The Google Story

October 3, 2005
If Google's splashy IPO and skyrocketing stock haven't revived the dotcom sector, they have certainly revived the dotcom hype industry, judging by this adulatory history of the Internet search engine. Billionaire founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, their countercultural rectitude imbibed straight from the Burning Man festival, are brilliant visionaries dedicated to putting all information at mankind's fingertips and "genuinely nice people" who "didn't care about getting rich." Their company motto, "Don't Be Evil," is not just PR boilerplate rendered in fantasy-gaming rhetoric, but a deeply-pondered organizing principle. Washington Post reporter Vise, author of The Bureau and the Mole, and researcher Malseed give a serviceable rundown of the company's rise from grad-student project to web juggernaut, its innovative technology and targeted advertising system, its savvy deal-making and its inevitable battles with Microsoft. But while they raise the occasional quibble about controversial company policies, they generally allow Google's image of idealism to overshadow the reality of a corporate leviathan. Worse, the bloated text feels like the product of an overly broad web search: anything with keyword Google-executives' speeches, seminar talks, informal Q and A sessions with students, company press releases, legal documents, SEC filings, even the company chef's fried chicken recipe-comes up, excerpted at inordinate and rambling length, drowning insight in a flood of information.

December 15, 2005
Pulitzer Prize winner and Washington Post reporter Vise (The Bureau and the Mole) and veteran researcher Malseed tell of the meteoric rise of Google to become the preeminent Internet search engine. Drawing on original research and access to the company, they track Google's trajectory, from the partnering of fellow graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the engineering department of Stanford University to the controversial plan to digitize book collections of major U.S. academic libraries, and Microsoft's calculated plan to curtail Google's dominance. Chief among the confluence of factors that led to Google's success was Page and Brin's unshakable vision, fueled by their own brilliance and audacity, to create the best possible search engine. Helping them along the way was a large network of believers: Stanford professors, students, and Silicon Valley moneymen. The story of Google is of a transforming technology that has so altered the ways that millions acquire information that it has become an active verb. This book deserves a place in every public library and all academic business collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 7/05.]Peter R. Latusek, Stanford Graduate Sch. of Business Lib., CA

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