Google has always struck me as being a twenty first century company. With its 'Don't Be Evil' mantra, countless employee benefits and constant experimental beta programs, it appears they are digitizing the world's information through the funnel of one big mysterious algorithm. While reading Planet Google I was constantly reminded of ways in which Google has affected my life. I used Google maps on a daily basis as a delivery driver in Orlando, I used the satellite imagery to see how close a house was to the ocean before renting it and five of my books are available through the Google Books program. My latest novel was researched largely through the Google search engine, my videos are on YouTube and I have a Gmail account that gets checked daily. This intertwining usage made it all the more fascinating to find out where these programs began. However, this apparent loyalty does not color my opinions. As a book Planet Google has much to be desired.

While author Randall Stross gives a snapshot of the company and its many ambitions, he does so from a distance. I can only imagine that he had very little contact with the owners or engineers that keep Google ticking. His descriptions are dispassionately technical but meant for the lay person thus failing on both fronts. Further, the human side of the story is missing entirely. If someone had to slavishly sacrifice for this company or its accomplishments, that sacrifice has gone unrecorded.

For those who know nothing at all about Google this book is a usefull first step but a broader text will be needed in the future for the sake for more accurately understanding this technological and economic giant.

An interesting book about the history of Google, and many of the projects it's undertaken over the years. Most of projects would be impossible to pursue without the revenue Google rakes in with it's search advertising program.

Somehow this otherwise fine story about Google omits the full story about it's FINANCIAL success. Almost all of Google's revenue is from it's search engine advertising, which the founders resisted introducing because they felt it was inconsistent with their objectives.

Google's search engine ads are based on a model pioneered by GoTo -- later renamed Overture, then purchased by Yahoo! -- in the late 90's. A year or two after GoTo demonstrated the viability of such a model, Google started their own search engine advertising. Google's program rapidly became the success it did because their basic search engine was superior, and preferred by the public. I've used all 3 services to advertise an online business over the years. Google ads (and regular searches) have received BY FAR the most hits.

I'm a big fan of Google, and use many of their services. That said, I wonder how much longer their current business model will work where ad revenues are financing everything they do.

For readers who appreciated The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, this book loosely picks up where the former book sort of left off. "The Search" (by different author and published in 2005) covers the origin and growth of general Web search technology and the rise of Google the company up to the point shortly after its IPO. "Planet Google" mainly takes a look at what the company has been doing since (circa 2004-08) and focuses on Google's many attempted forays into products and technologies beyond the core Web search. A chapter is dedicated for each of Google's better-known endeavors, namely book digitization, video/YouTube, Google Earth/Maps, datacenter buildup, Gmail and privacy issues, the go for open-source everything, and the debate of machine-only vs. human-assisted search algorithm.

The author claims to enjoy fairly generous access to Google's facilities and some of its top executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt. The book provides a quick read and is much shorter than the number of pages would suggest as the last 75 pages contain only massive amount of footnotes. It will certainly delight those who have always been fascinated by everything Google.

The book's title flatters to deceive. The "audacious plan to organize everything we know" has significant impacts on almost all aspects of our lives and how new IT business models emerge - privacy, accessibility, level playing ground for education, security, etc..; growth of software-as-a-service and service-oriented architecture. Despite these meaty issues that the author's premise would have allowed him to provide an in-depth analysis of the trends and implications, he chooses to provide a superficial narration that reads more like a Businessweek article. To be fair, the author did write a few sentences on the above topics, but only as an introduction to his narration of some of the behind-the-scenes incidents that shaped Google's growth. After various authors have done this before, (more notable example - The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time and The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture), this book breaks relatively new ground for even a casual reader in this space. Nevertheless, the narrations discussing the algorithm itself, and Google's foray into video search and Youtube, travails with Google Answers, email scanning and search, the ambitious book scanning project, and growth pains of Google Maps are entertaining and provides some interesting tidbits. For someone familiar with the search space and avid user of Google, some of these discussions may seem yesterday's news.

Even if it is not, the author misses an opportunity to analyze the fundamental impact Google's 'audacious plan' can have on us. The most glaring omission is Google Health - here is an attempt by Google to develop an ecosystem that stores electronic health records and allows other service providers to tap into this information as and when the owner of the health record permits. The implications of this can be far-reaching and a game changer for how healthcare is viewed in the world, particularly in the U.S. There is perhaps one tangential reference to Google Health in the book.

The book is well narrated, with a sense of urgency that keeps the reader captivated. The notes section of the book is well-organized and provides additional citations and information for the more serious reader (in fact, if some of the information that are now hidden in the notes section had found its way to the main text, the book may have read better). Overall, an entertaining read, but providing no or superficial analysis/insights.

Early in "Planet Google" Stross points out that Google's income reached $4.2 billion in 2997 - 99% from the simple text ads that accompany its search returns. Readers also learn that 68% of Internet searches use Google. Thus, one suspects that at least some of Google's current new activities (eg. creating a digital library of all books, providing video search capability, server-supplied software and central data storage, StreetView, translating between languages, voice-to-text capability) are a dangerous distraction from Google's main business (especially creating a digital library of all books - strongly fought by publishers and still lacking an income-generating plan, as well as the book. Similarly, video search is also opposed on copyright grounds, while StreetView has been lambasted as an invasion of privacy and aid to terrorists, GMail blasted as "creepy" for providing ads based on message content, and Google News also attacked on a copyright basis.

Stross also is oblivious to the fact that eventually other Internet-search engines will catch up with Google, its search services will become a much-cheaper commodity, and the company's ability to reward and retain staff will precipitously decline. (It's called "product-life cycle," taught in every business school, and there are no long-term antidotes.) Further, Stross woefully short-circuits a key current and future problem - Google's data-center energy costs - undoubtedly because Google doesn't want to discuss it. Finally, Google's page ranking and Web-searching algorithms do not receive enough attention, while "open" vs. "closed" source coding receives entirely too much.

Nonetheless, "Google Earth" is mostly interesting reading. Google's power derives from the accidental discovery, two years after its founding, that plain text ads on its search pages produce enormous profits. Another key innovation was its requiring that ads be directly relevant to the search and ranking them according to projected income to Google (bid/click X probability of being clicked).

Google's search engine did not start out perfect - 1998 queries sometimes took ten seconds. In 1999 the search engine reviewed only 60 million sites, but the company then aggressively set a goal for 1 billion - at the time, AltaVista, its largest competitor, indexed only 150 million. (Google indexed 8 billion Web pages by 2004, the last year it made data available.) Another important Google advantage was gained by choosing to use low-cost standard PCs as servers, vs. competitors' choosing more expensive, specialized machines. Still another important decision was to avoid human involvement in the search output, contrary to Yahoo, which of course eventually found this approach too slow and expensive.

Bottom Line: Google benefited from lucky and judicious decisions early in its history, as well as very well designed software; however, it now risks sliding downhill by trying to do too many things.

Early in "Planet Google" Stross points out that Google's income reached $4.2 billion in 2997 - 99% from the simple text ads that accompany its search returns. Readers also learn that 68% of Internet searches use Google. Thus, one suspects that at least some of Google's current new activities (eg. creating a digital library of all books, providing video search capability, server-supplied software and central data storage, translating between languages, voice-to-text capability) are a dangerous distraction from Google's main business (especially creating a digital library of all books - strongly fought by publishers and still lacking an income-generating plan, as well as the book.

Stross also is oblivious to the fact that eventually other Internet-search engines will catch up with Google, its search services will become a much-cheaper commodity, and the company's ability to reward and retain staff will precipitously decline. (It's called "product-life cycle," taught in every business school, and there are no long-term antidotes.) Further, Stross woefully short-circuits a key current and future problem - Google's data-center energy costs - undoubtedly because Google doesn't want to discuss it. Finally, Google's page ranking and Web-searching algorithms do not receive enough attention, while "open" vs. "closed" source coding receives entirely too much.

Nonetheless, "Google Earth" is mostly interesting reading. Google's power derives from the accidental discovery, two years after its founding, that plain text ads on its search pages produce enormous profits. Another key innovation was its requiring that ads be directly relevant to the search and ranking them according to projected income to Google (bid/click X probability of being clicked).

Google's search engine did not start out perfect - 1998 queries sometimes took ten seconds. In 1999 the search engine reviewed only 60 million sites, but the company then aggressively set a goal for 1 billion - at the time, AltaVista, its largest competitor, indexed only 150 million. (Google indexed 8 billion Web pages by 2004, the last year it made data available.) Another important Google advantage was gained by choosing to use low-cost standard PCs as servers, vs. competitors' choosing more expensive, specialized machines. Still another important decision was to avoid human involvement in the search output, contrary to Yahoo, which of course eventually found this approach too slow and expensive.

Bottom Line: Google benefited from lucky and judicious decisions early in its history, as well as very well designed software; however, it now risks sliding downhill by trying to do too many things.

Very interesting story on Google. I give it 5 stars for sure. You don't see many people actually telling the actual google Story, so I thought it was a great idea for this author to cover it.

This was a great book. Written in lay mans terms, this book is a macro view of google - from birth pangs to its 10th year birthday.

Google has been a company which has been a source of inspiration and intrigue for the past decade. Like all big firms, it has had its fair share of problems (legal and competition wise) but it is still standing.

The book talks about all the steps Google has taken to follow it initial mantra of getting all the data in the world together and indexed. From youtube to keyhole to its documents software to its news reader, this book briefly talks about all of googles achievements.

This is not a book which talks in depth about the life of google but it does give the reader a glimpse of one of the most innovative and exciting companies in the world.

"Planet Google" is a simple, well-written overview of Google and its business. The book explains how Sergey Brin and Larry Page started Google while they were students at Stanford and made it their mission to organize all of the world's information.

The various chapters in the book relate how and why Google acquired companies such as YouTube and Keyhole. The book explores the opposition and challenges that Google has faced as it has become larger and entered new areas.

I found "Planet Google" to be neither worshipful nor vindictive. It was largely unbiased reporting. The book does not say much about the people or personalities involved. There is not much time spent on anecdotal storytelling. This book is more of a straight-forward review of how Google started, what Google has done, and thoughts about Google's future.

"Planet Google" provides a good overview for someone who does not know much about the company, but does not really provide much depth.