Dimensions
152 x 234 x 28mm
There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. This is a ride on the Google wave, telling the story of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses - from newspapers to books to television to movies to telephones to advertising to Microsoft. With unprecedented access to Google’s founders and executives, as well as to those in media who are struggling to keep their heads above water, Ken Auletta reveals how the industry is being disrupted and redefined.
On one level Auletta uses Google as a stand-in for the digital revolution as a whole – and goes inside Google’s closed door meetings, introducing Google’s notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as those who work with – and against – them. Besides the fullest account ever told of Google’s rise, the reader discovers the ‘secret sauce’ of Google’s success, and shows how and why the worlds of ‘new’ and ‘old’ media often communicate as if residents of different planets. It may send chills down traditionalists’ spines, but it’s a crucial roadmap to how media business may be done going forward. For the Google story may well be the canary in the coal mine.
Googled is candid and authoritative – based on extensive research including in-house at Google HQ – and it doesn’t flinch from outlining the negatives related to the Google worldview, as well as charting the extraordinary vision and business acumen that brought us the phenomenon of the uber search engine. And crucially, it’s not just a history or reportage: it’s forward-looking. This book is ahead of the curve, unlike any Google books that have gone before – which tend to have been near-histories, somewhat starstruck, now out of date, or don’t look at the full synthesis of business and technology.
