Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator

Online, Mar/Apr 2008 by Wiley, Deborah Lynne

**** Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator by Stephen E. Arnold Published: 2007 Pages: 266 pp.; PDF Price: $640

Available in PDF only from: lnfonortics Ltd., 15 Market Place, Tetbury, Glos. GL8 8DD, U.K.; 44 (0)1666 505 772; www.infonortics.com

This book is the sequel to Arnold's 2005 book on Google {The Google Legacy: How Google's Internet Search is Transforming Application Software, reviewed in the January/February 2006 issue of ONLINE). By tracking patent applications and white papers, he continues to follow the technology that Google develops to show how this amazing company is poised to move in many different directions.

The author is a well-known industry veteran, an outspoken and insightful commentator on the information industry in the broadest sense, and a frequent speaker at library and information conferences. He takes a different look at Google than most books or press releases do, and you may not believe what he sees. He points out that Google carefully cultivates the media image of a happy-go-lucky, pizza-eating, O dwala juice-drinking, "do no evil" search and advertising company. The truth, however, is that Google is more like Googziila, a coldly calculating, extremely clever, supranational company that makes its own rules and runs in many markets.

This book is an in-depth analysis of the business of Google. It purposefully ignores the more well-known aspects of things such as Google Search and AdWords to focus on the lesser-known Google developments and how they can potentially be used. The 10 chapters mostly focus on different patent applications and their implications, with the technology described in much more understandable language than the patents themselves. Arnold shows how the potent combination of technology and people comprising the Googleplex are poised to enter any number of markets, most notably financial services, e commerce, publishing, telecommunications, entertainment, and enterprise applications.

But far from thinking that Google is unbeatable, the book also examines potential weaknesses in the Google strategy. Arnold points out that a major reason for Google's success is that it enters markets quickly and often without warning. Competitors are taken completely unawares since they haven't looked at the big picture of Google's world and how its infrastructure can make it easy for Google to suddenly compete in a new market.

Although the price of this book may cause you to stop and think-and the PDF with so many pages is difficult to maneuver-if you are seriously involved in Google-watching and are concerned with its strategic directions, this book is worth the price. You will no doubt learn a thing or two, even if it is only to be aware.

Deborah Lynne Wiley (deb@consultnw com) is principal of Next Wave Consulting, Inc.

Comments? Send email to the editor (marydee@xmission.com).