The Google Story

Narrated with classy restraint by Stephen Hoye, this story is so exciting it's inescapable. Two precocious sons of professors, one with unbounded curiosity about all things mathematical and the other with an uncanny gift for deal making, created the search engine that revolutionized how we find things on the World Wide Web. Their unconventional story of humor, social responsibility, and relentless curiosity rises above most dot-com sagas because the protagonists are so entertaining. From their beginnings at Stanford through the initial public offering and all the turf wars and intellectual challenges that followed, the story of how these two characters became gazillionaires is totally engaging. T.W. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

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.

If you Google this title, you'll get 160,000 references for the print version and only 185 references for the audiobook. That's odd considering the great job narrator Adam Grupper does conveying the Google founders' "Do no evil" mission. The audiobook provides a thorough chronological history of the search engine company, beginning with a family history of its two founders and ending with the current litigation over Google's plan to scan library books for Internet viewing--a lawsuit that Random House, the publisher of this slightly fawning company history, supports. As with many audiobooks, abridgment works well. And, of course, if you need any more information, you can always Google it. R.W.S. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

Starred review from May 1, 2006
Vise ("The Bureau and the Mole") and Malseed, contributor to Bob Woodward -s "Bush at War" and "Plan of Attack", join forces in this detailed, inside look at the history of Google, the world -s number one Internet search engine. Fascinated with the massive worldwide impact of Google, these experienced investigative reporters apply their rigorous research skills to produce this behind-the-scenes story of this rapidly evolving company that continues to stun the world. The rich, solid narration by Stephen Hoye provides an always interesting documentary style to this important work. The authors offer fascinating insights into the early friendship between Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt, the initial start-up of the company, the attempts to sell early versions of the search engine to Silicon Valley companies, and much more. Now billionaires, Page and Brin have managed to integrate their genius with their counterculture rectitude, putting nearly all available electronic information at the fingertips of computer owners everywhere. Highly recommended for academic business and information technology collections and larger public libraries." -Dale Farris, Groves, TX"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.