In The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, John Battelle describes how the evolution of a search engine has changed the way we view the human culture. In the first half of his book, Battelle sets the stage to tell the annecdotal version of Google’s birth and rise to become a super power of the Internet.
Battelle begins his tale with an overview of the evolution of the search engine and the factors that led to Larry Page and Sergey Brin to redefine its use. Throughout the reading, I was drawn into the more personal story of Google’s creation. Battelle weaves in the history of other dot coms to dot gones, like Alta Vista and Lycos, both of which did not and do not have the Internet celebrity of Google. The Search draws the reader into the Google story, and I found myself rooting for the super giant to prevail.
Beginning as a project for Graduate School at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, Page and Brin brought Google to life. Battelle details their journey from begging and borrowing computer hardware and Stanford’s bandwidth. Little did they know, but Google would take on a life of its own. As their ideas became the Google Ideology, Page and Brin’s thesis project became a company.
Their idea began with a simple idea of the link structure of the web. Page was curious to track how webpages linked together, and Brin was lured into the complexity and scale the idea could have. Originally called BackRub, the pair set out to develope a system that would track backlinks on the Internet.
As with any good idea, it evolves over time and Google is no different. As Brin and Page worked on BackRub, they pondered more uses for the information stored on the Internet. The invented PageRank, an algorithm that “managesto take into account both the number of linksinto a particular site, and the number of links into each of the linking sites.” (p. 75) They compared this simple technology to academic citation counting.
Just as they stumbled into developing their technology, users began to stumble upon its practical uses. John Battelle details how users caught on to using Google’s early information. Other search engines only randomly listed results and often returned irrelevant sites (think AltaVist and Excite). PageRank which became Google was/is far superior and became the company’s “secret sauce.” PageRank was built to evolve and grown as the Internet did. As their “crawl” creeped through the Internet and users started to test the system, loyal users caught on and began to understand the implications of “SEARCH.”
As Google grew, Brin and Page had to make a decision about their futures. They could stay at Stanford and finish their graduate school or take a risk and for Google Inc. Lucky for us they took the risk. Starting out small in a friend’s house, Google Inc. became a garage company. Google picked up pace and quickly evolved into a venture backed business and later into a multi-million dollar empire.
One true principle resonates with Google’s creation “Google would never put advertisers ahead of its users.” (p. 92) And to this day, I believe it is this ideology that has allowed Google to become a super giant to rival Microsoft in market share. Google has forged a path in the business world that is different from the traditional roads. Brin and Page have led their brainchild down a more friendly yet saavy path. They did not stick to the useual profit triggered goals, but fought to ensure that their product is built for the consumer. It is this loyalty that helps to create customers for life.
John Battelle details Google’s history in a manner that plays out like a movie. I found myself drawn into the company’s success and cheering for Brin and Page’s risk taking spirit. My one criticism of Battelle’s story is that his depiction of Google predecessors and competitors does not read with the same passion as the main characters of his book, which may have been a concious decision to emphasis the power of Google. I am intrigued to keep reading for next week.
Interesting Development:
Ask.com has decided to go head to head with Google for a position as a leader in the “Search” industry. They have put out a television commercial that puts them in head to head competition with Google. I wonder if the consumer will bite? It seems to be an up hill battle to sway a users’ loyalty to a brand like Google.
