What Would Google Do?

From Publishers Weekly This scattered collection of rambling rants lauding Google's abilities to harness the power of the Internet Age generally misses the mark. Blog impresario Jarvis uses the company's success to trace aspects of the new customer-driven, user-generated, niche-market-oriented, customized and collaborative world. While his insights are stimulating, Jarvis's tone is acerbic and condescending; equally off-putting is his pervasive name-dropping. The book picks up in a section on media, where the author finally launches a fascinating discussion of how businesses—especially media and entertainment industries—can continue to evolve and profit by using Google's strategies. Unfortunately, Jarvis may have lost the reader by that point as his attempt to cover too many topics reads more like a series of frenzied blog posts than a manifesto for the Internet age. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Jarvis, columnist and blogger about media, presents his ideas for surviving and prospering in the Internet age, with its new set of rules for emerging technologies as well as industries such as retail, manufacturing, and service. We learn that customers are now in charge, people anywhere can find each other and join forces to support a company’s efforts or oppose them, life and business are more public, conversation has replaced marketing, and openness is the key to success. Jarvis’ other laws include being a platform (help users create products, businesses, communities, and networks of their own); hand over control to anyone; middlemen are doomed; and your worst customer is your best friend, and your best customer is your partner. Jarvis offers thought-provoking observations and valuable examples for individuals and businesses seeking to fully participate in our Internet culture and maximize the opportunities it offers. It is unclear what role Google played, if any, in the preparation of this book, which provides excellent advertising for the company. --Mary Whaley General,Technology & Engineering,Computers,Business & Economics,Google,Web,Corporate & Business History,Creativity in business,Strategic Planning,Search Engines,Management,Information technology - Management,Creative ability in business,Technological innovations,Information Technology A Manual For Survival And Success That Asks The Most Important Question Today's Leaders, In Any Industry, Can Ask Themselves: What Would Google Do? To Demonstrate How To Emulate Google, Jarvis Lays Out His Laws Of What He Calls The New Google Century, Including Such Insights As: Think Distributed; Become A Platform; Join The Post-scarcity, Open-source, Gift Economy; The Middleman Has Died; Your Worst Customers Are Your Best Friends And Your Best Customers Are Your Partners; Do What You Do Best And Link To The Rest; Get Out Of The Way; Make Mistakes Well; And More. He Applies These Principles Not Just To Emerging Technologies And The Internet, But To Other Industries--telecommunications, Airlines, Television, Government, Healthcare, Education, Journalism, And, Yes, Book Publishing--showing Ultimately What The World Would Look Like If Google Ran It. The Result Will Change The Way Readers Ask Questions And Solve Problems.--from Publisher Description. Google Rules -- New Relationship. Give The People Control And We Will Use It -- Dell Hell -- Your Worst Customer Is Your Best Friend -- Your Best Customer Is Your Partner -- New Architecture. The Link Changes Everything -- Do What You Do Best And Link To The Rest -- Join A Network -- Be A Platform -- Think Distributed -- New Publicness. If You're Not Searchable, You Won't Be Found -- Everybody Needs Googlejuice -- Life Is Public, So Is Business -- Your Customers Are Your Ad Agency -- New Society. Elegant Organization -- New Economy. Small Is The New Big -- The Post-scarcity Economy -- Join The Open-source, Gift Economy -- The Mass Market Is Dead; Long Live The Mass Of Niches -- Google Commodifies Everything -- Welcome To The Google Economy -- New Business Reality. Atoms Are A Drag -- Middlemen Are Doomed -- Free Is A Business Model -- Decide What Business You're In -- New Attitude. There Is An Inverse Relationship Between Control And Trust -- Trust The People -- Listen --^ New Ethic. Make Mistakes Well -- Life Is A Beta -- Be Honest -- Be Transparent -- Collaborate -- Don't Be Evil -- New Speed. Answers Are Instantaneous -- Life Is Live -- Mobs Form In A Flash -- New Imperatives. Beware The Cash Cow In The Coal Mine -- Encourage, Enable, And Protect Innovation -- Simplify, Simplify -- Get Out Of The Way -- If Google Ruled The World -- Media. The Google Times: Newspapers, Post-paper -- Googlewood: Entertainment, Opened Up -- Googlecollins: Killing The Book To Save It -- Advertising. And Now, A Word From Google's Sponsors. -- Retail -- Google Eats: A Business Built On Openness -- Google Shops: A Company Built On People -- Utilities. Google Power & Light: What Google Would Do -- Gt&t: What Google Should Do -- Manufacturing. The Googlemobile: From Secrecy To Sharing -- Google Cola: We're More Than Consumers -- Service. Google Air: A Social Marketplace Of Customers -- Google Real Estate: Information Is Power -- Money. Google Capital: Money Makes Networks --^ The First Bank Of Google: Markets Minus Middlemen -- Public Welfare. St. Google's Hospital: The Benefits Of Publicness -- Google Mutual Insurance: The Business Of Cooperation -- Public Institutions. Google U: Opening Education -- The United States Of Google: Geeks Rule -- Exceptions. Pr And Lawyers: Hopeless -- God And Apple: Beyond Google? -- Generation G. Jeff Jarvis. Includes Index. A bold and vital book that asks and answers the most urgent question of today: What Would Google Do?In a book that's one part prophecy, one part thought experiment, one part manifesto, and one part survival manual, internet impresario and blogging pioneer Jeff Jarvis reverse-engineers Google — the fastest-growing company in history — to discover forty clear and straightforward rules to manage and live by. At the same time, he illuminates the new worldview of the internet generation: how it challenges and destroys, but also opens up vast new opportunities. His findings are counterintuitive, imaginative, practical, and above all visionary, giving readers a glimpse of how everyone and everything — from corporations to governments, nations to individuals — must evolve in the Google era.Along the way, he looks under the hood of a car designed by its drivers, ponders a worldwide university where the students design their curriculum, envisions an airline fueled by a social network, imagines the open-source restaurant, and examines a series of industries and institutions that will soon benefit from this book's central question.The result is an astonishing, mind-opening book that, in the end, is not about Google. It's about you. “Eye-opening, thought-provoking, and enlightening.”—USA Today“An indispensable guide to the business logic of the networked era.”—Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody“A stimulating exercise in thinking really, really big.”—San Jose Mercury NewsWhat Would Google Do? is an indispensable manual for survival and success in today’s internet-driven marketplace. By “reverse engineering the fastest growing company in the history of the world,” author Jeff Jarvis, proprietor of Buzzmachine.com, one of the Web’s most widely respected media blogs, offers indispensible strategies for solving the toughest new problems facing businesses today. With a new afterword from the author, What Would Google Do? is the business book that every leader or potential leader in every industry must read. Eye-opening, thought-provoking, and enlightening. USA Today An indispensable guide to the business logic of the networked era. Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody A stimulating exercise in thinking really, really big. San Jose Mercury News What Would Google Do? is an indispensable manual for survival and success in todays internet-driven marketplace. By reverse engineering the fastest growing company in the history of the world, author Jeff Jarvis, proprietor of Buzzmachine.com, one of the Webs most widely respected media blogs, offers indispensible strategies for solving the toughest new problems facing businesses today. With a new afterword from the author, What Would Google Do? is the business book that every leader or potential leader in every industry must read. Google is the world's most widely used search engine. Its users conduct hundreds of millions of searches daily, many pursuing links from corporate ads. Each time you click on a company's paid link, Google makes money. Already one of the best-known corporations on the planet, Google continues to grow tremendously as it sets the paradigm for booming Internet commerce. Author Jeff Jarvis explains what makes Google and other successful Web companies tick, and what your company can learn from its strategic concepts. He explains how to use a set of Internet business axioms he dubs the "Google Rules." getAbstract finds (with little searching) that Jarvis provides an essential corporate road map for this era of radical change Draws on the examples of the thriving Internet company to discuss the unique challenges of the modern business world, covering such strategies as building on strengths, networking effectively, and learning from mistakes.