Google: The Beginning - WSJ.com

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THE SATURDAY ESSAY
JULY 16, 2011
The Beginning
An insider recounts the early days: the bizarre job interview, April Fools' pranks that enraged users, roller hockey, platters of sushi—and the uneasy leap to the mainstream.
By DOUGLAS EDWARDS

In an excerpt from his new book, "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59," in this Saturday's Review, Douglas Edwards recounts tales from the early days of Google, including bluffing his way through a job interview with Sergey Brin, sweating-out Google's first-ever April Fools' Day prank, and what it was like working at a start-up that had a chef and two massage therapists on call-but no marketing department.

Getty Images/Michael Grecco; Google Type: Vault 49

Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 2002.

In November 1999, Douglas Edwards became fledgling Google's first "brand manager," making him employee No. 59. In this excerpt from his new book, "I'm Feeling Lucky," Mr. Edwards gives an inside view of the company's early days, starting with his job interview with co-founder Sergey Brin, then 26 years old.

Cindy McCaffrey, director of public relations, brought me back to the conference room to wait for Sergey. I wasn't nervous. Sergey was about the age of my favorite T-shirt (I was 41) and a Russian by birth. I had lived in Russia. I spoke some Russian. I had Russian friends.
I felt unusually confident that the interview would go well. Perhaps I would become his mentor and we would toast each other's health with fine Siberian vodka. Sergey showed up wearing roller-hockey gear: gym shorts, a T-shirt and in-line skates. He had obviously been playing hard. I had known better than to wear a tie, but he took office casual to a new level.

Sergey pored over my résumé and began peppering me with questions. "What promotion did you do that was most effective?" "What metrics did you use to measure it?" "What types of viral marketing did you do?"

"How much do you think a company our size should spend on marketing?" Sergey asked me. Based on his earlier questions, it was easy to guess what he wanted to hear from me. "I don't think at this stage you should spend much at all," I said. "You can do a lot with viral marketing and small budgets."

He nodded his agreement, then asked about my six months in Siberia, casually switching to Russian to see how much I had picked up. Finally, he leaned forward and fired his best shot, what he came to call "the hard question."

"I'm going to give you five minutes," he told me. "When I come back, I want you to explain to me something complicated that I don't already know." He then rolled out of the room toward the snack area. I looked at Cindy. "He's very curious about everything," she told me. "You can talk about a hobby, something technical, whatever you want. Just make sure it's something you really understand well."

I reached for a piece of scrap paper as my mind raced. What complicated thing did I know well enough to describe to Sergey? I decided to go with the general theory of marketing, which was fresh in my mind, because I'd only learned it recently.

One of my dirty little secrets was a complete lack of academic preparation for the business world. Fortunately, my boss at the San Jose Mercury News, where I was working as a brand manager, had a Harvard MBA and a desire to drive some business theory into my thick skull. She had given me a bunch of her old textbooks, along with strong hints that I should spend time reading them. I began regurgitating everything that I could remember onto the paper in front of me: The five P's (or was it six?), the four M's, barriers to entry, differentiation on quality or price.

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Speakeasy: Google Employee No. 59 on Why He Left
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By the time Sergey came back, I had enough to talk for 10 minutes and was confident I could fill any holes with the three Bs (Buckets of Baffling Bulls—). I went to the whiteboard and began drawing circles and squares and lots of arrows. I was nervous, but not very. Sergey bounced on a ball and asked questions that required me to make up things on the spot.

"What's more important: product differentiation or promotion?"

"How does the strategy change if the price is zero?"

He seemed to be paying attention, and I began enjoying myself. We were developing a special rapport! Clearly, he wanted to hear what I had to say and valued my opinions. Later I found out that Sergey did this with everyone he interviewed. An hour wasted with an unqualified candidate wasn't a total loss if Sergey gained insight into something he didn't already know.

The light was fading by the time I finished, and Sergey invited me to join the staff for dinner, which was being brought into a small kitchen across from the conference room. A crowd of hungry engineers bounced from plate to plate with chopsticks picking at a large selection of sushi.

"We just hired a chef, so this is a temporary set-up," Sergey told me. "And we've got a couple of massage therapists coming in as well."

A warning light flashed in my head at that. This was the guy who didn't think there should be a marketing budget, and he had hired a chef and two massage therapists? But then I saw the platters of fatty tuna and shrimp and salmon and yellowtail. I grabbed some chopsticks and began loading my plate. Concerns about a business plan and revenue streams and organizational structure faded away.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin in their first office -- a garage -- in Menlo Park, Calif., in January 1999 One of Mr. Brin's early marketing ideas was to inoculate Chechen refugees against cholera.

H.P.'s Foreign Entanglement - NYTimes.com

H.P.’s Foreign Entanglement

September 13, 2010, 11:30 am

Peter J. Henning follows issues involving securities law and white-collar crime for DealBook’s White Collar Watch.
The last month or so has not been very pleasant for Hewlett-Packard.
The company’s recent 10-Q disclosed that the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission have expanded an investigation of possible bribe payments in connection with contracts the company obtained in Russia. Such payments may violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (F.C.P.A.), an area where the federal government has investigated more aggressively over the last few years.
This disclosure comes on top of other recent legal problems at H.P. Joe Nocera’s recent column in The New York Times described H.P.’s directors as “the most inept board in America” for its lawsuit against its former chief executive, Mark V. Hurd. On Aug. 30, the Justice Department announced a $55 million settlement of a civil fraud claim against H.P. for paying “influencer fees” — in other words, kickbacks — in return for favorable recommendations to the federal government to buy the company’s products.

About White Collar Watch

Peter J. Henning, writing for DealBook’s White Collar Watch, is a commentator on white-collar crime and litigation. A former lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division and then a prosecutor at the Justice Department, he is a professor at the Wayne State University Law School. He is currently working on a book, “The Prosecution and Defense of Public Corruption: The Law & Legal Strategies,” to be published by Oxford University Press.

As Mr. Nocera pointed out, H.P. is unlikely to succeed in its legal battle with Mr. Hurd, but that is more of a distraction than anything else. A widening F.C.P.A. investigation, on the other hand, may end up costing the company millions of dollars in legal fees as it deals with demands for documents while conducting its own internal inquiry. And any settlement with the government would likely involve both criminal fines and civil monetary penalties, along with other remedial measures, ratcheting the price up further.
The bribery investigation began in Russia in connection with a contract with a former German subsidiary of H.P. that involved the installation of a computer network in, of all places, Russia’s chief prosecutor’s office. Russian and German prosecutors are looking into the transaction, which took place from 2002 to 2006, and have requested documents from the company.
In its 10-Q, H.P. notes for the first time that the investigation is not limited to that one contract in Russia: “The U.S. enforcement authorities have recently requested information from H.P. relating to certain governmental and quasi-governmental transactions in Russia and in the Commonwealth of Independent States subregion dating back to 2000.”
It is not clear how many contracts or transactions may be involved, but the expanded time frame and geographic scope probably means the inquiry will be an extended one, rather than something H.P. can wrap up quickly. As sometimes happens, once one part of a multinational company is scrutinized for bribery, problems in other areas can pop to the surface.
The recent settlement by Siemens of overseas bribery charges shows how corruption can spread throughout a company. Subsidiaries operating in France, Argentina, Turkey and the Middle East were found to have paid bribes to obtain contracts, and Siemens paid $800 million in criminal fines to the Justice Department and disgorgement to the S.E.C. as part of the settlement.
The F.C.P.A. is part of the federal securities laws, and most cases involve the S.E.C. along with the Justice Department because one part of the act requires corporations to maintain proper books and records, something that is rarely done when a bribe is paid. The Justice Department has become much more aggressive in pursuing foreign bribery cases, including conducting an undercover sting operation that resulted in more than 20 people being arrested on charges of offering bribes to participate in a fictitious security contract with an African nation.
The recent addition of enhanced whistle-blower rewards in the Dodd-Frank Act authorizes the S.E.C. to pay 10 percent of any recovery realized, up to a maximum of 30 percent, to those who provide valuable information related to any type of securities fraud. F.C.P.A. cases are very likely to be among the most common instances for whistle-blowing by corporate employees.
F.C.P.A. charges are also very difficult to defend once the government obtains evidence that payments were made to foreign officials “in obtaining or retaining business” in that country. The act recognizes two defenses to a charge, first the payment was lawful under the laws of the country where it was made, and second the expenses were reasonable for the promoting the product or implementing the contract.
Neither defense has been successfully offered in court to this point. Even worse, according to an article by Kyle Sheahen that will be published shortly in the Wisconsin International Law Journal, “the defenses are virtually useless in practice.”
Even if H.P. is found to have violated the F.C.P.A., that does not mean the company’s ability to win government contracts would be at risk. Professor Mike Koehler, who analyzes these issues on the FCPA Professor blog, noted that the Siemens settlement did not seem to have any real effect on the company’s relationship with the federal government. “One of the unfortunate beauties of engaging in bribery the U.S. government terms ‘unprecedented in scale and geographic scope’ is no slowdown in U.S. government contracts in the immediate aftermath of the enforcement action,” he noted.
The impact from any F.C.P.A. violation may change, however, under a bill under consideration in Congress. The legislation, called the Overseas Contractor Reform Act and passed by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in July, requires debarment from future government contracts for any person or company found in violation of the F.C.P.A. The bill states the policy that “no Government contracts or grants should be awarded to individuals or companies who violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.”
Whether the House and Senate will pass the legislation remains to be seen, but corporate integrity is, like mom and apple pie, not easily opposed. While the current aversion to corporate America may be abating, this is the type of reform that may well take hold to put some more bite into the F.C.P.A.
For H.P., a burgeoning foreign bribery investigation is not good news because of the costs and uncertainly it engenders. If the Overseas Contractor Reform Act becomes law, it will make it even more imperative that the company try to avoid any finding of a violation of the F.C.P.A., perhaps through a deferred or non-prosecution agreement that can let it avoid a finding of a violation.
– Peter J. Henning
The Overseas Contractor Reform Act
H.P.'s Foreign Entanglement - NYTimes.com

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