Googled: The End of the World As We Know It | 
| Author: Ken Auletta
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $15.49
as of 11/21/2009 09:29 CST details
You Save: $12.46 (45%)
New (33) Used (4) Collectible (1) from $15.49
Seller: OB1S
Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 143
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 1594202354
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.76102504
EAN: 9781594202353
ASIN: 1594202354
Publication Date: November 3, 2009 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A revealing, forward-looking examination of the outsize influence Google has had on the changing media Landscape.
There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. As only he can, bestselling author Ken Auletta takes readers for a ride on the Google wave, telling the story of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses-from newspapers to books, to television, to movies, to telephones, to advertising, to Microsoft. With unprecedented access to Google's founders and executives, as well as to those in media who are struggling to keep their heads above water, Auletta reveals how the industry is being disrupted and redefined.
Using Google as a stand-in for the digital revolution, Auletta takes readers inside Google's closed-door meetings and paints portraits of Google's notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as those who work with-and against-them. In his narrative, Auletta provides the fullest account ever told of Google's rise, shares the "secret sauce" of Google's success, and shows why the worlds of "new" and "old" media often communicate as if residents of different planets.
Google engineers start from an assumption that the old ways of doing things can be improved and made more efficient, an approach that has yielded remarkable results- Google will generate about $20 billion in advertising revenues this year, or more than the combined prime-time ad revenues of CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX. And with its ownership of YouTube and its mobile phone and other initiatives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt tells Auletta his company is poised to become the world's first $100 billion media company. Yet there are many obstacles that threaten Google's future, and opposition from media companies and government regulators may be the least of these. Google faces internal threats, from its burgeoning size to losing focus to hubris. In coming years, Google's faith in mathematical formulas and in slide rule logic will be tested, just as it has been on Wall Street.
Distilling the knowledge accrued from a career of covering the media, Auletta will offer insights into what we know, and don't know, about what the future holds for the imperiled industry.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
 Deceptive Advertising by Amazon November 16, 2009
Spike HK (hong kong)
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
Amazon's Kindle page for this book says that the list price is $27.95, the Kindle price is $15.37, so you save $12.58 on the purchase, a 45% savings.
However, the Amazon price for the physical book is $17.47. So you only save $2.10 by buying the Kindle edition instead of the hard cover edition. That's a savings of 12%, not 45%.
I believe this to be deceptive advertising.
I would also like to know why the Kindle edition is priced at $15.37 instead of $9.99. I would have bought this at $9.99. But now I'll need to think about it a bit more.
 Well written and fun to read November 12, 2009
compulsive reader
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was lucky to get this book through Vine program, because I was going to buy it anyway. I know Ken Auletta is a great writer and I was sure to enjoy reading his book.
I used to use Yahoo and excite ( Ask Jeeves was useless), but once Google launched it's search engine, I never went back to Yahoo or excite. I made Google as my homepage because Google gave me what I wanted. Now I can't live without Google. What I finally understand by reading Auletta's book is that it was not Google's service, but it's vision which attracted me.
Some of the reviewers state there's nothing new about Google in Auletta's book. Since I haven't read any other "Google" books I can't argue with them. What I could tell is that this is a well written book which brings you right in the middle of actions. It's immensely fun read for someone who is not so interested in technical aspects but human aspects of Google.
There are some complains about Kindle price being more than hardcover version. Amazon seemed to have changed the price since then, but still more than the price we are used to (less than $9.99). While I prefer paying at least a few dollars less for Kindle books, I believe this book deserves higher price than silly bestseller books (e.g. one of James Patterson's books).
 Some Good Material - November 7, 2009
Loyd E. Eskildson (Phoenix, AZ.)
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
In 1990 the world's first web-page was created, and by 1992 there were all of 26. Today there are about 150 websites for everyone on the planet (6.7 billion) and Google daily users number in the hundreds of millions.
Google's chairman believes that Google (now $22 billion revenue firm) will someday reach $100 billion in revenues; revenues increased 31% last year. "Googled," by Ken Auletta, is another in a line of books covering the history of Google's spectacular rise while also trying to explain it and project the future. The very good part of Auletta's work is that it makes readers think about Google's approach and potential in the future; the not so good parts are that many areas recently 'invaded' by Google are not well covered (fortunately, Wikipedia and Google itself can help fill in the gaps), and too many pages are filled with useless anecdotes and detail.
Google's search service underlies the company's success. It is based on a secret (to limit spammers' efforts to artificially boost ratings) algorithm (PageRank) developed by Google's founders, based primarily on the 'importance' of the pages (recursively determined by the other pages linking to them), and constantly under change (359 in 2008). About 200 factors are utilized in determining PageRank. Auletta contends that Google also uses cookies to refine search responses over time.
Google's advertising revenues account for more than 40% of all ad dollars spent online. Google also pumps additional ad dollars into tens of thousands of Web sites through its AdSense program in which Google serves as matchmaker, uniting advertisers with Web destinations. In effect, AdSense allowed Google to turn everyone's content into a potential place for Google ads. Google charges a fee of about 33%, and the Web destinations pocket about $5 billion/year as a result of visitors clicking on the ads. AdSense for search also allows website owners to place Google search boxes on their websites - Google shares any advertising revenue it makes from those searches with the website owner. 'Google AdSense' has been criticized by some as a large source of "invalid clicks", in which one company clicks on a rival's search engine advertisements to drive up the other's costs; auditing programs are available to help detect and correct for this.
Google AdWords, however, is the company's main source of revenue. AdWords allows potential advertisers to bid to place small text ads (95 character limit - less intrusive and bothersome than typical banner ads) next to the results for key search words. All auctions for ads are run online and automated. The highest bidder gets to place a small text ad to the right of the search results; up to ten lower bidders also win ad space below it. The order is set by a combination of comparative bid levels and the "quality score" of all ads shown. (The quality score is calculated by historical click-through rates, relevance of an advertiser's ad text and keywords, an advertiser's account history, and other determined by Google.) Minimum bids per keyword are set by Google, also using the quality score - a commonly searched word or phrase like JetBlue might cost only a penny or two, while more esoteric phrases like helicopter parts might go for $50/click. Advertisers can choose to pay either according to the number of viewers or clicks. Google Analytics allows advertisers to track day by day, hour by hour, the number of clicks and sales, the traffic produced by the keywords used, the conversion rate from clicks to sales, where viewers came from (referrers, as well as physical location), etc. It helps advertisers target by age, sex, income, zip-code, personal preferences for leisure time activities, product preferences, news preferences. etc.
Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, the idea being to use it's free content as another platform for selling Google ads. YouTube, however, is losing money ($100 million expectation in 2009) so far. In 2008 Google also bought DoubleClick, a service that tracks users and records what commercial advertisements they view. It's main service is to automate the administration effort in the ad buying cycle for advertisers and the management of ad inventory for publishers to increase the purchasing efficiency of advertisers and to minimize unsold inventory for publishers - eg. allowing last-minute substitutions of higher-paying advertisers and filling unused ad space. Auletta reports DoubleClick as posting 17 billion display ads/day.
Ads constitute over 95% of Google's revenue, yet its tentacles are exploring numerous other areas. These include Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Scholar, Google Finance, Google Product Search, Google Calendar, Google Desktop (Docs, Spreadsheets, collaborative forms), Google Chrome (Google's browser), Google Sites (free and assisted way to create websites), Google Android (new mobile phone operating system, with over 1,000 released applications in 2008), Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Voice (provides people with a single phone number that can be used to reach them on their work, home, or cell phones, has 1.419 million users), as well as Google's efforts to digitize all books and to provide cloud computing (no installation). Part of this reflects Google's efforts to return more than just web sites in response to inquiries (eg. videos, books, photos, maps), and to respond to inquiries from more than PCs (about one-third of 2008 Google queries in Japan originated from mobile phones). Google's potential business model for all these is not clear - on the other hand, Google began without a business model, so it doesn't allow that to be an initial hindrance. (Google engineers are all allowed one-day/week to work on a project of their own choice, again without regard for profits; some of its non-engineers are also afforded that privilege.)
The cloud in Google's future - possible antitrust regulation, and lawsuits over copyright infringement (eg. Google Books). On the other hand, Fortune recently noted that Google and the Obama have generally good relations, with top company executives participating in a number of government projects.
Bottom Line: Readers need to read "Googled" slowly and carefully, thinking how this behemoth might affect their businesses. Newspapers, TV and cable stations are already undergoing dramatic changes as a result of Google, the mobile phone and GPS direction-assistance business are about to. They also need to carefully read Wikipedia and Google sites for additional related information to fill in the holes Auletta left.
 Great author, don't buy to punish the publisher for pricing November 7, 2009
someguy123 (NYC)
0 out of 11 found this review helpful
Ken's a great author, but don't buy to punish the publisher for pricing.
Google is a great story and Ken Auletta is a superb writer on media trends.
But I have to diss the book for the pricing of the book and to punish the publisher. Then Pengiun Press won't sign any future authors if they keep this up.
Hardback is cheaper than kindle version???? November 4, 2009
A Prose (Gunnison, CO)
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
The sample holds the promise of an informative book. I'll wait and buy at $9.99.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
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