The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture [Hardcover]

John Battelle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 2005

What does the world want? According to John Battelle, a company that answers that question -- in all its shades of meaning -- can unlock the most intractable riddles of both business and culture. And for the past few years, that's exactly what Google has been doing.

Jumping into the game long after Yahoo, Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, and other pioneers, Google offered a radical new approach to search, redefined the idea of viral marketing, survived the dotcom crash, and pulled off the largest and most talked about initial public offering in the history of Silicon Valley.

But The Search offers much more than the inside story of Google's triumph. It's also a big-picture book about the past, present, and future of search technology, and the enormous impact it is starting to have on marketing, media, pop culture, dating, job hunting, international law, civil liberties, and just about every other sphere of human interest.

More than any of its rivals, Google has become the gateway to instant knowledge. Hundreds of millions of people use it to satisfy their wants, needs, fears, and obsessions, creating an enormous artifact that Battelle calls "the Database of Intentions." Somewhere in Google's archives, for instance, you can find the agonized research of a gay man with AIDS, the silent plotting of a would-be bombmaker, and the anxiety of a woman checking out her blind date. Combined with the databases of thousands of other search-driven businesses, large and small, it all adds up to a goldmine of information that powerful organizations (including the government) will want to get their hands on.

No one is better qualified to explain this entire phenomenon than Battelle, who cofounded Wired and founded The Industry Standard. Perhaps more than any other journalist, he has devoted his career to finding the holy grail of technology -- something as transformational as the Macintosh was in the mid- 1980s. And he has finally found it in search.

Battelle draws on more than 350 interviews with major players from Silicon Valley to Seattle to Wall Street, including Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt, as well as competitors like Louis Monier, who invented AltaVista, and Neil Moncrief, a soft-spoken Georgian whose business Google built, destroyed, and built again.

Battelle lucidly reveals how search technology actually works, explores the amazing power of targeted advertising, and reports on the frenzy of the Google IPO, when the company tried to rewrite the rules of Wall Street and declared "don't be evil" as its corporate motto.

For anyone who wants to understand how Google really succeeded -- and the implications of a world in which every click can be preserved forever -- THE SEARCH is an eye-opening and indispensable read.

"Battelle has written a brilliant business book, but he's also done something more... All searchers should read it."
-Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute

"This book ought to be called 'The Answer.' As usual, John Battelle delivers insightful, thought-provoking, and essential reading."
-Seth Godin, author of All Marketers Are Liars and Purple Cow

"Nobody, and I mean nobody, has thought longer, harder, or smarter about Google and the search business than John Battelle."
-John Heilemann, author of Pride Before the Fall

"A must read for anyone endeavoring to understand one of the most important trends of this generation.'"
-Mary Meeker, Managing Director, Internet Analyst, Morgan Stanley

"Battelle has... figured out why "search" is so damned important to the future of everything digital. Even more impressive, he's actually managed to turn the subject into a compelling analog story.
-John Huey, editorial director, Time inc.

"A terrific book."
--L. Gordon Crovitz, Dow Jones

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you pick your books by their popularity--how many and which other people are reading them--then know this about The Search: it's probably on Bill Gates' reading list, and that of almost every venture capitalist and startup-hungry entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. In its sweeping survey of the history of Internet search technologies, its gossip about and analysis of Google, and its speculation on the larger cultural implications of a Web-connected world, it will likely receive attention from a variety of businesspeople, technology futurists, journalists, and interested observers of mid-2000s zeitgeist.

This ambitious book comes with a strong pedigree. Author John Battelle was a founder of The Industry Standard and then one of the original editors of Wired, two magazines which helped shape our early perceptions of the wild world of the Internet. Battelle clearly drew from his experience and contacts in writing The Search. In addition to the sure-handed historical perspective and easy familiarity with such dot-com stalwarts as AltaVista, Lycos, and Excite, he speckles his narrative with conversational asides from a cast of fascinating characters, such Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Yahoo's, Jerry Yang and David Filo; key executives at Microsoft and different VC firms on the famed Sandhill road; and numerous other insiders, particularly at the company which currently sits atop the search world, Google.

The Search is not exactly the corporate history of Google. At the book's outset, Battelle specifically indicates his desire to understand what he calls the cultural anthropology of search, and to analyze search engines' current role as the "database of our intentions"--the repository of humanity's curiosity, exploration, and expressed desires. Interesting though that beginning is, though, Battelle's story really picks up speed when he starts dishing inside scoop on the darling business story of the decade, Google. To Battelle's credit, though, he doesn't stop just with historical retrospective: the final part of his book focuses on the potential future directions of Google and its products' development. In what Battelle himself acknowledges might just be a "digital fantasy train", he describes the possibility that Google will become the centralizing platform for our entire lives and quotes one early employee on the weightiness of Google's potential impact: "Sometimes I feel like I am on a bridge, twenty thousand feet up in the air. If I look down I'm afraid I'll fall. I don't feel like I can think about all the implications."

Some will shrug at such words; after all, similar hype has accompanied other technologies and other companies before. Many others, though, will search Battelle's story for meaning--and fast. --Peter Han

From Publishers Weekly

Rather than write a book strictly about the rise of Google as a business, technology journalist Battelle targets his research on the concept of Internet search, beginning the book with a discussion of an abstract idea he terms the "Database of Intentions," defined as the sum total of all queries that pour into search engines daily, revealing the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of our culture. Though most of the book is devoted to the search engine giant (which Battelle reports corners 51 percent of the search engine market), the author also includes chapters on "Search, Before Google" and the "Who, What, Where, Why, When. And How (much)" of search. Battelle is at his best when describing the creation of Google, especially through the yin-yang personalities of its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and in describing the company's culture. Though Battelle's descriptions of Internet search technology can get too technical for readers without a computer science background, the book is a deeply researched and nimbly reported look at how search has defined the Internet and how it will continue to be a tremendous reflection of culture.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; First Edition edition (September 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591840880
• ISBN-13: 978-1591840886
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (112 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #529,956 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Will "search engines" change the world as we know it?, October 8, 2005

By 

Michael Erisman (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (Hardcover)

The book is excellent, although if you are a true techno-geek it will be pedestrian from a technical sense. However, for the novice it is a great overview on the history of search engines and the power they are just starting to demonstrate. I found the history of all the various engineers and technology overlaid against the backdrop of luck, economics and timing, to be a fascinating glimpse into the reality that the best technology is not usually what makes the most money.

At the core of the book though is the concept of what a search engine can do. Obviously there are as many possibilities to develop and implement search algorithms as there are creative people to invent them (Microsoft MSN, Yahoo and others have products that compete directly with, and in many cases outperform the more well known brand the book focuses on), but essentially they have the power to pull together unbelievable amounts of formerly disconnected data, and create a targeted marketing aimed at you personally.

The potential danger of all of this technology is that depending on how you set the algorithm, you no longer simply search reality, but actually create it. For example, a change in how the search engine works can drive business to some on line retailers while destroying the business of others. It can conceivably literally create trends, and promote views, all through the seemingly blind eye of the program. The problem is that these programs are anything but blind, and we are on the verge of tremendous legal battles due to the creativity of those trying to use the system to deflect traffic from the owner of a trademark, to their own competing brand, with full compliance by the folks at Google.

Overall, this book is an excellent way for the novice to understand this phenomenon a little better, and be more aware of how our world is changing. Sure, there are valid literary criticisms of the book, and the author is biased towards (seems enamored with) Google, but it is a very interesting book that is informative, and certainly not dull. Recommended.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars History of Google, Not Search Engines, September 10, 2006

By 

Jordan Stalker (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (Hardcover)

Though I'm coming to a review of The Search a year too late, I can explain why. I bought the book on its release, very excited to read some good journalism about the hottest business topic of the day. I was sure that Battelle, who had been chronically his progress on the book on his own blog, would deliver. Halfway through the book (in a matter of three days - a possible sign pointing to its lack of depth) I'm realizing that this is not the case.

Thus far, I have two major gripes with the book. The first is the writing itself. The book is written in informal magazine style, in keeping with his roots as a "cutting edge" technology writer (having worked for Wired and Business 2.0, magazines that try desperately to be "too cool for the room").

This would be fine enough, except that Battelle has a habit of jumping around from year to year, talking about decisions made by players in Google's history before he actually introduces them. He never fully explains why it was important for Sergey Brin and Larry Page - Google's founders - to resign their chairman and CEO posts, nor does he tell the reader what their new titles are. Battelle also has a habit of reintroducing people several times, a practice which at times seems a cheap way to up his page count. His writing style thoroughly muddles however much thoughtfulness there was to his project. I considered keeping a tally of how many times he used "well" as an interjection, but lost interested after I ran out of fingers.

On page 150 he discusses a lack of managerial prowess on the part of Brin, Page and new CEO Eric Schmidt. According to Battelle, one of Google's investors, John Doerr, insisted that Intuit founder Bill Campbell come on as a leadership coach. Battelle uses an anecdote from journalist John Heilemann's GQ article on Google, which quotes Doerr as saying, "I don't know where the company would be without him." However, Battelle doesn't include any of his own reporting on what Campbell actually did. Neglecting to explain right away what this `miraculous' shift was is, in my own journalistic view, irresponsible. Not to mention that he doesn't include the actual title of Heilemann's article in either the main book or the citations.

Later in the book on page 172, he tries to play the role of not only a technology writer, and search historian, but also media theorist and critic, waxing about how Google ought to be considered a media company - not just a technology company.

In the book's final chapter, Battelle introduces the idea of having several different kinds of information contribute to "perfect search," including every tech writer and journalist's favorite idea, the blog. He bulldozes through a description of the blog and later posits that we have reached the critical mass point, "but we don't know it yet." I suspect that Battelle means that he's savvier than users and other writers and he knows something we don't, but he doesn't explain why he thinks we've reached the tipping point, nor what that means in the overall discussion of what the blog can do.

Though Battelle tries to play his book as a "history of search," it is nowhere near as comprehensive as such a book must be. It is a book that sings the praises of Google, nothing more. However, that the book is a history of Google is fine. The company certainly is interesting and large enough to warrant an historical account and Battelle ought to be forthcoming with his intent. The short discussions he does include of the company's search engine precursors such as Lycos and Alta-Vista need considerable expansion and deserve to be considered as more than also-rans, if he really wants to be considered the historian of search and not just Google's unofficial corporate historian.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A window into an industry, a look at the future, December 19, 2005

By 

Manny Hernandez "@askmanny" (Bay Area, CA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (Hardcover)

John Battelle knows search. His blog on the topic has become a standard of sorts in an industry that evolves by the minute (almost) and his book on the topic is as comprehensive as it is insightful. He does an excelled job at looking back at the evolution of the search field from its early days, going into greater detail about Google, and delving some into Yahoo!, Altavista and A9. Yet, he cleverly manages to keep the book fresh by not just sticking his head in the past, but posing interesting philosophical questions throughout the book.

After doing a fairly comprehensive assessment of the evolution and current state of the industry as of the publishing of the book, almost the entire last two chapters of "The Search" are devoted to the exploration of the possible avenues Google specifically and the search domain at large will likely be taking. This part of the book is bound to be fascinating to SEO/Internet Marketing professionals as well as to the average web user.

If you want to learn more about Google, I suggest you pick up "The Google Story", published shortly after this book. The truth is it will only save you from reading just a couple of chapters on the mega-successful search company in this book. Otherwise, there is not that much overlap between the two books. If you haven't read either one, I'd say start here, and if you feel like it, move on to "The Google Story". That for sure will wet your appetite for knowledge on the Search Engine topic.