For his book, he got "unprecedented" access to the movers and shakers in the organization, starting with co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Levy even partied 'round the world with Google, in the prologue sharing his journey to distant Google installations with a bunch of the company's rising stars.
But clearly he managed to maintain a sense of balance about the search-engine colossus, acknowledging its weaknesses and strengths, its could-have-beens (like precursors to Facebook and Twitter) and its home runs (like the Android smartphone operating system and its $1.6 billion purchase of YouTube, which Levy predicts "will become a full-fledged streaming rival to cable and satellite TV").
WHERE ALL THE CHILDREN ARE ABOVE AVERAGE: Brin and Page are products of the Montessori educational system, which encourages independent thought and argues against artificial "right or wrong" ways of doing things. Levy suggests this helps explain why the now mid-30s pair have always been able to think really big - with their dream of gathering and organizing all the world's information for everyone to access - and to see past pesky obstacles like copyright laws and know-it-all naysayers. The latter included Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Google, through its formative years, operated in a liberated, Montessori-like atmosphere where young geniuses were pretty much set loose on complex projects. And got a goodly share of time to dream up cool new stuff.
WHAT DRIVES THE GOOGLE ENGINE? In his book's early chapters, Levy patiently explains how an Internet search engine works. You might want to take notes.
