Larry Page: A Profile in Failure

The greatest people in history have been failures. Certainly, we remember these individuals as successes--success stories--and we treat those stories as legends and those individuals as gods. But each of them failed epically and repeatedly, more so than the combined successes of all of humanity.

Failure should not be overlooked in anyone, especially not those we admire. It is through failure that these individuals were able to learn, grow and ultimately succeed. We know this about ourselves but even as we learn to accept our own failures, sometimes we don’t recognize that the most successful people in the world have had an abundance of failure.

Our heroes need to be held to the same standard as the ancient Greek gods: awesome but not infallible. Failure is a humbling exercise, both for the observer and the observed. But learning is a humbling process. Once we realize that our heroes are just like us, we can examine how failure drives success. So I’ve started collecting stories about the failures of successful people, as a reminder that if you’re making mistakes and learning from them, you’re actually on the path to success.

Perhaps one of the most interesting examples of a leadership failure and subsequent comeback success is the story of the history of Google and its co-founder Larry Page. In 1995, Page was a Stanford graduate student with an idea to build a better search engine. The most popular engine at the time, Altavista, used keywords alone to determine relevance. Page felt that a better search engine would rank pages according to what other sites linked to it and use that page ranking in addition to keywords in a complex algorithm in order to find the most relevant search results. His friend and fellow graduate student Sergey Brin wrote a program that analyzed, summarized, and catalogued web site content in one place to make it easier for Page’s program to search. In true Silicon Valley form, Page and Brin worked tirelessly on the project, often forgoing sleep, personal hygiene, and anything resembling a social life.

The first version of the search engine software was a hit. It worked better than Page and Brin had anticipated, and they immediately saw the commercial value in the program. But both students wanted to complete their Ph.D.s, so they tried to sell the software to several established web companies in 1997. They weren’t looking for much money: $1m would have likely done the trick. But no one was interested. So in 1998 they secured a first round of funding, rented office space, and set out to run the company themselves, with Larry Page as CEO.

By 1999, Google was a thriving company. It had grown from two employees to several hundred and from zero funding to over $25 million in venture capital from major Silicon Valley firms, including Kleiner Perkins. But that money came with a catch. Page had to agree to step down and allow a seasoned CEO to take the reins of Google. At first Page resisted, but he knew the company needed the investment in order to grow and he couldn’t figure out another solution. So he made the deal with Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr. A couple months later, after Google had received the funding, Page called Doerr to tell him he had changed his mind and had decided to remain as CEO. He just could not wrap his head around the idea of letting someone else take control of his creation.

Even as Google grew exponentially, Page insisted on being part of every project. In fact, one of his written management tenets was “don’t delegate: do everything you can yourself to make things go faster.” One day in July 2001 he decided to eliminate all project managers, and instead have all engineers report to a VP of engineering who would in turn report to Page himself. Several of his fellow executives tried to talk him out of this reorganization but Page would not be dissuaded. He called a meeting outside of his office with all of Google’s engineers and project mangers. He told them that he did not believe in non-engineers managing engineers, and further, that the project managers had not been doing a good job. Therefore, they were all fired effective immediately.

The news was not favorably received. One of the engineers in the meeting flew off the handle and yelled at Page. He called him “unprofessional” and told Page that what he was doing was “completely ridiculous.” Sure enough, the new structure didn’t work. It turned out that the engineers liked having managers to turn to when there was a problem, and the project managers made sure that there was no redundancy and that deadlines were met. Page had made a rash decision, one that a more experienced leader would not have made. Many inside and outside of Google felt that Page had proven he was not ready to be CEO.

Less than a month later, in August 2001, Larry Page reluctantly stepped down and former Novell chief executive Eric Schmidt took the CEO role, a post he held for almost ten years. Google flourished under Schmidt, who presided over a successful IPO in 2004 and the acquisition of Android in 2005. During Schmidt’s tenure, Google grew to 24,000 employees and to a market cap of $180 billion.

After giving up his role as CEO, it has been said that Page was “often unhappy” and “frequently disconnected.” Indeed, only someone who has been in Page’s shoes can really imagine how difficult it must have been for him to make that sacrifice. Page not only gave up the thing he had poured his heart and soul into for years, but also gave up the helm of the most exciting technology company in the world at the time. It must have been akin to cutting off a limb. 

The story has a happy ending for Larry Page: He became CEO of Google again in 2011, and this time has been different. Page is a better executive and a wiser leader. He is less argumentative and he discourages conflict where he once embraced it. And he has learned to delegate. Perhaps most importantly, he has grown up. The day Eric Schmidt announced that his tenure as CEO had come to an end and that Larry Page would once again take the lead, Schmidt tweeted out “Adult supervision no longer needed.” Rather than admit defeat after he was forced to step down, Larry Page came back stronger and better than ever and became a shining example of turning failure into success. 

Be sure to check out the other articles in the failure series:

• Michael Jordan
• Stephen King
• Howard Schultz
• Steven Spielberg
• Oprah Winfrey
• Jeff Bezos
• Richard Branson
• Warren Buffett
• J.K. Rowling
• President Obama
• How to Fail the Right Way
• The Greatest Failures of All Time
• Two Years of Failure
• Lady Gaga
• The Science Behind Failure
• Jay-Z
• James Dyson