The Search

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L16.99 UK only
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"Nearly everyone I hold dear has asked why I was writing a book about search. A book about Google as a business, sure, they could understand that. But why search? Because through search one can tell the story of the modern Internet era in all its cultural and commercial nuances. . . ."
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 business and arguably of human culture itself. And for the past few years, that's exacdy what Google has been doing.
Jumping into the game long after Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, and other pioneers, Google offered a radical new approach to search, redefined the idea of viral marketing, survived the dot-com crash, and pidled 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... Tovább

Fülszöveg

L16.99 UK only
I
I
"Nearly everyone I hold dear has asked why I was writing a book about search. A book about Google as a business, sure, they could understand that. But why search? Because through search one can tell the story of the modern Internet era in all its cultural and commercial nuances. . . ."
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 business and arguably of human culture itself. And for the past few years, that's exacdy what Google has been doing.
Jumping into the game long after Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, and other pioneers, Google offered a radical new approach to search, redefined the idea of viral marketing, survived the dot-com crash, and pidled 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 fiiture of search technology and the enormous impact it's 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 bomb maker, 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
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up to a gold mine 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, Battelle 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 Seatde 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 to be 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.
I John Battelle is a cofounding editor of WiredssiA the founder of The Industry Standard, as well as TheStandard.com. He is currently program chair for the Web 2.0 conference, a colum-I nist for Business 2.0, and the founder, chairman, and publisher of Federated Media Publishing, Inc. He lives in Kentfield, California, with | his wife and three children. ^
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Visit John Battelle's Searchblog at www.battellemedia.com
Advance Praise for The Search
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"Both as a company and as a concept, Google has transformed the Internet and the entire cosmos of knowledge. John Battelle has written a brilliant business book, but he's also done something more: he's used the amazing saga of Google to explore what it means to search. All searchers should read it." —Walter Isaacson
CEO of the Aspen Institute; former editor of Time;
former CEO of CNN
"This book ought to be called 'The Answer.' As usual, John Battelle delivers insightful, thought-provoking, and essential reading. If you want to know why Google-think really does change everything, this is the book for you." —Seth Godin
Bestselling author of All Marketers Are Liars 3.nd Purple Cow
"Nobody, and I mean nobody, has thought longer, harder, or smarter about Google and the search business than John Battelle. Now he coughs up a book that combines terrific reporting with rigorous analysis and joints-after-midnight ruminations on where this company and technology are taking us. If you want to understand the rise of the search economy and culture, you need to read this book." —John Heilemann
Author of Pride Before the Fall: The Trials of Bill Gates and the End of the Microsoft Era
"Battelle has done two things with this book. He's 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 must-read for anyone endeavoring to understand one of the most important trends of this generation: organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible."
—Mary Meeker
Managing director and Internet analyst, Morgan Stanley
"A terrific book. The Search makes clear that despite the many losers over the years and the few still-standing winners, the search industry remains at a very early stage of development. Searching is fine, but actually discovering answers will be even better." —L. Gordon Crovitz
Senior vice president, Dow Jones and Company;
president, electronic publishing group
ISBN l-aS7afl-3bl-b
9781857883619 Vissza