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THE GOOGLE STORY
By David A. Vise
Macmillan
PP: 326
Price: Rs 595 |
To
the millions of people who Google every day, the eponymous company
is just a search engine, albeit the best around. Few know or care
how Google makes money offering free search, not just in English,
but in a variety of other languages. Why, when Stanford PhD students
Sergey Brin and Larry Page decided to turn their project-to make
Internet search easier and more effective-into a business in 1998,
they were equally clueless about its financial potential. But
soon enough they figured out a way-and what a goldmine it has
turned out to be. From nothing, it has grown to be a $6 billion-in-revenues
company (annualised for 2005). Its stock today trades at about
$420, giving it a market value of $124 billion-behind only Microsoft
($280 billion) and Wal-Mart ($197 billion). Indeed, as Vise, a
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer with The Washington Post puts it,
the search company has spawned a new "Google economy",
where an ever-growing web of interlinked firms is pulling in more
and more advertising money online.
Much of this was unknown to the world until
Google went public in 2004, forcing it to disclose its business
model and the scale of its ambition. Since then, Google has been
the subject of many media stories (including our Cover this issue)
and Internet debates that have both marveled at the company's
phenomenal growth and fretted over its growing power over the
Internet. For instance, to be able to provide instantaneous search
results, Google downloads and indexes all pages on the Web, and
its search engine keeps record of every single query and can even
trace it back to individual IP addresses. A lot of what Vise writes
is already available publicly, but where he excels (disclosure:
the reviewer once worked in the same newsroom with Vise) is in
putting it all together in a style that is not just objective
but eminently readable. At a time when the world is getting wary
of Google's growing powers, Vise has refrained from being judgmental.
He does raise the issues of privacy and Google's seeming double-standards
in some areas (calling advertisements "sponsored links",
for example), but he's also appreciative of the firm's focus on
the end customer ("Don't be Evil" is Google's official
motto). Should you buy this book? Yes, especially if you thought
all that Google did was to crawl the Web.
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THE LEGEND RIDES ON
By Gordon G. May
Published by Royal Enfield
PP: 164
Price: Rs 1,949 |
ROYAL ENFIELD
It
is arguably India's hottest engineering export; yet it is rarely
mentioned in the mainstream media. Originally imported in completely
knocked-down condition and assembled here, the Royal Enfield is
celebrating 50 years in India. To celebrate the occasion, Eicher
Motors Ltd-yes, Royal Enfield is now owned by Eicher-has published
a coffee table book on the history of this legendary motorcycle.
Author Gordon G. May, an Englishman-New Zealander
bike enthusiast, delves into the history of the bike, starting
from the first one that rolled out in 1891 from the Townsend Cycle
Co. in Reddich, UK, tracing its rise to iconic status in the UK
and, indeed, much of the world.
The book has interesting anecdotes gleaned
from Royal Enfield aficionados in the UK, the US and, of course,
India. It is full of vivid photographs, especially, of Bullets,
with which it is almost synonymous in India.
Even if you have only a passing interest
in these beautiful machines, this book will give you lots of information
with which to spice up your conversation at office parties.
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