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Googled: The End of the World as We Know It
Book Criticism
Marla Loftus
College of Charleston
March 19, 2012 - APA
Paper Submitted to Dr. David Parisi for COMM 580
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Googled: The End of the World as We Know It (Auletta, 2010) is an account of the rise of
Google and the company’s profound impact on the media landscape. Ken Auletta, a media and
technology reporter for the New Yorker, approaches the book as an impartial journalist. He
documents the making of and the growth of Google in a chronological fashion and presents both
the positive and negative ways that Google has impacted modern society. Auletta’s central thesis
is that Google is a company that should be both respected and feared. Built and run by engineers
who are single-minded in their focus on access, the company often seems oblivious to the impact
they have on the business of media. The employees take the company motto of “Don’t be evil”
seriously, Auletta believes:
Its leaders genuinely want to make the world a better place. But they are in business to
make money. Making money is not a dirty goal; nor is it a philanthropic activity. Any
company with Google’s power needs to be scrutinized. (p. xiii)
Early in Googled, Auletta (2010) relates an interview he had with Bill Gates in 1998, at
the height of Microsoft’s power. Auletta asked Gates about his greatest concern in regards to the
sustainability of Microsoft’s success and Gates replied, “I fear someone in a garage who is
devising something completely new” (p. 28). Gates’ response proved to be prophetic because in
1998, Stanford Ph.D. candidates Sergey Brin and Larry Page were creating Google in a two-car
Menlo Park garage.
The goal of Brin and Page was to build an efficient search engine that was user-focused
and relied upon the wisdom of the masses. At the time, search engines like Alta Vista, would
provide results that showed every time a searched word appeared in a text. In Googled (2010),
Larry Page explained:
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If you did a search for the word university on Alta Vista, it heaved at you every text that
contained the word university, without ranking value or assessing whether people were
actually using the links. Doing the same search, Google relied on the collective
intelligence of its users and returned with the top ten universities. (p. 38).
At the time that Google was founded, Brin and Page were twenty-six years old and
seemingly young and idealistic. According to Auletta (2010), they were singularly focused on
what users might want and they rejected conventional wisdom about monetizing search through
advertising. To Brin and Page, “advertising was like a rude stranger interrupting a conversation
to sell you something you neither wanted or needed” (p. 53). Brin and Page’s goal was to get
users to their search results quickly and they didn’t want to slow things down or clutter things up
with banner ads and pop-ups as other online companies were doing. This notion of giving the
users what they want quickly, regardless of the potential to make money, is evident every time
Google’s uncluttered opening page is viewed. That opening page is seen by millions of Google
users every day and one wonders what the advertising value of that landing page might be.
Decisions like keeping the opening page uncluttered and not selling search placement is
an example of how Google bucks conventional media wisdom by not taking advantage of many
opportunities to sell access. In Googled, Auletta (2010) recounted a conversation that Google
CEO Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin had with Viacom President Mel Karmazin in 2003:
Schmidt and Brin explained that Google was a digital Switzerland, a “neutral” search
engine that favored no content company and no advertisers. Their search results were
“objective,” based on secret algorithms, and no one could bribe their way to the top of
a search. (p. 5)
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Google is a company run by engineers who think differently from the executives who run
media companies. According to Auletta (2010), the bottom line does not factor in to decisionmaking. The engineers that run Google are constantly asking questions such as, “Why shouldn’t
all the books ever published be digitized? Why shouldn’t we be able to read any newspaper or
magazine online?” (p. xii). The questions are asked from a scientific point of view and the
business impact of making every newspaper available online, does not factor into the question or
the answer. The answers are about unlocking data and creating access. Auletta contends that
“naiveté and passion make a potent mix; combine the two with power and you have an
extraordinary force, one that can effect great change for good or for ill” (p. xii).
Throughout the book Googled (2010), Brin and Page are portrayed as singularly focused
on search and access. The fact that the company makes money is seen as a byproduct of their
efforts “to change the world” (p. xii). Early on, Google became popular among users because it
was free and useful. Later, Google became popular with advertisers because they are only
charged when users click on the their text ads. Businesses that partner with Google have received
over five billion dollars in revenues through their advertising on the search engine (p. 21).
Auletta (2010) describes Google as a “juggernaut” producing two-thirds of all Internet
searches in the United States and nearly 70% throughout the world. In 2006, Google acquired
YouTube, the largest Web site containing user-generated video with an estimated 25 million
daily visitors. In 2007, Google acquired the digital marketing company DoubleClick, at which
time the site posted seventeen billion display ads daily. In 2008, Google’s ad revenues matched
the advertising revenues of the five broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and the CW)
combined (p. 16). At the same time that Google’s ad revenues were growing, the ad revenues of
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traditional media companies were declining as was the public’s willingness to pay for media and
tolerate intrusive advertising.
In Googled, Auletta (2010) chronicles the decline in business of record companies as
digital consumers were drawn to the option of purchasing individual songs as opposed to entire
albums. Like the record companies, many traditional media companies were slow to understand
the power of consumer choice and demand. Beginning in 2000, ad revenue and circulation began
declining at most major newspapers in the United States. More readers were turning to Google
and Web sites like the Huffington Post to get their news. Through Google searches, newspapers
were gaining more readers but their revenues were declining because newspapers could only
charge online advertisers a fraction of what they could charge their print advertisers. Newspapers
carried all of the expenses associated with gathering the news but they weren’t getting a return
on their investment. Auletta quotes Tad Smith, CEO of Reed Business Information, as saying,
“Google has created an environment where the way to make money in the media world is with
OPC: other people’s content” (p. 234). Google’s Schmidt contends, “There is a systemic change
going on in how people spend their time. I think it is important that Google understands that we
are one of the companies that is making that happen….but it is the end users who are choosing
this” (p. 234).
One of the big issues raised in Googled (2010), is how the company has impacted the
business of traditional media companies. Like Auletta, I question the extent that Google can be
blamed for media companies that were slow to react to the arrival of the Internet. The concept of
technological determinism has been around a long time and it is my opinion that media
companies should have been the first to understand that new technologies always impact the
marketplace. Smith and Marx (1994) note that “technology as a key force in society dates back
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to the early stages of the Industrial Revolution….changes in technology exert a greater influence
on society and their processes than any other factor” (p. 2). In Googled, Schmidt asks, “Do you
feel bad that the pager business is in trouble? No, because you use your cell phone as a
substitute” (p. 321). Heilbroner (1967) notes that “technological evolution follows a sequential
and determinate rather than random course….most advances, particularly in retrospect, appear
essential incremental, evolutionary” (p. 337). The cell phone’s supplanting of the pager was a
natural progression and the smart companies that were manufacturing pagers should have been
researching and creating the technology that would be next on the horizon.
The Internet is allowing consumers to compare products like never before and it is
becoming imperative that companies understand their unique selling proposition. In this
competitive climate, successful companies need to be nimble and they need to understand their
customers. In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan (1964) said that, “When IBM
discovered that it was not in the business of making office equipment or business machines, but
that it was in the business of processing information, then it began to navigate with clear vision”
(p. 85). Google is a company with a clear mission that is run by engineers whose primary goal, I
believe, is not to harm the livelihood of others. I concur with Auletta’s contention that, “Unless
old media companies want to fight their customers, try to deny their desire for new choices and
new conveniences, they have no alternative but to figure out how to ride the wave” (p. 321).
Although I believe that Google does not set out to do harm, I agree with Auletta that they
do need to be more aware of the enormous impact they are making on the business and even
political landscape. Langdon Winner (1986) wrote of the lack of accountability that technology
companies often possess. “Those actively engaged….are busy pursuing their own ends: profits,
market share, handsome salaries, the intrinsic joy of invention…” (p. 3). Not intending to cause a
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profound disruption in a business sector, however, does not waive some measure of
responsibility.
In the last chapter of Googled, Auletta (2010) outlines the internal and external risk
factors that could erode the company’s success. From the social costs to the social media costs,
Google faces significant risks. Like its young founders, the company comes across as both
innocent and arrogant. As Auletta notes, “history is littered with examples of people who
believed too much in their own virtue and lost the humility that is counterweight to hubris” (p.
332). Some of the clashes the company has encountered stem from their unwillingness to ask the
questions that don’t come easily to engineers. Questions like “what is being diminished by
enhancing access?”
Google and its publics need to understand the vast power the company wields. In
Googled, Ken Auletta (2010) helps to shine a light on this forceful company, and what it leaves
behind in its wake. Auletta is fair-minded in his approach as he investigates the impact that
Google has made on media and culture. It’s a book that holds value to anyone who uses Google
to search, and that is practically everyone on the planet.
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References
Auletta, K. (2010). Googled: The end of the world as we know it. New York: Penguin.
Heilbroner, R. (1967). Do machines make history?. Technology and Culture, 8.3, 335-345.
McLuhan, M. (2011). Selected material from understanding media: the extensions of man
In S. Giddings & M. Lister (Eds.), The New Media and Technocultures Reader (pp. 8291). Oxon, England: Routledge.
Smith, M.R., & Marx, L. (Eds.). (1994). Does technology drive history?: The
dilemma of technological determinism. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
Winner, L. (1986). The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.