Googled, by Ken Auletta

post from Fast Company on 03 November 2009 07:30:00 AM. © Fast Company

"If we solve search," Google cofounder Larry Page told a class at Stanford in 2002, "that means you can answer any question. Which means you can do basically anything." Googled tells the story of the search rocket's relentless ambition and how it has upended every corner of the media business. Auletta creates an engrossing narrative from this clash between Google's engineering mind-set and old media's grip on the buggy whip of the status quo. Although Google appears indomitable, he identifies several potential Achilles' heels, from naïveté to arrogance to a chaotic management structure. And from the company's myriad initiatives, he hints that the most important to watch is whether Google can successfully monetize YouTube. If it can do so, then, as CEO Eric Schmidt says, "that's the creation of the equivalent of the CBS network in the 1950s." If not, we may remember it as the company's MySpace moment. -- DAVID LIDSKY

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 03 Read GoogledBy Ken Auletta

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