he made, does anyone know?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 February 2016

Verified Purchase

The book gives an account of Google growth, politics and personalities in its early days. Little if any technical content. Describes the endless detail, personalities and petty politics around decision-making in Google from the perspective of a mid-level Comms/PR manager. Not a great read I'm afraid! And certainly not 'hilarious' as suggested by the front cover!

One person found this helpful

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Mr Lee Rudd

Google's growing pains

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 April 2013

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Although ancient history - in IT terms - the years covered by this book are the formative period of one of the most successful, and omnipresent, companies of our time. The subjects covered include some good work, some surprisingly naive, but they are always interesting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 September 2011

Verified Purchase

Interesting insight into the meteoric rise of Google, really aimed at fellow geeks as much of the language is intelligible only to those in IT professionally. But still a racy account

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agodson

Informative and well written

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 July 2012

Verified Purchase

Brought this based on the reviews and was not disappointed. this book really gives you an insight of how google operated in the early days and how it went from a small start up in Silicon Valley into a fully fledged Public company. Don't Be Evil!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 April 2016

Verified Purchase

Great behind the scene insights

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