I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 by Douglas Edwards
This isn’t a marketing manual by any stretch, but an inside look at google from a marketers point of view – I found it 
fascinating.
Douglas Edwards was (as you may have guessed) Google Employee Number 59 and he writes about the growth of the company from only a few marketing/PR staff and no outside agency – to the mammoth beast that it is today. Douglas lasted five and a half years at google and he provides a fly in the wall insight into what the company was like in it’s early days.
Even though the book is more of a life story than a manual – there’s still some lessons to learn! Here’s a few I picked out.
Marketing snippets from Google Employee Number 59
(headings = my comments, all quotes directly from the book)
1. A great idea for a Friday meeting
“TGIF was an all-company affair at which Larry and Sergey recounted the wins of the previous week as we sipped beer and chewed food on skewers.”
2. Make it simple
“Nonfunctionality is a feature,” he instructed me. “We don’t need to increase page views by adding products.”
3. A nice definition of branding
“A brand is the sum of all the “touch points” you have with a product or service—your interactions, your impressions, your expectations, your unplanned casual encounters.”
4. Offer some sweet staff benefits
“Google encased us in a cocoon of essential services—on-site haircuts, on-site car washes, on-site dentist and doctor, free massages, free snacks, free lunch, free dinner, gaming groups, movie nights, wine and beer clubs, tech talks and lectures by globally recognized speakers.”
Happy reading,
C x
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