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Books

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

Steven Levy · 2011

Recommended by 2 people on the record.

The bar next to each date shows how long ago it was said: 6d is days, 4yr is years.

Ken Norton recommends it affiliate
Levy was given unprecedented access to Google, and the result is what I consider to be an accurate depiction of how the company operates. A good overview of how Google product managers work.

on bringthedonuts.com · 7 Jan 2026

Gwern liked it
I learned a great deal from this book about Google, which put some of my own experiences with Google products in context.

on gwern.net · 13 Oct 2022

This book on rcmnd →

That little bar

It says how long ago something was said, so you can tell last month from 2014 without doing the arithmetic. Full and green is recent; it drains and cools as the date gets older, and empties completely at about 6 years.

A striped bar means the date itself is an estimate — the source did not carry an exact one. An entry with no date at all gets no bar.