The Google Story Review
I would recommend this book to young teens who are looking forward to having own business.
The Google Story Overview
"The Google Story" is the definitive account of one of the most remarkable organizations of our time. Every day over sixty-four million people use Google in more than one hundred languages, running billions of searches for information on everything and anything. Through the creative use of cutting-edge technology and a series of groundbreaking business ideas, Google's thirty-five year old founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have in ten years taken Google from being just another internet start-up to a company with a market value of over US billion. Based on scrupulous research and extraordinary access to the inner workings of Google, this book takes you inside the creation and growth of a company that has become so familiar its name is used as a verb around the world. But even as it rides high, Google wrestles with difficult challenges in a business that changes at lightning speed. In this new and updated edition to celebrate Google's 10th birthday, David A. Vise has written a new preface and new final chapter which look at further developments since 2005 and how Google will continue to expand and innovate while trying to follow its founders' mantra: Do No Evil. 'If you want to know how the Google boys became wealthy and powerful beyond dreams, then David Vise's assiduously researched "The Google Story" is for you' - "Sunday Telegraph". 'If Google were to take on critical faculties as well as its other attributes Vise's book would probably come out on top' - "The Times".
The Google Story Specifications
Social phenomena happen, and the historians follow. So it goes with Google, the latest star shooting through the universe of trend-setting businesses. This company has even entered our popular lexicon: as many note, "Google" has moved beyond noun to verb, becoming an action which most tech-savvy citizens at the turn of the twenty-first century recognize and in fact do, on a daily basis. It's this wide societal impact that fascinated authors David Vise and Mark Malseed, who came to the book with well-established reputations in investigative reporting. Vise authored the bestselling The Bureau and the Mole, and Malseed contributed significantly to two Bob Woodward books, Bush at War and Plan of Attack. The kind of voluminous research and behind-the-scenes insight in which both writers specialize, and on which their earlier books rested, comes through in The Google Story.
The strength of the book comes from its command of many small details, and its focus on the human side of the Google story, as opposed to the merely academic one. Some may prefer a dryer, more analytic approach to Google's impact on the Internet, like The Search or books that tilt more heavily towards bits and bytes on the spectrum between technology and business, like The Singularity is Near. Those wanting to understand the motivations and personal growth of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt, however, will enjoy this book. Vise and Malseed interviewed over 150 people, including numerous Google employees, Wall Street analysts, Stanford professors, venture capitalists, even Larry Page's Cub Scout leader, and their comprehensiveness shows.
As the narrative unfolds, readers learn how Google grew out of the intellectually fertile and not particularly directed friendship between Page and Brin; how the founders attempted to peddle early versions of their search technology to different Silicon Valley firms for million; how Larry and Sergey celebrated their first investor's check with breakfast at Burger King; how the pair initially housed their company in a Palo Alto office, then eventually moved to a futuristic campus dubbed the "Googleplex"; how the company found its financial footing through keyword-targeted Web ads; how various products like Google News, Froogle, and others were cooked up by an inventive staff; how Brin and Page proved their mettle as tough businessmen through negotiations with AOL Europe and their controversial IPO process, among other instances; and how the company's vision for itself continues to grow, such as geographic expansion to China and cooperation with Craig Venter on the Human Genome Project.
Like the company it profiles, The Google Story is a bit of a wild ride, and fun, too. Its first appendix lists 23 "tips" which readers can use to get more utility out of Google. The second contains the intelligence test which Google Research offers to prospective job applicants, and shows the sometimes zany methods of this most unusual business. Through it all, Vise and Malseed synthesize a variety of fascinating anecdotes and speculation about Google, and readers seeking a first draft of the history of the company will enjoy an easy read. --Peter Han
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Customer Reviews
An entertaining read, but seems like Google PR - PDK -
The Google Story covers major milestones of the company up through its recent push into China, all along the way documenting the eccentric and often unorthodox business approach of its founders: Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The tone is overwhelmingly pro-Google, the only exception being a chapter on click fraud(that mysteriously disappeared in new versions...) that questions Google's practice of charging/reimbursing advertisers. A few good lessons can be learned about entrepreneurship and venture capital, but--albeit an entertaining read, The Google Story feels more like a veiled public relations effort than a subjective and independently researched work.
OK for what it is ... - David Brock - Chicago
"The Google Story" is a decent book if you are looking for a history of the historic company from an outside perspective. Many comments say that the author writes with a bit of favoritism, and I don't disagree one bit. However, the book does not intend to be anything else.
The back cover proclaims "extraordinary access to Google", and it doesn't seem that way. The book offers a good history of the company and its challenges but does not go into much depth about any of them. When they won back business in London, how exactly did they do it? It seems that the light criticism of Google is written from the company's perspective.
With that said, if you wish to become aware of how Google obtained their success, it's a good and informative light read.
A book that is not worth a company - Gustavas Jankauskas - Lithuania
Google is one of the biggest brands in the world. Everyone of us uses it as least few times a day. Of course, a book should have been written about it.
Still, the more books of american authors I read the more I see their incredible skill to worship business leaders as half-gods.
This book is one of the cases - yes, these two Google guys are extremely smart and worth admiration, but not everything they do is close to divine. This style of writing eventually starts to irritate.
If you do decide to read this book, skip first 100 pages, they are literally about nothing and then read every-second page - you will not miss anything because all the stories are a bit too much exagerated. Also, try not to pay attention that authors themselves constantly vary from novel-style-of-writing to pure statistics and numbers.
So, to sum it up, it's worth reading only in a way I advised, otherwise it will be too much of a time waste. Google is worth admiration but this book - definetly not.
*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Aug 09, 2010 20:46:05
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