Google: Behind the Screen is a 2006 Dutch documentary directed by IJsbrand van Veelen for the Dutch broadcaster VPRO. The documentary focuses more on Google’s suite of products as it existed at the time, and the goals of the organization, rather than focusing on the startup story, the personalities of the founders, or the corporate culture behind closed doors like most other documentaries about the company.
The business was built upon its excellent search product, indexing every website on the internet for anybody to quickly find the information that they require, but from this they built vertically and their ambition was to subsequently digitalise and index very page of every book ever published, every video on the internet, every image, and anything and everything else that they can think of.
The film makers visit the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, where they meet Vint Cerf whose job it is to think up new possibilities for Google. He talks about the role that he thinks Google has played and will continue to play in the development of the internet. The documentary also touches on some of the challenges that the business has to tackle in pursuit of its goals.
