The Google Story Reviewed
For my birthday this year I was given a copy of David Vise’s book, “The Google Story”. The book was published in November 2005, which makes it a reasonably up-to-date coverage of the rise of Google from its early days at Stanford through to its float on the stock exchange.
David Vise, who apparently doesn’t work for Google, takes us through a journey with Sergey Brin and Larry Page as they hang out together at Stanford, attend Burning Man Festival, and of course develop their capacity to download the whole of the internet on to their computers.
There are chapters on Adsense, the hiring of a CEO, partnership with Ask Jeeves, Yahoo and AOL, Google News, Google Translation and country-specific portals, Google Earth and Google Moon, Froogle, click fraud, competition with Microsoft and entry into the Chinese market.
The book ends with some consideration of Google’s effect on Microsoft. I note that MSN Search was quicker to cache Duncan’s TV Adland when I moved it to its own domain. However something like 85 to 90 percent of searches for pages at my sites are done through Google.
The book finishes with 23 Google Search Tips, a Google Labs Aptitude Test, and the Google Financial Scorecard for the years 1999 to 2004.
