Google 2011 Annual Report Download - page 15

Download and view the complete annual report

Please find page 15 of the 2011 Google annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.

Page out of 124

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • 37
  • 38
  • 39
  • 40
  • 41
  • 42
  • 43
  • 44
  • 45
  • 46
  • 47
  • 48
  • 49
  • 50
  • 51
  • 52
  • 53
  • 54
  • 55
  • 56
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • 62
  • 63
  • 64
  • 65
  • 66
  • 67
  • 68
  • 69
  • 70
  • 71
  • 72
  • 73
  • 74
  • 75
  • 76
  • 77
  • 78
  • 79
  • 80
  • 81
  • 82
  • 83
  • 84
  • 85
  • 86
  • 87
  • 88
  • 89
  • 90
  • 91
  • 92
  • 93
  • 94
  • 95
  • 96
  • 97
  • 98
  • 99
  • 100
  • 101
  • 102
  • 103
  • 104
  • 105
  • 106
  • 107
  • 108
  • 109
  • 110
  • 111
  • 112
  • 113
  • 114
  • 115
  • 116
  • 117
  • 118
  • 119
  • 120
  • 121
  • 122
  • 123
  • 124

Most important of all, however, we believe that work should be challenging.
People are more motivated and have more fun when they work on important
projects. Take Google Translate, which we started eight years ago and now enables
anyone to translate text in an instant between any two of 64 languages—including
Hindi, Arabic and Chinese. That’s actually 4032 different pairs of languages you
can translate! In fact, by combining it with our voice recognition technology, we’ve
turned mobile phones into pocket translators for millions of users globally. When
you work on projects of this magnitude, it’s impossible not to wake up excited about
work; the chance to make a difference is the greatest motivation anyone can have.
HAPPINESS IS A HEALTHY DISREGARD FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE
When I was a student at the University of Michigan, I went on a summer
leadership course. The slogan was “a healthy disregard for the impossible,” and
it’s an idea that has stayed with me ever since. It may sound nuts, but I’ve found
that it’s easier to make progress on mega-ambitious goals than on less risky projects.
Few people are crazy enough to try, and the best people always want to work on the
biggest challenges. We’ve also found that “failed” ambitious projects often yield
other dividends. Believe it or not, the technological innovation behind AdSense,
which, as I mentioned earlier, has paid out over $30 billion to partners, was the
result of a “failed” more ambitious project to understand the web. The team failed
at understanding the web, mostly, I think, because they were distracted by their
work making advertisements amazingly relevant.
XIII