Larry Page asks questions like "why can't we search all the world's books?" instead of getting stuck in technical details. Friedberg credits this 100× zoomed-out thinking with Google's biggest breakthroughs, including a 2003 proposal to index every book that seemed insane at the time.
Larry Page is one of the most impressive individuals you'll ever meet. It's really sad he's not more public because I think Larry could offer a lot to the world in the way he thinks and the way he talks about things. He always takes a bigger point of view and a bigger picture perspective on things. When people would suggest products or ideas, he wouldn't get into the technical details or the near-term roadmaps. He would always zoom out 100x and be like, why can't we do X? Why don't we search all the world's books? Was one of the things they proposed doing in 2003, which was a crazy concept, but they actually went and then did it right. And no one would have done that if not for that suggestion, that audacity of perspective. And so they always pushed and challenged every team to think bigger, to think more grand, to think more aggressively.
