????十年前，當谷歌（Google）首次上市時，擁有約2,600名員工，季度營收剛剛越過8億美元。如今，有超過52,000名員工在谷歌工作，最近一個季度營收達160億美元。

????那時，谷歌的主要競爭對手是雅虎（Yahoo）和微軟（Microsoft），智能手機還沒有問世，Facebook只是一家剛成立6個月、為大學生服務的小網站。如今，谷歌最大的競爭對手是蘋果（Apple）、Facebook和亞馬遜（Amazon），當然還有微軟。

????谷歌IPO時除了核心的搜索和廣告業務之外，產品屈指可數，只有Google News、Gmail、Blogger、Picasa和Orkut （被描述為“一個人們可以進行社交的網上聚會地”）等幾項。如今，谷歌已是一個包羅萬象的帝國：產品、應用程序、服務、在個人電腦和移動設備上運行的計算平臺，包括全球最流行的網絡瀏覽器和手機操作系統。谷歌還在打造無人駕駛汽車、恒溫器和機器人，并試圖延長人類的生命。

????十年間變化巨大；谷歌今昔的相似之處或許不那么顯著。但從一些根本層面來看，今天的谷歌依然是2004年8月19日首次上市交易時的那家公司。此話怎講？不妨讀讀拉里?佩奇和謝爾蓋?布林2004年寫的“創始人信函”[靈感來自沃倫?巴菲特為伯克希爾-哈撒韋（Berkshire Hathaway）股東撰寫的“股東手冊”]。即便是今天看來，這封信依然很有預見性，高度概況了谷歌的本質、商業和創新模式以及公司的精神氣質。

????佩奇和布林在這封信中向投資者們明確表示，谷歌是他們的公司。股東可以買股票，但沒有決定權。雙重股權結構確保兩位創始人能夠對公司保持掌控。如今，谷歌依然是他們的公司，從名義上和事實上都是如此。或者更確切地說，自從2011年佩奇擔任CEO、布林擔任次要角色以來，谷歌很大程度上是佩奇的公司。如果有什么不同的話，就是佩奇的管理風格更為集權，更注重自上而下。所有重要決定都要經過他的首肯。（人們都說，他與布林的關系依然密切，在很多事情上兩人都會商量著來。）迄今為止，股東們總體上沒什么理由可以抱怨。

????佩奇依然專注于長期。這意味著很多，比如進行他認為合適的投資，在人才和基礎設施等優先項目上進行支出，不用過于擔心季度壓力。當然，經過這些年，谷歌已經被迫成長起來。比如，金融危機之后，谷歌在新任首席財務官帕特里克?皮切特的帶領下改掉了一些隨意支出做法，建立起了更嚴格的成本控制。如今，谷歌已經成為杰出運營典范：任何事務都要評估和分析，內部目標大多能達到，甚至超過。但佩奇堅持一點不變：谷歌應該進行他認為從長遠來看必須做的優先投資。包括：無人駕駛汽車、谷歌眼鏡、物聯網（32億美元收購Nest Labs）、移動專利[125億美元收購摩托羅拉（Motorola），隨后分拆移動硬件部門售予聯想（Lenovo）]和其他很多投資。

????最為重要的是，谷歌仍舊是一個充滿奇思妙想的工作場所，專注于實現一次次巨大的創新飛躍。之前，這意味著每周給雇員1天時間從事自己選擇的項目。如今，這意味著智能個人助理Google Now，探索機器人、自動汽車、高海拔風力發電、借助氣球實現互聯網接入的“登月工廠”Google X，或勾勒移動未來的Advanced Technology and Products業務。雖然佩奇指望其中一些（如果不是全部）能獲得成功，它們并非終局。他率領下的大批谷歌人（Googlers）一直不停地在尋覓下一個能推動科技前進一大步的驚世之作。

????結果是，沒有任何一家公司像谷歌這樣：永遠不安于現狀，永遠在前行，永不停歇地尋找下一個大熱門。這當然就是佩奇和布林在那封致股東信中開篇兩句話的含義：“我們是一家非傳統公司。我們不打算變成那樣。”目前看來，一切良好。（財富中文網）

????譯者：早稻米

????When Google went public 10 years ago, it had about 2,600 employees and its quarterly revenue barely topped $800 million. Today, more than 52,000 people work at Google , and it booked $16 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter.

????Back then, its main competitors were Yahoo and Microsoft , smartphones had not been invented and Facebook was a small, six-month-old Web site for college kids. Today, Google’s biggest competitors are Apple , Facebook, Amazon , and yes, Microsoft.

????At the time of its IPO, Google had only a handful of products outside of its core search and advertising business, like Google News, Gmail, Blogger, Picasa and Orkut (which it described as an “online meeting place where people can socialize.”) Today, Google is a sprawling empire of products, applications, services and computing platforms for PCs and mobile devices that include the world’s most popular Web browser and mobile operating system. Google is also building driverless cars, thermostats and robots and trying to extend the life span of humans.

????The differences between then and now are obvious; the similarities, perhaps less so. But in some fundamental ways, Google today is the same company it was on August 19 2004, when its stock traded publicly for the first time. How so? Read the “founder’s letter” which Larry Page and Sergey Brin penned for shareholders back in 2004 (with inspiration from Warren Buffett’s “Owner’s Manual” for Berkshire Hathaway shareholders). It remains a remarkably prescient distillation of Google’s essence, its approach to business and innovation and its ethos.

????In the letter, Page and Brin made it clear to investors that Google was their company. Shareholders could buy into it, but they wouldn’t have a voice. A dual stock structure ensured the founders would retain control. Today Google is still their company, both on paper and in the real world. Or rather, it’s largely Page’s company since 2011, when he became CEO and Brin chose to take a secondary role. If anything, Page’s management style is more centralized and top-down. All major decisions bear his stamp. (By all accounts, he and Brin remain close, and consult on many matters.) So far, shareholders, by and large, have had no reason to complain.

????Page is still focused on the long term. That means many things, like making investments where he sees fit, spending on priorities like talent and infrastructure, and not worrying too much about quarterly pressures. Sure, over the years, Google has been forced to grow up. After the financial crisis, for example, with Patrick Pichette as its new CFO, Google cut back some of its free-spending ways and established more stringent cost controls. Over time, Google has become a model of operational excellence, where everything is measured and analyzed, and internal targets are met or surpassed more often than not. But Page’s insistence that Google make the investments he thinks are necessary to stay on top over the long run has not changed. To wit: self-driving cars, Glass, Internet of things ($3.2 billion acquisition of Nest Labs), mobile patents ($12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola, followed by the spin off of the mobile hardware business to Lenovo) and many more.

????Most of all, Google is still a quirky workplace that’s focused on delivering giant leaps in innovation time and again. Back in the day, that meant giving employees a day a week to work on a project of their choosing. Today, it means things like Google Now, a smart personal assistant, Google X, the “moonshot factory” where it pursues robots, autonomous vehicles, high-altitude wind power, and Internet access via a fleet of balloons, or the Advanced Technology and Products group, where it is charting the future of mobile . While Page counts on some, if not all, of these bets to pay off, they are not the endgame. His army of Googlers is always searching for the next thing that will push the arc of technology forward.

????The result is a company unlike any other: always impatient, always moving and always searching for the next big thing. And that, of course, is what Page and Brin meant when they opened their letter to shareholders with these two sentences : “We are not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” So far, so good.