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In The Plex
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Produktbeschreibungen
Pressestimmen
"Levy is America’s premier technology journalist. . . . He has produced the most interesting book ever written about Google. He makes the biggest intellectual challenges of computer science seem endlessly fun and fascinating. . . . We can expect many more books about Google. But few will deliver the lively, idea-based journalism of In the Plex.”
—Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Washington Post
"Almost nothing can stop a remarkable idea executed well at the right time, as Steven Levy's brisk-but-detailed history of Google, In the Plex, convincingly proves. . . . makes obsolete previous books on the company."
—Jack Shafer, The San Francisco Chronicle
"The rise of Google is an engrossing story, and nobody's ever related it in such depth."
—Hiawatha Bray, The Boston Globe
"Dense, driven examination of the pioneering search engine that changed the face of the Internet.
Thoroughly versed in technology reporting, Wired senior writer Levy deliberates at great length about online behemoth Google and creatively documents the company’s genesis from a 'feisty start-up to a market-dominating giant.' The author capably describes Google’s founders, Stanford grads Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as sharp, user-focused and steadfastly intent on 'organizing all the world’s information.' Levy traces how Google’s intricately developed, intrepid beginnings and gradual ascent over a competitive marketplace birthed an advertising-fueled 'money machine' (especially following its IPO in 2004), and he follows the expansion and operation of the company’s liberal work campus ('Googleplex') and its distinctively selective hiring process (Page still signs off on every new hire). The author was afforded an opportunity to observe the company’s operations, development, culture and advertising model from within the infrastructure for two years with full managerial cooperation. From there, he performed hundreds of interviews with past and current employees and discovered the type of 'creative disorganization' that can either make or break a business. Though clearly in awe of Google’s crowning significance, Levy evenhandedly notes the company’s more glaring deficiencies, like the 2004 cyber-attack that forced the removal of the search engine from mainland China, a decision vehemently unsupported by co-founder Brin. Though the author offers plenty of well-known information, it’s his catbird-seat vantage point that really gets to the good stuff.
Outstanding reportage delivered in the upbeat, informative fashion for which Levy is well known."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"An instructive primer on how the minds behind the world's most influential internet company function."
—Richard Waters, The Wall Street Journal
"[Steven Levy] spent much of the past three years playing anthropologist at one of the Internet's most interesting villages and set of inhabitants -- the Googleplex and the tribue of Googlers who inhabit it. . . . A deep dive into Google's culture, history and technology."
--Mike Swift, San Jose Mercury News
"The wizards of Silicon Valley often hype their hardware/software breakthroughs as 'magical' for the products' ability to pull off dazzling stunts in the blink of an eye. And true to the magicians' code, these tech talents rarely let mere mortals peer behind the curtains. . . . That's what makes Levy's just-out tome so valuable."
—Jonathan Takiff, The Philadelphia Daily News
"The most comprehensive, intelligent and readable analysis of Google to date. Levy is particularly good on how those behind Google think and work. . . . What's more, his lucid introductions to Google's core technologies - the search engine and the company's data centres - are written in non-geek English and are rich with anecdotes and analysis. . . . In The Plex teems with original insight into Google's most controversial affairs."
—Andrew Keen, New Scientist
"Steven Levy's new account [of Google], In the Plex, is the most authoritative to date and in many ways the most entertaining."
—James Gleick, The New York Review of Books
Kurzbeschreibung
Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes readers inside Google headquarters—the Googleplex—to show how Google works.
While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google’s earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow (until Google’s IPO nobody other than Google management had any idea how lucrative the company’s ad business was), Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open-source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more.
The key to Google’s success in all these businesses, Levy reveals, is its engineering mind-set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers—free food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseuses—and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire.
But has Google lost its innovative edge? It stumbled badly in China—Levy discloses what went wrong and how Brin disagreed with his peers on the China strategy—and now with its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete?
No other book has ever turned Google inside out as Levy does with In the Plex.
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Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
Ever since its inception, and in many cases even before it became incorporated, Google has been referred to mainly in the superlatives. The briskness with which it became the dominant player in online search, the sheer size of its operations and the infrastructure, the incredibly short time within which it became one of the largest companies in terms of market capitalization - all of these are the stuff of legends. It is unsurprising then that Google would attract a high level of media attention, and there are literally hundreds of articles written about it every day. (I know this because I just did a quick search for Google in Google News.) Over the years there has also been no shortage of books on Google. However, in terms of the depth and breadth of its research, as well as the amount of first-hand information that it provides, Steven Levy's "In The Plex" stands in a category of its own.
In the minds of its founders and most of the early employees, Google is first and foremost a technology company. The business model of online advertising came about almost as an afterthought, and one continuously gets the sense that its purpose is to pay the bills so that Google geeks can have a free reign in pursuing their latest techie interest. This attitude is an integral part of Google's DNA, and any book that aims to provide the reader with a better sense of what Google is all about needs to get this point across. Unfortunately, there have been several books in recent years that were more concerned with all the intangible aspects of life in the age of Google and had almost completely missed this point. "In The Plex," I am happy to say, did not fall in that trap. Steven Levy comes across as an extremely competent and well-informed technology journalist who clearly relishes the opportunity to write about all the intricacies of Google's engineering prowess. In this respect as well, this is a quintessentially Google book. If Google were a person, this is probably what its autobiography would look like. Levy, who currently works for Wired magazine, literally embedded himself deep within Google and over the course of two years or so interviewed hundreds of Google employees. The result is a very comprehensive book on almost all aspects of Google's technology and business.
The book is very informative, probably more so than all the other books on Google out there combined. Even some of the already widely familiar stories about Google's origins and early years have been given new details. The book is also remarkable in that it provides a lot of information on some very specific technical details and innovation that Google has accomplished over the years. Granted, much of it is many years, or even over a decade, old, but for the longest time Google has been extremely cagey about revealing any of that information to the wider audience. The fact that most of the information in this book has been obtained directly from Googlers, including the notoriously secretive founding duo, may signal that Google has come to the point where it has become confident in its own strength and comfortable with the idea that revealing certain information about itself will not jeopardize its business model.
I relished the opportunity to find out more about some of the Google's early "magical" features and projects. For instance, even though I had been relying on it for years, I finally understand how Google's famous spell-checker works. The reader can also learn more about the early days of Google's book scanning technology, the development of its massive data centers, the rise and fall of Google video, and several other Google projects and initiatives that have been undertaken over the years. All the stories are to the point and are not laden with techie jargon.
The part of the book that I liked the most was the one that dealt with Google's abortive efforts to gain a foothold in China. China's government is notorious for its online censorship and the very restrictive measures that it used when dealing with foreign companies on its soil. Nonetheless, it was very hard for Google to forgo the world's second largest economy (third at the time) and the world's most populous nation with well over billion and a half of inhabitants. Google tried to compromise and work out some sort of rapprochement with the Chinese government, but this attitude was so antithetical to almost all of Google's core beliefs and business practices, that it was doomed from the get-go. One person that was particularly uncomfortable with the whole situation was Sergey Brin, who immigrated with his family to the United States from Soviet Union when he was just six years old. His family's experience with totalitarian regime shaped his thinking, and it proved decisive in the long run. What finally triggered Google's pullout from China was a Chinese government's hacking into Google Chine's servers and accessing of some highly classified information. The showdown with China reads almost like a spy thriller, and it highlights all the complex interconnections between business, technology, policy and politics that will dominate life in the twenty-first century.
This book's laser-like focus on Google is actually one of its weaknesses. Many of Google's main rivals are mentioned, but mostly just in passing. There is also very little discussion of Google within the larger online economy. All of this has an effect that it is sometimes hard to put many of the interesting facts and stories in this book within a larger context. Another one of the book's weaknesses is the lack of critical assessment and analysis of various products, projects, policy decisions, and inevitable failures. The author appears a bit too eager to present Google's version; any criticism remains of the mildest variety. One gets a sense that this book was thoroughly vetted by Google's PR department. I guess that is the price one has to pay for having unprecedented access to Google's own internal information. However, for the most part it was worth it.
One thing that did surprise me with this book was the very limited attention that it gave to some of the most headline-grabbing issues that currently grip Google: Android OS and social networking. Android is mentioned in one of the earlier chapters, but only in terms of its early development and the fallout that it engendered with Google's relations with Apple. Since those early days Android has become a major player in its own right, a very viable alternative to iPhone, and very likely the dominant mobile operating system in the near future. And as was hinted at one point in the book, it also brings in very healthy revenue. Social networking fares even worse than Android. It has been relegated to the epilogue, even though companies like Facebook and Twitter are threatening the very model of the web that is at the core of all of Google's services.
CONCLUSION
This is by far the most thorough and informative book on Google that is currently available. If you are interested in learning more about Google and are going to use just one source then this book should be it. It is well written, interesting, and free of puff pieces. It has a few shortcomings, but overall they are insignificant compared to the amount of material that one can glean from it.
In the minds of its founders and most of the early employees, Google is first and foremost a technology company. The business model of online advertising came about almost as an afterthought, and one continuously gets the sense that its purpose is to pay the bills so that Google geeks can have a free reign in pursuing their latest techie interest. This attitude is an integral part of Google's DNA, and any book that aims to provide the reader with a better sense of what Google is all about needs to get this point across. Unfortunately, there have been several books in recent years that were more concerned with all the intangible aspects of life in the age of Google and had almost completely missed this point. "In The Plex," I am happy to say, did not fall in that trap. Steven Levy comes across as an extremely competent and well-informed technology journalist who clearly relishes the opportunity to write about all the intricacies of Google's engineering prowess. In this respect as well, this is a quintessentially Google book. If Google were a person, this is probably what its autobiography would look like. Levy, who currently works for Wired magazine, literally embedded himself deep within Google and over the course of two years or so interviewed hundreds of Google employees. The result is a very comprehensive book on almost all aspects of Google's technology and business.
The book is very informative, probably more so than all the other books on Google out there combined. Even some of the already widely familiar stories about Google's origins and early years have been given new details. The book is also remarkable in that it provides a lot of information on some very specific technical details and innovation that Google has accomplished over the years. Granted, much of it is many years, or even over a decade, old, but for the longest time Google has been extremely cagey about revealing any of that information to the wider audience. The fact that most of the information in this book has been obtained directly from Googlers, including the notoriously secretive founding duo, may signal that Google has come to the point where it has become confident in its own strength and comfortable with the idea that revealing certain information about itself will not jeopardize its business model.
I relished the opportunity to find out more about some of the Google's early "magical" features and projects. For instance, even though I had been relying on it for years, I finally understand how Google's famous spell-checker works. The reader can also learn more about the early days of Google's book scanning technology, the development of its massive data centers, the rise and fall of Google video, and several other Google projects and initiatives that have been undertaken over the years. All the stories are to the point and are not laden with techie jargon.
The part of the book that I liked the most was the one that dealt with Google's abortive efforts to gain a foothold in China. China's government is notorious for its online censorship and the very restrictive measures that it used when dealing with foreign companies on its soil. Nonetheless, it was very hard for Google to forgo the world's second largest economy (third at the time) and the world's most populous nation with well over billion and a half of inhabitants. Google tried to compromise and work out some sort of rapprochement with the Chinese government, but this attitude was so antithetical to almost all of Google's core beliefs and business practices, that it was doomed from the get-go. One person that was particularly uncomfortable with the whole situation was Sergey Brin, who immigrated with his family to the United States from Soviet Union when he was just six years old. His family's experience with totalitarian regime shaped his thinking, and it proved decisive in the long run. What finally triggered Google's pullout from China was a Chinese government's hacking into Google Chine's servers and accessing of some highly classified information. The showdown with China reads almost like a spy thriller, and it highlights all the complex interconnections between business, technology, policy and politics that will dominate life in the twenty-first century.
This book's laser-like focus on Google is actually one of its weaknesses. Many of Google's main rivals are mentioned, but mostly just in passing. There is also very little discussion of Google within the larger online economy. All of this has an effect that it is sometimes hard to put many of the interesting facts and stories in this book within a larger context. Another one of the book's weaknesses is the lack of critical assessment and analysis of various products, projects, policy decisions, and inevitable failures. The author appears a bit too eager to present Google's version; any criticism remains of the mildest variety. One gets a sense that this book was thoroughly vetted by Google's PR department. I guess that is the price one has to pay for having unprecedented access to Google's own internal information. However, for the most part it was worth it.
One thing that did surprise me with this book was the very limited attention that it gave to some of the most headline-grabbing issues that currently grip Google: Android OS and social networking. Android is mentioned in one of the earlier chapters, but only in terms of its early development and the fallout that it engendered with Google's relations with Apple. Since those early days Android has become a major player in its own right, a very viable alternative to iPhone, and very likely the dominant mobile operating system in the near future. And as was hinted at one point in the book, it also brings in very healthy revenue. Social networking fares even worse than Android. It has been relegated to the epilogue, even though companies like Facebook and Twitter are threatening the very model of the web that is at the core of all of Google's services.
CONCLUSION
This is by far the most thorough and informative book on Google that is currently available. If you are interested in learning more about Google and are going to use just one source then this book should be it. It is well written, interesting, and free of puff pieces. It has a few shortcomings, but overall they are insignificant compared to the amount of material that one can glean from it.
2 von 2 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
Bereits 1995-96 beginnt Larry Page, die Informationen im Internet zu sortieren und zu bewerten, und zwar anhand aller auf einer Webseite eingehenden Links. Dazu holt er sich Unterstützung u.a. bei Sergey Brin, einem Mathegenie.
Zu diesem Zeitpunkt gibt es noch ein paar weitere Computerspezialisten, die sich mit der Suche im Internet befassen. Doch es sind Brin und Page, die die größten technischen Fortschritte machen. Ihre zuerst noch BackRub genannte Unternehmung wird im September 1997 in Google umbenannt und ein Jahr später als Firma eingetragen. Zum gleichen Zeitpunkt stellen sie auch ihren ersten Mitarbeiter ein, einen Kommilitonen aus Stanford.
Schon relativ schnell ist ihnen bewusst, dass zur weiteren Expansion der Suchmaschine einiges an Geld benötigt wird. Denn die stetig und vor allem rapide wachsende Zahl an Internetseiten verlangt eine damit schritthaltende Ausstattung an Hardware. Daher bleibt den beiden 1999 nichts anderes übrig, als auf die Suche nach Wagniskapital zu gehen. Fündig werden sie u.a. bei John Doerr von Kleiner Perkins und Mike Moritz von Sequoia Capital, die die beiden Unternehmensgründer richtig einzuschätzen wissen und dann auch sogar zusammen investieren -- etwas, das bis dahin noch nicht vorgekommen war.*1
Da das Unternehmen aber in den roten Zahlen steckt und noch keine größeren Einnahmen absehbar sind, müssen die Googler bei allem, was sie machen, auch immer sehr genau auf die Kosten achten. Dies führt zu einigen findigen Lösungen, wie z.B. der extremen Überbelegung ihres Serverabteils bei Exodus oder aber der Übertragung aller Daten von einem neuen Serverstandort (an der US-Ostküste) innerhalb eines kurzen Zeitraumes, weil der Betreiber diese kurzfristige Extremnutzung automatisch herausrechnet und sich nicht bezahlen lässt.
Kurze Zeit später fängt Google dann aber bereits mit dem Bau eigener Datenzentren an. Nachdem Standorte gefunden sind, die den Anforderungen entsprechen, wird mit den Vertretern von Städten und Energieunternehmen verhandelt. Auch dabei lässt man nicht locker, die gewünschten Konditionen zu erhalten und dadurch viele Dollar einzusparen: "Then Google worked with the state to get fifteen years of tax relief, only the second time in Oregon history that a company had received a break of that length."*2
Steven Levy erläutert dann aber, wann und auf welche Weise Googles Haupteinnahmequellen, AdWords und AdSense, ins Leben gerufen werden und wie sie funktionieren. Und dass von Anfang an die komplette Geheimhaltung aller Informationen bezüglich dieser Gelddruckmaschinen ganz, ganz wichtig ist. "Those who knew the secret -- virtually everyone working at Google -- were instructed quite firmly to keep their mouths shut about it."*3 Ein Grund dafür ist natürlich, einen der größten und finanzstärksten Player nicht auf sich aufmerksam zu machen: "The new CEO [Eric Schmidt] was worried about Microsoft. In the 1990s, at Sun Microsystems and then as leader of the networking company Novell, Schmidt had seen what happened when the 800-pound gorilla of high tech had awakened to a threat to its livelihood, the Internet."*4
Der Autor betont die Bedeutung von Eric Schmidt für das Unternehmen, ganz besonders in seinen Anfangsjahren und zum Zeitpunkt von Googles Börsengang im Jahre 2004. Zum Beispiel mit dem Hinweis auf Schmidts Funktion, eine Art Puffer zwischen den Gründern und der Außenwelt darzustellen. Aber auch, um ihre Aussagen näher zu erklären und ihre Ansichten als Technik-Geeks verständlicher zu machen.
Leider (aber vielleicht insgesamt besser für das Buch) geht Steven Levy nicht der Frage nach, ob Google ohne einen CEO von außen nicht ebenso gut gefahren wäre. Wenn z.B. Larry Page die Rolle offiziell eingenommen und behalten hätte. Denn neue Produkte werden bei Google entweder von den eigenen Technikern erdacht und entwickelt oder aber in Form eines anderen Unternehmens dazugekauft. Und vielleicht bremst Eric Schmidt einige neue Ideen und Dienste, die Sergey und Larry ohne ihn vielleicht in Angriff nehmen würden.
Neben dem Einblick in die Entstehung von Google Search und dem Ad-Network beschreibt Levy die Anfänge und die beteiligten Personen bei vielen weiteren Produkten -- darunter einige Knaller wie YouTube, Gmail, Android und Earth, aber auch Rohrkrepierer wie Knol und Google Video. Und er geht auf die (teilweise mit großem Paukenschlag der Öffentlichkeit vorgestellten) Dienste Buzz, Wave und +1 ein, Googles erste drei Schritte in Richtung eines Social Networks.
Gut ist auch das sechste Kapitel, das sich mit Googles Markteintritt in China beschäftigt. Trotz einiger Bedenken vor allem bei Sergey Brin entscheidet man sich, seine Suchdienste auch im Reich der Mitte anzubieten -- selbst wenn das bedeutet, den Forderungen der Regierung nach Selbstzensur nachzugeben. Googles Offenheit im Umgang mit den Nutzern führt aber dazu, dass man auf jeder Seite mit ausgeblendeten Suchergebnissen darüber informiert, dass hier etwas blockiert wurde.
Das China-Abenteuer findet dann aber weitestgehend sein Ende, als Hacker in Googles interne Systeme eindringen und sowohl Unternehmens- als auch Nutzerdaten stehlen.*5
Das letzte Kapitel von 'In the Plex' beschäftigt sich mit Umgang zwischen Google und staatlichen Stellen (außerhalb Chinas). Angefangen bei der Unterstützung von Obamas Wahlkampf durch einige Googler bis hin zu den Untersuchungen seitens US-amerikanischer und europäischer Kommissionen, die heutzutage aufgrund von Googles Größe immer häufiger vorkommen und der Frage nachgehen, ob der Konzern im Falle einer Übernahme eines Konkurrenten eine monopolistische Stellung einnimmt.*6
Auch wird in diesem Teil über die Anfänge von 'Google Book Search' gesprochen -- ein Projekt, das schon allein für sich Googles Mission verdeutlicht, alle Informationen der Welt zugänglich zu machen. Das aber aufgrund von Urheberrechtsfragen unter keinem besonders guten Stern steht...
Fazit: 'In the Plex' liefert einen sehr fundierten und detaillierten Einblick in Googles bisherige Geschichte. Es ist interessant geschrieben und gut lesbar. Im Gegensatz zu Douglas Edwards' Google-Buch 'I'm feeling lucky' geht es etwas großflächiger und objektiver an die Entstehung und Fortentwicklung des Unternehmens heran, welches heute am Börsenwert gemessen zu den weltgrößten gehört.
Außerdem ist der hier beschriebene Zeitabschnitt fast doppelt so lang: während 'I'm feeling lucky' 1999 beginnt und mit Edwards' Kündigung 2005 endet, läuft 'In the Plex' bis zum Zeitpunkt seiner Veröffentlichung im ersten Halbjahr 2011 weiter.
Dennoch: Beide Werke ergänzen sich gut und liefern dem Leser eine Menge an Informationen.
*1 S. 74; Gebundene Ausgabe; 2011
*2 S. 193; ebd.
*3 S. 69; ebd.
*4 S. 70; ebd.
*5 wenn mich nicht alles täuscht, ist Google von den damals insgesamt 40 (!) gehackten Unternehmen bis heute das einzige, dass den Einbruch in seine Systeme und den Diebstahl von Daten öffentlich zugegeben hat
*6 wobei die Intelligenz beim Technologiekonzern zu finden ist und eher nicht bei den staatlichen Stellen: z.B. geht die Übernahme von DoubleClick so gut wie problemlos über die Bühne
Zu diesem Zeitpunkt gibt es noch ein paar weitere Computerspezialisten, die sich mit der Suche im Internet befassen. Doch es sind Brin und Page, die die größten technischen Fortschritte machen. Ihre zuerst noch BackRub genannte Unternehmung wird im September 1997 in Google umbenannt und ein Jahr später als Firma eingetragen. Zum gleichen Zeitpunkt stellen sie auch ihren ersten Mitarbeiter ein, einen Kommilitonen aus Stanford.
Schon relativ schnell ist ihnen bewusst, dass zur weiteren Expansion der Suchmaschine einiges an Geld benötigt wird. Denn die stetig und vor allem rapide wachsende Zahl an Internetseiten verlangt eine damit schritthaltende Ausstattung an Hardware. Daher bleibt den beiden 1999 nichts anderes übrig, als auf die Suche nach Wagniskapital zu gehen. Fündig werden sie u.a. bei John Doerr von Kleiner Perkins und Mike Moritz von Sequoia Capital, die die beiden Unternehmensgründer richtig einzuschätzen wissen und dann auch sogar zusammen investieren -- etwas, das bis dahin noch nicht vorgekommen war.*1
Da das Unternehmen aber in den roten Zahlen steckt und noch keine größeren Einnahmen absehbar sind, müssen die Googler bei allem, was sie machen, auch immer sehr genau auf die Kosten achten. Dies führt zu einigen findigen Lösungen, wie z.B. der extremen Überbelegung ihres Serverabteils bei Exodus oder aber der Übertragung aller Daten von einem neuen Serverstandort (an der US-Ostküste) innerhalb eines kurzen Zeitraumes, weil der Betreiber diese kurzfristige Extremnutzung automatisch herausrechnet und sich nicht bezahlen lässt.
Kurze Zeit später fängt Google dann aber bereits mit dem Bau eigener Datenzentren an. Nachdem Standorte gefunden sind, die den Anforderungen entsprechen, wird mit den Vertretern von Städten und Energieunternehmen verhandelt. Auch dabei lässt man nicht locker, die gewünschten Konditionen zu erhalten und dadurch viele Dollar einzusparen: "Then Google worked with the state to get fifteen years of tax relief, only the second time in Oregon history that a company had received a break of that length."*2
Steven Levy erläutert dann aber, wann und auf welche Weise Googles Haupteinnahmequellen, AdWords und AdSense, ins Leben gerufen werden und wie sie funktionieren. Und dass von Anfang an die komplette Geheimhaltung aller Informationen bezüglich dieser Gelddruckmaschinen ganz, ganz wichtig ist. "Those who knew the secret -- virtually everyone working at Google -- were instructed quite firmly to keep their mouths shut about it."*3 Ein Grund dafür ist natürlich, einen der größten und finanzstärksten Player nicht auf sich aufmerksam zu machen: "The new CEO [Eric Schmidt] was worried about Microsoft. In the 1990s, at Sun Microsystems and then as leader of the networking company Novell, Schmidt had seen what happened when the 800-pound gorilla of high tech had awakened to a threat to its livelihood, the Internet."*4
Der Autor betont die Bedeutung von Eric Schmidt für das Unternehmen, ganz besonders in seinen Anfangsjahren und zum Zeitpunkt von Googles Börsengang im Jahre 2004. Zum Beispiel mit dem Hinweis auf Schmidts Funktion, eine Art Puffer zwischen den Gründern und der Außenwelt darzustellen. Aber auch, um ihre Aussagen näher zu erklären und ihre Ansichten als Technik-Geeks verständlicher zu machen.
Leider (aber vielleicht insgesamt besser für das Buch) geht Steven Levy nicht der Frage nach, ob Google ohne einen CEO von außen nicht ebenso gut gefahren wäre. Wenn z.B. Larry Page die Rolle offiziell eingenommen und behalten hätte. Denn neue Produkte werden bei Google entweder von den eigenen Technikern erdacht und entwickelt oder aber in Form eines anderen Unternehmens dazugekauft. Und vielleicht bremst Eric Schmidt einige neue Ideen und Dienste, die Sergey und Larry ohne ihn vielleicht in Angriff nehmen würden.
Neben dem Einblick in die Entstehung von Google Search und dem Ad-Network beschreibt Levy die Anfänge und die beteiligten Personen bei vielen weiteren Produkten -- darunter einige Knaller wie YouTube, Gmail, Android und Earth, aber auch Rohrkrepierer wie Knol und Google Video. Und er geht auf die (teilweise mit großem Paukenschlag der Öffentlichkeit vorgestellten) Dienste Buzz, Wave und +1 ein, Googles erste drei Schritte in Richtung eines Social Networks.
Gut ist auch das sechste Kapitel, das sich mit Googles Markteintritt in China beschäftigt. Trotz einiger Bedenken vor allem bei Sergey Brin entscheidet man sich, seine Suchdienste auch im Reich der Mitte anzubieten -- selbst wenn das bedeutet, den Forderungen der Regierung nach Selbstzensur nachzugeben. Googles Offenheit im Umgang mit den Nutzern führt aber dazu, dass man auf jeder Seite mit ausgeblendeten Suchergebnissen darüber informiert, dass hier etwas blockiert wurde.
Das China-Abenteuer findet dann aber weitestgehend sein Ende, als Hacker in Googles interne Systeme eindringen und sowohl Unternehmens- als auch Nutzerdaten stehlen.*5
Das letzte Kapitel von 'In the Plex' beschäftigt sich mit Umgang zwischen Google und staatlichen Stellen (außerhalb Chinas). Angefangen bei der Unterstützung von Obamas Wahlkampf durch einige Googler bis hin zu den Untersuchungen seitens US-amerikanischer und europäischer Kommissionen, die heutzutage aufgrund von Googles Größe immer häufiger vorkommen und der Frage nachgehen, ob der Konzern im Falle einer Übernahme eines Konkurrenten eine monopolistische Stellung einnimmt.*6
Auch wird in diesem Teil über die Anfänge von 'Google Book Search' gesprochen -- ein Projekt, das schon allein für sich Googles Mission verdeutlicht, alle Informationen der Welt zugänglich zu machen. Das aber aufgrund von Urheberrechtsfragen unter keinem besonders guten Stern steht...
Fazit: 'In the Plex' liefert einen sehr fundierten und detaillierten Einblick in Googles bisherige Geschichte. Es ist interessant geschrieben und gut lesbar. Im Gegensatz zu Douglas Edwards' Google-Buch 'I'm feeling lucky' geht es etwas großflächiger und objektiver an die Entstehung und Fortentwicklung des Unternehmens heran, welches heute am Börsenwert gemessen zu den weltgrößten gehört.
Außerdem ist der hier beschriebene Zeitabschnitt fast doppelt so lang: während 'I'm feeling lucky' 1999 beginnt und mit Edwards' Kündigung 2005 endet, läuft 'In the Plex' bis zum Zeitpunkt seiner Veröffentlichung im ersten Halbjahr 2011 weiter.
Dennoch: Beide Werke ergänzen sich gut und liefern dem Leser eine Menge an Informationen.
*1 S. 74; Gebundene Ausgabe; 2011
*2 S. 193; ebd.
*3 S. 69; ebd.
*4 S. 70; ebd.
*5 wenn mich nicht alles täuscht, ist Google von den damals insgesamt 40 (!) gehackten Unternehmen bis heute das einzige, dass den Einbruch in seine Systeme und den Diebstahl von Daten öffentlich zugegeben hat
*6 wobei die Intelligenz beim Technologiekonzern zu finden ist und eher nicht bei den staatlichen Stellen: z.B. geht die Übernahme von DoubleClick so gut wie problemlos über die Bühne
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74 von 86 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Best Google book...ever
10. April 2011
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
Among recent great books describing the business and impact of information technology, In the Plex is one of the best. As impactful as Pulse: The New Science of Harnessing Internet Buzz to Track Threats and Opportunities, and with story-telling as engaging as Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft this book will be on the shortlist of 2011 "must reads" in the business of technology.
One of my favorite writers, Steven Levy of Wired, gained what may be unprecedented access to the employees and upper management of Google in order explore the history, the work environment key management decisions of one of the most innovative and culturally-influential companies of all time. Google manages this with 24,000 employees who see Google as the perfect employer for them. Levy describes Google as a place for the "unspeakably brainy", a kind of "geek never-never land" - just the right kind of environment to maximize innovativeness. Among the perks is the requirement for every engineer to spend a share of their time on personal projects. And as daunting as it sounds, Levy says Co-founder Larry Page actually still signs off on every single hire.
The co-founders Sergey Brin and Page literally started Google from a garage. (The name was a misspelling of the mathematical term for 10 to the 100th power - Googol. But the name stuck.) Their big idea: efficient searches and how to make money at it by selling keywords. Levy then leads us through Google's history of fantastic growth and innovation focusing mainly on big decisions in the firm. Among them the mistakes of handling the special case of China where media access is more controlled than Google would prefer and where management style of the China-based executives were more like a stodgy, old IBM than the free-thinking Google. The company with the motto "Don't be Evil", ultimately decided to leave the China market.
The rapid growth of the firm was itself a major challenge. That many smart people with the freedom and resources to chase many ideas could spread themselves thin. Some of the ideas could be technically possible because of the clever solutions Google staff would develop, but some ideas had other obstacles the engineering-oriented firm didn't anticipate. For example, Google's plan to scan in millions of books and offer them online ran into what should have been entirely foreseeable legal obstacles from authors. But as Levy describes in the first pages of the book, "To Google, it was a boon to civilization." It is this story that frames much of the rest of the book: visionary and cash-rich but somewhat naïve technologists struggle with practical realities of the rest of the world.
Some of the employee perks are drying up as economic hard times have even hit Google. The sheer size of the firm has required some amount of long-avoided bureaucracy and rapid acquisitions of firms the engineers thought were cool has slowed down. As Levy says, even the "Don't Be Evil" motto is now used as ironic humor by Google's detractors. But Google, with a $180+ billion dollar market capitalization is an example of a massive creation of wealth from one of a few areas where US exports lead the world: world-changing innovation.
Levy's telling of the Google story is based on access no other author had and, as a result, it is the best story about Google written to date.
One of my favorite writers, Steven Levy of Wired, gained what may be unprecedented access to the employees and upper management of Google in order explore the history, the work environment key management decisions of one of the most innovative and culturally-influential companies of all time. Google manages this with 24,000 employees who see Google as the perfect employer for them. Levy describes Google as a place for the "unspeakably brainy", a kind of "geek never-never land" - just the right kind of environment to maximize innovativeness. Among the perks is the requirement for every engineer to spend a share of their time on personal projects. And as daunting as it sounds, Levy says Co-founder Larry Page actually still signs off on every single hire.
The co-founders Sergey Brin and Page literally started Google from a garage. (The name was a misspelling of the mathematical term for 10 to the 100th power - Googol. But the name stuck.) Their big idea: efficient searches and how to make money at it by selling keywords. Levy then leads us through Google's history of fantastic growth and innovation focusing mainly on big decisions in the firm. Among them the mistakes of handling the special case of China where media access is more controlled than Google would prefer and where management style of the China-based executives were more like a stodgy, old IBM than the free-thinking Google. The company with the motto "Don't be Evil", ultimately decided to leave the China market.
The rapid growth of the firm was itself a major challenge. That many smart people with the freedom and resources to chase many ideas could spread themselves thin. Some of the ideas could be technically possible because of the clever solutions Google staff would develop, but some ideas had other obstacles the engineering-oriented firm didn't anticipate. For example, Google's plan to scan in millions of books and offer them online ran into what should have been entirely foreseeable legal obstacles from authors. But as Levy describes in the first pages of the book, "To Google, it was a boon to civilization." It is this story that frames much of the rest of the book: visionary and cash-rich but somewhat naïve technologists struggle with practical realities of the rest of the world.
Some of the employee perks are drying up as economic hard times have even hit Google. The sheer size of the firm has required some amount of long-avoided bureaucracy and rapid acquisitions of firms the engineers thought were cool has slowed down. As Levy says, even the "Don't Be Evil" motto is now used as ironic humor by Google's detractors. But Google, with a $180+ billion dollar market capitalization is an example of a massive creation of wealth from one of a few areas where US exports lead the world: world-changing innovation.
Levy's telling of the Google story is based on access no other author had and, as a result, it is the best story about Google written to date.
53 von 62 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Major Insight Into Google
14. April 2011
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe|Von Amazon bestätigter Kauf
Ever since its inception, and in many cases even before it became incorporated, Google has been referred to mainly in the superlatives. The briskness with which it became the dominant player in online search, the sheer size of its operations and the infrastructure, the incredibly short time within which it became one of the largest companies in terms of market capitalization - all of these are the stuff of legends. It is unsurprising then that Google would attract a high level of media attention, and there are literally hundreds of articles written about it every day. (I know this because I just did a quick search for Google in Google News.) Over the years there has also been no shortage of books on Google. However, in terms of the depth and breadth of its research, as well as the amount of first-hand information that it provides, Steven Levy's "In The Plex" stands in a category of its own.
In the minds of its founders and most of the early employees, Google is first and foremost a technology company. The business model of online advertising came about almost as an afterthought, and one continuously gets the sense that its purpose is to pay the bills so that Google geeks can have a free reign in pursuing their latest techie interest. This attitude is an integral part of Google's DNA, and any book that aims to provide the reader with a better sense of what Google is all about needs to get this point across. Unfortunately, there have been several books in recent years that were more concerned with all the intangible aspects of life in the age of Google and had almost completely missed this point. "In The Plex," I am happy to say, did not fall in that trap. Steven Levy comes across as an extremely competent and well-informed technology journalist who clearly relishes the opportunity to write about all the intricacies of Google's engineering prowess. In this respect as well, this is a quintessentially Google book. If Google were a person, this is probably what its autobiography would look like. Levy, who currently works for Wired magazine, literally embedded himself deep within Google and over the course of two years or so interviewed hundreds of Google employees. The result is a very comprehensive book on almost all aspects of Google's technology and business.
The book is very informative, probably more so than all the other books on Google out there combined. Even some of the already widely familiar stories about Google's origins and early years have been given new details. The book is also remarkable in that it provides a lot of information on some very specific technical details and innovation that Google has accomplished over the years. Granted, much of it is many years, or even over a decade, old, but for the longest time Google has been extremely cagey about revealing any of that information to the wider audience. The fact that most of the information in this book has been obtained directly from Googlers, including the notoriously secretive founding duo, may signal that Google has come to the point where it has become confident in its own strength and comfortable with the idea that revealing certain information about itself will not jeopardize its business model.
I relished the opportunity to find out more about some of the Google's early "magical" features and projects. For instance, even though I had been relying on it for years, I finally understand how Google's famous spell-checker works. The reader can also learn more about the early days of Google's book scanning technology, the development of its massive data centers, the rise and fall of Google video, and several other Google projects and initiatives that have been undertaken over the years. All the stories are to the point and are not laden with techie jargon.
The part of the book that I liked the most was the one that dealt with Google's abortive efforts to gain a foothold in China. China's government is notorious for its online censorship and the very restrictive measures that it used when dealing with foreign companies on its soil. Nonetheless, it was very hard for Google to forgo the world's second largest economy (third at the time) and the world's most populous nation with well over billion and a half of inhabitants. Google tried to compromise and work out some sort of rapprochement with the Chinese government, but this attitude was so antithetical to almost all of Google's core beliefs and business practices, that it was doomed from the get-go. One person that was particularly uncomfortable with the whole situation was Sergey Brin, who immigrated with his family to the United States from Soviet Union when he was just six years old. His family's experience with totalitarian regime shaped his thinking, and it proved decisive in the long run. What finally triggered Google's pullout from China was a Chinese government's hacking into Google Chine's servers and accessing of some highly classified information. The showdown with China reads almost like a spy thriller, and it highlights all the complex interconnections between business, technology, policy and politics that will dominate life in the twenty-first century.
This book's laser-like focus on Google is actually one of its weaknesses. Many of Google's main rivals are mentioned, but mostly just in passing. There is also very little discussion of Google within the larger online economy. All of this has an effect that it is sometimes hard to put many of the interesting facts and stories in this book within a larger context. Another one of the book's weaknesses is the lack of critical assessment and analysis of various products, projects, policy decisions, and inevitable failures. The author appears a bit too eager to present Google's version; any criticism remains of the mildest variety. One gets a sense that this book was thoroughly vetted by Google's PR department. I guess that is the price one has to pay for having unprecedented access to Google's own internal information. However, for the most part it was worth it.
One thing that did surprise me with this book was the very limited attention that it gave to some of the most headline-grabbing issues that currently grip Google: Android OS and social networking. Android is mentioned in one of the earlier chapters, but only in terms of its early development and the fallout that it engendered with Google's relations with Apple. Since those early days Android has become a major player in its own right, a very viable alternative to iPhone, and very likely the dominant mobile operating system in the near future. And as was hinted at one point in the book, it also brings in very healthy revenue. Social networking fares even worse than Android. It has been relegated to the epilogue, even though companies like Facebook and Twitter are threatening the very model of the web that is at the core of all of Google's services.
CONCLUSION
This is by far the most thorough and informative book on Google that is currently available. If you are interested in learning more about Google and are going to use just one source then this book should be it. It is well written, interesting, and free of puff pieces. It has a few shortcomings, but overall they are insignificant compared to the amount of material that one can glean from it.
In the minds of its founders and most of the early employees, Google is first and foremost a technology company. The business model of online advertising came about almost as an afterthought, and one continuously gets the sense that its purpose is to pay the bills so that Google geeks can have a free reign in pursuing their latest techie interest. This attitude is an integral part of Google's DNA, and any book that aims to provide the reader with a better sense of what Google is all about needs to get this point across. Unfortunately, there have been several books in recent years that were more concerned with all the intangible aspects of life in the age of Google and had almost completely missed this point. "In The Plex," I am happy to say, did not fall in that trap. Steven Levy comes across as an extremely competent and well-informed technology journalist who clearly relishes the opportunity to write about all the intricacies of Google's engineering prowess. In this respect as well, this is a quintessentially Google book. If Google were a person, this is probably what its autobiography would look like. Levy, who currently works for Wired magazine, literally embedded himself deep within Google and over the course of two years or so interviewed hundreds of Google employees. The result is a very comprehensive book on almost all aspects of Google's technology and business.
The book is very informative, probably more so than all the other books on Google out there combined. Even some of the already widely familiar stories about Google's origins and early years have been given new details. The book is also remarkable in that it provides a lot of information on some very specific technical details and innovation that Google has accomplished over the years. Granted, much of it is many years, or even over a decade, old, but for the longest time Google has been extremely cagey about revealing any of that information to the wider audience. The fact that most of the information in this book has been obtained directly from Googlers, including the notoriously secretive founding duo, may signal that Google has come to the point where it has become confident in its own strength and comfortable with the idea that revealing certain information about itself will not jeopardize its business model.
I relished the opportunity to find out more about some of the Google's early "magical" features and projects. For instance, even though I had been relying on it for years, I finally understand how Google's famous spell-checker works. The reader can also learn more about the early days of Google's book scanning technology, the development of its massive data centers, the rise and fall of Google video, and several other Google projects and initiatives that have been undertaken over the years. All the stories are to the point and are not laden with techie jargon.
The part of the book that I liked the most was the one that dealt with Google's abortive efforts to gain a foothold in China. China's government is notorious for its online censorship and the very restrictive measures that it used when dealing with foreign companies on its soil. Nonetheless, it was very hard for Google to forgo the world's second largest economy (third at the time) and the world's most populous nation with well over billion and a half of inhabitants. Google tried to compromise and work out some sort of rapprochement with the Chinese government, but this attitude was so antithetical to almost all of Google's core beliefs and business practices, that it was doomed from the get-go. One person that was particularly uncomfortable with the whole situation was Sergey Brin, who immigrated with his family to the United States from Soviet Union when he was just six years old. His family's experience with totalitarian regime shaped his thinking, and it proved decisive in the long run. What finally triggered Google's pullout from China was a Chinese government's hacking into Google Chine's servers and accessing of some highly classified information. The showdown with China reads almost like a spy thriller, and it highlights all the complex interconnections between business, technology, policy and politics that will dominate life in the twenty-first century.
This book's laser-like focus on Google is actually one of its weaknesses. Many of Google's main rivals are mentioned, but mostly just in passing. There is also very little discussion of Google within the larger online economy. All of this has an effect that it is sometimes hard to put many of the interesting facts and stories in this book within a larger context. Another one of the book's weaknesses is the lack of critical assessment and analysis of various products, projects, policy decisions, and inevitable failures. The author appears a bit too eager to present Google's version; any criticism remains of the mildest variety. One gets a sense that this book was thoroughly vetted by Google's PR department. I guess that is the price one has to pay for having unprecedented access to Google's own internal information. However, for the most part it was worth it.
One thing that did surprise me with this book was the very limited attention that it gave to some of the most headline-grabbing issues that currently grip Google: Android OS and social networking. Android is mentioned in one of the earlier chapters, but only in terms of its early development and the fallout that it engendered with Google's relations with Apple. Since those early days Android has become a major player in its own right, a very viable alternative to iPhone, and very likely the dominant mobile operating system in the near future. And as was hinted at one point in the book, it also brings in very healthy revenue. Social networking fares even worse than Android. It has been relegated to the epilogue, even though companies like Facebook and Twitter are threatening the very model of the web that is at the core of all of Google's services.
CONCLUSION
This is by far the most thorough and informative book on Google that is currently available. If you are interested in learning more about Google and are going to use just one source then this book should be it. It is well written, interesting, and free of puff pieces. It has a few shortcomings, but overall they are insignificant compared to the amount of material that one can glean from it.
56 von 71 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Great at ancient history, not so great at current events
31. Mai 2011
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
If you want a good history of Google's early years, this is the book for you. The author, a Google booster, had unparalleled access to current and former Google employees and presents more information about the history and development of the company than has reached print before. If you're interested in the causes of Google's recent stumbles, though, the author's hagiographic approach gets in the way of understanding. Here are a half dozen "evil" approaches from the "don't be evil" company that simply are not adequately explained.
(1) Google went into the China market and self-censored itself based on what it understood the Chinese autocrats wanted it to do. It didn't get out of China until the Chinese government launched a sophisticated hack that not only broke into and stole Google's top secret code, it stole the gmail contact lists of Chinese dissidents. Why didn't Google recognize the slippery slope of the rationalizations that allowed it to participate in this charade, especially co-founder Sergey Brin, who had escaped from a similar regime?
(2) Google was initially in favor of the positive public good of "net neutrality" when it was trying to break into the field, but suddenly it's no longer in favor of such neutrality for wireless. Why the about-face?
(3) In its book scan project Google initially took the legal position that what it was doing was fair use, and the author makes clear that the legal community thought it would win on this point. (p. 362). Yet ultimately Google bought into a suggestion from the Writers Guild of America that Google should become the designated internet bookstore for copyrighted books that are out of print and that it should create a registry to determine who should be paid for the books. Not coincidentally, Google would have profited handsomely by this arrangement. The only explanation the author proffers is that "it was a foregone conclusion that [co-founder] Larry Page would sign on.... It was his personal history and that of Google that determined that he embrace the scheme." (p. 362). This tautology is no explanation, and of course a federal judge has now rejected the settlement, a fact that occurred too late to get into this volume.
(4) On the Wi-Fi-street view project, again the author has no explanation as to why Google cars roaming the street sucked up all unprotected communications to and from the internet, other than "the engineers working on the Wi-Fi street view project noticed that someone had written useful code and implemented it." (p. 343). What?
(5) Google implemented a social networking application based on gmail that automatically gave everyone access to your entire email contacts list, and showed the frequency with which you communicated with each contact ("Buzz"). The $8 million privacy settlement that Google entered into a few months ago didn't make its way into this book. How could the "don't be evil" company be so tone deaf on privacy? Again, the author doesn't offer any clues.
(6) The most problematic issue has resulted from Google's purchase of internet ad king Double Click. After the purchase, without letting any of us know, it substituted its former privacy-conserving policy of keeping track of our web browsing only when we clicked through to one of Google's advertisers, to a new policy of keeping track of us every time we visit a web page that either has a connection to Doubleclick or contains Google ads, whether or not we click on the ad. All Google has to do to keep track of ALL of our individual web browsing is to match this up with the search data that it keeps for each of us for 9 months. What guarantee do we have that Google won't do that in the search for the type of profits it was looking for in China, in the book search project, and everywhere else? The author just doesn't say.
(1) Google went into the China market and self-censored itself based on what it understood the Chinese autocrats wanted it to do. It didn't get out of China until the Chinese government launched a sophisticated hack that not only broke into and stole Google's top secret code, it stole the gmail contact lists of Chinese dissidents. Why didn't Google recognize the slippery slope of the rationalizations that allowed it to participate in this charade, especially co-founder Sergey Brin, who had escaped from a similar regime?
(2) Google was initially in favor of the positive public good of "net neutrality" when it was trying to break into the field, but suddenly it's no longer in favor of such neutrality for wireless. Why the about-face?
(3) In its book scan project Google initially took the legal position that what it was doing was fair use, and the author makes clear that the legal community thought it would win on this point. (p. 362). Yet ultimately Google bought into a suggestion from the Writers Guild of America that Google should become the designated internet bookstore for copyrighted books that are out of print and that it should create a registry to determine who should be paid for the books. Not coincidentally, Google would have profited handsomely by this arrangement. The only explanation the author proffers is that "it was a foregone conclusion that [co-founder] Larry Page would sign on.... It was his personal history and that of Google that determined that he embrace the scheme." (p. 362). This tautology is no explanation, and of course a federal judge has now rejected the settlement, a fact that occurred too late to get into this volume.
(4) On the Wi-Fi-street view project, again the author has no explanation as to why Google cars roaming the street sucked up all unprotected communications to and from the internet, other than "the engineers working on the Wi-Fi street view project noticed that someone had written useful code and implemented it." (p. 343). What?
(5) Google implemented a social networking application based on gmail that automatically gave everyone access to your entire email contacts list, and showed the frequency with which you communicated with each contact ("Buzz"). The $8 million privacy settlement that Google entered into a few months ago didn't make its way into this book. How could the "don't be evil" company be so tone deaf on privacy? Again, the author doesn't offer any clues.
(6) The most problematic issue has resulted from Google's purchase of internet ad king Double Click. After the purchase, without letting any of us know, it substituted its former privacy-conserving policy of keeping track of our web browsing only when we clicked through to one of Google's advertisers, to a new policy of keeping track of us every time we visit a web page that either has a connection to Doubleclick or contains Google ads, whether or not we click on the ad. All Google has to do to keep track of ALL of our individual web browsing is to match this up with the search data that it keeps for each of us for 9 months. What guarantee do we have that Google won't do that in the search for the type of profits it was looking for in China, in the book search project, and everywhere else? The author just doesn't say.
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