The Search
December 31st, 2005How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture
by John Battelle
ISBN: 1591840880
You can’t write a book about search without writing (a lot) about Google. Yet it is interesting to consider how fragile a thing Google was when it started, and how easily it could not have come to be.
Mixed in at the beginning of this investigation of the meaning of search is some entertaining business history. Battelle recounts outlandish sums for IPOs, big mistakes, and the elusive search for profitability — and this part isn’t even about Google.
I found the most interesting bit of information about Google wasn’t something about their hiring practices or their chef, but about the PageRank patent. Page and Brin started Google when they were in grad school at Stanford, and one result is that the PageRank patent is owned by Stanford. (It is being licensed exclusively to Google until 2011.)
Google is the undisputed search giant now, but what makes this book interesting isn’t Google, it is the idea of search itself. How we find things online, how people will or won’t make money attempting to decipher our intent, and what happens with all of our “intent” data — those are fascinating questions to grapple with.
Highly recommended for folks interested more in the theory and power of search than the technical, algorithmic side of things (as those folks will find this light.) This may seem like a small audience, but I think a growing one — at least I hope so, for the future health of the internet. Also recommended for people who work in the tech industry or are interested in startups.
