The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture [Paperback]

I found this a really interesting book. It’s not a ‘history of Google’ story (look at ‘The Google Story’ by David Vise, if that’s what you’re after); although Google’s evolution features throughout. It’s a ‘history of search’ story, which provides insights into Yahoo, Alta Vista, Google and the other main players. It’s also an essay on what ‘search’ could be, how it could change everything and what we should expect in future.

The highlights for me were:
The realisation that the ‘database of intentions’ (Battelle’s term for the as yet unrecorded database of all our collective searches) would be an incredible archive of the developed world’s interests at any point in time.

How TV advertising could become a function of the programmes you watch.

How cool mobile search would be (scan a barcode into a PDA to see if another local retailer has he item you’re after for less).

The positives and negatives of everything recorded about us being searchable, and the implications for privacy (like ‘reverse directory lookup’ – type in a phone number and Google returns a name and address).

The prospect of all our stuff being searchable (eg our kids having indexed digital photo albums instead of cardboard ones gathering dust).

The reasons behind Google acquiring other little companies that can help it produce things like Google Earth and Google Print.

The reason other traditionally non-search internet players (such as Amazon with its A9 search engine) are taking an interest in search.

The amazing possibilities of ‘perfect search’….

So don’t be left behind – buy your copy now.

When a brilliant journalist writes about a contemporary and lava hot topic like Search-simply consider that Google which epitomizes Search experienced the phenomenal growth of 0 to $3 billion in the short time span of five years 2000-2004 -the result is a riveting book.

There are similarities and parallels between the founders of Google and the founder of Microsoft. In both instances they are dropouts of elite universities in order to found companies and pursue their vision. In the case of Bill Gates the founder of Microsoft, the epiphany was the power of software. In the case of Larry Page and Sergey Brin the founders of Google, the driving insight was the power of Search.

The object of Search is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

The author's treatment is balanced in that while he shows that the present Search is already enormous and its future virtually unlimited he also points to its ominous consequences such as the infringement on privacy.

To show what the future for Search reserves, a comparison with Micrososft would suffice:

The audacious goal of Bill Gates and Micropsoft was of a computer on every desk, and Microsoft products running on every computer. A goal achieved within twenty years and in the process rendering Bill Gates fabulously rich and Microsoft a stellar world company.

Let us consider Google's audacious goal:to organize information and make it accessible. Forget about a computer on every desk. The entire world needs to become computerized. Anything of value will be in Google's index. We have to visualize the merging of the physical world with the World Wide Web.

Microsoft's success was driving a computer to every desk with Windows on every computer. The next step in the evolution of the computer was the connection of every computer to every other-the Internet. But what comes after that?

According to the cognoscenti, the web is in the process of becoming the next great computing platform-the successor to Microsoft Windows, owned by no one but used by everyone. The web is also in the process of connecting to everything, just name it. The companies best positioned to deliver hugely scaled services over the web platform are best positioned to win. And when it comes to hugely scaled services nothing beats Search.

Google's mission of organizing information and making it accessible sets the company up to deliver nothing short of every possible service that might live on top of a computing platform:the Google grid.

We can conceive in our digital future Google as phone company; as cable provider; as university; as eBay, Amazon, Microsoft, Expedia, and Yahoo all folded in one. Fascinating, beguiling and awe inspiring!

John Battelle has a long history in the web's short evolution. He is currently deeply involved in the Web 2.0 technologies and strategies and therefore has a great understanding of the past,present and the future of the web. This book very much reflects that fact by covering the past, present and future of search. Google may rule the roost today but let us not forget in the past so did Alta Vista.

The delicious irony is that today Google has delivered on Microsoft's stated vision of "information at your fingertips" first but this is only the first round of a very long battle in the war to win consumers.

If you want to understand what comes next ... I recommend you read this book.