Googled
A revealing, forward-looking examination of the outsize influence Google has had on the changing media landscape. There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. As only he can, bestselling author Ken Auletta takes readers for a ride on the Google wave, telling the story of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses—from newspapers to books, to television, to movies, to telephones, to advertising, to Microsoft. With unprecedented access to Google's founders and executives, as well as to those in media who are struggling to keep their heads above water, Auletta reveals how the industry is being disrupted and redefined. Using Google as a stand-in for the digital revolution, Auletta takes readers inside Google's closed-door meetings and paints portraits of Google's notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as those who work with—and against—them. In his narrative, Auletta provides the fullest account ever told of Google's rise, shares the "secret sauce" of Google's success, and shows why the worlds of "new" and "old" media often communicate as if residents of different planets. Google engineers start from an assumption that the old ways of doing things can be improved and made more efficient, an approach that has yielded remarkable results— Google will generate about $20 billion in advertising revenues this year, or more than the combined prime-time ad revenues of CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
5mentions
5people
2010–2017years
20% recommend80% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Here is a country that refused to give me knowledge when i needed it but it's now trying to lure me in.
A decade back i finished my high school in a French speaking country with honors and got an admission in a French university to study Business Administration. I've been refused the entry visa for some imaginary reasons. Unofficially i was part of the group of potential foreign students who may refuse to go back to their home-country after graduation. I then stayed in my country went to university to get a "useless" B.A. that couldn't help me to face the socio-economic realities of the world. In 2015 i read a book "Googled" by Ken Auletta that shacked me to the core and pushed me to learn how to code. I'm now a self taught programmer with skills that will benefit any French Tech startup and products' projects that could create 1000s of jobs in France if i decide to start my companies there. That said, I would not go to France because it didn't welcome me when i wanted to get in order to acquire knowledge. Now France "needs" me to come and boost their shrinking economy with the tech-knowledge i have acquired elsewhere. Sorry Monsieur le President, I ain't coming.
- There is a horrible story in the book “Googled” by Ken Auletta. There is this panel at Davos in 1998, and a couple of executives at Google are there, along a few pseudo-intellectuals of the digerati like Mary Meeker and Esther Dyson. At the end of their speech where they talk about how blah blah amazing the world is going to be, the only one who stands up and says no this is bullshit, the web isn’t about serving the individual, and letting them be whatever or have whomever choosing what can happen to them, it’s about serving society, is the ambassador from IRAN. I felt sick the rest of the day about how right he was, above all these supposed experts, so long ago.
I looked it up and it’s page 331 in the paperback for the full story, or just look for the only page-mention of “Esther Dyson” in the index.
- Thanks for replying. I'd say Silicon Valley is synonymous with tech industry here (the article effectively mentions "Silicon Valley and its satellites").
As for the second argument, I trust there is much progress in terms of tackling politics and history in SV, but many sources contributed to forming my opinion:
- In "Googled" (published in 2004), Ken Auletta of the "New Yorker" explains in great detail how clueless Google initially was in dealing with Washington, DC., a trait he claims can be linked to the naïveté of engineers who see the world as a collection of "problems" all waiting for a "solution". As an engineer myself, I really recognize that engineering bias. Yet I agree the engineering culture may be stronger at Google than at other tech companies. But it's still dominant in the tech industry.
- In his "Secret History of Silicon Valley" conference, Steve Blank constantly jokes about the fact that people in Silicon Valley are ignorant of history, to the point where even students at Stanford University don't have a clue about who was Frederick Terman.
- More recently, another "New Yorker" article told the story of Mark Zuckerberg "getting an education" in his failed attempt to transform the education system in the state of New Jersey—see http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/19/schooled
-In Europe most of us are appalled at how clumsy SV-based tech companies are when dealing with local governments and adapting to the various cultures, institutions, and special interests => hence the many problems that Uber, Airbnb, Google, and others have here in Europe on the regulatory front (Apple being the latest to suffer that fate with the infamous €14B European tax bill).
Maybe it's a false impression. Or maybe in Silicon Valley those who are genuinely interested in geography, history, and politics are not in the executive seats and so far fail to make a difference.
But I can assure you that the tech industry's passion with basic income has a direct consequence on the ground: when you try to open up the discussion about the future of social policy, the tech people's response is always: "nevermind those complex policies from the past, basic income will solve everything". Ugh.
In most cases the reason is that they read the books by Peter Thiel and others, they read the blogposts by American Entrepreneurs and VCs, they believe the hype around basic income, and, I'm sorry to say, I think they don't have a clue about what it takes to build inclusive and sustainable social institutions.
- FWIW, there's already a thread on this topic:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2026716
But to answer the question: I started out with a goal of integrating Apache Shindig[1] into Quoddy[2] to enable OpenSocial[3] support. A very basic version of that is up and working, so now I'm working on refining the account / profile "stuff" in Quoddy and factoring out some common code for use in another project[4].
I'm also trying to get in a fair bit of reading. I had started Googled[5] before the break, and I finished that earlier today. I'd also started Simply Complexity[6], which I finished sometime in the last 24 hours or so (time is starting to become a fuzzy concept to me here). Then I read The Facebook Effect[7] which I just finished up a few minutes ago, and now I'm starting to re-read Bill Gates' Business @ The Speed of Thought[8]. Once I finish that, I'm hoping to find time to squeeze in The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture[9] and - if things go smashingly well - Complexity - A Guided Tour[10].
2: https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy
4: https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick
5: http://www.amazon.com/Googled-End-World-As-Know/dp/014311804...
6: http://www.amazon.com/Simply-Complexity-Clear-Guide-Theory/d...
7: http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connect...
8: http://www.amazon.com/Business-Speed-Thought-Succeeding-Digi...
9: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Enterprise-Information-Architectur...
10: http://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Guided-Tour-Melanie-Mitchel...
- The great thing is they brand it "Content from Wikipedia" so you know to avoid it.
Some books (eg, Googled by Ken Auletta) require interviews with over 50 people - something away and beyond ripping off web content.
