Google and me

Book Description
Based on unprecedented access he received to the highly secretive “Googleplex,” acclaimed New York Times columnist Randall Stross takes readers deep inside Google, the most important, most innovative, and most ambitious company of the Internet Age. His revelations demystify the strategy behind the company’s recent flurry of bold moves, all driven by the pursuit of a business plan unlike any other: to become the indispensable gatekeeper of all the world’s information, the one-stop destination for all our information needs. Will Google succeed? And what are the implications of a single company commanding so much information and knowing so much about us?

As ambitious as Google’s goal is, with 68 percent of all Web searches (and growing), profits that are the envy of the business world, and a surplus of talent, the company is, Stross shows, well along the way to fulfilling its ambition, becoming as dominant a force on the Web as Microsoft became on the PC. Google isn’t just a superior search service anymore. In recent years it has launched a dizzying array of new services and advanced into whole new businesses, from the introductions of its controversial Book Search and the irresistible Google Earth, to bidding for a slice of the wireless-phone spectrum and nonchalantly purchasing YouTube for $1.65 billion.

Google has also taken direct aim at Microsoft’s core business, offering free e-mail and software from word processing to spreadsheets and calendars, pushing a transformative — and highly disruptive — concept known as “cloud computing.” According to this plan, users will increasingly store all of their data on Google’s massive servers — a network of a million computers that amounts to the world’s largest supercomputer, with unlimited capacity to house all the information Google seeks.

The more offerings Google adds, and the more ubiquitous a presence it becomes, the more dependent its users become on its services and the more information they contribute to its uniquely comprehensive collection of data. Will Google stay true to its famous “Don’t Be Evil” mantra, using its power in its customers’ best interests?

Stross’s access to those who have spearheaded so many of Google’s new initiatives, his penetrating research into the company’s strategy, and his gift for lively storytelling produce an entertaining, deeply informed, and provocative examination of the company’s audacious vision for the future and the consequences not only for the business world, but for our culture at large.

Book Description
Google Docs is a free online software suite of word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, forms, and drawing programs. All files are stored by Google and are accessible from any computer that has Internet access. The format allows students to create, edit, share, and collaborate on documents with their peersin the classroom or at home. Discover how rewarding collaborative learning can be as you use this fantastic technological resource.

Book Description
Sams Teach Yourself Google AnalyticsÖ in 10 Minutes gives you straightforward, practical answers when you need fast results. By working through its 10-minute lessons, you’ll learn everything you need to use Google Analytics to accurately measure your website’s performanceùand improve it!

Book Description
Encounter Geosystems gives you a well-organized way to visualize key topics, helping you find Google Earth™ locations
for assignments created. Here’s how it works: Each of 20 Explorations consists of a worksheet and a .KMZ file. The
worksheets, available in the workbook or as PDFs, guide you through activities and ask for feedback. The .KMZ files,
designed to be read by the Google Earth™ application, contains placemarks, overlays, and annotations referred to in the
worksheets. Worksheets are printed in a paperback supplement that also includes an access code to the Encounter
Geosystems website. The supplement is perforated for homework assignments. It’s the ideal companion to your introductory
geoscience course.

Book Description
What does the world want? According to John Battelle, a company that answers that question – in all its shades of meaning – can unlock the most intractable riddles of both business and culture. And for the past few years, that’s exactly what Google has been doing. Jumping into the game long after Yahoo, Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, and other pioneers, Google offered a radical new approach to search, redefined the idea of viral marketing, survived the dotcom crash, and pulled off the largest and most talked about initial public offering in the history of Silicon Valley. But The Search offers much more than the inside story of Google’s triumph. It’s also a big-picture book about the past, present, and future of search technology, and the enormous impact it is starting to have on marketing, media, pop culture, dating, job hunting, international law, civil liberties, and just about every other sphere of human interest. More than any of its rivals, Google has become the gateway to instant knowledge. Hundreds of millions of people use it to satisfy their wants, needs, fears, and obsessions, creating an enormous artifact that Battelle calls ‘the Database of Intentions.’ Somewhere in Google’s archives, for instance, you can find the agonized research of a gay man with AIDS, the silent plotting of a would-be bombmaker, and the anxiety of a woman checking out her blind date. Combined with the databases of thousands of other search-driven businesses, large and small, it all adds up to a goldmine of information that powerful organizations (including the government) will want to get their hands on.