The Search: How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

A few days ago, I found a copy of The Search: How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle. The book was published in 2005 (only a year after Google went public), so I suppose you could say that it is dated in some respects. That said, I am still finding it very interesting.

One thing so far that strikes me as a bit sad is that searching is something that information professionals know a lot about but everything they know seems to be left out of the picture. Instead, computer science academics and technology people have seized the problem and made some good progress toward solving it.

Yet again, I also wish that there was some organization or centre that studied Canadian Internet habits the way that the Pew Center does in America. I can't tell you how many times I've read some interesting American study or survey and have wondered if its observations would hold true in Canada.