What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis
My review
I have to admit that the title of this book put me off from the start. Could it be a serious book based on a blatant rip off of WWJD. So I was a bit grumpy to start with, but the author won me over by the end of the book.
Jarvis does a pretty good job of pulling apart some of the things that Google has done and tries to apply it to other industries.
Google is perhaps give a bit too much credit as being the saviour of all businesses. Google got lucky with Adsense – it was a search company without any income until Adsense and Adwords was created. That was a stroke of genius that has made the company immensely rich. Going from that to youtube, google maps and gmail – and including them as brilliant innovations that will make google more $$$ is a bit of a stretch I think. Google still feels a little like a one product company to me. Time will tell which of their spaghetti on the wall sticks.
For those who don’t know much about the history of Google, or haven’t read The Search or The Long Tail for eg then this book is a good place to start and indeed complement them quite well.
