Customer Reviews

The Google Story: For Google's 10th Birthday

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Well, this book was quite disappointing.

At first, I liked how the author was able to tell the story and how he has connected the pieces together, but he has perpetrated huge mistakes like, for example, forgetting how some first generation googlers were vital to the success of the company.

I am talking of people like Eric Veach, who created the algorithms for AdWords, Jeff Dean, who created important infrastructure tools, Paul Buchheit, the Gmail creator and many, many other googlers. Fortunately, Craig Silverstein and Craig Nevill-Manning were not forgotten but the author barely mention their names.

Did you know that the "Don't be evil" motto was created by Paul Buchheit and Avid Pattel? Well, this fact is totally ignored by the author! If you read the book it will look like it was created by Brin and Page. Even Wikipedia is more accurate than this book.

The first few chapters provide a high-level description of the early days of Google. This reader was left wanting more detail. Subsequent chapters are disjointed descriptions of the origins of other Google services like Google News and Google Shopping. For the Internet-savvy reader in 2009, I'm afraid this book is obsolete because most of us understand the importance of Internet search, blogging and other Google services. When this book was written, those services were new and not yet widely understood. The hand-holding that the book provides to describe simple concepts like Google Shopping is not necessary and comes across as borderline insulting.

This book provides precious little detail about Google. This book is good for skimming only. Readers looking for an in-depth account of the founding and inner-workings of Google will be left wanting more.

Skip It.

The updated version for 2008 doesn't supply anything new other than a chapter on how much richer Brin and Page are, and a more useful chapter on future endeavours.
However, if you didn't read the first edition, this is a must read story--especially ten years after the company's debut. As an avid business user of Google, I enjoyed reliving the memories of how simple concepts created millionairs of people like you and me...and how it still does if you just follow the simple plan the boys envisioned. Even this time around, I still found a couple of things I had forgotten that I immediately incorporated into my current webpage to ensure the googlebot liked me even more. And like clockwork, it worked immediately.

If you're new to adwords or adsense, be sure to read the chapters on SEO; it's not as complicated as it seems. If you spend the time and build it properly...they will come!
If nothing else, the updated release (as I'm sure it was intended) reminds the online businessperson that this is mandatory reading.

The book is informative in a factual sense but the author's tone is gushing to the point that it's distracting. This is not an evenhanded chronicle of Google's history - it's a fairly shallow, idealized account of Page, Brin, Schmidt and Google. The book would be much more interesting if it was balanced.

The Google Story: For Google's 10th Birthday made for very easy airplane reading on a cross country trip last week. The authors's styles very much reflect their newspaper training and experience, and to a certain extent, missing a bit of the tough editing one is used to during their day jobs.

Nonetheless, it was fun to read a comprehensive review of what has become one of my favorite links online, and it reminded me of several of my own experiences along the way:

-- Nine years ago folks on "The New York Times" Crossword discussion group had an intense debate over whether "google" could be used as a verb and whether it had to be capitalized -- that's an absolute non-issue today several billion searches later.

-- In 1999 we tried to license the search engine for a Fortune 100 company; I now understand why Google down played that effort for a number of years and couldn't make a deal.

-- The checklist of shortcuts was mostly old news, but a couple of the hints had value.

-- Some of the beta features sound fascinating and once I had access to the Internet I signed myself up.

Overall, for anyone who uses the search engine on a regular basis and reads about Google in the newspaper, there is very little new here. But it was fun to review the bidding and speculate a bit with the authors about the future.

Robert C. Ross 2008

I was really hoping this would be an entertaining account but it reads like the company's PR team wrote it. The book is long on wet kisses for Google's founders and short on details, anecdotes, etc. At some point it just implodes, making this a waste of reading time.

A fascinating read of the first 10 years of Google. The book introduces you to all the famous faces of Google. The only down side of this book is not introducing some of the other major faces of Google. Can be a little to praise worthy of Google at times.

For a non-computer type, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and learning about Google. Easy to read, and gives a great historical perspective about the birth of the company. Have recommended this book to several friends.

"This book not only tells the story how Larry and Sergey created Google and made it successful, also the principle behind the pair.

I don't know that Google has ambitious long-term plans on biology and genetics until I read this book."