The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture
- ISBN-10
- 1591840880
- ISBN-13
- 9781591840886
- Series
- The Search
- Pages
- 311
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2005
- Publisher
- Portfolio
- Author
- John Battelle
Description
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
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2024-07-02
- 210 pages
- Paperback
- Indiana University Press
Similar books
-
The Search
By Naguib MahfouzA powerful story of lust, greed and murder. Unflinching, tough, and dramatic, The Search was most certainly intended to be a harsh criticism of Post-Revolution morality, but, on its most elemental level, it is a lurid and compelling tale.
-
The Search for Why: A Revolutionary New Model for Understanding Others, Improving Communication, and Healing Division
By Bob RaleighAnd of course, understanding what truly makes you tick is an invaluable step on your journey to self-discovery. In The Search for Why, Bob Raleigh offers the missing link that all the big data in the world can’t deliver.
-
The Search
By Nora RobertsThe Search
-
The Search: Forgiveness, Family, and Love
By Joyce Murphy ArendtWe are keeping a vigil, as he may begin to awake at any moment. In that case, we would ask all that are not medical personnel to vacate the room while we tend to our patient. “He isn't awake yet?” Victoria asked.
-
The Search for Fundamentals: The Process of Modernisation and the Quest for Meaning
By Lieteke van Vucht Tijssen, Jan Berting, Frank LechnerThose questions pertain not only to the search for the ultimate meaning of life, but also to that for identity in social and cultural life. How should one act as an individual and as a social being? When the search for identity is ...
-
The Search for Infinity
By Alina Ben LarbiHere too everything was carved out of numbers, but Paula often seemed to find the number three. "If I may introduce myself, my name is Zacharias. Tsar of the number city and number gnome," said the figure.
-
Applied Geophysics in the Search for Minerals
By A. S. Eve, D. A. KeysAPPLIED GEOPHYSICS The weather reports issued daily may be regarded as an example of applied geophysics. If earthquakes could be forecast with some precision, that result would again be listed under applied geophysics.
-
The search for democratic renewal: The politics of consultation in Britain and Australia
By Rob ManwaringLudlam, S. and Smith M.J. (eds), 2004, Governing as New Labour: Policy and Politics under Blair, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Lukes, S., 1999, 'The Last Word on the Third Way', The Review, Social Market Foundation, London.
-
The Search for an Alternative: Philosophical Perspectives of Subjectivism and Marxism
By Marvin FarberIt may and does in fact occur that the painstaking investigator , or the logical critic , will find himself unable to go along with the founder of phenomenology in numerous respects , both in the name of its guiding principles and ...
-
The Search for El Dorado (Totally True Adventures): Is the City of Gold a Real Place?
By Lois Miner HueyThis nonfiction chapter book makes history exciting and accessible for younger readers and features illustrations, photographs, a map, Common Core connections, and additional Story Behind the Story facts.