When I finished reading John Battelle’s “The Search”, I intended to post a book review to my blog. But, although I found the book compelling, I realized that there was almost nothing I could add that hadn’t already been said in one of the more than 1,800 blog posts discussing the book. Not to mention, of course, the more than 40 reviews on Amazon, plus detailed articles in dozens of business magazines. Sometimes, there’s little more to say.
However, I’ve recently begun reading a different book on Google. This one, by search engine analyst Steve Arnold, is an e-book entitled “The Google Legacy: How Google’s Internet Search Is Transforming Application Software”.
This 295 page tome takes a technologically-focused look at Google, and proposes that Google and their network-centric approach is the “logical heir to the Microsoft dynasty”.
The Google Legacy is geared to those looking to capitalize on the large economic ecosystem created by Google, or those who may soon find themselves threatened by it. As Arnold shows, Google is much more than simply web search. With more than 50 applications today, ranging from the Google Search Appliance to Google Local to Gmail to image management application Picasa, Google has leveraged its search technology in numerous ways. According to Arnold, this huge array of products and services exist due to Google’s software and hardware engineering achievements. Google’s success in these areas is as much tied to their ability to harness commodity hardware and Linux in creating massively parallel computing system as it is to their search algorithms.
The Google Legacy is a comprehensive analysis of Google, its technology and its potential impact. If you’re in software, hardware or information services, or in a knowledge-driven business, you need to better understand the impact that Google will be having in your market.
You can view the Table of Contents or read a sample chapter at the Infonortics site.
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