The Google Story: For Google's 10th Birthday - Hardcover

Vise, David A.; Malseed, Mark

3.88

16,063 ratings by Goodreads

9780385342728: The Google Story: For Google's 10th Birthday

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385342721 ISBN 13: 9780385342728

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 2008

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Here is the story behind one of the most remarkable Internet successes of our time. Based on scrupulous research and extraordinary access to Google, the book takes you inside the creation and growth of a company whose name is a favorite brand and a standard verb recognized around the world. Its stock is worth more than Disney's, McDonald's and General Motors' combined, its staff enjoys free meals inspired by a former chef for the Grateful Dead, and its employees traverse the firm's colorful Silicon Valley campus on scooters and inline skates.

The Google Story is the definitive account of the populist media company powered by the world's most advanced technology that in a few short years has revolutionized access to information about everything for everybody everywhere.

In 1998, Moscow-born Sergey Brin and Midwest-born Larry Page dropped out of graduate school at Stanford University to, in their own words, "change the world" through a search engine that would organize every bit of information on the web for free.

While the company has done exactly that in more than one hundred languages, Google's quest continues as it seeks to add millions of books, videos, personal genetic records and more to its searchable database.

Readers will learn about the amazing business acumen and computer wizardry that started the company on its astonishing course; the secret network of computers delivering lightning-fast search results; the unorthodox approach that has enabled it to shake up Wall Street, scoop up YouTube, and challenge Microsoft's dominance at every turn. Not afraid of controversy, Google is looking to expand in Communist China and pursuing other projects that may come to test the founders' mantra: DON'T BE EVIL.

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Review:

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

About the Author:

David A. Vise, formerly a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for The Washington Post, is a Senior Advisor to New Mountain Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, and to New Mountain Vantage, the firm's public equity fund. He is the author of three previous books, including the New York Times bestseller, The Bureau and the Mole.

Mark Malseed has contributed to The Washington Post, Boston Herald, Moment, and other publications. The former researcher to Bob Woodward, he is a consultant to ChaCha and cofounder of OhMyGov.com.

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