How well do you understand new media, and the tools for getting your message out to the masses? Of course there’s Facebook, Twitter and maybe even LinkedIn if you’re being a little professional about it. But are you managing to harness these websites properly, and is there anything that you can do to make the situation better? Read the rest of this entry »
Facebook is a global phenomenon. Over 700 million people have accounts, and this number is increasing on a regular basis. The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg is someone who will never need to feel the cold pinch of winter brought about by a lack of pennies to put in the gas meter. He and his fellow investors profit from the business end of the pre-eminent social network, and the ability of the network to use advertising. Read the rest of this entry »
It is human nature to explore; to seek out knowledge from previously unknown places in order that the mind is extended for many purposes. It might be to complete a piece of work, or purely for entertainment. The problem has always been how to get to all that information. Read the rest of this entry »
Of the great internet successes of the last thirty years, Apple is in the top three along with Google and Facebook. Depending on whom you talk to, Steve Jobs creator and single focus of the Apple business is either a cultist or a messiah. In the last three decades, he has built a company that dominates the smartphone, music and PC/laptop market. Only Microsoft is larger but doesn’t have the breadth that Apple does.
“Don’t be evil” is the mantra that guides the phenomena that is Google. The pre-eminent search engine and information repository is less than fifteen years old at the time of writing, and is so important that its name, which was once a Proper Noun has become a verb. To Google, is to use the portal in a million different ways searching for the world’s information, that the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have dedicated their lives to organising.
In 2005 David Vise wrote “The Google Story” which tells the story of how it all began. From humble beginnings in the Wild West years of Netscape, to the website that pervades most aspects of our internet lives Google is the story of the internet.
Realising that their lack of business experience could be a problem, Eric Schmidt was hired as Google’s CEO in 2001 after a search that is rumoured to have included Apple’s Steve Jobs. His guiding hand has freed Larry and Sergey to concentrate on maintaining the focus on the Google brand, and what it means to information organisation.
Of the world’s internet companies, Google is possible one of the companies with the greatest reach. It’s certainly one of the three most interesting big internet companies of the moment (the others being Apple and Facebook).
The key to Google’s economic success is the labyrinthine formula that allows pages to be ranked according to their popularity and therefore opening up the potential for selling advertising to the optimum webpages. This has been a real money-spinner for the triumvirate of Brin, Page and Schmidt who have diversified into extra-Google activities such as Maps, Blogger and latterly You Tube.
David Vise has captured a story that is only just beginning, but like all the best stories this is just the start. Google will be an internet force for many years to come, and ‘The Google Story‘ is an excellent place to understand where it all began.
This book review was also published on Information Unplugged- Sifting through the data of your life.
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