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

Battelle, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1591840880 ISBN 13: 9781591840886

Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover, 2005

Synopsis

The story of the popular Internet search engine draws on more than 350 interviews with executives at Google and other leading technology companies, explaining how it became one of the world's leading IPOs and revealing how Google and its competitors contributed to changes in information searching and viral marketing. 40,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

John Battelle is a cofounding editor of Wired and the founder of The Industry Standard, as well as TheStandard.com. He is currently program chair for the Web 2.0 conference, a columnist for Business 2.0, and the founder, chairman, and publisher of Federated Media Publishing, Inc.

Reviews

Rather than write a book strictly about the rise of Google as a business, technology journalist Battelle targets his research on the concept of Internet search, beginning the book with a discussion of an abstract idea he terms the "Database of Intentions," defined as the sum total of all queries that pour into search engines daily, revealing the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of our culture. Though most of the book is devoted to the search engine giant (which Battelle reports corners 51 percent of the search engine market), the author also includes chapters on "Search, Before Google" and the "Who, What, Where, Why, When. And How (much)" of search. Battelle is at his best when describing the creation of Google, especially through the yin-yang personalities of its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and in describing the company's culture. Though Battelle's descriptions of Internet search technology can get too technical for readers without a computer science background, the book is a deeply researched and nimbly reported look at how search has defined the Internet and how it will continue to be a tremendous reflection of culture.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Battelle, entrepreneur, writer, and academic, explores the concept of search, one of the Internet's first useful services, which adopted an actual business model in banner advertising. This also is a book about the fabulous success of Google, which is at the core of Battelle's research, but the book is broader in scope than one company's story. We learn that the impact of search on our culture is extraordinary--it could bring together the convergence of television and personal computers and it could lead to the creation of artificial intelligence. The author opens up our perspective on the enormity of search and society's collective click stream, the product of our online lives as played out across Internet sites and private machines with e-mails recorded and preserved, and although losing some privacy, we seek convenience, service, and power. Battelle sees the search engines of the future as intelligent agents and reference librarians holding all of human knowledge. This is an excellent, thought-provoking book. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1591840880
• ISBN 13: 9781591840886
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320