 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | 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 $1 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 |
Average Customer Rating:    An entertaining read, but seems like Google PR 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 ... "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 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. An average book about a great business story Quite detailed story and insight on the google way and its unique approach to business and internet. That makes the 3/5 note, but the writer style is quite heavy, the book could have been much more compact, maybe because it targets a wide audience and not only geeks.
The author is also quite "Google-biased", not much criticism inside the book, but reading it through, you feel like some critical view is missing, maybe because it has been reviewed by Google... But despite this, i recommend the book for anybody willing to know a bit more about Google and getting some insider stories. Truly awful I'll start by saying: this is the first book I've ever thrown out. This is truly the worst book I've ever read. What could be an interesting story is just gushing fanboy nonsense.
It really does seem to have been researched by cutting and pasting Google press releases. I wish I could quote some of the gushing text, but I threw it out in disgust. |  |
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