What Would Google Do? - Hardcover

Jarvis, Jeff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061709719 ISBN 13: 9780061709715

Publisher: Harper Business, 2009

Synopsis

What’s the question every business should be asking itself? According to Jeff Jarvis, it’s WHAT WOULD GOOGLE DO? If you’re not thinking or acting like Google – the fastest-growing company in the history of the world – then you’re not going to survive, let alone prosper, in the Internet age.

An indispensable manual for survival and success that asks the most important question today’s leaders, in any industry, can ask themselves: What would Google do?

To demonstrate how to emulate Google, Jarvis lays out his laws of what he calls “the new Google century,” including such insights as:

Think Distributed
Become a Platform
Join the Post-Scarcity, Open-Source, Gift Economy
The Middleman Has Died
Your Worst Customers Are Your Best Friends and Your Best Customers Are Your Partners
Do What You Do Best and Link to the Rest
Get Out of the Way
Make Mistakes Well
... and More

He applies these principles not just to emerging technologies and the Internet, but to other industries–telecommunications, airlines, television, government, healthcare, education, journalism, and yes, book publishing–showing ultimately what the world would look like if Google ran it. The result is an astonishing, mind-opening book that will change the way readers ask questions and solve problems.

About this title

Review:

"Most of Jarvis's points-about customer influence, user-driven innovation, the death of middlemen-are by now axiomatic. And yet he manages to make the revolution feel newly revolutionary. . . . the book exudes credibility." -- Inc.

"Blogger/columnist Jeff Jarvis's treatise on how-and why-companies should think and act like Google brings to mind several trite words from the world of literary criticism: eye-opening, thought-provoking and enlightening." -- USA Today

"For those who haven't thought much about how radically, rapidly and irreversibly the Internet has empowered us and changed our culture, "What Would Google Do?" by Jeff Jarvis will be revelatory. It is a stimulating exercise in thinking really, really big. "--San Jose Mercury News

"Blogger/columnist Jeff Jarvis's treatise on how--and why--companies should think and act like Google brings to mind several trite words from the world of literary criticism: eye-opening, thought-provoking and enlightening."--USA Today

"[Jarvis's] observations are worth reading....We're never going to unplug the Internet, so read this book with the long view in mind. Mr. Jarvis's rules don't all apply to you, but they're all true enough for someone"--Wall Street Journal

"[Jarvis] is an intelligent observer of technology and the media and has intellectual scruples.... [T]here are lessons to be learnt from Google and its single-minded determination to change how business is done."--Financial Times

"Jarvis, proprietor of the influential media blog BuzzMachine, gleans maxims from Google's successful strategies that occasionally sound like doublespeak (Free is a business model! Abundance is the new scarcity! Correcting yourself enhances credibility!). But they boil down to practical suggestions."--Time magazine

"What Would Google Do? is an exceptional book that captures the massive changes the internet is effecting in our culture, in marketing, and in advertising."--Craig Newmark, Founder of craigslist

"Jeff Jarvis's What Would Google Do? is a divining rod for anyone looking for ways to hit real paydirt in the new territory of Web 2.0 marketing. Jarvis has a sharp eye for what is relevant, real, and actionable. Isn't that what we all need today?"--Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, salesforce.com

"Jeff Jarvis has written an indispensable guide to the business logic of the networked era, because he sees the opportunities in giving the people control, and understands the risks in letting your competitors get there first."--Clay Shirky, Author of Here Comes Everybody

From the Back Cover:

A bold and vital book that asks and answers the most urgent question of today: What Would Google Do?

In a book that's one part prophecy, one part thought experiment, one part manifesto, and one part survival manual, internet impresario and blogging pioneer Jeff Jarvis reverse-engineers Google--the fastest-growing company in history--to discover forty clear and straightforward rules to manage and live by. At the same time, he illuminates the new worldview of the internet generation: how it challenges and destroys, but also opens up vast new opportunities. His findings are counterintuitive, imaginative, practical, and above all visionary, giving readers a glimpse of how everyone and everything--from corporations to governments, nations to individuals--must evolve in the Google era.

Along the way, he looks under the hood of a car designed by its drivers, ponders a worldwide university where the students design their curriculum, envisions an airline fueled by a social network, imagines the open-source restaurant, and examines a series of industries and institutions that will soon benefit from this book's central question.

The result is an astonishing, mind-opening book that, in the end, is not about Google. It's about you.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0061709719
• ISBN 13: 9780061709715
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272