Though I’m coming to a review of The Search a year too late, I can explain why. I bought the book on its release, very excited to read some good journalism about the hottest business topic of the day. I was sure that Battelle, who had been chronically his progress on the book on his own blog, would deliver. Halfway through the book (in a matter of three days – a possible sign pointing to its lack of depth) I’m realizing that this is not the case.
Thus far, I have two major gripes with the book. The first is the writing itself. The book is written in informal magazine style, in keeping with his roots as a “cutting edge” technology writer (having worked for Wired and Business 2.0, magazines that try desperately to be “too cool for the room”).
This would be fine enough, except that Battelle has a habit of jumping around from year to year, talking about decisions made by players in Google’s history before he actually introduces them. He never fully explains why it was important for Sergey Brin and Larry Page – Google’s founders – to resign their chairman and CEO posts, nor does he tell the reader what their new titles are. Battelle also has a habit of reintroducing people several times, a practice which at times seems a cheap way to up his page count. His writing style thoroughly muddles however much thoughtfulness there was to his project. I considered keeping a tally of how many times he used “well” as an interjection, but lost interested after I ran out of fingers.
On page 150 he discusses a lack of managerial prowess on the part of Brin, Page and new CEO Eric Schmidt. According to Battelle, one of Google’s investors, John Doerr, insisted that Intuit founder Bill Campbell come on as a leadership coach. Battelle uses an anecdote from journalist John Heilemann’s GQ article on Google, which quotes Doerr as saying, “I don’t know where the company would be without him.” However, Battelle doesn’t include any of his own reporting on what Campbell actually did. Neglecting to explain right away what this ‘miraculous’ shift was is, in my own journalistic view, irresponsible. Not to mention that he doesn’t include the actual title of Heilemann’s article in either the main book or the citations.
Later in the book on page 172, he tries to play the role of not only a technology writer, and search historian, but also media theorist and critic, waxing about how Google ought to be considered a media company – not just a technology company.
In the book’s final chapter, Battelle introduces the idea of having several different kinds of information contribute to “perfect search,” including every tech writer and journalist’s favorite idea, the blog. He bulldozes through a description of the blog and later posits that we have reached the critical mass point, “but we don’t know it yet.” I suspect that Battelle means that he’s savvier than users and other writers and he knows something we don’t, but he doesn’t explain why he thinks we’ve reached the tipping point, nor what that means in the overall discussion of what the blog can do.
Though Battelle tries to play his book as a “history of search,” it is nowhere near as comprehensive as such a book must be. It is a book that sings the praises of Google, nothing more. However, that the book is a history of Google is fine. The company certainly is interesting and large enough to warrant an historical account and Battelle ought to be forthcoming with his intent.
The short discussions he does include of the company’s search engine precursors such as Lycos and Alta-Vista need considerable expansion and deserve to be considered as more than also-rans, if he really wants to be considered the historian of search and not just Google’s corporate historian.
