Customer Reviews

Google Power: Unleash the Full Potential of Google

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Although this book is well written and contained much information, there was little information included that is not already available on Google's Help pages for free. Buy this book only if you don't like reading online help pages.

Sherman offers instructions into how much you can do with Google. Way beyond its signature searching ability. Perhaps the most obvious and successful is its news feeds. An excellent way to read from newspapers all over the world.

Also, in its regular searching, Google stores old versions of many pages it spiders. Sometimes you may find this useful, when a website deletes some of its content before you got to it.

Plus, there are the thousands of newsgroups. Ironically, some of these predate Google and the Web itself. They hark back to when the Internet communication was a much simpler text-based mode.

For programmer types, Sherman explains the Google API. Which lets you write code that programmatically hooks up to Google, without the drawbacks of screen scraping.

With several of the Google options that Sherman describes, it is unclear what profit Google ultimately makes out of them, beyond just mindshare. But I guess its search profits are so lucrative that it can afford to bleed on these other options.

The book is a bit outdated, but there is nothing anybody can do about it. By the time a book is written, edited, published and finally available for purchase at your local book store did pass so much time that is measured in Google or Internet time a small eternity. Every book to the subject is by default outdated by the time you can buy it.

However, as long as the book provides general truth and methods in addition to specifics, long time value is still guaranteed. I would say this is partially true with this book. It does focus on specifics and most stuff is still true, but a lot of stuff changed since then, in some cases dramatically.

I use Google for years now and consider myself very Internet savvy, especially when it comes to search engines and even I learned some nice tricks from the book.

It comes in handy sometimes and I am sure that it will be useful for a few more years to come, but I would not expect too much from it. I have not found any better book in print format yet, but the best place for this kind of information is actually the Internet itself.

Still, I love to have a print version around. That's may be just me being old fashioned, but I am sure that I am not the only one out there.

I think this is a great book for people that want to know more about searching in general and using google to search-- in particular.

The author has thrown in his vast personal experience and expertise. It shows in the books' tips and search strategies.
He supplements the technical stuff with his real world samples that show the readers how particular google features can be put to good use.

It assembles the most useful links to make it easier for readers to use.

Oh , btw, i am in no way related to the author. :)

Chris Sherman, President of Searchwise LLC, reviews Google in his Google Power: Unleash The Full Potential Of Google. Customize Google for your own fast search needs, differentiate between authoritative references and pop sites lacking authenticity, and recover content that's been removed from the web: these are only a few of the in-depth techniques covered here, and missing in competing titles.

This is a thorough and conscientious work. However, I also appreciate the work for the directions in which it could have potentially taken the inquiry (i.e. where it pointed but didn't take us). For example, the concern that the federal government could require Google furnish the personal information of its users is misplaced.

fireflySun DOT com/book/Google2.php

And victims of gang cyberstalking might welcome such a registry. Consider the following:

1. Stalking gangs use Google to search IP addresses to keep tabs on the activities of its victims, often disrupting their relationships with third parties and collecting information to create / disseminate dossiers.

2. Just a single post by an epileptically-posting belligerent in Usenet's unmoderated news groups (over 90% of which amount to flame wars) is cloned by news readers (as many times as there are news readers to archive it to the web under a unique URL). Google then archives all these posts, and they rank highly in a search of your name in Google.

3. Google's customer service could not keep pace with its OCD-like hoarding of content, and when you request that Google remove a link to a malicious and libelous message containing nothing accurate except your illicitly-procured residential address and phone number, Google threatens by claiming that if you compel them with a legal document to remove any message, your name and document will be referred to a free speech web site for blacklisting (chillingeffects.org).

So Google itself, and our infatuation with it (and dependence on it), is still young enough that we ignore the fact Google is a public safety and health risk (i.e. "The Great Repression").

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