India Times Goes Googley
July 4, 2008
“Life at the Googleplex” appeared in my news reader on July 4, 2008. You can read the IndiaTimes Infotech essay here. (Note: this site’s search system is awful. I had to find missing chunks of the story in the cache for the site.) Why did this essay catch my attention? Well, it is a high water mark in dressing Googzilla as the world’ most wonderful mom. I read:
The company’s carefully assembled university campus like environment — lava lamps, massage chairs, free gourmet food courts — has been the subject of saturation media coverage.
Then the author giddily reveals:
There are Snack Rooms packed with bins of various cereals, gummy bears, M&Ms, toffee, licorice, cashew nuts, yogurt, carrots, fresh fruit and other snacks. Also stacked are dozens of different drinks including fresh juice, soda and make-your-own cappuccino. In fact, there’s a rule within Google: that there must be food within 100 feet of every employee.
The only hint of a negative in this star-struck writer’s Googley moment is this statement:
But despite its much-lionised and benign corporate credo ‘Do No Evil’, and a self-projected work culture that would appear to border on bohemian anarchism, Google gives media and technology giants from Redmond to New York to Minato sleepless nights. For the conspiracy theorists, Google’s takeover of the world is imminent.
Google gets the type of treatment usually reserved for Trump buildings and millionaires who buy big pink Pontiacs. Google’s taking over the world sounds like a pretty good thing to the author of this encomium.
Stephen Arnold, July 4, 2008
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
