Google Speaks: Secrets of the World's Greatest Billionaire Entrepreneurs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Praise for Google Speaks

"It's not hard to see that Google is a phenomenal company....At Geico, we pay these guys a whole lot of money for this and that key word."
–Warren Buffett

"Google rocks. It raised my perceived IQ by about 20 points."
–Wes Boyd, President of Moveon.Org

"Google is my rapid response research assistant. It's the Swiss Army knife of information retrieval."
–Lloyd Grove, columnist, Portfolio.com

"Who's afraid of Google? Everyone."
–Wired magazine

"Writers of the past had absinthe, whiskey or heroin. I have Google."
–Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

From the Inside Flap

In many ways, Google is the prototype of a successful twenty-first-century company. It uses technology in new ways to make information universally accessible; promotes a corporate culture that encourages creativity among its employees; and takes its role as a corporate citizen very seriously, investing in green initiatives and developing the largest corporate foundation in the United States.

Following in the footsteps of Warren Buffett Speaks and Jack Welch Speaks—which contain a conversational style that successfully captures the essence of these business leaders—Google Speaks reveals the amazing story behind one of the most important new companies of our time by exploring the people and philosophies that have made it a global phenomenon in less than fifteen years.

Written by bestselling author Janet Lowe, this book offers an engaging look at how Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, transformed their vision of a better Internet search engine into a business colossus with about $16 billion in annual revenue. Lowe discusses the values that drive Brin and Page-for example, how they both live fairly modest lives, despite each having a net worth in excess of $15.9 billion-and details how they have created a culture that fosters fun while, at the same time, keeping Google at the forefront of technology through relentless R&D investments and imaginative partnerships with organizations such as NASA.

In addition to examining Google's breakthrough business strategies and new business models-which have transformed online advertising and changed the way we look at corporate responsibility and employee relations-Lowe explains why Google may be a harbinger of where corporate America is headed. She also addresses controversies surrounding Google, such as copyright infringement, antitrust concerns, and personal privacy and poses the question almost every successful company must face: as Google grows, can it hold on to its entrepreneurial spirit as well as its informal motto, "Don't do evil"?

What started out as a university research project conducted by Sergey Brin and Larry Page has ended up revolutionizing the world we live in. Google Speaks puts these incredible entrepreneurs in perspective and shows you how their drive and determination have allowed them to create one of today's most powerful companies.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 315 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (May 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 047039854X
• ISBN-13: 978-0470398548
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #196,774 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Messy fluff, July 2, 2009

By	Micky Lee (Somerville, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The usefulness of this book depends on how much the readers know about Google. To readers who think Google is nothing but a search engine, this book can be passed as informative. To readers who have read other Google books and know quite a lot about the company, this book does not add much. In fact, I doubt the writer knows much about the technology of Google. She seems to have some difficulties with explaining what PageRank and AdSense are.

The content organisation is terrible. In one chapter, the author spends great length reciting the origin of the name Google, the logo, and doodle. In another chapter, she tries to cover all the legal cases against Google. It may make sense to spend at least one chapter on intellectual property; another on free speech, etc.

The conclusion? Well, if you possess the qualities of Brin and Page, and Buffet and Oprah, perhaps you will succeed too! But I bet that Brin and Page did not waste their valuable time on books like this one at Stanford.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sloppy and Superficial!, May 25, 2009

By	Loyd E. Eskildson "Pragmatist" (Phoenix, AZ.) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The "good news" is that just about anything about Google is at least somewhat interesting - including "Google Speaks"; the "bad news" is that the book is sloppy and superficial. Sloppy because it has a few misspelled words (inexcusable in this day of spell-checking), obvious misstatements (eg. company value rose to "$100 million" (billion), inferring that the company laid off 10,000 during the 2008 downturn, and claiming the firm has 6,000 PCs (other sources suggest many more);superficial because it lacks clear structure, and provides few, if any, details about its Dutch auction IPO, click fraud, pornography revenues, and the business plan for digitizing all/most books and Street View. In addition, the book lacks any breakout of revenues by product line, information on its anti-trust vulnerability, and conflict of interest vs. Apple (two overlapping board members).

Yet, there's still interesting material eg. both Larry Page and Sergey Brin are sons of scientists, are Jewish, received a Montessori School education as children, and both attended Standford to pursue a PhD in computing science. Google just catalogued its one trillionth Web page, has expanded from just the two of them to 20,000 (more or less), and latest advertising revenues (about $16 billion, with $4.2 billion net) are almost as great as the four major TV networks - combined.

Their initial attempts to obtain funding were rebuffed, partly because there already were 37 search engines at the time, partly because they had no business plan. Lucky for Google's founders. Google is used over 200 million times/day, and has a 71.7% market share (76^ of search-engine revenues). Google provides its search engine for AOL and Mozilla Firefox.

PageRank, the key to Google's ranking system, takes into account the number of links and ranking of those links, as well as about 500 other variables.

Advertisers bid both on words that should deliver their ads and on the maximum amount they're willing to pay/click. Winning bidders pay only a penny more than second-place bidders, a ploy designed to encourage them to bid high knowing they'll not be penalized if far above the market (Vickrey auction). Bid price helps get top placement for ads, but that is not the only factor. Ads are also assigned a "quality" score, calculated by historical click rates, an advertiser's account history, relevancy of the bidder's ad (eg. prevent a porn site from coming up for unrelated searches), geographical distance, and other factors. Vendors can also try a variety of ads, and automatically determine which are most effective.

Google provides advertisers with information showing the seasonality and geography of selected search terms.

Page, Brin, and Schmidt hold 1/3 of company stock, while maintaining 2/3 of the votes.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Google, the powerful search engine, August 14, 2009

By	Mariusz Skonieczny "Author" (ClassicValueInvestors.blogspot.com) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Google is an exceptional company. It is currently the most used search engine on the web. I picked up this book because I wanted to learn how this company started and why it is so successful. I enjoyed reading the history of the two founders who met at Stanford, and, at first, thought of each other as arrogant and obnoxious, but then ended up founding one of the most powerful companies in the world together.

Google is extremely successful because it has a platform power or network effect. As more people use the platform to search the Internet, the more valuable it becomes. The company knows how powerful its platform is so it works really hard to expand it in any way it can. I enjoyed reading this book.

- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market