Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Although most computer users were content with well-known search engines like Yahoo! and AOL in the late 1990s, a few users, usually quite computer-savvy, learned the quiet secret about Google, a search engine dedicated to the brand promise of faster and better. And when these nerds discovered Googles ability to deliver pages more relevant to a query, usually much faster, they told other nerds-much as in the new-wave music network of the 1980s.     Unlike most initial public offering (IPO)-oriented strategies and instant-wealth motivations of Internet companies of that time, Google was dedicated to the customer. Googles Rule 1 is "Put the user in charge." And thats what it does, even to the extent of granting access to its code for other developers to manipulate however they want, limited only by a cap of 1,000 queries a day to prevent server meltdown. With its relentless objective of perfection, Google cuts the time needed for a search by using information from past searches, saving download time on customers computers, increasing relevance and ease of use. As a result, Google continuously improves on its brand promise of giving users a better experience than its competi- tors. The open approach to its system and code appeals to nerdy users, who not only develop their own customized approaches, thereby guaranteeing customer loyalty, but also tell others-becoming evan- gelists for Google. The strength of the Google brand is not skin-deep; it starts in the heads and hearts of the firms employees-called "Googlers." The firm attracts the best-it gets 1,500 resumes a day from Googler wannabes-but can hire only a few, spending 87 person-hours per successful candidate to screen down to the 300 or so Googlers it hired in 2002. Google looks for two types of new Googlers. One type is the brilliant, but sometimes a little weird, risk taker. The sec- ond type is the certified PhD nerd. When hiring the first category, Googles chief engineer, Wayne Rosing, says, "We look for smart. Smart as in, do they do something weird outside of work, something off the beaten path? That translates into people who have no fear of trying difficult projects and going outside the bounds of what they know." Google also scours the top computer science programs and research labs in the world to hire PhDs who reportedly give the com- pany 90 percent of the best search-engine people in the world. These are the people who can shoot holes in the wild ideas of the weird people. Mix it all up, let people do their own thing in an environment where managers have as many as 160 direct reports, and you get a culture in which people manage themselves. They take lots of risks and create plenty of failures along the way, but all in a culture dedi- cated to the relentless drive to deliver on the brand promise of faster and better. Google does it better than perhaps any other computer     firm in the world, something nerds understood about the brand from the beginning. Its systems may be open, but its financial books are not. Private, secretive, but apparently highly profitable, the company is estimated by some analysts to be reaping several hundred million dollars a year, accounting for three-quarters of all web searches. When Fast Com-