Are You Googley?

Yahoo, eBay, and other late 1990s Dot Com Daze survivors long ago traded in a live-out-loud work environment for something more traditional and business-like.

But not Google.

Inside Google environs, there’s still very little recognizable structure, according to a recent address in Phoenix by Google Vice President Douglas Merrill.

Imagine lots of high-energy, charismatic people disassembling robots, playing with their pets, shooting pool, playing ping pong, or eating lunch at Google’s five-star cafeteria. And everybody’s talking about the next great idea.

Out of this unscripted atmosphere has come some of the Web’s greatest innovations of the last 10 years, plus a $100 billion company. So Google doesn’t intend to fiddle with a successful formula, Merrill said.

So Google will continue to protect this culture partly by making particular IT buying decisions, and also applying the Googley-meter to potential employees, Merrill said.

“We talk about being Googley,” Merrill said. It’s a “terrible label that’s stuck. We’ll say, Is that person Googley? What it means is this person fits in well with our culture. We protect and reinforce our culture of innovation. We live out loud.”