BOOK REVIEW: The Google Story

Title : THE GOOGLE STORY

Author: David A. Vise

Price:  £ 7.99 

Publisher : Pan Macmillan

Points : 2 out of 5

"An insight into one of the biggest technological revolutions of our time."

Google, today is an extension of our brain. We use it everyday to find the nearest movie theatre, the best restaurant,the treatment for a disease, the download links,the images, the latest stock quotes, the e-mails,the news and what not.Today that i am publishing this review is also courtesy- google.Today many businesses around the world are dependent on its services. Just 2 weeks back when the google servers went down for about 3.5 hours , it caused a havoc amongst its users which include several big firms.

The book starts with the introduction about its founders & their families,their graduation school (i.e. Stanford) and what triggered them to make the fastest search tool on the planet- freely available to information hungry men and women across the globe.It moves on to discussing the difficulties they faced early in the life of their organisation and how they never compromised on the ownership front.The competition from other search engines and other software firms like Microsoft forms a large portion of the book and has been objectively narrated without any bias.The 'campus culture @ google' and how it makes google one of the best places to innovate & develop has been very well illustrated.

'How google earns money?' is another questions that many users around the world find difficult to answer.The answer is advertising- a single click on a sponsored ad on a search page makes google earn anywhere from 5 cents to 5-10 dollars! Users can also add these adds to their website or blogs through the Adsesnse program and get paid a share of what google makes.This has led to the emergence of what has been rightly described as "The Google Economy". 

Although the book reveals some of the insights about google, it avoids any controvertial subject like google acting as a huge reservior of data which can be misused(if stolen) for all evil deeds.It only touches upon these subjects and has no cues for conspiracy theorists.The author wanted to play it safe i guess.Moreover it adds very little over the facts about google in public domain.It is a general collection of facts about google and fails to generate any interest beyond plain reading.

Book Review: Delhi is not far

Title: Delhi is not far

Author: Ruskin Bond

Publisher :Penguin 

Price : 150 INR

Points : 3 out of 5

"Delhi is not far" is  a story of a writer and his struggle to make a fortune, of a thousand rural voices wanting to reach out to cities and the unchanged rural setting that forms the background of most of bond stories.Although a lot of attention has been accorded to  detail , it is not a thick volume and has been written with sensitivity to the subject.

The story however is not that appealing and is full of discontinuities .Sometimes it moves very fast and on other occasions it creeps into existence from moments of boredom and lethargy.It fails to convey a clear message but the life at a village has been very well portrayed.

Altogether it makes for a good read given the size of the volume.A bigger canvas could have done more justice to the subject.