Friday, April 28, 2006

The Google Story (Review)

I’ve never gotten around to write a proper review for the book The Google Story by Washington Post’s David Vise and Mark Malseed, but maybe a shorter note helps. Before I started the book to read it I was prepared to get bored quickly because I just read John Battelle’s great The Search, and really how much books on the subject can you read before shouting “duplicate"? But I was in for a surprise, because The Google Story was really, really interesting. If I’d have to suggest either of the two, I’d probably answer: buy both! The Search has a stronger focus on Google technology and philosophical implications, whereas The Google Story is more of a biography of the company and its founders, with many tidbits of the industries and people surrounding Google. My favorite chapter was the one on Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch... it was the first time I learned about the man behind the blog I’m checking daily for Google news. (And there’s even two pages on Google Blogoscoped!)

For both books, you shouldn’t expect to find scandalous bits about the Google founders... I think Larry and Sergey make very sure to shield their privacy (I guess that happens when you run a crawler snooping around the web all day), and there’s very little they say that would shock you. While we do have Google biographies now, we still need to wait for the definite biography on the Google founders...

The Google Story (Review) by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (3)

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