The Googlization of Everything

LATimes.com:

BOOK REVIEW 'Planet Google' by Randall Stross, 'What Would Google Do?' by Jeff Jarvis A deftly paced analytical effort from Stross; a look at the tenets of Google's Web strategy by Jarvis. By Matthew Shaer January 26, 2009 Asked in 2002 to describe the "ultimate" search engine, Google co-founder Sergey Brin half-jokingly pointed to HAL 9000, the supercomputer from the Stanley Kubrick film "2001: A Space Odyssey." "HAL . . . had a lot of information, could piece it together, could rationalize it," Brin told a PBS reporter. "Now hopefully . . . it would never have a bug like HAL did where he killed the occupants of the spaceship. But that's what we're striving for, and I think we've made it a part of the way there."

As Randall Stross writes in "Planet Google," Brin's response was funny, if more than a little portentous. Founded in a Stanford dorm room, Google has exponentially expanded its reach. It now dabbles in mapping, e-mail, social networking and journalism; in 2006, Google purchased YouTube, the video-sharing site. Most of the initiatives have been very successful. Some, like Google Earth, have changed the way we see ourselves.

"Every age -- coal, steel, oil -- has a raw material that defines its historical moment," writes Stross, a columnist for the New York Times and a professor at San Jose State. "In ours it is information, and Google has become its preeminent steward." ...