How did Google's famous '20% time' policy originate, and what successful projects emerged from it?

The origin and achievements of this "20% time" policy are quite interesting. It wasn't something a senior executive came up with on a whim; rather, it was more like a culture that existed from the company's early days.

How did it come about?

You can think of this as an "open conspiracy" by Google's two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. When they started the company, they had already decided to attract the smartest and most creative engineers in the world. But the question was, how do you retain these geniuses? If they were made to work routinely every day, they would quickly get bored and might even resign to start their own companies.

So, they drew inspiration from companies like 3M (where Post-it Notes originated) and informally encouraged employees to dedicate 20% of their weekly work time (one day out of five) to any project they were personally interested in, as long as it had some connection to the company's business.

In essence, the company allowed you to "get paid to tinker." The goal was to unleash the imagination of these brilliant minds and see what they could come up with when given free rein. More than a rigid rule, it was an act of trust and an investment, betting that employees' creativity would lead to unexpected breakthroughs.

What successful projects did it spawn?

The returns from this "gamble" were astonishing, with many well-known Google products today originating from this policy.

1. Gmail: This is perhaps the most legendary outcome of "20% time." At the time, an engineer named Paul Buchheit was dissatisfied with all the email services on the market, finding them slow and low on storage. So, he used his 20% time to start developing an internal email system with powerful search, lightning-fast speed, and massive storage. This "side project" eventually evolved into the Gmail we use today.

2. Google News: The birth of this product stemmed from the 9/11 attacks. An engineer named Krishna Bharat wanted to understand the news from various perspectives after the event, but he found himself inefficiently switching between countless news websites. So, he used his 20% time to create a platform that could automatically crawl and aggregate news sources worldwide, which was the prototype of Google News.

3. AdSense: This product is one of Google's "money-printing machines." It's a system that allows website owners, big and small, to display Google ads on their sites and earn revenue from them. This business, which generates enormous profits for Google, also began as a project initiated by an engineer during his 20% time to solve the problem of "how to enable small websites to easily display ads."

4. Google Maps Street View: Although Google Maps itself was based on an acquisition, one of its coolest features, "Street View," was a classic 20% project. At the time, an engineer had a sudden idea to mount cameras on cars and photograph all the streets in the world, allowing people to "virtually stroll" without leaving their homes. This seemingly crazy idea eventually became a reality.

In summary, the essence of the "20% time" policy lies in its belief that "unintended actions can lead to unexpected success." It granted employees immense autonomy and trust, allowing them to explore and experiment. Although many now say this policy is no longer as prevalent within Google as it once was, the culture it represents—encouraging innovation and tolerating failure—has profoundly influenced the entire tech industry.