Headline Jan 21, 2016/ ''' O ''GIANT - *GOOGLE ! '''

''' O ''GIANT - *GOOGLE ! '''

*DON'T BE EVIL*....... is one of  Google's company mottos. '' We take that very seriously,'' says Jack Menzel, director at Google search.   And the year is 2012-13

It;s just after 9am and I'm standing outside the Silicon Valley, USA headquarters of Google, the hugely successful Internet search company whose name has entered the international lexicon. 

Most of the world doesn't   ''search''   the Internet, it  ''googles''.

Under an impossibly blue Californian sky, I watch hundreds of  **Googlers**, as the company's employees are known, stream into the 100,000m sq    Googleplex, a collection of low-rise, landscaped office buildings.

T-shirts are big here. Many people have backpacks, others carry computer notebooks tucked under their arms or open in front of them. Some tote bags of dirty laundry.

I've been invited by Google management to the  Googleplex  for an exclusive inside look into this highly secretive operation. Google has promised me an unprecedented access to its facilities and employees.

I'm hoping to prove or disprove some widely held beliefs  -and rumours- about this company that in 13 years  has grown from a tiny Internet search startup to a multinational colossus that employs more than 32,000  people in 60 offices around the world.

*For example, does Google know everything about us how we search the Internet?*   Should we care?  Do Googlers spend most of their time skateboarding around their offices, shooting pool or playing practical jokes  on one another?

Aren't most Googlers  20-something millionaires? Do they even hire someone older than 30? And is Google, which made nearly   $38 billion in revenue in 2011, about to take over the world?

TO EXPLORE the sprawling Googleplex I jump on one of the hundreds of trademark blue, red, yellow and green bicycles  that are left around the campus for employees to use. 

I ride with Cliff Redeker, 28, the company's ''impressario''-

Who organises the visits of celebrity speakers to the Googleplex. As we pedal past glistening glass and steel buildings, Redeker tells me, ''We like to combine fun with business. It's called being ''Googley'. 

As we park our bikes outside  Building 43, I spot a Googler wearing old jeans and polo shirt dashing up the steps with a guitar sticking out of his backpack.

When I tell Redeker that's not something you'd see at many other companies, he tells me.

   

''That's our CFO, Patrick Pichette. We are casual at Google.''

Indeed, how many other companies have a corporate philosophy that notes:........... you can be serious without a suit?   As I learn quickly at Google, It's a cardinal sin to take oneself too seriously.

After passing through Building 43's security check, we bump into Wanda Hung, who works in the Search department. She's accompanied by her four-year-old-dog Lily, a striking white-haired Samoyed. 

''She's been coming to work with me since she was four months old,'' says Hung. ''She loves it here. So do I.''

Redeker and I walk on. A Googler wearing rollerblades and clutching a notebook zoom by us. I meet several workers who have ditched their office chairs to sit on giant,inflatable exercise balls.

At a staff canteen that offers everything from organic yogurt to freshly roasted coffee to energy balls   -ALL FREE- ,  Redeker tells me that co-founders  Sergey Brin  and  Larry Page wanted employees to feel free to snack whenever they got the urge.

''They dictated that  no Googler should be more than  150 feet   away from a micro-kitchen.'' he tells me. There are more than  150 micro-kitchens in the Googleplex.

FOOD, all free, is a big deal at Google. There are 25 cafes, including 25 gourmet restaurants, that serve everything from fried calamari with Chinese sausage to rack of lamb to vegetarian you-name-it, to a reported annual cost to Google of more than  $70 million. 

New staff report having to cope with what's called the   ''Google 15'' :

''That's the  15 pounds  [seven kilos]  they put on after they start working here, '' says Redecker. No worries, they can then head to one of the firm's six free gyms to work it off.

And those laundry bags I saw?  ''We have washing machines and dryers here, so employees can do their laundry while they work,'' says Redeker,

BACK ON OUR BIKES,  Redeker laughs when I ask him if the rumours about so many   Googlers   becoming millionaires are true.

''I wish!'' he says.

''Many of the early employees became millionaires when the company went public, but things are different now.'' Salaries are a closely guarded secret, but new employees can easily earn more than $100,000 a year.

OK, but aren't all newbies in their 20s?  ''That's another misconception,'' says Yolanda Mangolini, a director within  People Ops [Human Resources], as we sit a quirky playground-type bench inside her department.

''We hire lots of people in their 30s, and 40s and older.'' Although Google doesn't release information on the age of its workers, the average appears to be the mid-30s

The Honour and Serving of  ''Technology Operational Research'' continues. Thank Ya all for reading and sharing forward.

With respectful dedication to....... Giant Google, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and Ecosystem 2011.

''' A Quirky Masterpiece '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless