Monday, September 24, 2007

The Search : John Battelle

Hi,

This week, Google celebrates its 9th birthday.
Rise of every company spawns a number of books written about it. First it was IBM, then Microsoft and Apple... and now it's time of Google. Earlier, I had written about The Google Story. Last week, I read another book related to same subject.

The SearchBy: John BattelleNicholas Brealley Publishing

This book is not just about Google, but about the search economy at large. Nevertheless, Google features in each and every chapter and most of the discussion revolves around the rise of company so far and its future prospects. Battelle begins with a background of search before Google. Next, he describes the lives of Google founders: Larry Page & Sergey Brin and their days at Stanford and the first days of the company. This is followed by rise of Google rise and its historic IPO. The book concludes with a discussion about the search in future, and the impact it would have on our day-to-day lives.

The book is certainly worth a read because unlike other books, it dares to ask some uncomfortable questions about the most-loved company of our age. It is ironical that Google hoards information about the world is very reticent when it comes to sharing details about itself. Also, the way Google compromised its search results to exclude the links that offended Chinese govt has not gone down well with many of industry experts.


1 comment:

Chandrakant said...

Hmmm Good review, I just completed "The Google story" written by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, and I find it to be interesting.... not giving much thought about the adulation by author of Google guys..... ;) But the core of the book "The Search" seems to be mainly search, looking forward to grab and enjoy the book...and know more about search which was noticeably missing from the book "The Google Story" :)