Googled: The End of the World As We Know It

by Ken Auletta

Book Overview

"The fullest account yet of the rise of one of the most profitable, most powerful, and oddest businesses the world has ever seen."
-San Francisco Chronicle

Just eleven years old, Google has profoundly transformed the way we live and work-we've all been Googled. Esteemed media writer Ken Auletta uses the story of Google's rise to explore the future of media at large. This book is based on the most extensive cooperation ever...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143118048
• ISBN13: 9780143118046
• Release Date: October 2010
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Googled: somewhat predictable but quite fascinating

Ken Auletta's new book Googled: The End of the World As We Know It takes us for a fascinating look behind the scene as he shows us the growth of Google from its simple beginnings within the labs of Stanford University to its becoming what is perhaps the most influential technology company in Silicon Valley today. Author Auletta is a technology journalist and media critic for The New Yorker, and was one of the first to popularize the concept of the so-called "information superhighway" with a 1993 New Yorker profile of Barry Diller, in which he described how Diller used his Apple PowerBook to anticipate the digital future. In his new book he has interviewed many key players to tell this fascinating story as only he is able. Full of interesting tales, insight and remarkable scrutiny, this comprehensible book explains how and why Google matters to a lot of us, from basic Internet neophytes to business decision makers. Mr. Auletta stands out at writing Google's company history in a solid chronological style. Individual chapters are focused on the years of its growth from 1999 through 2008. We get an intimate look at Google's highly-private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, a pair of indisputably brilliant (but socially-awkward) individuals who have remained focused on their vision of making information accessible to the world, like so many Internet success stories of today. The author illustrates how Google's focus on perfecting its own proprietary search algorithms has proven to be equally unsettling to media and technology companies, while its control of information has gained often unwanted attention from governments and non-governmental organizations who are concerned about issues of personal privacy and corporate power. Google's growth has posed internal challenges to its management, corporate culture and strategy, and while praising Page and Brin in general for their decisions, Mr. Auletta shows his concern that Google's founders, who have yet to be confronted with the kind of difficulties that affect most business owners, could be overlooking some of the external threats to the company's enduring capabilities. The author believes there are legitimate public concerns about the use of private information for profit, yet it's clear from his thoughtful examination that the data Google collects has positioned the company to continue to take advantage of and perhaps even define the technology and media backdrop for our own probable future. Ken Auletta's book does an excellent job with its explanation of what Google actually is and what it does so well. It's significantly different from other books such as What Would Google Do?, by columnist and media blogger Jeff Jarvis, or Planet Google, by college business professor Randall Stross, who writes the New York Times column "Digital Domain." Mr. Auletta focuses some of the discussion from the point of view of the advertising industry. While that doesn't provide a significantly different perspect

Don't Do Evil? Evil Empire?

It might be that right now, a couple of guys in a garage are coming up with the next big thing, an item of software or hardware that is going to change our way of doing things or of looking at the world. This is just what Bill Gates, head of Microsoft, used to say he worried about. And then it happened. Maybe leaders at Google now worry about the same sort of thing. After all, Sergey Brin and Larry Page were just a couple of young nerds tinkering with a new idea for a search engine in 1998, and now everyone knows what Google is and many people use it in some fashion every day. It is a hugely influential success, changing wide realms of computing and media. In fact, the subtitle of _Googled: The End of the World as We Know It_ (The Penguin Press) is only partly hyperbole. Ken Auletta, who writes for the _New Yorker_ and has written other books on media businesses, had access to the company's eccentric founders and their Silicon Valley campus. He has written a book that is essential for understanding what the company has achieved so far, how it is continuing to change the media world, and whether it is going to be able to maintain high standards of customer service and lofty ideals of free information. This is by no means an authorized biography of the company, but includes plenty of episodes that would seem to violate Google's jocular but earnest motto, "Don't Be Evil." Google is a well-loved company, at least by consumers. Google gives away many of its services to those who use them, getting paid in other ways. Google is well known to have a conscience, funding renewable energy concerns and exercising epidemiological philanthropy. To media industries, though, Google has become an enemy. Google's reach is getting wider every week, changing the very basics of advertising, telecoms, newspapers, navigation software, and book publishing. Google, in its first decade, went from a garage-based company to one with over twenty billion dollars in revenue in 2008, and an eagerness to acquire. Google shelled out $1.65 billion for YouTube in 2006, for instance. It has yet to make it pay, but the acquisition is typical of its act first, ask questions later approach. The approach, of course, has resulted in astonishing success overall. The founders, Page and Brin, are not only odd and funny, they are devoted engineers who deal in facts and numbers, a "thirst to quantify everything." If you can tabulate it and turn it into numerical data, Google will work with it and plan for it; but real although subjective factors like emotion and sympathy are not quantifiable. Neither are concerns about copyright, privacy, or monopoly. Income is quantifiable, but it was not something Page and Brin put as a high priority, thus endangering Google at the beginning. Much of this book is about the give and take between managers and the founders, and it seems as if they are all working together well. That doesn't keep them from making decisions that the publi

What Google actually did

Last winter I reviewed Jeff Jarvis' "What Would Google Do?". I described it as "Superficial" and gave it one star; to my amazement, it seems to have gathered a load of four and five star ratings. Well, that showed ME! Now we have Ken Auletta's excellent account of what Google actually did to get where they are. The author captures the gestalt of Silicon Valley to a T, and I particularly chuckled over the portrait that he painted of my old boss, Eric Schmidt. I enjoy books like this because they help me to make sense of the unexpected contingency and bizarre events that make up the world of business. The best of them are not deeply analytical: don't expect to learn how to replicate the success of others by learning their "secrets". I just read them because they are fascinating, the "now it can by told" gossip of our incestuous little world and its celebrities. Why not?

BEST BOOK ON GOOGLE

Ken has done a superb job on telling the Google story. The humor of Mel Kamazan joking about buying Google was a riot. B but I it's N not G Google MSN is once again a day late and a billion dollars short.

Much more than I expected

As I started reading this earlier today, I thought it would be a glossy recounting of Google's history with little substance. I deliberately ignore the author's name when I first pick up a new book so that I won't be influenced by my previous experiences - had I known that Ken Auletta was the author, I would have known better. But I did not, and indeed the first few chapters seemed to confirm my expectation of fluff. Honestly, I was getting bored and was very close to tossing it aside. After all, I know the history of Google and have been involved with Adsense both as an advertiser and a website publisher for many years now. I was an early adopter of Gmail, have e-books in Google Books and of course have a Google Voice account. I bought Google stock early on. I don't care very much about the personalities of the founders; I wasn't finding much to interest me. Fortunately, I held on a few more chapters and realized that this is a much deeper examination than I thought. The wide eyed awe and admiration that seemed to be the the theme of the first few chapters started to be replaced with a closer look at wrinkles and flaws. I don't mean that the author is attacking Google - it's just a fair and balanced honest look at the reality that is Google. Later chapters examine the gestalt of Google even more deeply. What does Google mean to other companies? What does Google's growth mean to itself? Can it really "do no evil"? These are all questions I've asked and thought about as I've watched Google grow and change. Ken Auletta has dissected the impact of Google thoroughly. I don't always agree with his conclusions, but he does hit all the stops and digs in to every angle. Excellent analysis, very, very well done. The business and societal changes that are developing are important to understand - this book will help.