Randall Stross

Planet Google

Google's search engine is so well known that we now have a verb: to google. But Google's aim of organising the world's information means that it is active in plenty of other areas besides web search. In Planet Google: How One Company is Transforming Our Lives Randall Stross describes some of the projects the company is currently involved in.

To maintain it's position Google needs to be aware of new ways in which people use the internet, and to gain a share of each new market. The book starts with a look at the competition between Google and the social networking site Facebook. We also hear about Google's acquisition of the video upload site YouTube, and it's plan to scan large numbers of the world's books. What I liked about this book was Stross' discussion of the issues involved in such cases. Is it reasonable that Google should disregard the objections of copyright holders? Should we be worried that Google is organising information that we think of as confidential? Stross also discusses the benefits and drawbacks of wholly algorithmic search results rather than those with some human input.

Some books about successful companies such as Google tend to concentrate on the areas in which they are most successful - search in the case of Google - rather than their future plans. I felt that this book gave a more detailed and up to date look at the world in which Google is operating, and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the current state of the internet.

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Hardcover 288 pages
ISBN: 141654691X
Salesrank: 78610
Weight:0.9 lbs

Published: 2008 Free Press

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Hardcover 288 pages
ISBN: 1843549808
Salesrank: 335425
Weight:1.15 lbs

Published: 2008 Atlantic Books

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Hardcover 288 pages
ISBN: 141654691X
Salesrank: 127958
Weight:0.9 lbs

Published: 2008 Free Press

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Product Description
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 business plan unlike any other: to become the indispensable gatekeeper of all the world's information, the one-stop destination for all our information needs. Will Google succeed? And what are the implications of a single company commanding so much information and knowing so much about us? As ambitious as Google's goal is, with 68 percent of all Web searches (and growing), profits that are the envy of the business world, and a surplus of talent, the company is, Stross shows, well along the way to fulfilling its ambition, becoming as dominant a force on the Web as Microsoft became on the PC. Google isn't just a superior search service anymore. In recent years it has launched a dizzying array of new services and advanced into whole new businesses, from the introductions of its controversial Book Search and the irresistible Google Earth, to bidding for a slice of the wireless-phone spectrum and nonchalantly purchasing YouTube for $1.65 billion. Google has also taken direct aim at Microsoft's core business, offering free e-mail and software from word processing to spreadsheets and calendars, pushing a transformative -- and highly disruptive -- concept known as "cloud computing." According to this plan, users will increasingly store all of their data on Google's massive servers -- a network of a million computers that amounts to the world's largest supercomputer, with unlimited capacity to house all the information Google seeks. The more offerings Google adds, and the more ubiquitous a presence it becomes, the more dependent its users become on its services and the more information they contribute to its uniquely comprehensive collection of data. Will Google stay true to its famous "Don't Be Evil" mantra, using its power in its customers' best interests? Stross's access to those who have spearheaded so many of Google's new initiatives, his penetrating research into the company's strategy, and his gift for lively storytelling produce an entertaining, deeply informed, and provocative examination of the company's audacious vision for the future and the consequences not only for the business world, but for our culture at large.

Product Description

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 business plan unlike any other: to become the indispensable gatekeeper of all the world's information, the one-stop destination for all our information needs. Will Google succeed? And what are the implications of a single company commanding so much information and knowing so much about us?

As ambitious as Google's goal is, with 68 percent of all Web searches (and growing), profits that are the envy of the business world, and a surplus of talent, the company is, Stross shows, well along the way to fulfilling its ambition, becoming as dominant a force on the Web as Microsoft became on the PC. Google isn't just a superior search service anymore. In recent years it has launched a dizzying array of new services and advanced into whole new businesses, from the introductions of its controversial Book Search and the irresistible Google Earth, to bidding for a slice of the wireless-phone spectrum and nonchalantly purchasing YouTube for $1.65 billion.

Google has also taken direct aim at Microsoft's core business, offering free e-mail and software from word processing to spreadsheets and calendars, pushing a transformative -- and highly disruptive -- concept known as "cloud computing." According to this plan, users will increasingly store all of their data on Google's massive servers -- a network of a million computers that amounts to the world's largest supercomputer, with unlimited capacity to house all the information Google seeks.

The more offerings Google adds, and the more ubiquitous a presence it becomes, the more dependent its users become on its services and the more information they contribute to its uniquely comprehensive collection of data. Will Google stay true to its famous "Don't Be Evil" mantra, using its power in its customers' best interests?

Stross's access to those who have spearheaded so many of Google's new initiatives, his penetrating research into the company's strategy, and his gift for lively storytelling produce an entertaining, deeply informed, and provocative examination of the company's audacious vision for the future and the consequences not only for the business world, but for our culture at large.

Healthy historical review of the rise of Google and its role in the world ***
A well researched, balanced look at the rise of Google and the impact they've had on business and the world. The author was obviously granted special access to peek under the covers of Google and did a good job of calling out inconsistencies when he saw them. It's amazing to see how Google has steadily grown its breadth of information gathering services, and a little scary. The accumulation of so much personal information by one entity has never before been so easily accepted as it has been with this company, probably because we're kind of like the frog in the pot of warming water. I certainly have an increased appreciation for Google's place in the online services space and a better understanding of its rapid growth over the past 10 years.

Healthy historical review of the rise of Google and its role in the world ***

A well researched, balanced look at the rise of Google and the impact they've had on business and the world. The author was obviously granted special access to peek under the covers of Google and did a good job of calling out inconsistencies when he saw them. It's amazing to see how Google has steadily grown its breadth of information gathering services, and a little scary. The accumulation of so much personal information by one entity has never before been so easily accepted as it has been with this company, probably because we're kind of like the frog in the pot of warming water. I certainly have an increased appreciation for Google's place in the online services space and a better understanding of its rapid growth over the past 10 years.

Great book for non-technical people ****
Great book for non-technical people to understand what Google is really all about. I particularly like the chapter about The Algorithm. This chapter reveals how much emphasis Google places on computer science and engineering to provide a competitive advantage. It's made them billions, why don't other companies follow suit? Probably because they aren't smart enough and too proud to admit it.

Great book for non-technical people ****

Great book for non-technical people to understand what Google is really all about. I particularly like the chapter about The Algorithm. This chapter reveals how much emphasis Google places on computer science and engineering to provide a competitive advantage. It's made them billions, why don't other companies follow suit? Probably because they aren't smart enough and too proud to admit it.

A Snapshot In Time *****
"Planet Google" was a fast and enjoyable read. Having been an Internet aficionado since its early beginnings as the World Wide Web, I was able to relate my place in time to the stages of evolution of Google as a vision and as a company. The book was fun because it is like revisiting the Route 66 "the Mother Road" of the free, world wide search engine and seeing early artifacts brought out of the "attic", dusted off, and then discussed as to what worked, how it worked and why it succeeded or failed. But, this is all in layman's terms and - as another reviewer said - it is more like a magazine article, albeit a long one, than an in-depth book. The book does a good job of projecting the sense of adventure, urgency, "point-of-the-spear" thinking that is required in order to launch a new "information age" enterprise. Where it is lacking is that it does not provide enough hard knowledge about the sacrifices made at the personal and family level to get this enterprise off the ground. It is also lacking in technical detail about how the search engine algorithms are created and validated, but then, one can hardly expect Google to open the doors to the kingdom. Overall, the book has potential to enable the reader to become a more informed and satisfied user of Google and to have more savvy about the workings of the Internet. I found the sections on server installations - the sheer massiveness, investment and safeguarding to be fascinating - ie the hardware that moves the bytes that make up the information in all forms. The author's thoughts on where Google might go next in its evolution were also interesting to me. I plan to read this book one more time - having now become a more adept user of Google's offerings - in order to see if I can dig out more ways to improve. I give this book 5 stars because of its readability and coverage of a tough topic. I came away smarter for reading it and plan to read it again soon. A fast read.

A Snapshot In Time *****

"Planet Google" was a fast and enjoyable read. Having been an Internet aficionado since its early beginnings as the World Wide Web, I was able to relate my place in time to the stages of evolution of Google as a vision and as a company. The book was fun because it is like revisiting the Route 66 "the Mother Road" of the free, world wide search engine and seeing early artifacts brought out of the "attic", dusted off, and then discussed as to what worked, how it worked and why it succeeded or failed. But, this is all in layman's terms and - as another reviewer said - it is more like a magazine article, albeit a long one, than an in-depth book. The book does a good job of projecting the sense of adventure, urgency, "point-of-the-spear" thinking that is required in order to launch a new "information age" enterprise. Where it is lacking is that it does not provide enough hard knowledge about the sacrifices made at the personal and family level to get this enterprise off the ground. It is also lacking in technical detail about how the search engine algorithms are created and validated, but then, one can hardly expect Google to open the doors to the kingdom. Overall, the book has potential to enable the reader to become a more informed and satisfied user of Google and to have more savvy about the workings of the Internet. I found the sections on server installations - the sheer massiveness, investment and safeguarding to be fascinating - ie the hardware that moves the bytes that make up the information in all forms. The author's thoughts on where Google might go next in its evolution were also interesting to me. I plan to read this book one more time - having now become a more adept user of Google's offerings - in order to see if I can dig out more ways to improve. I give this book 5 stars because of its readability and coverage of a tough topic. I came away smarter for reading it and plan to read it again soon. A fast read.

Solid overview ****
I very much enjoyed this book. I had read Stross' "The Microsoft Way" a few years ago and also found it to be very informative. This time, he covers the "it" company of the last ten years. Other than Apple, no company has enjoyed such a meteoric rise in the past decade. The chapters cover Google's main endeavors, from Google Book Search (formerly Google Print) to Google Voice to Google Docs. Each product or product group is covered in a reasonable level of detail. Stross also provides a solid historical context of Google's challenges, especially in relation to other computing stalwarts (read: Microsoft). In other words, Stross is not so glossly-eyed over Google's success that he overlooks some comparable historical precedents. Stross is also not afraid to call a spade a spade: he apologetically calls Google out for some missteps over privacy, copyright infringement, and other snafus. His writing style is very digestible and I never felt lost reading about more technical concepts, such as cloud computing, indexing the web, or Google's legendary algorithm. I do have a few complaints but they're pretty minor. I would really have liked to see more about the two company's founders. Larry and Sergey are given short shrift. I feel like I don't know that much more about them. This book easily could have used another 30 to 50 pages on two of the most intelligent and important business figures of their era. In the end, this is an excellent book with a great deal of well-written content. I'll be picking up some of Stross' other books pretty soon.

Solid overview ****

I very much enjoyed this book. I had read Stross' "The Microsoft Way" a few years ago and also found it to be very informative. This time, he covers the "it" company of the last ten years. Other than Apple, no company has enjoyed such a meteoric rise in the past decade.

The chapters cover Google's main endeavors, from Google Book Search (formerly Google Print) to Google Voice to Google Docs. Each product or product group is covered in a reasonable level of detail. Stross also provides a solid historical context of Google's challenges, especially in relation to other computing stalwarts (read: Microsoft). In other words, Stross is not so glossly-eyed over Google's success that he overlooks some comparable historical precedents.

Stross is also not afraid to call a spade a spade: he apologetically calls Google out for some missteps over privacy, copyright infringement, and other snafus. His writing style is very digestible and I never felt lost reading about more technical concepts, such as cloud computing, indexing the web, or Google's legendary algorithm.

I do have a few complaints but they're pretty minor. I would really have liked to see more about the two company's founders. Larry and Sergey are given short shrift. I feel like I don't know that much more about them. This book easily could have used another 30 to 50 pages on two of the most intelligent and important business figures of their era.

In the end, this is an excellent book with a great deal of well-written content. I'll be picking up some of Stross' other books pretty soon.

Interesting story of business ventures ****
If you want to know the origins of many of the Google features popular today, this is the book to read. If you are looking for a behind the scenes look at the people and personalities behind the company, this book is probably not for you. The author is clearly an outsider who knows a lot of the details of the company, but not much more than anybody who had dedicated time to studying it. There is very little intimacy with the Google founders or key players. However, the details of the different 'business ventures' of Google provide an effective 'behind the scenes' view of what Google was thinking when rolling out features like mail, and why it had to buy Youtube after being beat out in video.

Interesting story of business ventures ****

If you want to know the origins of many of the Google features popular today, this is the book to read. If you are looking for a behind the scenes look at the people and personalities behind the company, this book is probably not for you. The author is clearly an outsider who knows a lot of the details of the company, but not much more than anybody who had dedicated time to studying it. There is very little intimacy with the Google founders or key players. However, the details of the different 'business ventures' of Google provide an effective 'behind the scenes' view of what Google was thinking when rolling out features like mail, and why it had to buy Youtube after being beat out in video.

Competent but Lacking the Insider View ****
Randall Stross's earlier eBoys (a profile of Benchmark, the Silicon Valley venture firm) is a hard act to follow and, to be frank, Planet Google falls short in a number of areas. Whereas the Benchmark Partners gave Stross frequent and unrestricted access to meetings with both prospective and actual investments and, most revealingly, internal partnership meetings, it's clear that he simply didn't get the same intimate contact with Brin, Page or Schmidt at Google. That said, Stross is a shrewd observer of business and manages to extract some worthwhile insights into how the Google business model has evolved and where it's going in the future. A solid, workmanlike book of 200 pages (with 60 pages of somewhat spurious notes!)

Competent but Lacking the Insider View ****

Randall Stross's earlier eBoys (a profile of Benchmark, the Silicon Valley venture firm) is a hard act to follow and, to be frank, Planet Google falls short in a number of areas. Whereas the Benchmark Partners gave Stross frequent and unrestricted access to meetings with both prospective and actual investments and, most revealingly, internal partnership meetings, it's clear that he simply didn't get the same intimate contact with Brin, Page or Schmidt at Google. That said, Stross is a shrewd observer of business and manages to extract some worthwhile insights into how the Google business model has evolved and where it's going in the future. A solid, workmanlike book of 200 pages (with 60 pages of somewhat spurious notes!)

Informative, insightful, and candidly written ****
In the book which addresses the general reader, the two capacities of the author namely the New York Time columnist and the professor of business history meld seamlessly. The book is an entertaining and easy read and often conveys an air of suspense, traits which point to the columnist. But behind the entertaining facade there looms the professor of business history with his sense of the significant in tracing the evolution of this phenomenally successful company, in analysing the unique elements that contributed to its success but also pointing to the difficulties and the occasional blunder in its path and in describing the proliferation of its activities from the initial single activity of web search to its present culmination of 'cloud computing'. And from the flavour to the substance of the book. The profound vision and awe inspiring ambition of the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, articulated few months after the establishment of Google in 1998 was to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful'. The first and still by far the most successful activity of the company was web search. The key to the success was hardware and software technology that was designed to scale up fast and inexpensively. It was able to acquire market capitilization that exceeded all other Internet companies because it chanced upon text ads linked to the keywords of a search phrase, ads that turned out to be highly efficient means for advertisers to reach prospective buyers. To the present day ninety-nine percent of its revenues is still generated by these simple text ads which in 2007 amounted to $16.5 billion. In May 2008, Google fielded 68.3 percent of all U.S Internet searches compared to Yahoo's 20 percent and Microsoft's MSN 5.9 percent. In ten short years after its establishment Google moved boldly to add to its collection of web pages, indexes of published items in a variety of formats including news, books, scholary journals, street maps, satellite images, corporate financial information and video, the Google YouTube which it acquired at $1.65 billion. More recently it has created the infrastructure to perform more tasks than search, such as creating documents like those that Microsoft Office's Word, Excel and Power Point applications produce. Google also has begun to offer 'software as service' using its own software and storing and processing users' data on remote servers run by its company. The computer industry has adopted a new phrase, 'cloud computing', for this model of highly centralized computing. A user's document will seem to float in cyberspace, accessible from anywhere with an Internet Connection. The preceding model of centralised computing creates enormous posibilities but to some looks ominous as potentially infringing privacy.

Informative, insightful, and candidly written ****

In the book which addresses the general reader, the two capacities of the author namely the New York Time columnist and the professor of business history meld seamlessly. The book is an entertaining and easy read and often conveys an air of suspense, traits which point to the columnist. But behind the entertaining facade there looms the professor of business history with his sense of the significant in tracing the evolution of this phenomenally successful company, in analysing the unique elements that contributed to its success but also pointing to the difficulties and the occasional blunder in its path and in describing the proliferation of its activities from the initial single activity of web search to its present culmination of 'cloud computing'.

And from the flavour to the substance of the book.

The profound vision and awe inspiring ambition of the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, articulated few months after the establishment of Google in 1998 was to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful'.

The first and still by far the most successful activity of the company was web search. The key to the success was hardware and software technology that was designed to scale up fast and inexpensively. It was able to acquire market capitilization that exceeded all other Internet companies because it chanced upon text ads linked to the keywords of a search phrase, ads that turned out to be highly efficient means for advertisers to reach prospective buyers.

To the present day ninety-nine percent of its revenues is still generated by these simple text ads which in 2007 amounted to $16.5 billion. In May 2008, Google fielded 68.3 percent of all U.S Internet searches compared to Yahoo's 20 percent and Microsoft's MSN 5.9 percent.

In ten short years after its establishment Google moved boldly to add to its collection of web pages, indexes of published items in a variety of formats including news, books, scholary journals, street maps, satellite images, corporate financial information and video, the Google YouTube which it acquired at $1.65 billion.

More recently it has created the infrastructure to perform more tasks than search, such as creating documents like those that Microsoft Office's Word, Excel and Power Point applications produce. Google also has begun to offer 'software as service' using its own software and storing and processing users' data on remote servers run by its company. The computer industry has adopted a new phrase, 'cloud computing', for this model of highly centralized computing. A user's document will seem to float in cyberspace, accessible from anywhere with an Internet Connection.

The preceding model of centralised computing creates enormous posibilities but to some looks ominous as potentially infringing privacy.

Good Survey But Lacks Depth ***
The premise of chronicling the rise of Google is a fascinating one. The corporation that is the information age's equivalence of the East India Company is one that is intriguing and frightening at the same time. Randall Stross, technology writer for the New York Times attempts to do just that in "Planet Google." While I like the premise of the book, I have to say that the research lacks depth and ideological insight. That is to say, Stross tells us the how and what, but he is light on the why. While there are extensive endnotes, I was surprised by the lack of archival information from Google itself, considering Stross had such in depth internal access to Google's executives and day-to-day operations. Overall, if one is relatively unfamiliar with the what and how of Google, this would be a good read into the general story of one of the most important companies of our time. For a deeper look at the societal implications of Google's omniscience, keep looking.

Good Survey But Lacks Depth ***

The premise of chronicling the rise of Google is a fascinating one. The corporation that is the information age's equivalence of the East India Company is one that is intriguing and frightening at the same time. Randall Stross, technology writer for the New York Times attempts to do just that in "Planet Google."

While I like the premise of the book, I have to say that the research lacks depth and ideological insight. That is to say, Stross tells us the how and what, but he is light on the why. While there are extensive endnotes, I was surprised by the lack of archival information from Google itself, considering Stross had such in depth internal access to Google's executives and day-to-day operations.

Overall, if one is relatively unfamiliar with the what and how of Google, this would be a good read into the general story of one of the most important companies of our time. For a deeper look at the societal implications of Google's omniscience, keep looking.