Douglas Edwards (1) (1958–)

Author Douglas Edwards was already an experienced marketer when he started working for Google as its online brand manager. This was in 1999, long before Google went public in 2004. In I'm Feeling Lucky, he gives his inside perspective of Google's transformation from a Silicon Valley startup to a Wall Street behemoth. His focus on the wrangling between business units, as smart people grabbed onto the live wire vision of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and implemented it, was the right approach for me.

I worked in the I.T. industry during the time recounted in this book (1999-2005) and was too busy slinging code to care about the corporate side of the tools I was using - tools like Netscape's browser, Google's toolbar, and Yahoo email. This book opened my eyes to insider connections and business deals that happened during that era, and now after the dust has settled a bit, it's interesting to see where some of these titans are today.

The author is an accomplished wordsmith and his memoir is substantive, with well-thought-out sections and chapters. Readers looking for salacious personal gossip will not find it here, but there are plenty of revelations about the decisions and the cast of dreamers who made them, laying the foundation for what Google is today.… (more)