The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

by John Battelle

Book Overview

What does the world want? According to John Battelle, a company that answers that question -- in all its shades of meaning -- can unlock the most intractable riddles of both business and culture. And... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591841410
• ISBN13: 9781591841418
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Portfolio
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A window into an industry, a look at the future

John Battelle knows search. His blog on the topic has become a standard of sorts in an industry that evolves by the minute (almost) and his book on the topic is as comprehensive as it is insightful. He does an excelled job at looking back at the evolution of the search field from its early days, going into greater detail about Google, and delving some into Yahoo!, Altavista and A9. Yet, he cleverly manages to keep the book fresh by not just sticking his head in the past, but posing interesting philosophical questions throughout the book. After doing a fairly comprehensive assessment of the evolution and current state of the industry as of the publishing of the book, almost the entire last two chapters of "The Search" are devoted to the exploration of the possible avenues Google specifically and the search domain at large will likely be taking. This part of the book is bound to be fascinating to SEO/Internet Marketing professionals as well as to the average web user. If you want to learn more about Google, I suggest you pick up "The Google Story", published shortly after this book. The truth is it will only save you from reading just a couple of chapters on the mega-successful search company in this book. Otherwise, there is not that much overlap between the two books. If you haven't read either one, I'd say start here, and if you feel like it, move on to "The Google Story". That for sure will wet your appetite for knowledge on the Search Engine topic.

Why Google rules

The idea of making billions of dollars on a business based on searching online indexes is inconceivable, except when you consider how the Internet has changed the business world. This concept is so vague that it is difficult even to consider, let alone write about. Yet author John Battelle has done a thorough, entertaining job of identifying how this attempt to pin down cyberspace works, and how two graduate students turned their mathematical challenge into Google, the fastest growing company in history. While this is primarily a corporate biography, Battelle does not pander to the company's billionaire founders. They are portrayed as authoritarian geeks with few warm qualities. But they are also shown as visionary engineers who turned their killer application into a business that successfully defied Wall Street when their company went public. This is a great story, which is why we recommend it to technology fans searching for meaning and to business readers who want to understand the future of search technology. Or as Google says: search and you shall find.

Google's Meteoric Rise to the Top of the Internet

Less than five years ago, two PhD. candidates, Sergey Brin and Larry Page launched their own search engine. Naming it Google, after the name of the largest known number, it has literally changed the face of internet searching as we know it. Gone are the days of multiple hits for basic search inquiries. With Google's page-ranking system, the searcher gets to see the most relevant searches listed first. This book does a remarkable job of telling Brin's and Page's story. From humble Silicon Valley students to the owners of the most prosperous company in the world, Brin and Page have changed the playing field for the entire internet. While many companies died out during the dot com days, Google survived and flourished. One of the oddities of Google's success is that they have achieved all of thier miraculous growth without a real working marketing plan. They have let the sheer influence and size of Google do the talking, and it has worked extremely well. Today, Google has become a household name. People constantly say "I've Googled this", or "I've Googled that". And they're right. With Google's method of search, it makes it very easy for the user to type almost anything into the search box and get back a near-perfect response. But we haven't made it to the "perfect search"; the idea of retrieving exact results for a specific search. With the way Google is going, it wouldn't be surprising if they solved this enigma. I read this book for a Master's degree course in library science, and I was fascinated by it. Brin and Page got to live everyone's ultimate dream; find something that will make you insanely rich. I use Google almost extensively in my own research, and I've been extremely pleased with the results. I was fascinated with the story of Google's unheard of rise from a small company being housed in a college dorm room to a giant that employs thousands of people. I highly recommend this book. Google is a one-of-a-kind company, and their story is truly remarkable. Read this great book and discover how the brainchild of two students turned into one of the world's most profitable companies.

The search has just begun

This is an extremely insightful book on the concept of search in the information age. The internet is ubiquitous with loads of information and billions of users. The problem is to match our information needs and the source in this vast ever expanding ocean. The book is about bridging the gap and also making money in the process. The book starts with an explanation of our intentions to find something and how we find it. The methodology of search based on ideas like crawling , indexing and retrieval linked to key words initially looks simple. However the need for the huge amount computational power and storage to run search engines is mind-boggling. On the other hand to make search really contextual and interactive with inclusion of text, audio and video wherever necessary is not a simple task. The search for such technologies seems to have just begun. At best we have reached 5% of what we need to achieve says the author. Some aspects that I found really interesting in this book are : - Excellent non technical approach to explain the working of search engines - Outline of the rise ( and fall) of several companies grappling with the technology of search - Biography of Google and to some extent other search engines, Yahoo in particular - The business model of Search - making Billions through millions of transactions, a few cents at a time. - The strategic importance of Search in the next years and the need to assume leadership in this vital business/technology Apart from technology and business the book is also a lively read with some interesting episodes and litigations. Highly recommended.

Who can forget the first time they did a search on Altavista, and saw the world at their fingertips?

This book gives a great overview of the past, present and future of search. Given the dominance of Google in the web and in culture, it is tempting to forget the companies that preceeded Google, and did a damn fine job in their own right. This book describes long forgotten search engines like AltaVista, Excite, Overture, and how their missteps allowed Google to overtake them as the dominant search engine. Read about how Yahoo changed their focus to being a media company, and by doing so, forever altered the landscape of the internet. Apart from the history of search, the bulk of the book focuses on Google, and gives a particularly interesting insight into the culture and inner workings in of the company. I spoke to a director at Google right before I read the book, and the book complemented what he told me really well. Last but not least, the last chapter, 'The Perfect Search' was just fascinating. It relates so well, because it is essentially summarizes all the frustrations I ever had when searching, and describes how the perfect search is already becoming a reality in many ways, slowly but surely. All in all, a great read that changes the way you look at search.