MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And it's time now for All Tech Considered.
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NORRIS: As NPR's Laura Sydell reports, Larry Page is notoriously shy, and many wonder how he will fare as head of the world's largest Internet company.
LAURA SYDELL: Ken Auletta, the author of "Googled: The End of the World As We Know It," says the question is, can he run the company?
KEN AULETTA: He's not a particularly good speaker. He is not a particularly sociable guy. He hates people micromanaging his schedule. He doesn't like to be confined. Well, a CEO is confined.
SYDELL: Page isn't known as the kind of guy who's good at schmoozing with other executives, also part of being a CEO. Auletta says the first time Page met with media mogul Barry Diller, Page was looking down and typing on his PDA while Diller tried to talk to him.
AULETTA: And he says, Larry, I'm trying to talk. Can you just converse with me? He says, it's OK, Barry, I can do both. I can look at this device and talk to you. He says, no, no, Larry, choose. And, Larry, without looking up, says, I choose this.
SYDELL: But Page has also been watching the more experienced Eric Schmidt run the company for 10 years. Page also read a book as a young man about one of his heroes that brought home how important it is to be good at business. The inventor, Nikola Tesla, along with Thomas Edison, was pivotal to the development of electricity.
AULETTA: And he wound up dying destitute because unlike Thomas Edison, he wasn't a good businessman.
SYDELL: Page also likes to solve problems, and he'll bring that to pushing Google forward, says David Vise, author of "The Google Story." For example, he grew up outside of Detroit and was also bothered by traffic jams and accidents.
DAVID VISE: And he actually has thought about such things as automated cars that drive themselves and move at a kind of optimal speed without ever causing accidents or ever causing slow downs.
SYDELL: Google recently announced that it's working on a car that drives itself. In the last two years, Page has watched his company start to look like the old guard in Silicon Valley, as Facebook has taken on the mantle of the innovative upstart. Vise thinks that Page is really going to push to reclaim that mantle.
VISE: And that's really the key for a company like this - to stay out in front, to stay ahead and to continually surprise and delight users.
SYDELL: Laura Sydell, NPR News, San Francisco.