What Would Google Do?
april 7th, 2010 by Andreas från XavierMedia.se
- ISBN13: 9780061709715
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
A bold and vital book that asks and answers the most urgent question of today: What Would Google Do? In a book that's one part prophecy, one part thought experiment, one part manifesto, and one part survival manual, internet impresario and blogging pioneer Jeff Jarvis reverse-engineers Google—the fastest-growing company in history—to discover forty clear and straightforward rules to manage and live by. At the same time, he illuminates the new worldview of t… More >>
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april 7th, 2010 at 12:17 e m
By page 20 I was revising my entire business model. This book states the raw facts about yesterday, today, and tomorrow. You the reader have to decide how these facts impact you, and what actions to take. I have read several of the negative or weak reviews of this book and am shocked at the stupidity, jealousy, and reader envy of the naysayers — IGNORE THEM. They're the same people that look at price before value, and have no concept of serving customers to make a profit. Buy this book as fast as you can, and use the model of Google to the benefit of your company, your customers, and you. I did. Jeffrey Gitomer author of The Little Red Book of Selling.
Rating: 5 / 5
april 7th, 2010 at 12:27 e m
The business revolution that is Google has eluded insightful coverage in book form…until now. WWGD (the acronym the author uses to ask the books central question, "What Would Google Do?") delivers the real deal.
The first part of the book, "Google Rules," is exactly what you you would expect: a discussion of what Google does, and more important, how it impacts users. This discussion is broken down into 10 chapters and 30 or so short topics. Among the best material here is the chapter New Economy, with topics including "The mass market is dead, long live the mass of niches" and "Google commidifies everything." This latter topic is something that helps define Googles impact on business, yet few people understand it.
Here's a sample: "Content is commodified: Google makes it just about as easy for you to find what I've written on a topic as what Newsweek has written. Once was, brands organized information but now Google does. Media are commodified: Google places marketers' ads on sites without telling them where the ads will appear. It places those ads not as an ad agency would–on the basis of the audience size, demographics, trust, or value of a media brand–but on the coincidence of words on a page. The value of the ad depends only on how many people click on it."
Another great chapter is "New Business Reality, with sections like "Free is a business model" and "Middlemen are doomed." I'll just say that if you're a middleman, read this chapter and be scared.
The ten sections in the second part of the book, "If Google Ruled the World," are what make this book truly useful. The author has picked nine broad industries, including Media, Retail, Manufacturing, Money and even Public Welfare, and again asked the question WWGD?
Here's an excerpt from the Media chapter section "GoogleCollins: Killing the book to save it." "Publishers treat Google as an enemy for scanning books and making them searchable (though you cant read them all cover-to-cover at[...]). Instead, publishers should embrace Google and the internet, for now via search and links more readers can discover authors and what they say and develop relationships and perhaps buy their books." A bit of a run on sentence, but also an important insight that has worked in other industries (think independent music and MySpace).
With 20+ chapters and 50 sections, the book sometimes reads more like a blog than a book. This is no surprise, as author Jeff Jarvis is a popular blogger at [...]. Some of individual sections are weak, but not enough for me to deduct a star. The writing could definitely have benefitted from a copy editor. But the meat is here. I have panned other recent business titles as being self-serving magazine articles bloated into books. This is the opposite, a content rich expose of how one of the most successful companies in the world thinks. That world is changing, and this book helps explain why.
Rating: 5 / 5
april 7th, 2010 at 2:08 e m
Here's the question I ask myself when I consider my criticism of a book on the topic of new media: will the book empower and motivate me to do anything different that will improve my results?
Yes, in the case of this book.
Readers whose success depends on how well they use the opportunities of the Web will find much to consider. The book begins with a tale that is both cautionary and instructive about Dell's initial belief that what people say on the Web doesn't matter. It continues with an analysis of how Google has decided consistently to try different approaches to making available information and tools. Even if you don't want to follow Google's lead toward greater openness, it is a good idea to try to understand it as thoroughly as possible. This book, though certainly not definitive, is one you should certainly try to digest.
I say "try" because there is one important difference between me and most (perhaps all) of those who have written negative reviews of this book. That difference is that I have have been the developer, designer, and content manager of successful sites on the Web since 1995. And I'd like to continue and expand my success. Jarvis' book suggests some strategies that I can use right now.
If the Web is not your area of expertise and, further, if you are not doing much business in a 21st century model, then I can see that you might not — like other negative reviewers here — find much of value. In fact, you might be tempted to the reductionist and incorrect view that Google was simply lucky, very lucky.
Nothing could be further from the truth. As anyone who runs a successful site can tell you, it's not a matter of luck. It is a matter of trying to understand and respond to what is needed by your users. Google's success, because almost everyone using the Web finds it very useful (notwithstanding some folks here), matters because what makes it successful will determine, at least to some extent, how well your work on the Web will succeed.
So, if you are looking at the negative reviews here, take into consideration the experience and current work of the reviewers. If yours coincides with theirs, I agree that there's nothing to see here: move along. But if you are trying to succeed at disseminating information for the sake of your business (or because, as in my case, you simply believe that the information you are making available will be of value and use to some segment of Web users), this is a book to read carefully. And then think about its implications for your work, because those implications matter.
Rating: 5 / 5
april 7th, 2010 at 4:06 e m
It has some great perspective on how you view your market and ideas for growing like google.
Rating: 4 / 5
april 7th, 2010 at 4:47 e m
Until you read this book, it is reasonable for you to question the title. As it is written, it appears to be a book about different problems and solutions presented in terms of what would the Google company do. Fortunately, it is much more than that because the usage of the term Google in the title is more in the nature of a process rather than the specific company.
Jarvis uses the Google model of disbursement and the soliciting of comments from the crowd as his fundamental mechanism for solving problems. It reminds me of the old story about a university building some new buildings and then preparing to lay down the sidewalks. When the contractor asked, "Where do the sidewalks go?" the smart university official responded with, "Wait a few months." After viewing where the footpaths had been worn in the grass, the university official told the contractor to put the sidewalks there.
Jarvis is quite correct in pointing out that relying on the crowd to generate the best, at least the most generally appealing solution to problems, can work well. My only criticism is that at times his arguments reach the point of propaganda for the Google way and there is a bit of unrealistic reliance on self-regulation. While there have been many successes with this process, there have been some significant problems and the Google company itself is beginning to lose some it its' luster. There have been recent reports of some of the most talented people leaving the company and there was a recent announcement of significant layoffs.
However, it must be said that no process is ever perfect and therefore, any significant action must be tempered by a context-specific realism. Therefore, while I am in complete agreement with most of what Jarvis says, as he is clearly a visionary, at some point we wander along different philosophical paths. This split is due to my belief that while the Google process is an excellent approach, more context-specific restraint must be included if it is to work as well as Jarvis claims.
Rating: 5 / 5