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64th out of 196 books
—
133 voters
Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan To Organize Everything We Know
Based on unprecedented access he received to the highly secretive "Googleplex," acclaimed "New York Times" columnist Randall Stross takes readers deep inside Google, the most important, most innovative, and most ambitious company of the Internet Age. His revelations demystify the strategy behind the company's recent flurry of bold moves, all driven by the pursuit of a busi...more
Hardcover, 275 pages
Published
September 23rd 2008
by Free Press
(first published January 1st 2008)
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785)
Aug 08, 2012
Noor Alssarraj
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
technology-computer
بالنسبة لمحتوى الكتاب فهو يتألف من عدة فصول تتضمن أهم المحطات التي مرت بها غوغل من لحظة إطلاقها حتى وقتنا الحالي , أهم منجزاتها و أهم الخدمات التي قدمتها ما نجح منها في السوق و ما فشل .كما تطرق الكاتب للمعوقات التي واجهت الشركة و التي كان معظمها قضايا قانونية متعقلة بحقوق الملكية الخاصة بالمواد المنشورة, و المنافسة التي كانت تلقاها من الشركات الموجودة في السوق .
يوضح الكتاب أن الشركة تسعى لتحقيق شعارها بشكل حثيث و هو تجميع كافة المعلومات الموجودة في العالم!و على الرغم من ضخامة الهدف الأشبه بالمست...more
يوضح الكتاب أن الشركة تسعى لتحقيق شعارها بشكل حثيث و هو تجميع كافة المعلومات الموجودة في العالم!و على الرغم من ضخامة الهدف الأشبه بالمست...more
Nov 11, 2008
Andrew Hecht
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
anyone interested in online privacy
Recommended to Andrew by:
Oakland Public Library
Shelves:
public-library,
non-fiction
I didn't expect much from this book. I saw at the the library and it looked interesting, so I picked it up, but it was surprisingly good. This is not some Google hagiography or a tear down piece. Rather it's a measured look at both the successes failures of the information giant. Particularly interesting was the detailing of Google's trouble with copyright infringement with both YouTube and Google Books.
Personally, I love Google, but I am concerned about online privacy, as much as one can be fo...more
Personally, I love Google, but I am concerned about online privacy, as much as one can be fo...more
Chances are good that a large portion of the general population has come in contact with Google in some way, shape, or form within the last 11 years.
I, for one, am so finely ingrained in a plethora of their services that it's almost frightening to think of what all I have stored on their servers. Even given all of that, they're still a fascinating company.
And Planet Google is a wonderfully enthralling book.
The best thing about it is that it's not just a straight chronological account of their h...more
I, for one, am so finely ingrained in a plethora of their services that it's almost frightening to think of what all I have stored on their servers. Even given all of that, they're still a fascinating company.
And Planet Google is a wonderfully enthralling book.
The best thing about it is that it's not just a straight chronological account of their h...more
An interesting overview of the rise of Google as a company and how it goes about things. It was very readable, if a bit dry, and the tales of Silicon Valley are often like this – there’s no time for boozing, womanising and doing drugs when you’re coding every day until four in the morning. I was left with the impression that Google is a bit of a haphazard business – I thought their motto “Don’t be evil” would be a profound statement of mission, but no, it just kind of fell into being in a kind o...more
Writer Lev Grossman has chosen to discuss Randall Stross’s
Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know
on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject- The World Wide Web, saying that:
"...Stross is no privacy nut. He embraces with the minimum of criticism the Utopian vision of Google, and, you know, what he does in a really great, clear way, with lots of access and good writing, is to reveal the sheer scope of the Googlean vision of the world, whereby informati...more
"...Stross is no privacy nut. He embraces with the minimum of criticism the Utopian vision of Google, and, you know, what he does in a really great, clear way, with lots of access and good writing, is to reveal the sheer scope of the Googlean vision of the world, whereby informati...more
I was afraid to read this book because I CANNOT stop reading a book once I start - so if it is tedious and full of technobabble then I am stuck with it. Pleasantly, this book is neither tedious (it moves along at a good pace) or full of technobabble (as I am not a programmer or DBA, I don't get warm fuzzies by reading computer jargon).
I DO interface with Google on a daily basis - Gmail, google maps and Grandpa Google, the search engine, are good friends of mine. Gone are the days when I would s...more
I DO interface with Google on a daily basis - Gmail, google maps and Grandpa Google, the search engine, are good friends of mine. Gone are the days when I would s...more
I saw this book sitting on a shelf as I was browsing my local library and immediately thought, "Hey, I should find out more about the company that I seem to spend most of my time engaging with and sort of work for (through YouTube)." So, I checked it out. I was a bit humbled to learn that the overall goal of Google was to organize the World's information. That seems a Herculean task, and through the course of the book, I found that they are well on their way to doing it. Plus, you have to like a...more
After starting this book and learning about how google got started and what they were trying to accomplish, my main comment was "I had no idea!"
Unlike Microsoft, whose products I have used for 20 years and some of which I like and some I think are OK, and whose new products you are pretty much forced to use when you get a new computer, Google has been in the background, never charging for their services, and constantly improving.
This book faithfully recounts Google' histoy, its hits and misses...more
Unlike Microsoft, whose products I have used for 20 years and some of which I like and some I think are OK, and whose new products you are pretty much forced to use when you get a new computer, Google has been in the background, never charging for their services, and constantly improving.
This book faithfully recounts Google' histoy, its hits and misses...more
Oddly, I found myself reading this book on the airplane on a recent trip to San Jose, California. One of the tasks for this trip was to meet some folks at the Googleplex. Reminded me of reading Microserfs on the plane to my interview with Microsoft in 1998...
The book itself is an easy ready. The history of Google is quite compelling. The author avoids getting into any details on machine learning - instead just substitutes The Algorithm for all machine learning techniques. But, I guess, more peop...more
The book itself is an easy ready. The history of Google is quite compelling. The author avoids getting into any details on machine learning - instead just substitutes The Algorithm for all machine learning techniques. But, I guess, more peop...more
We met Randall Stross when he visited the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver. You can listen to him talk about "Planet Google" here: www.authorsontourlive.com/?p=209
About this podcast:
Acclaimed New York Times columnist Randall Stross discusses his new book "Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know." Based on unprecedented access he received to the highly secretive “Googleplex,” this book takes readers deep inside Google, the most important, most innovative, and...more
About this podcast:
Acclaimed New York Times columnist Randall Stross discusses his new book "Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know." Based on unprecedented access he received to the highly secretive “Googleplex,” this book takes readers deep inside Google, the most important, most innovative, and...more
I found this book via a great magazine article written by the same author on a different topic (an annual grand award process for small start-up companies; the article was extracted from the book "The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups", which I haven't yet read). Randall Stross has written a few different books on technology companies and writes for the New York Times. "Planet Google" tells the tale of the evolution of the company and delves int...more
I'm on this Google fascination lately. Try to think about life before Google, or life without Google...well, it's literally impossible to imagine (for me). Even grasping our reliance on Internet in general is enough to blow my mind. Whether that's good or bad, I haven't decided. But I have decided one thing: to embrace all the good things that Google has to offer. Google Earth alone is out of this world (literally, they cover the moon and the stars!!) Afterall, a company whose motto is "Don't be...more
The most interesting part was in the beginning of the book where Stross talked about Facebook's AOL-like walled garden (closed) and Google's success accessing openly available data.
Stross probably wants to forget that he once buried Steve Jobs in his book "The Next Big Thing" because since then, Stross has been proven wrong. But since then he's focused on the good in companies like Microsoft and Google, so it's worth the 3 hours it takes to read this book, if only to tie all of the various Goog...more
Stross probably wants to forget that he once buried Steve Jobs in his book "The Next Big Thing" because since then, Stross has been proven wrong. But since then he's focused on the good in companies like Microsoft and Google, so it's worth the 3 hours it takes to read this book, if only to tie all of the various Goog...more
Eeehh... Some parts are pretty interesting, other parts seem to present a rather simplistic picture. The best parts eem to reflect the more social & business aspects of what was going on. Particularly coverage of press events attended by the author. Other parts of the books have a tendency towards hyperbole. (Google is more open than other companies, no one thought about X before Google, Yahoo had everything be person-driven, etc).[return][return]Not bad, a good start if you're interested in...more
Dec 30, 2012
Dru
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
nonfic-science,
nonfic-history
A pretty interesting read but already way out of date by 2012! It helped me understand and appreciate why Google is as evil as they are, despite their stance against it. I fear for the world where everything private is online ready to be hacked. Google as a company *does not have the security chops to protect what they are trying to acquire*!
They can't even address years-long bugs in their existing products. Google is a bunch of kids eager to build the next "shiny object", but without the matur...more
They can't even address years-long bugs in their existing products. Google is a bunch of kids eager to build the next "shiny object", but without the matur...more
Apr 12, 2009
Clare
added it
OMG I can't believe I actually read this book as the Silicon Valley/Internet wars are not my subject of choice, but I found Planet Google to be informative, entertaining, and slightly scary. Google's founders have stated that they want to organize (and have) all the world's information, but Google maintains a friendly face - those primary colors, the rumors its employees are some of the happiest people on earth; and one of its founding tenets is "don't be evil." Not that Google is evil...I mean,...more
Planet Google discusses the most interesting company in the world, Google. It does so by addressing different aspect of Google as a company, and different project and situations they have encountered at Google. The Google Story, a book I previously read about the company, addresses the personality of Google. This book, however, focuses more on the business of Google, it's competition, and how it handled the different business issues.
This book is totally worth reading, especially if you're intere...more
This book is totally worth reading, especially if you're intere...more
Great book! Learned that when people talk about ``Page Rankings'' that this is an old program designed by U-M grad and Google co-founder Larry Page when he was in college. Page refers to web pages and to Larry Page! Learned how long they think it will take to organize all the world's information: they actually estimate how many years it will take (we will be dead when that date arrives, the number is at the end of the book) and they say they are 5 percent of the way there now. Also learned more...more
It's super-fun to read a non-fiction book so close to the release date, and hence so up-to-date, as this is right now. There are no big revelations, but the writing is interesting, well-researched, and relevant enough that it just kept pulling me in. It's a short book, too -- the last 50 pages or so are notes.
Google is a Big Deal, and even though there's not much more to say then "we really should be keeping an eye on these folks," this book is valuable.
Also, it'll probably be completely irrel...more
Google is a Big Deal, and even though there's not much more to say then "we really should be keeping an eye on these folks," this book is valuable.
Also, it'll probably be completely irrel...more
The subtitle really caught me on this one; one company's audacious plan to organize everything we know. I've long had this desire to know everything, so I could relate to the "audacious plan." It was more of a business oriented book, so I admit that I skimmed a lot of it.
The details of how you organize a tech business and, more important, learn to make a profit was interesting to me. The author hints that Google's success was more a lucky chance than anything else. They chose to do the notes on...more
The details of how you organize a tech business and, more important, learn to make a profit was interesting to me. The author hints that Google's success was more a lucky chance than anything else. They chose to do the notes on...more
This book doesn't focus exclusively on Google but also talks about how it compares to major competitors such as Yahoo! and Microsoft and other smaller businesses that did not make it out of the tech-bubble. Very interesting business and ethics study. I've always been a bit skeptical of exactly what "Do No Evil" prevents a company from doing--since apparently consumer privacy violations does not count as evil--and this book was a nice balance between starry-eyed fanboy and skeptical hater.
It is truly amazing how much Google accomplished in a short about of time. Interestingly, they started the web site as source for information not a money making endeavor, which came later. When they decided to allow advertising on Google they used scientific algorithms to target ads to a searcher’s interest. Since then they have expanding into other things including satellite pictures of earth and space. Lots of information in this book about Google and the web.
Oct 22, 2008
Ryan
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
people addicted to google products
Recommended to Ryan by:
Columbus Public Library
Shelves:
non-fiction,
business-economics
Great book for those of us addicted to Google everything (e.g., maps, reader, gmail, earth, docs, health, picasa, sites, sketch, etc.) Just like I had to read a book about Sam Walton after Wal-mart became a central part of our existence, this book jumped out at me as a must-read. I think the most important point made throughout the book is that Google is successful because it thinks BIG. As in, Q: "How long will it take Google to catalog all of the information on Earth?" A: "300 years." Any comp...more
May 14, 2010
Harley
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
anyone interested in computers and business.
Technology is changing quicker every day. Google was started in 1998, a mere 12 years ago. Its mission is to index and organize all of the world's information so that it can be easily searched. This book tells the story of the birth and growth of Google. The book is written for the lay person who knows little of the company. As business history it is fascinating. I recommend the book to anyone interested in business, computers and how companies operate.
I really enjoyed this book. The read does not require a computer science background, but tech-savvy readers will definitely get more out of it. The book dives into the history, obstacles, and brilliance behind open vs. closed strategies on the web, the famous algorithm, scalability, G-Earth, G-Maps, G-Books, YouTube, Gmail, and the move toward cloud computing (very interesting!). Really makes you appreciate the responsiveness, foresight, and daring business strategies of this great company.
I like this book but I concede that it is not for everyone. It has some "techy" moments that most would not enjoy, but that I must confess I found fascinating. What is really interesting is that I had no idea how pervasive Google had become and found it to be intimidating and quite concerning. Especially with regard to personal privacy. Were you aware that your emails are scanned (not just Google does this)? The digital age has brought significant changes to our lives that I believe we don't yet...more
A very interesting look-see into one of the most reclusive and innovative corporations of the internet age. Planet Google explores how a company which was built purely out of a problem that needed solving, and whose founders had no interest in money, made them billionaires by the age of 30...
Interesting look at google and how far it has come to organizing all the information in the world. Enjoyed the read, made me think a bit more about the impact what google is doing - both for better, and as the other hints at - possibly worse. Being an avid google user myself from day one, it was interesting to get more of the history behind the company and its many successes and few failures to date.
Stross doesn't quite come away with a definitive point of view. He seems to want to be a strong critic of the Google philosphy, but he doesn't go the distance. The book does a good job of covering Google's brilliant creations and acquisitions and better explains the Google mindset than most anyone else. A fascinating read.
Very good book giving the inside story, detailing Google's rise, and brushes with failure. Interesting back stories of how certain Google features came into being. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about the company whose master plan is to "organize the world's information."
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