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 enlarge | Authors: David Vise, Mark Malseed
Creator: Adam Grupper
Publisher: Random House Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  94 reviews
Sales Rank: 377982
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 5
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.1 x 5.5 x 1
ISBN: 0739321617
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.761025040973
EAN: 9780739321614
ASIN: 0739321617
Publication Date: November 15, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: NEW AUDIO BOOK, JUST CRISP AND BEAUTIFUL AND STILL PLASTIC SEALED, GREAT PRICE AND READY TO SHIP!!!
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| Customer Reviews:
 A very good overview of an important company April 5, 2008
The Google Story by David A. Vise is a clear and straightforward look at the history of this fabled company. It is written for the lay person, not just techies or business types. Anyone can, and should, enjoy it and be fascinated at this unusual company and its founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
The story is told chronologically beginning with Sergey and Larry's academic careers as undergraduates at the Universities of Maryland and Michigan respectively. Both, of course, are bright and end up as graduate students at Stanford during the height of the dot com boom. In this regard, the book provides an interesting insight into Stanford and the connection between the university and the surrounding business community. The "Google Guys" as Vise keeps referring to them, try at first to sell their nascent search engine for $1 million with the intention of remaining in graduate school. Fortunately (as it turns out) there were no takers and the two young men reluctantly decide to leave Stanford and start their own company. Vise consistently refers to their business naivety, inherent goodness and iconoclastic approach to business. For example, the name "Google" itself is a misrepresentation of the word for an infinite number (googol).
As the story progresses exciting things happen, both good (mostly) and bad. Vise gives an even-handed presentation. The good outweighs the bad, but that is the reality with Google, one of the most phenomenally successful companies in American history. The good includes the ability of the Google Guys to convince two of the leading venture capital firms (Kleiner, Perkins and Sequoia Capital) to invest heavily in their firm without having to give up control, the incredible success of the IPO despite an unorthodox approach, development of an advanced system for sending and organizing emails (gmail) and the continuing development of new ideas such as digitalizing all the major library collections and plans for expansion into the fields of biology and genetics.
Vise may, however, be faulted for, in my view, glossing over the problems Google faced along the way. For example he discusses the fact that gmail constitutes an unwarranted invasion of privacy in that it reads email messages in order to put relevant advertisements in the sponsored links section, but then nothing more is said about this subject. He also writes that Google acknowledged that it violated its own code of ethics (do no evil) in order to gain entry into the lucrative Chinese market by allowing the Chinese government to censor its content. More tellingly, in the chapter entitled "The China Syndrome" Vise examines the competition between Microsoft and Google. He indicates that Microsoft set out to counter the Google challenge as it had so many other challenges in the past. He even quotes Microsoft CEO Steve Ball Ballmer as saying, "I'm going to f...ing kill Google." The chance comes up when a key Microsoft employee, Dr. Kai-fu Lee, decides to leave the company and work for Google as the new head of its China operations despite the fact that his contract with Microsoft contained a one year "no compete" clause. Microsoft, even Bill Gates personally, told Dr. Lee that they would sue him in order to get at Google. Despite this warning Dr. Lee did leave and went to work for Google in China. Microsoft then filed a lawsuit against Google in what Vise calls a "war." Vise then indicates that a "preliminary ruling by a judge in the state of Washington barred Lee from engaging in work that involved search or Google's plans for China, giving Microsoft a temporary victory pending a full trial in January." But at this point Vise changes gears and begins writing about a birthday party at Google to celebrate the first year of the IPO. When he does come back to the Lee case some pages later all he says is that Microsoft and Google "reached a settlement in the Kai-fu Lee case and indicated that the settlement terms were not disclosed but that Dr. Lee was now free to work for Google. Thus what started out as a potentially major issue just fizzles away.
Perhaps because of the relative shortness of the book (less than 300 pages of text), Vise was forced to leave out details on many matters. In any case, the book falls far short of being a definitive, in-depth study of the company. Finally, he also raises the issue of "click fraud," (people just clicking on an advertisement without the intention of buying anything thereby incurring a cost to the company, but does not provide much in the way of what Google is doing about it.
The book also gives insights into personal and business success if the reader is familiar with that literature. For example, Brin and Page are highly focused (Focal Point by Brian Tracy) they use a win/win strategy with a competitor, Ask Jeeves (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey), they have a burning desire for creating the best search engine (Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill) and their focus is on achieving goals, constant improvement and staying positive (The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma).
The appendices to the book are also useful. The first gives a number of valuable tips on how to make maximum use of Google. The second, a copy of the so-called GLAT test that is administered to potential new employees is a dud, first of all because it is difficult to get the answers (I could not get them from the website indicated in the book), and secondly when I did get them they proved to be disappointing--either impossibly hard or lacking any answer other than personal judgment.
In sum, the book is well worth reading. I give it a five star rating because it is a very good way for the average person to learn about this important company.
 Goodgle March 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I think this book is a must-read for bankers and insurance guys. This shows how business can be fun and how to escape the stubborn world of meetings, sales trainings and being stiff :-)
Known for its size and earnings, Google now stands on top with Microsoft. Although many consider them both IT companies, many differences can be shown. For one their main goal is creating added value and being the best. For the other is profit and sales.
Ofcourse this book shines its light from a Google perspective, but that's what makes the book fun. You get sucked into the Googleplex and get to know an organization that seems chaotic, yet organized.
Fun to read.
Did you know a brain surgeon worked on their systems? February 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was pretty awesome and I couldn't put it down. Those guys are geniuses and it sounds like everyone they hire is a genius as well. They had a brain surgeon design their network. Now who would have thought to do that? How do you keep your employees from going offsite to have long lunches? You bring in a gourmet chef and provide free meals! Google was developed at a time when there were already big name search engines. It just goes to show that you can build a better mousetrap.
 ...very disapointing January 30, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
There's not a lot to say about this book. The content is boring and empty. It offers no insights. It misses the single most important factor of Page and Brin's success. AND... the narrator doesn't help; his voice is not only banal and uninspiring - it just plain gets on your nerves! How anyone could choose such a narrator is beyond me! A good narrator can always help to sell even a weak story, but this guy just makes it so much worse. It was really a struggle to listen through it, and I couldn't wait to put it on eBay and sell it. Not only that, the whole thing just sounds like a (very poor) promotional blurb for Google. Disappointing is definitely an understatement. I wanted to give it NO stars - it is really that void of any value - but Amazon forced me to give it one. There are so many good things out there to read and/or listen to. This is not one of them!
Interesting Perspective on an Amazing Company December 12, 2007
"The Google Story" offers a unique perspective on the story of Google (the company). More than a business biography, this book does trace the rapid growth and historical arc of the Google story, but it also layers insightful observations and questions about the company's plans for the future into the book.
While many widely read business biographies are written "after the fact", this book is real-time...it covers events associated with the company right up until the time at which the book was published.
An interesting theme, from my point of view, that is played upon from time to time through the book is the role mathematics, and by extension, general problem-solving, plays in the success of Google's main product at this point in time...a search engine. This theme adds another, deeper, dimension to this book as compared to many other business biographies.
For readers with an interest in technology, entrepreneurship and business in today's changing world, this is a recommended read.
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