The Intellog Blog

If, in a twist of irony, you put the word Google into the Amazon book search, you now get more than 3,000 titles.  One would think everything that could be written about Google already has been.  Not deterred, Ken Auletta, who has written the Annals of Communication for The New Yorker for the last 18 years, has decided there are still a few more things to say.  Surprisingly, he does manage to find a few in his recent book Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.

Part One gets things off to a good start, where the author opens with a description of a meeting between Mel Karmazin, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.  Karmazin – the quintessential New York Madman – is to have said about Google’s impact on traditional advertising; “You’re f… with the magic.”  In a less civil world, this would have actually been the subtitle of Auletta’s book.  At the very least, it is its main thesis.  “Half of advertising is wasted, you just don’t know which half” has been the foundation of advertising as long as there has been advertising.  It’s as funny as it is true, but Karmazin believes Google has cracked the code.  As a result is the world really has changed, and there is simply no putting the genie back in the bottle*.

Part Two is the least interesting part of the book, with Google’s start really well documented in several earlier books; The Search by John Battelle is a pretty good place to start, and does a better job of putting Google in the context of all the other search engines which also go their start around the same time.  Battelle’s book was one of the earlier works to assert Google’s success can be attributed, to some degree, to luck.  Or rather, the lucklessness of their competitors.  What Auletta manages to add to the story is to find a quote attributed to Larry Page where he says AdSense “was probably more luck than a plan.”  Also, the author highlights the missing ingredient provided by the enigmatic ‘Coach Campbell’; that is, Bill Campbell, Chairman of Intuit, Google board member and Silicon Valley confidante-to-the-technology-stars.  He had the ability to weld together the traditional approach of Schmidt, and the revolutionary approach of Brin and Page. 

Part Three is a dense description of the inevitable clashes arising from Google’s success; with government, so-called old media companies, book publishers and anybody else caught in the tsunami radiating out from the earthquake Google has created.  It laboriously enumerates the corporate machinations, lawsuits and negotiations as the wealth inevitably gets redistributed.  Two surprises are highlighted;  Eric Schmidt’s much more significant contribution to Google’s success than had previously been asserted, and secondly, when Google gets it wrong, it may well be attributed to their leadership’s naivety, as opposed to outright malice.  The section is highly detailed and well written, but the nature of the subject material still makes it hard to follow.

The final part of the book is where Auletta’s broad understanding and insight of the media industry really combine to make for some interesting reading.  It’s where he finally explains the concept of being Googled by Google; turns out it’s a collective term that describes the net effect of Google focusing its gaze on a particular market space, and what happens to the current occupants of the space when they do. 

There is, of course, an angle to Auletta’s book.  To some degree, Auletta has been old media, at least during his tenure at The New Yorker.  So when he says ‘The End of the World as We Know It’, it may more accurately describes ‘The End of the World as I Know It’.  What Auletta, with his great journalistic powers at his disposal, should now investigate whether online advertising – post Google – actually works.  If I am in any way representative, my pathological avoidance of the ‘sponsored link’ makes me think it might not.   As always, I would highly recommend the Charlie Rose interview of Auletta talking about Googled.  The book is well worth reading, and Auletta a person to whom its well worth worth listening.

*Of note is that Karmazin is now CEO of Sirius XM, the very existence of which is predicated on a business model based on an alternative to advertising.  To fully appreciate Karmazin’s characterization in the book, it’s worth watching his interview with Charlie Rose.

Think of this as the book David Mamet would have written if he had written on the subject of faceted search.  For about $29, it was little surprising to see how thin the volume was when it arrived – a scant 70 pages of reading.  The text is part of the Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services which is described on their website as “50- to 100-page publications on topics pertaining to information science and applications of technology to information discovery, production, distribution, and management.”  I’m afraid I didn’t follow the reference to ‘lecture’ – but I can only assume the author has lectured on the subject at some point, and the text captures the essence of his presentations.

But in truth, if you strip out the fluff that accompanies most texts, it’s likely you’ll wind up with something not much longer than Tunkelang’s book.  It’s a worthwhile (and very quick!) read and takes the reader through a brief history of the subject, identifies the key concepts, compares academic research and commercial applications and finally deals with some of the practical concerns of implementing faceted search.  There are 119 references which form the basis for lots of additional reading.  Actually, it’s not a bad approach.  Read through the text in a couple of hours or less to get an overview of the subject, then use the references to expand knowledge if interested or if additional explanation is required.  There are at least a couple of referenced books and websites I’m inclined to follow up.

As the author says on page 25; “You might wonder why you have picked up an entire book on faceted search only to find it summed up in a couple of pages…not quite halfway through.”  Indeed.  But as he alludes to shortly thereafter, faceted search is a simple concept which gets complicated in the details, many of which are introduced in the balance of the book.  But in summary, you could spend a lot more money and time getting the same basic information Tunkelang provides in his book, and it’s therefore recommended reading for those looking to get up to speed quickly on the subject.

I finally managed to get through the 463 pages of this well researched, extremely well documented and reasonably readable tome.  Nandan Nilekani, the co-chairman of India’s Infosys Technologies Limited has prospered handsomely since the introduction of political reforms in the early 90s. His business rock star status means he is often asked to provide his explanation of the Indian economic miracle.  Imagining India is the collective response, and he has answered the questions exhaustively to say the least.  The only downside is he felt the need to squeeze his answer into just one volume.

The first 340 pages are a fairly dense history of virtually every aspect of Indian life including politics, education, health care, national infrastructure and, of course, business.   While necessary to provide a context for where India is today and where it is going in the future, I almost wished the author had put this information in a separate book, which could be optionally read.  It certainly paints a very complete picture of the period from India’s independence in 1947 to the current day.

For someone like me who was otherwise unfamiliar with India’s history, the most significant surprise is the wide diversity of cultures which make up the country.  Naively, I had assumed a certain homogeneity for all parts of India.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  To describe India as one nation would be the same as describing Europe as one nation.

However, the most interesting part of the book started for me on page 341 through to the end, where the author talks about the status quo, and the things which will need to happen in the future if the boom is to continue.   He makes what seem to be practical and workable suggestions.  However, they do appear to be variations on the theme of deregulation and getting the suffocating Indian bureaucracy off the backs of the fundamentally entrepreneurial Indian people.

It’s interesting to note that in July of this year, Nilekani was appointed Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India.  This is one of the subjects he spends quite a bit of time on in the book.  Simply having one, universal identification system for each Indian – when there are nearly 1.2 billion of them – is a monumental task, and Nilekani sees it as a key enabler for further reforms and the continued rapid development of the economy.  Unfortunately, his move into this position has necessitated the discontinuation of his blog.  In the last post he states “In my new role, I can no longer comment on government policy.”  Not only do we lose a useful point of access to this exceedingly bright mind, but one also hopes this is not the first step in Nilekani being subsumed by the bureaucracy, as opposed to being a useful and constructive critic of it.  Time will tell.

Imagining India is a long and fairly difficult read, but well worth the time and effort to get a sense of a country which is going to have a huge impact in the future.  (Also, for those interested in the subject, watching Charlie Rose’s fairly brief  interview with Nilekani is well worth the time.)