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What Would Google Do? (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: larry page, inverse relationship between control, elegant organization, Jeff Jarvis, Google Maps, The Times (more...)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This scattered collection of rambling rants lauding Google's abilities to harness the power of the Internet Age generally misses the mark. Blog impresario Jarvis uses the company's success to trace aspects of the new customer-driven, user-generated, niche-market-oriented, customized and collaborative world. While his insights are stimulating, Jarvis's tone is acerbic and condescending; equally off-putting is his pervasive name-dropping. The book picks up in a section on media, where the author finally launches a fascinating discussion of how businesses—especially media and entertainment industries—can continue to evolve and profit by using Google's strategies. Unfortunately, Jarvis may have lost the reader by that point as his attempt to cover too many topics reads more like a series of frenzied blog posts than a manifesto for the Internet age. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Jarvis, columnist and blogger about media, presents his ideas for surviving and prospering in the Internet age, with its new set of rules for emerging technologies as well as industries such as retail, manufacturing, and service. We learn that customers are now in charge, people anywhere can find each other and join forces to support a company’s efforts or oppose them, life and business are more public, conversation has replaced marketing, and openness is the key to success. Jarvis’ other laws include being a platform (help users create products, businesses, communities, and networks of their own); hand over control to anyone; middlemen are doomed; and your worst customer is your best friend, and your best customer is your partner. Jarvis offers thought-provoking observations and valuable examples for individuals and businesses seeking to fully participate in our Internet culture and maximize the opportunities it offers. It is unclear what role Google played, if any, in the preparation of this book, which provides excellent advertising for the company. --Mary Whaley
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Product Details

More About the Author

Jeff Jarvis
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
larry page, inverse relationship between control, elegant organization
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Jeff Jarvis, Google Maps, The Times, New York, First Law, United States, Fred Wilson, Michael Dell, Rishad Tobaccowala, New Jersey, Justice Department, Eric Schmidt, Harvard Business Review, Mark Zuckerberg, Fast Company, Google Power, Howard Stern, Steve Jobs, Craig Newmark, Marissa Mayer, Barack Obama, Union Square, The Wall Street Journal, Jimmy Wales, Weinberger's Corollary
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3.8 out of 5 stars (105 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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79 of 90 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Are you doing what Google does?, January 22, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Jeff Jarvits explains how Google is so successful by:

1. being free
2. acting fast
3. allowing customers to decide (thereby eliminating the third party or agent)
4. providing the most prevalent links based on their ranking ("Googlejuice")
5. etc...

The author gives numerous examples of successful companies which employ similar tactics such as etsy, craigslist, and Amazon. He describes various reasons why these tactics work.

The author certainly elaborates on enough strategies that make Google and others like Google online successes; however, the text drags on endlessly and in a somewhat unorganized fashion that I felt he was verbally vomiting. It was like reading an endless blog instead of a book. If found myself repeatedly asking these two questions:

1. What did I just read?
2. What information did I get out of reading this?

In summary, a person who is thinking of embarking on a net presence will probably find that there's enough material in this book to guide them into doing what Google does. However, since the text rambles on, that person will have to jot down important details as he or she reads in order to remember it. If the book were better organized, more concise and definitive in its evaluation of what Google and others like Google do, and had a clearer table of contents (chapter headings), I would have rated it four stars.
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52 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Just Another Business Book (JABB), but this time, about Google, February 2, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)

What would Google do if it were writing books on business? Probably not write a book like this one. Most business books, like most Saturday Night Live skits, have a nut that's worth a couple minutes of air at most that are dragged out into an interminable pileup. To be sure, there are some interesting and illuminating ideas that Jarvis presents here, but they don't merit 200 pages.

Jarvis seeks to show how Google is the Future, but this gets lost in all his self-promotion and name dropping about his Davos luncheons. Not all of that is bad; his own struggle to get a laptop that works (and the ensuing, minor media racket he was able to generate) provide some good fodder for business and life lessons. One of which ("...your customer is your brand") is even quite profound.

But there is always a but. To get to these nuggets, you have to bushwhack through Jarvis' prose tic of coining absurd neologisms ("Googlethink", "Googlejuice", more and worse to come) and his inane triumphalism. In the introduction, Jarvis sets this tone by writing "We begin by examining the new power structure of the economy and society, where we, the people, are suddenly in charge--empowered by Google".

On the face of it alone, this notion is outrageous. Our Ourubian economy's slide is nothing less than a ratification of "old power structures" at work, regardless of where you're sitting. Even if you're at lunch with Jarvis at Davos.

Jarvis has the stuff in here to have written a short book about Google, without the silly, technorati zeal ("At Google, we are God and our data is the Bible...") and the reliance on old, worn out cliches about how Google's dominance presages "Geeks...coming to rule the culture" which constantly undercut Jarvis' allegations of "old models" being upturned. If you speak in the language of "ruling culture", after all, then you're not promoting upheaval or betterment, but just a new set of codgers at the helm. Thus, as always in a revolution: the wheel turns and you wind up exactly where you started.

You can read this book. It won't make you a better person, and it won't harm you, either.








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75 of 90 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars I think the crux of the book is summed up at page 47. What would Google do? Well, just get lucky, very lucky., January 23, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)

I did not like this book. Yep. It's actually less than OK and I have a distinct aversion toward it. Thus, it earned a 2-star rating from me. In my humble opinion, this book is poorly organized and poorly written. In fact, even as I write this review, I have yet to figure out what organization it has. As I read it I felt like it just kept meandering and babbling with no message, no point, no content of real value.

The title of the book probably would have been just as appropriate if it has been "WWGD?" instead of the search engine optimized verion "What Would Google Do?" And if the author got paid as much as he boasts for writing this book at page 56, then the publishers really got conned. I cannot imagine this book being a bestseller. And if it ultimately is, then I have to laugh heartily at the publishing system that exists today.

The author is a trained journalist who covered New Media stories in business, then started a blog, got cozy with venture capital firms apparently, quit his journalist job, became a CUNY graduate school professor where he collects $100K a year in salary supplemented by consulting and speaking gigs that gets him another $200K a year in revenues. Nowhere in that resume is there any training in business or experience running a company. And thus, we have a self-appointed expert on business telling us about what Google would do if it were YOU. What a joke!

Google is a new media company. It is huge, very good at what it does, and what it provides is in high demand. Its business model is one that relies on revenue streams generated by advertising dollars. Newspapers, magazines, professional sports teams, film producers, and TV stations all create entertainment of some sort or another. What they do rarely creates sizeable revenue streams directly. Only the indirect revenue streams gained through advertisers support the business model. Are most companies set up like this? Can most companies bend their business models to work this way? The proper answer is: NO. And as a result, this book is a bunch of bunk.

At page 31 the author talks about "revenue models." Anybody in business knows there is no such thing. There are business models, and they have revenue streams, but streams are not models - they are just streams (or rivers in the case of Google). And at page 52 the author says "organization is a business model." No. No. No. Organization is merely a way of doing business, but it is not a business model. Business models are profit models. Revenues in must exceed expenses and costs out. And the revenue streams come from selling product, providing service, or advertising.

I think the crux of the book is summed up at page 47. What would Google do? Well, just get lucky, very lucky. 2 stars!

PS. I have read the other three book reviews previously posted for this book. I usually don't read reviews to learn anything, but since I had such a problem figuring out what the purpose of this book was I felt I would check to see if the other reviewers could help me comprehend (see the light). Unfortunately, the other reviews I found to either be babble delievered much like what was in the book - or a verification that the book was mere babble. Oh yeah, I think the book would have been better if the title were changed to "What Would Jarvis Do?" since he's the one laughing all the way to the bank. Not many people in America command $300K a year in compensation.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Jarvis' Google vision applies to everyone
Jeff Jarvis explains Google's revolutionary business and social principles in a very simple and easy to understand way. Read more
Published 6 days ago by Carolina Madrid

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful analysis of the Google goliath
Google is the world's most widely used search engine. Its users conduct hundreds of millions of searches daily, many pursuing links from corporate ads. Read more
Published 8 days ago by Rolf Dobelli

5.0 out of 5 stars Transnational Corporations Must Bow to the Little Guy
I consumed this book on audio-format and Jeff's delivery is great. Amid the range of neo-entrepreneurial platitudes like, "Small is the new Big" and "Free is Competative", he... Read more
Published 14 days ago by Charlotte Ann Hu

3.0 out of 5 stars All in all okay read, just a lot of information coming at you

Jeff Jarvis says it well with his first law, "Give the people control and we will use it." We use it so much we have practically taken it for granted, thanks to Goggle... Read more
Published 17 days ago by ck_361

1.0 out of 5 stars Overpriced
Save your $$$. There are very good $9.99 works out there that cover this ground.
Published 24 days ago by James W. Hull

5.0 out of 5 stars I read it 3x.
First a co-worker suggested it to me. She photocopied out 4 pages of the chapter on real estate. A good deal of what I do is in the real estate industry, so. Read more
Published 26 days ago by Dr. Vince Collura

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Jeff Jarvis brings the goods in on Google. He created a great resource, including many tips on how to increase your GOOGLEJUICE!
Worth every penny.
Published 1 month ago by Healthful Marriage

4.0 out of 5 stars When Google Runs the World...
Jeff Jarvis has taken a look at forty "rules" by which Google operates, and applied them to a variety of online and offline industries. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Cathy Stucker

1.0 out of 5 stars As bad as business literature gets
If you think Tom Friedman's a genius, then you'll love "What Would Google Do?"

I had hopes for this book. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Packherd

5.0 out of 5 stars A Metaphor For Where To Go Next
In 1995, Robert Spector wrote a book about a Northwest upscale department store chain that embraced the idea of customer service. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Todd Sattersten

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