In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

A. Parts of it were very tedious, to me, but I'm glad I read it. I'm not a very technically savvy person, rather I'm a former psychology student, so I had much to learn. Levy helped fill some of the gaps in my knowledge of how Google, and the web itself, actually works. Q. What parts were tedious to you? A. Well, the chapter on Google's business in China, for one, though this may be the most important chapter for people with an interest in China, which I don't have. Also, at times, Levy seemed to be glorifying the people at Google. I mean, he rarely said a negative word about any of them, only maybe that Larry was "ambitious," that's as far as he would go. It was like, he didn't want to burn his sources, and thus seemed to arise a potential conflict of interest. This repeated exaltation of Google's "heroes" was tedious after a while. Q. So you feel he was a biased observer and writer? A. Sometimes, but to be fair, toward the end of the book, Levy did note that Google's rapid growth, as a corporation, in terms of employees and capitalization, had made it the "big boy" on the block. New start-ups, and older corporations, like book publishers, all feared Google. He notes that some of Google's actions would lead to questions about their motto: "Do no evil." Nonetheless, the book is based largely on insider interviews he had with the Google principals, and these were granted, most likely, because the informants did not expect Levy to reveal much bad about them. Q. So what did you learn? A. I learned about "cloud computing," such as Google's Document service; about their largely ineffective forays into web television and social networking (Orkut); about precisely how Google Print started, with Larry taking digital photos of books held up page by page; about Android, which I knew nothing about but the name; and quite a bit more. Q. So the book is worth reading, even though you found it tedious in parts? A. Yes, I would say so. Levy was able to get his mitts around what seemed like the whole of a large corporation and give a sense of its many facets. This makes the book somewhat unique, but he does cite other authors on Google in his end notes. The documentation at the end is detailed and the book includes an index for specific reading.

Great book, really let's you peek into Google. The only downside was that I would have expected more about the "break" between Eric S and Larry / Sergey.

Great book, offers a lot of insightful stories about Google, the founders, the core values, big decisions, mistakes; really makes you believe you know a lot of Google, almost that you were present on those key meetings and can feel the joy and frustration of those meetings. The book is pretty well organized and covers the creation or adquisition of the big GProducts. Recommended for everyone that want to know how this inventive and giant tech company has growth at such incredible speed. Data! data! data!