What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis
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Book Reviews of What Would Google Do?
Book Review: A Metaphor For Where To Go Next
Summary: 5 Stars
In 1995, Robert Spector wrote a book about a Northwest upscale department store chain that embraced the idea of customer service. Spector popularized the famous story of a customer returning a set of tires to a store and the associate happily accepting the return even though the chain didn't sell tires. The Nordstrom Way was a defining title for the customer service trend of the 90's. The bestselling business book used the teach-by-number format made popular by In Search of Excellence, but what Spector really did was use Nordstrom as a metaphor to remind companies how customers (and they themselves) want to be treated.
Jeff Jarvis does the same thing in his book What Would Google Do? He uses the Internet giant as a metaphor for what is to come and again what is so successful about this device is that we recognize instantly the point and how familiar it feels. The temptation with WWGD? is to think that Jarvis is describing some far-off future. He's not. The foundation has already been laid and somehow we are waiting for everyone to catch up.
If I have already lost you, read the first 225 pages carefully. Networks and platforms are the new game. And it's not mimics of the closed, monopolistic telcos and mass-media operations of the past. Open-source creation and abundance-based thinking feed a whole new set of platforms. Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter are the headliners of the next act. "Can I use your platform to build my own business?" says venture capitalist Fred Wilson when Jarvis brings a business associate to visit. "And before you answer, let me tell you, the right answer is 'yes.'"
Transparency is part of this new game whose power source is everything being linkable, clickable, and searchable. Again, the digital native believes these actions to be inalienable rights alongside life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A moment of reflection on how one's company lives up to these 21st century declarations is required. Go ahead. Take a moment.
Jarvis takes the final 100 pages to do thought experiments of what industries would look like if the terraforming nature of these forces come to pass. GoogleEats would provide menu with what was popular with prior customers and how much they turned out liking it. GT&T would provide ubiquitous service no matter where we were and if there was trouble they would use their own tools to help solve the problem (i.e. a Google Map for us to plot where we were having trouble). Imagine your Google Calendar tracking the tasks you had over the coming week suggested with best form of transport with pricing and schedules.
When executives asked me this year what book they should assign for their corporate retreats, my recommendation was What Would Google Do? The book is not about Google, but rather a new set of rules that changes what is possible.
Book Review: Why my views are different from those of others here
Summary: 5 Stars
Here's the question I ask myself when I consider my criticism of a book on the topic of new media: will the book empower and motivate me to do anything different that will improve my results?
Yes, in the case of this book.
Readers whose success depends on how well they use the opportunities of the Web will find much to consider. The book begins with a tale that is both cautionary and instructive about Dell's initial belief that what people say on the Web doesn't matter. It continues with an analysis of how Google has decided consistently to try different approaches to making available information and tools. Even if you don't want to follow Google's lead toward greater openness, it is a good idea to try to understand it as thoroughly as possible. This book, though certainly not definitive, is one you should certainly try to digest.
I say "try" because there is one important difference between me and most (perhaps all) of those who have written negative reviews of this book. That difference is that I have have been the developer, designer, and content manager of successful sites on the Web since 1995. And I'd like to continue and expand my success. Jarvis' book suggests some strategies that I can use right now.
If the Web is not your area of expertise and, further, if you are not doing much business in a 21st century model, then I can see that you might not -- like other negative reviewers here -- find much of value. In fact, you might be tempted to the reductionist and incorrect view that Google was simply lucky, very lucky.
Nothing could be further from the truth. As anyone who runs a successful site can tell you, it's not a matter of luck. It is a matter of trying to understand and respond to what is needed by your users. Google's success, because almost everyone using the Web finds it very useful (notwithstanding some folks here), matters because what makes it successful will determine, at least to some extent, how well your work on the Web will succeed.
So, if you are looking at the negative reviews here, take into consideration the experience and current work of the reviewers. If yours coincides with theirs, I agree that there's nothing to see here: move along. But if you are trying to succeed at disseminating information for the sake of your business (or because, as in my case, you simply believe that the information you are making available will be of value and use to some segment of Web users), this is a book to read carefully. And then think about its implications for your work, because those implications matter.
Book Review: One of the Most Worthwhile Business Books of the Last Year
Summary: 5 Stars
Of the close to 100 books I have reviewed in the last year here on Amazon, few books have garnered a wider range of opinion by reviewers. And, seldom have I agreed more with views from the other end of the spectrum from my own rating on a given book. For sure, there are stylistic annoyances as to the writing style chosen, at times, by author Jeff Jarvis. And yes, there are times when the author seems unduly preoccupied with packaging his own image. But, for me, the strength of the book far, far outweighed such annoyances.
I believe this is a profound book about changes in the business world created by continued advancement of the information age. The book as I read it, really is not about Google, per se. Instead it is a thoughtful discussion as to how all kinds of businesses will be impacted by the forces on which Google has so brilliantly capitalized.
As a long time strategic consultant, it is my vocational responsibility to be observing changes and synthesizing them so as to help my clients. This book had as much impact on my thinking about change as any I have read in the last year (and I am a voracious reader of business books, the best of which I review here on Amazon).
Here is the bottom line, I have already bought and distributed a dozen copies of this book for C level executives at clients and urged them to read and absorb the authors points about how industries are changing and will be changing. All kinds and forms of information are and increasingly will be readily available and inexpensive. The winners will be those who can effectively and efficiently synthesize the relevant information on a given subject. Jarvis is certainly not the first to make this point; but his book does a wonderful job of driving home the point.
Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, sums up the book so well right on the top of the cover of the book: "Google is not just a company, it is an entirely new way of thinking. Jarvis has done something really important: extend that approach to business and culture, revealing just how revolutionary it is."
Book Review: Transnational Corporations Must Bow to the Little Guy
Summary: 5 Stars
I consumed this book on audio-format and Jeff's delivery is great. Amid the range of neo-entrepreneurial platitudes like, "Small is the new Big" and "Free is Competative", he brings some fascinating insight into how the digital era may impact the world of knowledge. His running commentary on the social impact of the interactive, dialetic of the Web 2.0, suggests that unlike Secretary Clinton's Internet Freedom speech that the Internet can help grassroots movements throughout the disaffected areas of world, Jeff says, it can have some of the most powerful social reform where people are most connected.
Jeff takes on a range of industries from energy to advertising, but just to take a glance of how he sees the Internet remaking industries, we'll take a look at books:
Jeff observes that while books occupy space on so many people's bookshelves, they are decreasingly read.
"Books are expensive to produce, they kill trees, rely on the blockbuster economy -- which is to say that most are losers and a few are big winners.
80% of US families do not buy or read a book in a year.
70% of US adults had not been in a book store in a year.
56% of adults haven't read a book since school.
40% of books that are printed are NEVER sold.
Books are where words go to die.
When books are digital, all kinds of possibilities open up. They become like Harry Potter newspapers with moving pictures and sound. They can be searched, linked and updated."
His ideas of a more interconnected, interactive world in which politicians and transnational corporations (like his Dell Hell story) must enter into conversations with "the little guy" are inspirational as a fiction and truly stunning in the idea that they might very well be valid and be reshaping our world as you read this.
It's a Brave New World and Here Comes Everybody!
Book Review: Born with a "Silver G" in Their Mouths
Summary: 5 Stars
I'll admit I have Jeff Jarvis envy. His new book, "What Would Google Do?" must prompt envy in many circles. He's written if not the definitive, certainly the most accessible text on what it means to be Googlely. I've been under the impression I was a Googlely person...heck I've been using Google as my homepage since it first showed its simple uncluttered face in the mid '90's. I'm also well versed in many Google Lab applications and I have a Google Voice number. I also have a blog, a FaceBook, and I am LinkedIn. But that doesn't mean I am Googlely...not by a wide margin. What Would Google Do? as Jarvis defines it for us is in fact a state of mind. It's the state of mind our children, the "G Generation" have been born under...born with a "Silver G" in their mouths, so to speak...my words not Jarvis's.
In the first half of the book Jarvis defines this new mindset...what is new and how it has changed almost everything. If I didn't like what he was saying and agree with his observations at times I might have thought he, Jeff Jarvis, invented the internet. Pushing past that very minor annoyance he clearly has a command of what Google would, in fact, do. I do not, as much as I hate to say it. I learned something on almost every page.
In the second half of the book he breaks down chapter by chapter how industries can become Googlely. What benefits they will reap by becoming networked, transparent, and click accessible and what's in store for them if they refuse to obey the new world order. Many industry pundits and observers have this knowledge and speak at length about pieces and parts. Jarvis has placed it all under one roof. Easily a text book to be studied for many years, or simply read to further your enjoyment of the Internet and the accessible world around us it has created. Five Stars.