Googled: The End of the World As We Know It
![[google]](http://barrons.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BA-AR038A_Googl_NS_20091030171645.jpg)
Author Ken Auletta asks the question whether Google will ever be more than a one-trick pony in a new book on the Internet search giant, Googled: The End of the World as We Know It (Penguin Press, 400 pages, $27.95).
Mr. Auletta says that Steve Balmer, Microsoft's, came up with the expression of Google, but Larry Ellison, Oracle's CEO, added, "But it's one helluva trick."
Advertising dollars continue to abandon traditional media and move to the Internet where Google has about 66% market share of internet search.
Mr. Auletta is an accomplished writer of media. He gained personal access to Co-Presidents Sergey Brin, and Larry Page, both who founded the company, as well as Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO.
Mr. Auletta captures Google's unorthodox management style, all computer scientists, who have defied convention in every way, including the choice to share the top job.
All three must sign off on nearly every major decisionbeing made at Google. This, critics predict, ultimately will stifle creativity, innovation and productivity and lead to a spectacular corporate collapse. For now, it appears to work.
Mr. Brin focuses on engineering and technology. Mr. Page is trained on consumers and products. Mr. Schmidt oversees operations and acts as a coach for the other two.
According to Barron's writer Mark Veverka, the book has two major themes. One might be called "The Inside Story of Google and How It Works;" and the other, "How the Engineers of the Internet Changed Advertising and Media Forever."
Mr. Aulette never answers the question whether Google will ever be more than a one-trick pony, but he does say that Google is capable of diversifying successfully.
Mr. Auletta makes clear that Google has made engineers, not MBAs, the most important employees. The founders created a company that focuses on customers first and is obsessed with making information free to everyone in the most effective way.
Monetization of the idea came well after the co-founders set out to build the best search engine. Google's scientists later invented a pay-per-click advertising concept, called AdWords, which changed the ad game forever.
Co-founder Mr. Page once told Stanford University students that a type of pay-per-click technology, AdSense, was "probably more of an accident than a plan."
Watch an full hour interview with author Ken Auletta on CSPAN's Q&A.
