The vision of Larry Page and Sergey Brin:
"Basically our goal is to organize the world's information and to make it
universally accessible and useful."
When I was 19, I placed second at the 'Young Scientists' state competition, winning a trip
to visit the German National Museum in Munich. There I explored the archives, discovering
vast numbers of books dating back to the 16th century. These volumes, rare and handwritten, were mankind's last attempt to truly gather
all existing knowledge into one single encyclopedia.
Such a momentous effort took over 20 years to create. And by the
time they finished the letter A, the knowledge they gathered was
already outdated! Since then, no one has again undertaken this task of comprehensively gathering all existing knowledge into one accessible place.
500 years later, Google and Wikipedia could be the answer to this very problem!
Working at the frontier where technology meets business
While pursuing my degree in mathematics I was offered the chance for a PHD position at Harvard University. I would have done research in the field of complex geometry. While having this great opportunity, I knew that research in university had always been very interesting for me. On the other side I felt that combining research with a commercial product might lead to a higher dynamic than research itself done in university. Therefore I declined this big opportunity.
I still think that research is one of the most important things in life but I feel particularly drawn to the intersection of science and technology with the commercial sector. Turning Google search from an interesting research area to a commercial product attracted many customers. The large crowd of people demanding Google products lead to new problems like scaling, caching strategies, hardware issues, and cloud computing; fields on which Google now has to do further research in order to stay successful.
Solving the information retrieval problem
In my opinion, more than 90% of all conflicts in the world are caused by
mistakes in communication. Many challenges are not resolved because
people were simply not aware that a solution to their problem already existed.
While attending
university, I experienced that the information retrieval problem and the
communication of knowledge is one of the toughest challenges in the world.
I would love to be part of a group of people working on a solution for this problem.
Having a sustainable business model
"Don't be evil!"
Having a great product that customers like, and creating sustainable business models (like Google Adwords and Google Adsense)
is something you hardly see at other companies. In my opinion, this attitude is - in addition to the best search algorithms -
the major reason for Google's success!
Google has an incredibly high media power and has, to my knowledge, never abused it. By not being evil, Google was not only
able to attract many customers, but was also able to get my attention as a possible company to work for.
Co-workers
Judging by the spirit of Google and their recruiting methods, I expect
to meet the most amazing co-workers at Google.
Since work is a big part of life, I don't want
to get stuck in a boring job. With great co-workers and interesting problems to work on, Google seems
to me like the perfect place for a fulfilling, constantly challenging career.
And of course I want to enjoy, with my potential co-workers, the free lunch that Google fortunately offers (-;
Thank you for reading so far!
