Google Inc. is such an influential and potentially scary company that it deserves a book as comprehensive as the Internet search engine responsible for its whirlwind success.
Veteran technology journalist John Battelle comes close with “The Search,” a 288-page exploration of the company whose dorm-room invention, initially spurned by dot-com entrepreneurs, is now synonymous with looking up information online. Providing fresh insights and information about Google is difficult because so much already has been written about the Mountain View-based company since its 1998 inception. (Full disclosure: I’ve been a part of the media frenzy, having covered Google for the past five years.)
Battelle nevertheless manages to keep things compelling, adding his own trenchant analysis about what Google’s rapid evolution and powerful technology might mean for the company and our society as a whole. He views Google and other major search engines as invaluable windows into the world’s interests and desires, a “database of intentions” destined to become the hub of 21st-century capitalism. Learn more here.