Lai arī grāmata iznākusi 2005.gadā, tā tomēr ir interesanta lasāmviela, ja vēlas saprast kā darbojas meklēšana internetā. Iespējams, to varēja aprakstīt īsāk. Tomēr pārsteidzoši cik sarežģīta un vienlaikus nozīmīga tāda meklēšana var būt.

One of the best books to provide anyone insight of how the search industry grew from the start, the spawning of ideas in parellel and how one company became a overlord of industry.

The failure stories gives as much insight to the industry as successful ones. And author has done an excellent job to capture that.

Search changed our life! and google did it well than any other company. understood the basic necessity of finding the information in fast growing information webpages. people find relevent information through a window of google. if a webpage isn`t ranked by the google pagerank than it isn`t worth having information. startup companies can learn a lot from this book, how to get funds from venture capitalist and design a revenue model without hurting the business.

"An excellent book that explores the beginnings of Google in the dorm rooms of Stanford PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Really captures their thought process as they applied algorithms to determine what people are searching for and how to to deliver the optimum results. Also explains how Google PageRank and AdSense transformed this dotcom.com into a money-making juggernaut. Really fascinating book for anyone who wants to understand the Internet entrepreneur and the leap of intuition and ingenuity required to create a truly new business model."

If you want a history of Web search engines, this is it. I scanned many pages because it was at a level of detail and storyline that didn't captivate me, but I learned some interesting facts along the way.

Along with "Googled," "The Search" is a very thorough introduction to something a lot of people want to know: how does Google make money? However, it is also a solid narrative on the birth of internet searching in general, and its importance. Kudos to the author for showing that search (including its ad-supported incarnations) is not a Google invention per se. It was also particularly helpful for a non-technical reader like myself to appreciate some of the underlying mechanisms behind internet searching.

Search gives a good history of the early players in search including offerings such as Veronica, Web Crawler, GoTo, AltaVista and others and pointed out where they stumbled along the way and lead to MSN, Yahoo, and today's dominance of Google. It reviews the key pieces of search including the link crawlers, the indexer, analyzing the indexes from and back to a page, and the secret sauce of each offering in its algorithms that determine what results are returned. The first third of the book covered the pre-Google days and the last two thirds mainly dealt with Google with a brief peek at the end of what the future could become.

A cool history of how search engine businesses developed. I wanted to hear more about the actual technical details behind the content retrieval, the development of the search databases as well as supporting hardware setups.

Buscar es la historia del desarrollo de motor de búsqueda, desde los inicios de internet hasta google y lo que venga como búsqueda perfecta. Está lejos de ser un libro técnico, sino que es casi una novela llena de emociones, desafíos y aventuras. Logra comunicar las emociones de los innovadores y emprendedores que han desarrollado esta industria. Tiene aristas de negocio, científicas, tecnológicas y hasta políticas.

No se entenderá el fenómeno cultural/económico que es internet si no se entiende el lugar del motor de búsqueda en toda esta revolución de redes digitales. El comercio, las redes sociales, las leyes de la wikinomia y la long tail son posibles por el motor de búsqueda que todo los encuentra y todo lo conecta. Es aquí donde más cerca se encuentra el desarrollo de una inteligencia artificial, pero ya no de un cerebro aislado que calcula, sino de la emergencia de conocimiento y sabiduría que surge de la red como un todo y que vehicula el motor de búsqueda.

Este es otro libro que me cambio, me abrió a un espacio de realidades complejas que están transformando nuestro entorno así casi imperceptiblemente. Imprescindible.

I really enjoyed this book. It is partially a history of search, including Altavista, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, etc. and describes how Google gradually evolved from starting as a grad school project to its IPO. Along the way it covers ad revenue, gmail, etc. If you are interested in Google, search engines in general, or the future of advertising on the web, I highly recommend John Battelle's book.

Since this book was published a few years ago, the Web game has changed--and so has search. However, I still found the contents an interesting read. The author managed to interview several high-flying Silicon Valley executives, including Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google. While I don't think that the author's predictions for the future of search have come to pass, it was an interesting commentary on Google, its business practices, and its competitors. Search is a vital part of today's Web, and this particular author appears to be refreshingly aware of the influence and where it could take us in the future.

Why I Read this Book: The Internet search industry is dominating our web experience and Google is leading the pack. I wanted to understand this phenomenon as best as possible. This is a must read for anyone who currently has an online business/website or who is looking to create one.

Review:

Anyone who is reading this must be somewhat familiar with the Internet and with Internet search (that is probably how you got here). The truth of the matter is that even to the non tech savvy, the odds are that they have heard of search, or at least Google, because it is everywhere. It seems like you cannot go a single day without seeing Google’s name in the Wall Street Journal or business press.

The reason is that this industry that hardly even existed ten years ago has become extraordinarily powerful. It has become powerful for individuals, small business, large corporations and even entire countries. John Battelle does a fantastic job of portraying the truth about search and Google in a light that most any one of us could understand. This is a book that will change your perspective on what is possible in this new Internet and search driven world in which we live. Anyone who plans to be involved in this search revolution (which, after reading this book, you will realize is just about everyone) must get a copy of this book and take every last word of it in. You cannot afford to do otherwise. I debated whether or not to include this under the World Affairs section of the site because this material is just that powerful.

At this point I will offer a bit of a warning to future readers of search: if you are emotional about the stock market and get easily sold on things and even if this does not describe you; be careful. John Battelle appears to be very pro Google from what I have read. This book will give you the idea that Google is taking over the world and there is not much out there that can stop it. The funny thing is that there is probably some truth to that statement. I warn you that you will want to be a shareholder after reading this book. It is up to you to judge whether that makes sense or not. Battelle and Google make it so easy to get caught up in all the excitement.

Battelle starts by recounting the brief history of Internet search and then goes on to tell Google’s story. He does a great job of explaining things especially given how terribly complex the topic can be. It is actually a bit frightening to read about how much Google and other search companies know about our searching habits, likes, dislikes, and personal preferences. Luckily none of them claim to use this data in any form other than the aggregate, but just imagine if that changed. Google spent a lot of time and money fighting a case about this with the U.S. Government not long ago. Good thing Google is standing its ground.

On the other hand, it is because of this incredible data base of information about our intentions that allows search services to be so effective. Search companies and especially Google’s innovative search technology has allowed millions upon millions of people to do things that were unimaginable a few years ago. Have you ever heard the saying, “Half of our marketing and advertising works really well. We just don’t know which half”? There is finally one place where this does not apply. With content based advertising a business only pays for ads when an interested customer is pulled in from one of their website ads. These search companies have made online advertising completely accountable for every last penny spent. To give you a quick example, have a look to the right of this review near the top of the page. Something tells me those ads will have a lot to do with what you are reading right now. How novel. Ads I actually want to see.

This has incredible implications on business, marketing and advertising as we know them. Imagine if this advertising strategy could be implemented through other media channels. The opportunities are endless. That is what is so exciting. New technology and innovation does nothing but create more opportunities for more innovation.

Before we know it, this ever-improving technology is going to be everywhere. I don’t blame you if you have not seen it coming. I didn’t either until this book was given to me last Christmas and I realized the power and opportunity that is out there for the taking. You just have to find a way to harness it. Given that you are reading this on my site, The Search certainly must have taught me something valuable. I’m glad you found us.