62 Digital Wars were team decisions rather than an individual person. We as engineers would sit around and we'd talk and make a decision as a team. Speaking in 2005, Schmidt suggested that the rigorous divisional structure of Microsoft just wouldn't work at Google. `Flatness is not a function of reporting hierarchy', he said. `It's a function of information flow.' 28 Google was all about the free flow of information inside the company: there was a snippets database and project database, which were at the time open to all. Both pre-dated him. The view of one ex-Microsoft employee was plain: `Microsoft has to play Google's game to compete with Google.' But Microsoft wasn't comfort- able doing that. And it couldn't create a Google culture inside Microsoft to compete. Laakmann gives a picture inside Microsoft of something more like corporate salt mines: `By and large Microsoft's products were just Windows and Office, with some exploration of other areas. But essentially