The author notes that "Google is not egalitarian about sharing information with outsiders" and having attended presentations on its book digitization project, it's clear that the participating library "partners" were far too passive in allowing Google to digitize their collections while the vendor hid the digitization technologies being used in the process (19). So, to be clear, Google manages its book project digitization technologies in a tightly proprietary (or closed source) fashion, and there have been significant quality problems with the scanning (example / example).
One thing that I took from the early part of this book is the power of data-driven decision making. Auletta's description of PageRank and how it has shifted advertising to a more metric-driven model is a good example, and the use of metrics in this context is very compelling (that is, downsizing the advertising industry and getting a better result using data are, in total, a good thing). There may be limits (an "inherent simplification," as viewed by Irwin Gotlieb), but the reliance upon data results in a better product (180). In my profession, library automation, the shift to a data driven approach in assessing web-based services has been a slow one, in part due to the nature of the integrated library system and the weakness of assessment tools for web-based front ends for these systems. And if you don't have the data, you have to make gut decisions. With the advent of current-generation discovery systems like Endeca search engine, OCLC's WorldCat Local, and Ex Libris' Primo, this is starting to change.
A Lawrence Lessig quote on the jacket suggests that Google's dominance may be coming to an end, and Auletta provides some thoughts on how its search model could be compromised. First, social networking applications (with the author focusing on Facebook) that create a walled space, analogous to the earlier AOL community, that's not reachable to Google search. Second, how users work with search in the mobile context. (For a more current view on this challenge, see this BusinessWeek article; note the difference in the size of the development community for the iPhone [125,000 available applications] versus the Android [18,000 applications].)
Lessig questions Google's future ability to dominate, and a central question in this area is Google' strategic focus. Will Google stay true to the vision of its founders, the development of the best search, a system that forwards searchers to their destinations as quickly as possible? Or, as Tim Wu questions, will the service evolve into "a source of content...a destination that seeks to keep people in a walled Google garden?" (221).
The book did bring my attention to Google's Knol service, and though the content stats cited by Auletta aren't impressive (100,000 entries in January 2009), Knol's elegance is. Wikipedia may have the content, but Knol has a lot of potential.
Finally, one of Googled's motifs is that the company just doesn't get it at some points, its ability to increase profits notwithstanding. Google's Buzz service has received a lot of negative attention since its release, as shown in this post.
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