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Published by Infonortics
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Written by Stephen E. Arnold
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Book published September 2005
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Title:
Google Legacy
How Google's Internet Search is Transforming Application Software
Review:
The day that this review is being written, Google is the lead story on
the front page of the Financial Times as the company announces an
instant voice messaging and online voice calling service. In less than
ten years the company has grown from a bright idea of its founders,
whilst at Stanford University, to a company processing 300 million
searches a day. The fact that it has been able to scale with demand is
a tribute to the robustness of the relevance algorithm, the IT
infrastructure and the business acumen of the founders.
Yet despite Google being one of the most recognized global brands, it
is also a highly secretive organization. A few years ago, I visited
Google in San Francisco, and was intrigued both by the grand piano in
the reception area and the liberal use of bean bags in the offices.
This excellent book really goes behind the scenes and it is a tribute
to Steve Arnold, that he has managed to write a book of such detail
and insight without the cooperation of Google itself. Indeed, I would
not be surprised if Google employees were among the early readers of
the book!
The eleven chapters of this 289 page book cover the technology and
business objectives of every Google application, from the development
of the relevance ranking, GMail and Google Maps, Google Clustering,
Google Scholar and Google's venture into enterprise search with the
Google Search Appliance. The final chapters look at privacy issues and
attempt to assess the current and future impact of Google on the web
business. Appendices list all the Google patents with a brief
description of their claims, and all the Google publisher partners.
Throughout, there is an effective use of screen shots, and overall,
the layout of the book is excellent.
This is not a journalistic approach to Google but the outcome of the
author's lifetime involvement with search applications. The result is
a level of technical detail and analysis which I cannot see ever being
bettered. Equally valuable is that Steve Arnold looks at some of the
issues that might yet derail the Google train. After all, I can
remember the days when no one could conceive of there being a
competitor to AltaVista.
These could be the problems of scaling the business (far more
difficult than scaling the IT!), the activities of competitors (Google
is big, Microsoft is bigger still) or someone inventing a better
search mousetrap. Steve Arnold observes "One of the basic discoveries
from the research conducted for this monograph is that Google may
indeed end like so many high-flying Internet companies. However, the
legacy of Google has been the vivid demonstration that distributed,
parallelized network computing and virtual applications represent the
next evolutionary phase in computing, systems and software. Google's
architecture can scale".
Not only is there quite a staggering amount of detail in each chapter,
presented in a very readable way, but the author and publisher have
managed the production process so that, at launch, the book is only a
few weeks out of date. The downside is that the book is currently
available only as a 24MB download. There are plans to provide an
update to the book, to cover a number of significant announcements
expected over the next few months.
I thought I knew a fair bit about Google, but it is the tip of the
iceberg compared to the knowledge that Steve Arnold has amassed and
presented with great clarity in this very highly recommendable book.
FreePint Reviewer:
Martin White is Managing Director of Intranet Focus Ltd.
http://www.intranetfocus.com. He specializes in intranet strategy
development and the specification and selection of content management
software applications, and has worked in over 25 countries. He is the
author of The Content Management Handbook
http://www.intranetfocus.com/technology/cmhandbook.php and of the
Enterprise Search Guidebook published by FreePint
http://www.freepint.com/shop/report/enterprise-search/. Martin is the
Chairman of the Online Information Conference and a regular columnist
on intranet issues for both Econtent http://www.econtentmag.com and
Intranets http://www.intranetstoday.com/. His own experience in
information retrieval dates back to the mid-1970s.
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