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

Author - John Battelle ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Portfolio Trade was reviewed on 16-Oct-2008.

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1) Paperback Book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by Portfolio Trade. Already outdated...
Also, this book is not very well written and is slow to read.¤

2) Paperback Book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by Portfolio Trade. John Battelle subtitles his book, The Search, "How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture." This statement is quite ambitious and the book does not quite live up to it. It does, however, give a good overview of the role of Search, its effect on business and life, and how various companies, especially Google, were involved. The topic is of great importance to all of us, whether or not we avidly search the Internet. Thus it is an important book and for that reason I give it a high evaluation. The strong point of the book is that Battelle is both knowledgeable and well connected on this subject, thus he is able to get access to the key players involved with Search--Brin and Page at Google, Bezos at Amazon, Yang and Filo at Yahoo, etc. Battelle also tells some interesting stories about lesser known figures such as Bill Gross. It is these parts of the book that are most interesting and enlightening.

But the book also suffers from a number of flaws, some repairable, some not.
First of all, as Battelle notes, that doing a book on Search can be boring and the sections of the volume that are strictly about this topic are indeed not very interesting, especially for those of us who are not technically versed on computer and Internet language. One shortcoming of the book is that it could have benefited from a glossary. Battelle assumes that he readers are literate enough to understand what he means by such terms as "petabyte" and "exabyte" and uses language that is beyond the understanding of ordinary people. For example, on page 171 he quotes extensively from comments made by Tim Armstrong, VP of advertising at Google, regarding the future state of advertising that are large unintelligible to a non-technical person. His use of words such as "scale" also assumes that the reader understands the meaning of this word in technological jargon. Finally, there is the following example from page 268: "The gate opens and you drive one-quarter mile to a four-story slate gray building, which looks rather like a Nakamichi preamp, only with windows..." Well, of course, now I know what the building looks like!!

A problem that is not correctable is that the book is dated. Battelle completed it in early 2003 which makes it ancient history in the fast paced world of the Internet. Thus it is more of a history of Search rather than a description of its present condition. He does give some of his insights in the future potential of search and this parts are interesting and thought-provoking. Battlelle also spends too much time on Google. Admittedly this company is in the forefront of Internet Search, but it has been written about in detail. For example, The Google Story, by David Vise covers much of the same ground and, in my view, does a better job. Certainly it was necessary to cover the Alpha Dog in this field, but more about what others have done might have made the book more interesting.

In sum, The Search is well worth reading, but non-techies will have some trouble and techies may find it date
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3) Paperback Book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by Portfolio Trade. I loved this book and how it approached talking about search instead of just Google. It covers other big players in the field, goes over the entire industry, in addition to giving solid and good information about Google itself.

Also loved the author´s style and his ability to keep things relatively succinct.¤

4) Paperback Book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by Portfolio Trade. I love the tech industry and this book didn´t disappoint. It is very well written and it keeps you interested the entire way through. It also does a very good job of following the Google story from beginning up to almost-current-day. I couldn´t beat the price that I got this for on Amazon.¤

5) Paperback Book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by Portfolio Trade. As a computer professional I thought I pretty much got Search chalked out. It was quite a revelation to see that this book reveals facets about search that I did not comprehend before.

Very exciting book and incidentally very good information about Google as a company as well.
You can see my blog entry below as well if interested in my review: http://rajascyberspot.blogspot.com/2008/08/google-and-story-of-search.html
¤

6) Paperback Book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by Portfolio Trade. How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

• The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek Bestseller
• Finalist for the Goldman Sachs/FT Business Book of the Year Award

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 business and arguably of human culture itself. And for the past few years, that’s exactly what Google has been doing.

But The Search offers much more than the inside story of Google’s triumph. It’s a big- picture book about the past, present, and future of search technology and the enormous impact it’s starting to have on marketing, media, pop culture, dating, job hunting, international law, civil liberties, and just about every other sphere of human interest. BACKCOVER: “The Search is a superb story, well written and feverishly researched. Whether you are a student, techie, business executive, budding visionary or just enjoy pop culture, this is a book not to be missed.”
—USA Today

“John Battelle is Silicon Valley’s Bob Woodward. One of the founders of Wired magazine, he has hung around Google for so long that he has come to be as close as any outsider can to actually being an insider….The result is a highly readable account of Google’s astonishing rise.”
—The Economist

“It’s a fascinating story, and Mr. Battelle… tells it well.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“A surprisingly gripping story…The Search yields impressive results, pairing a reportorial eye for detail with an evangelical zeal to help readers understand the import of the search revolution.”
—Wired News

“Battelle…manages to keep things compelling, adding his own trenchant analysis about what Google’s rapid evolution and powerful technology might mean for the company and our society as whole.”
—The Associated Press

“A compelling glimpse of the search industry’s early years.”
—BusinessWeek

“Deeply researched and nimbly reported.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Indispensable.”
—London Review of Books

“John Battelle has written a brilliant business book, but he’s also done something more: he’s used the amazing saga of Google to explore what it means to search. All searchers should read it.”
—Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute; former editor of Time; former CEO of CNN

“Nobody, and I mean nobody, has thought longer, harder, or smarter about Google and the search business than John Battelle. If you want to understand the rise of the search economy and culture, you need to read this book.”
—John Heilemann, author of Pride Before the Fall¤

7) Paperback Book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by Portfolio Trade. If you pick your books by their popularity--how many and which other people are reading them--then know this about The Search: it´s probably on Bill Gates´ reading list, and that of almost every venture capitalist and startup-hungry entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. In its sweeping survey of the history of Internet search technologies, its gossip about and analysis of Google, and its speculation on the larger cultural implications of a Web-connected world, it will likely receive attention from a variety of businesspeople, technology futurists, journalists, and interested observers of mid-2000s zeitgeist.

This ambitious book comes with a strong pedigree. Author John Battelle was a founder of The Industry Standard and then one of the original editors of Wired, two magazines which helped shape our early perceptions of the wild world of the Internet. Battelle clearly drew from his experience and contacts in writing The Search. In addition to the sure-handed historical perspective and easy familiarity with such dot-com stalwarts as AltaVista, Lycos, and Excite, he speckles his narrative with conversational asides from a cast of fascinating characters, such Google´s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Yahoo´s, Jerry Yang and David Filo; key executives at Microsoft and different VC firms on the famed Sandhill road; and numerous other insiders, particularly at the company which currently sits atop the search world, Google.

The Search is not exactly the corporate history of Google. At the book´s outset, Battelle specifically indicates his desire to understand what he calls the cultural anthropology of search, and to analyze search engines´ current role as the "database of our intentions"--the repository of humanity´s curiosity, exploration, and expressed desires. Interesting though that beginning is, though, Battelle´s story really picks up speed when he starts dishing inside scoop on the darling business story of the decade, Google. To Battelle´s credit, though, he doesn´t stop just with historical retrospective: the final part of his book focuses on the potential future directions of Google and its products´ development. In what Battelle himself acknowledges might just be a "digital fantasy train", he describes the possibility that Google will become the centralizing platform for our entire lives and quotes one early employee on the weightiness of Google´s potential impact: "Sometimes I feel like I am on a bridge, twenty thousand feet up in the air. If I look down I´m afraid I´ll fall. I don´t feel like I can think about all the implications."

Some will shrug at such words; after all, similar hype has accompanied other technologies and other companies before. Many others, though, will search Battelle´s story for meaning--and fast. --Peter Han¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 13-Nov-2008, 15918414109781591841418, 060-9X0-630-781-101-KEB-8

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