Dec 10
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“The Google Story”
By David A. Vise and Mark Malseed
The story of Google IS the story of the internet in the 21st century. In the last ten years, Google has dominated the web and become the authorative source for internet search as well as a global leader in internet innovation, technology and monetization. All while holding fast to their principles of putting people and customers before profits… which is stated in their enigmatic corporate mantra “Don’t Be Evil.” (by the way.. this is a witty and somewhat snarky reference to Microsoft which they see as the Evil Empire)
Though this book was written in 2005 and a lot of water has flowed under the Google bridge since then, it covers in great detail the ‘early years’ of how Sergey Brin and Larry Page first envisioned a better way to search scholarly data while pursuing their PhD’s at Stanford. As they developed their capabilities and technology, their vision grew to include searching the entire internet. Which was a bold statement in 1998.
At the time, internet search was simply a way in which titans such as AOL and Yahoo could attract people to their sites and keep them there so that they could promote and advertise to them. The fact that the Google guys wanted to provide a fast and easy search and then immediately take you to the information you were looking for was seen as being amateur and not a viable business model. In a post DotCom bubble world, many were asking ‘Where’s the money?’ More concerned with solving the search ‘problem’ than with monetization at the time, Brin and Page secured $250,000 of start up money from an Angel investor, rented a garage in Palo Alto, California and went to work.
Within a few years, their brand was growing on a global scale without spending a dime on advertising. Welcome to the era of viral marketing. While Google didn’t invent ‘word of mouth’ advertising, they are a perfect example of how creating a better product and respecting your customers can lead to explosive internet growth. By 2004 when they went public, Google had become a verb in our modern lexicon and had millions of users across the globe. They had managed to create a fun and inviting, campus like, workplace at their new Googleplex, were luring top engineers and PhD’s away from Microsoft and other industry titans and had launched some of the most innovative initiatives on the internet, including Pay Per Click advertising (okay Overture created it.. but let’s face it Google perfected and then dominated PPC), Google Earth, Google Images, Google Scholar and many, many more. Their innovations have placed powerful resources for information at our fingertips and has made Google a global economic force with earnings greater than General Motors and Disney combined!
Butcher, baker, candle stick maker.. attorney, plumber, network marketer; no matter what you do, if you use the internet to market and promote your goods, services and brand, read this book to understand how it all started and to get a glimpse into the trends and technology that are shaping our (internet) world today.. and in the years ahead. To learn more about the book.. click the link below.
