SearchMob!
Recent Comment
Spotlight
- Reader Hercule DB writes: Each of us has a choice to make. How much privacy do we demand? What price freedom? We should rather live in a free world troubled even by threats from terrorists, than one in which individuals or organizations in whom I have little trust have open access and therefore control over our lives. [go]
Recent Comments
- ExposureTim: " I love it - thanks for posting this. It ..." [go]
- Mike: " ASK won't be doing it. They are signed ..." [go]
- eka-man: " Pfft ?!! doing the energy saving platfor ..." [go]
- epictum: " welcome to the google universe. next up. ..." [go]
- Trogdor: " Nice to see this available. Ask has had ..." [go]
- Soren G: " I think Alanis nailed this. It is that g ..." [go]
- John: " And really, that song deserves some mock ..." [go]
- JG: " First of all, as I repetitively say, why ..." [go]
- meeero: " a high pagerank doesn't mean that the si ..." [go]
- Geo: " I'm glad to see that Google has finally ..." [go]
- Rich: " Hi John, I'll chime in too. We're on o ..." [go]
- franck: " you're not a paranoid freak, i also did ..." [go]
- David Megginson: " I'm not a big fan of litigation usually ..." [go]
- Güzel Resimler: " i could not understant what is about thi ..." [go]
- peggy wilburn: " Hello, Looking for the paternal side or ..." [go]
- mb: " John, I'm with you on the fear that big ..." [go]
PERFECT FOR THAT PERSON WITH EVERYTHING
Order 'The Search'
Yup, it makes the perfect gift for that officemate or colleague who you thought had everything....including you! If you order here, I promise to sign it, assuming we can figure out the shipping...
You can also buy the audio version here.
Check my book page for more info.
Blogger's Rights
Top Posts
- The Database of Intentions (or how this all got started)
- From Pull to Point(or the first post where I riff on the "Point-To Economy")
- Google As Builder (or the point at which Google stopped being simply a search engine)
- On Google v. Yahoo
- TV and Search Merge
- On Sell Side Advertising
- Battelle Gets Searchstreams
- Search and Immortality
- Toward the Endemic (on endemic advertising)
More coming soon...
Active Topics
- 25 comments: Conversational Marketing: PGM v. CM, Part 3 (03.09)
- 24 comments: A Modest Proposal To YHOO and MSFT: Spin Out A Search Company (03.13)
- 21 comments: Microsoft Deal For Large Customers: Use Live Search, Get Free MSFT Products (03.15)
- 12 comments: Ballmer On Google - Uh Oh (03.18)
- 10 comments: BizWeek Says It All (03.31)
Monthly Archives
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- July 2004
- June 2004
- May 2004
- April 2004
- March 2004
- February 2004
- January 2004
- December 2003
- November 2003
- October 2003
About John Battelle
Searchblog Newsletter
Enter email to subscribe to "Re-Find", Searchblog's weekly newsletter:
Calendar
| Su | Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 |
Syndicate
Powered by
October 1, 2005 11:22 AM
Reading at Google
Yesterday I once again drove down to Google, but this time it wasn't to do a set of interviews for the book, it was to read from the book to perhaps the most demanding audience I've ever encountered - a room full of Googlers, nearly 200 in all.
I was a bit nervous. While I think the book is fair, and clearly acknowledges the importance and power of Google, it also has more than its fair share of reporting on the negative aspects of the company's astonishing rise - from privacy concerns to allegations of arrogance and self dealing. Would I be booed off the campus?
It didn't help my anxiety to see a gaggle of folks in the audience who also were in the book or helped me in one way or another - from Louis Monier and Peter Norvig to Raymond Nasr, Steve Langdon, and Eric Case.
But my concern was overblown. I had a great time, and I think the folks in attendance did too. I read selections from the early years, as well as my riff on the future of Google. And the questions, man, the questions were challenging and very, very thoughtful. They ranged from "if we build the Google Grid, and succeed, what do we do then?" (answer - I have no idea!) to "What would you do if you were running Google?" (answer: buy a video asset and set it free, more on that soon). Another good question: "What might make Google fail?" I wrote about that in the book - two things - one is lack of direction - when you encourage thousands of folks to dream and provide them the chance to execute on those dreams, a company can lose focus. And the other is simply managing growth - the company is hiring more than ten folks a day.
At the end, Eric Schmidt came up and said hello, and we chatted about the book and my visit. I signed a lot of books, and I asked each person who came up what division they worked in and how long they'd been there. The average time of duty? About six months. A very young, very fast growing company indeed.
I am very thankful to Karen Wickre for inviting me down. It was the highlight of the book tour so far. Of course, week after next I am going to Microsoft and Amazon. That should be interesting as well!
- Posted by John Battelle on October 1, 2005 11:22 AM
remember this »- Sphere It
Searchblog Classifieds!
Recent Jobs
Searchblog, in paperback
Searchblog
Print Edition
Get Your Own Print Version of Searchblog
Click here to buy a customized print version of the entire contents of Searchblog.
Comments
["What might make Google fail?" I wrote about that in the book - two things - one is lack of direction - when you encourage thousands of folks to dream and provide them the chance to execute on those dreams, a company can lose focus.]
I think this is rather what'll make google survive, it's the ability is to be agile enough to enter new markets and even morph the business at will. Their mission statement reflects that ( organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful), and that is what I beleives what keeps Gates awake at night.
Indeed, I should have been more direct - the company's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, classic Greek narrative, of course.
good question, and to answer that it will be interesting
to examine what has led to google's success so far,
simply put - the power of good technology, in the
early days google was by far the best search engine
(that gap is a lot narrower now, I find yahoo's
results equally relevant, although google's crawlers
are still a lot faster when it comes to indexing and
refreshing sites, often I update forums and find my
comments on google the very next day while it takes
a few days for yahoo to catch up, arguably this is
a gap that should be easier to narrow than relevancy),
google did ONE thing but did it WELL, and when
consumers have to choose betn 2 services (both
offered for free), they will always pick the
better (or at least perceived better) service,
how many people would continue to use google
if they had to pay even 5$ a month to search
on google, and how many would jump ship to
yahoo/msn/etc? I am sure most people (including
me) would switch. The example is purely hypothetical
and online search is not going to become a paid service
anytime soon. And as long as google maintains its search
superiority over others, it will continue drawing a majority
of the search traffic (thru google.com or thru a
variety of other services - like free wi-fi),
and will continue to maintain/grow its advt
revenue. I would like to mention 1 last point
here - the power of branding - google search
was featured on yahoo's front page for 3+ yrs,
and that played no small role in google getting
popular and becoming kind of a brand name for
"search", I dont see google faltering as long
as the technology/brand hold strong.
FYI FWIW John,
The Jonathan Thaw review (from Bloomberg) of SEARCH was picked up in Saturday's Rocky Mountain News - page 5C. They printed quite a few words, and even included a nice picture of you sitting in front of 3 of the covers.
Always "interesting" how stories make the rounds in cyberspace (you were basically EVERYWHERE) and then show up a few days/weeks afterwards in the mainstream media.
Nice job,
alek
Great reading, keep up the great posts.
Peace, JiggaDigga
Post a comment