When the Building Came Alive

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Kasturi Dhama Apartments — the play area where many evenings came alive. The lights would go out without warning. For a brief second, the entire building would fall silent. Then, from somewhere in Kasturi Dhama Apartments, a chorus would erupt. “Yayyy!” It is difficult to imagine children celebrating a power failure today. But in the Bangalore of the nineties and early 2000s, a power cut did not always feel like an inconvenience. Especially in the late evenings, it felt like permission. Permission to stop whatever we were doing, leave the darkness inside our homes, and step into the building outside. Before Kasturi Dhama became home, we had moved through a few different parts of Bangalore. My family had begun in Srirampuram and Vyalikaval before gradually cementing ourselves in Malleswaram for the next few decades. My earliest memory is of living in a vatara —a Kannada word loosely used for a building or a cluster of homes—on 15th Cross, near Karur Vy...
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The Google "Reality"

Google has been one company that started off incognito in the Stanford dorm to emerge as a leading search engine in the 21st century. It has beaten hands down any hint of competition from Altavista, Excite, MSN, Yahoo or in fact any other. Larry Page and Sergey Brinn created history of sorts, when they sat back to decipher, or rather invent the Back Link Algorithm. Imagine downloading the entire web content on your desktop. Well, that was the idea that propped into Page's head before hitting it off with what one can hail as one of the greatest turning points in the internet world with a sleek, usable and simple search engine that caught on easily with the masses.

I came to know some time back of The Google Story written by David Vise and Mark Malseed. I was hunting for this book for quite some time in various libraries, and obviously there are a lot of readers who have made a beeline in the waiting list for this book. Thankfully, after a long time did I realise that the University library had the digital rights for the book, and as I sat back to read this book, I found it really engrossing. The book opens with a presentation by the Google founders at an Israeli school, taking questions at ease from some really bright and intellectual kids. The authors have done a good job in capturing the essence of Google. The way Larry and Sergey get the initial funding to kick off the Google project is exciting to read. Why is it Google and not Googol? What did they do at Stanford? What were the issues in getting funded from a Venture Capitalist? It is also exciting to note how they did not partake any information though they get funded from a venture capitalist. That is not possible and is never heard off being done by any other company. An exciting round up of Googleplex is provided with good insight into Charlie's Corner. The recruitment of Eric Schmidt as the CEO of Google is an interesting read. The best part of this was that neither of them was ready to get into the other's fold. The way Google went public is covered in good detail. The hiccups, the speedbreakers, the agony, the anxiety and everything else is finally overcome by some steady progress that can stimulate anyone in achieving something in life. Overall, Google with its wide array of products has forayed into almost every aspect of internet, without any compromise on quality.

This book is a must read for Google fans. Though the authors at many times have stressed that Google derives its inspiration from technology and not for money, it is difficult to fathom. At the end of the day, money does matter, but it really does not matter to give this book atleast a one time read.

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