key quote on innovation:
We think the 20 percent time is really the only way we’ve been able to maintain our innovation as we have gotten larger. What normally happens with technology companies is the initial founding team gets older, you bring in traditional management, and although it becomes a better managed company, much of the creativity and the flair and the joy did get lost in the process. By establishing the principal that engineers could spend 20 percent of their time working on whatever they found interesting, we created a culture where there’s this constant flow of innovation. Literally every day there’s another fun surprise.
