What Would Google Do?: Reverse-Engineering the Fastest Growing Company in the History of the World

Jeff Jarvis

Mar 2009 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

“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 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.

Ratings and reviews

This is a very great book which inspires people to think about the key elements for success. The author has used a very attractive company—Google-- as the example to help readers getting out of the old minds/rules and encourage people re-realizing the world and exploring different way of thinking. The book is divided in two parts: Google Rules and If Google Ruled the World. In the first part, the author shares Google’s philosophy for its success. He has breaks down these philosophies into 40 kinds of straightforward, lucid and survival principles such as: • the way Google views and manages its relationship with customers • the view of how internet can impact the world structure and Google takes as advantage to develop its business • the strategy Google use for capturing the market niches and bring Google’s economy into the current economy system. In a word, this part has described the new changes in Google's social relations, openness, community, business, ethics and speed. All these changes account for Google’s competitive advantages of its development. In the second part, "If Google ruled the world", the author discusses that under the influences of the Google search, what are the developing trends of media, advertising, retail, utilities, manufacturing, services, finance, public welfare, public institutions. The author provides lots of details and information that already have been brought into different industries by Google. He also makes assumptions of further changes Google can develop. However, the deeper purpose in this part is the author hope people can rethink, and reimage, and find out the inspiration to their own situation. This book doesn’t imply that we should take to copy all the Google does, because Google also has its disadvantage and involved in many legal troubles. However, its philosophies, and views do remind us that we should take a look about our world with an open mind. We also should re-examine our situations with different view and grape further opportunities. So, this book is not only about Google, actually it is the book about yourself.

WWGD - What would Google Do - is a book about the new ways that internet is changing our lives, and how the best to benefit from it. Despite its title, this is not a book about Google, at least not in a sense that it makes any effort to deeply analyze and try to explain in non-obvious terms the source of Google's success. Recently I came across a picture online which depicts a small store somewhere in India that without any shame or sense of propriety named itself "Google." Google has indeed become a global phenomenon and one of the strongest brands in the world, and it is not surprising to find people trying to profit from being associated with it in any way imaginable. After reading this book, one can't help feel that the use of Google was a similar ploy on the part of the author. The book is filled with case studies and examples of where an online company supposedly benefited from emulating a "Google" model of doing things, even when that connection is tenuous at best. Oftentimes, as in the case of Facebook for instance, this is downright ridiculous: Facebook is lauded for opening up its application development system, while in fact Facebook is a paragon of the "old" way of approaching content on the internet - a closed garden, not an open platform. Although there are indeed many problems with the way that many old online companies were doing business, it is far from clear that the Google model is a panacea that fits every company and internet technology business model equally well. In fact, to this day Google has been unequivocally successful at doing exactly one thing - search. The book also suffers from not having a clear focus. There are many interesting and novel ides thrown around, but it is unclear what ties them all together. The writing style is fairly accessible and if you want to read something from one of the insides of the new online media world, this would be as good a read as they come. But don't expect to get any concrete ideas about either the inside scoop on how Google works or for your next business venture. One gets a sense that the author has absorbed way too much jargon and hype in order for this to happen.

If you are somebody who thinks that the internet has ruined the way we live, work, and so on, if you see this book in a library, pick it up. If you see this book on a store shelf, buy it. It will help you understand how we truly need to react to this technological era. It's not going to stop. You will be left behind. Business managers, company owners, do the right thing.... get this book and get with it!

About the author

Jeff Jarvis is the proprietor of one of the web’s most popular and respected blogs about media, Buzzmachine.com. He heads the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York. He was named one of a hundred worldwide media leaders by the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2007–11 and was the creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly magazine. He is the author of the forthcoming book Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live.