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The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture
vBulletin Book Store > vBulletin books beginning with S
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The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture |
Author: John Battelle
Published: 2006-10-03 |
List price: $14.95
Our price: $6.46
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As of: October 15th, 2008 08:10:54 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 A good overview of Internet Search and the companies involved
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
 Great Read
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.
great book at a great price
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.
An insight into a company and an industry
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
Great overview of the Search industry
It's a great overiview of the search industry and its brief but intense history.
However, it's also a good and refreshing reminder that success stories, such as Google's, are not envisioned or planned they way they later unfold. For example, the book explains how Google early on tried to sell their search engine to Yahoo! or one of the other portals, but no buyer was found! Google was in financial hardships and did not know how to make money (except with traditional banner ads) when Bill Gross came up with the pay-per-click model that Google simply copied.
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