There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. 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 - and now hopes to become the world's first $100 billion media company.
Auletta gained unprecedented access to Google's notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as to those who work with - and against - them. Using Google as a stand-in for the digital revolution, he takes readers inside closed-door meetings for the fullest account ever told of Google's rise, shares the recipe of their "secret sauce" and shows why the worlds of 'new' and 'old' media often communicate as if residents of different planets.
Yet there are many obstacles that threaten Google's future, and opposition from media companies and government regulators may be the least of these. Google faces internal threats too, from its burgeoning size to losing focus to hubris. In coming years, Google's faith in mathematical formulas and in slide-rule logic will be tested to the limit.
Distilling the knowledge accrued from a career of covering the media, Auletta presents a revealing, forward-looking examination of the outsized influence Google had had on the changing media landscape and offers insights into what we know, and don't know, about what the future holds for an imperilled industry.
Description:
There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. 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 - and now hopes to become the world's first $100 billion media company. Auletta gained unprecedented access to Google's notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as to those who work with - and against - them. Using Google as a stand-in for the digital revolution, he takes readers inside closed-door meetings for the fullest account ever told of Google's rise, shares the recipe of their "secret sauce" and shows why the worlds of 'new' and 'old' media often communicate as if residents of different planets. Yet there are many obstacles that threaten Google's future, and opposition from media companies and government regulators may be the least of these. Google faces internal threats too, from its burgeoning size to losing focus to hubris. In coming years, Google's faith in mathematical formulas and in slide-rule logic will be tested to the limit. Distilling the knowledge accrued from a career of covering the media, Auletta presents a revealing, forward-looking examination of the outsized influence Google had had on the changing media landscape and offers insights into what we know, and don't know, about what the future holds for an imperilled industry.