There wasn't one single thing that you could love best about

The best part about this story is having experienced and remembered some of the public events and seeing the story from a new point of view (ie. Google's) and going

I can't say that a single character performed by L. J. Ganser was my favourite, as there were many colurful and inspiring figures in the book which I believe the reader captures quite well. When listening to the audiobook, sometimes you can actually feel like you're standing in the room and observing the figureheads go toe to toe with their arguments.

Overall this is a great book and I would strongly recommend it to anyone who's interested in the internet and the way Google works and performs as it's an excellent insight into the way Google has evolved since the beginning. I am a little disappointed that they didn't go into detail of how, say YouTube functioned, but it is interesting listening to the fan fare around the other products like Wave, or other things that have come out of the Google Labs.

The book is a history of Google creation, Google policies and Google functioning. It reads like a novel and a fiction. But I know that everything is real in Google: ideas, accomplishments and management skills. The process of company management is the most exciting part of the whole story. It is not a surprise that Google as a tool became a part of most people life that are using computers, cell phone and look for most of information on web. It is a Must read for information technologists. I loved it...

Michael Bergelson

I actually think that this is the best audiobook that I have ever listened to.

Yes!

He skims over the scary parts of Google and does his best to be their defender. One does not have to know much about the missteps to notice that you are only getting a surface story from a man enamored with his subject. Now I feel obligated to read a book that makes an effort to tell me the other side.

YES! By an investigative reporter. We all know that two brainy students changed the world with their search product. We understand that they have done a spectacular job building a company. We also know they do not care at all about privacy or personal data.

This is a great biography of a corporation and an important addition to the history of the internet. For those who remember DOS and a super clunky internet, the notion that Microsoft is considered evil and Google was a white knight in the early days, won't be news but for those who came later, this is interesting information to know.

This is not all an objective treatment. However, even with the author's reverence for the

Yes and no: it's competent but nearly hagiographic. VERY few opposing viewpoints. I would bet that Google traded access for guaranteed favorable treatment.

Outstanding narration.

No

The author would have been well-served to leave out the Obama-centric chapters near the end of the book. They add very little and sound too much like mainstream Obama puffery: according to Levy, the President's main problem is just being too darn rational.... Yeah, right.

I thought this would be a fan-boy book.
There's a big part of this book that is just about telling the story of Google. How it started, how it has grown to be the Internet giant that it is now.
But it's the Google story told by a journalist with a long relationship with Google. This doesn't affect his integrity but I think it makes him sees the world as Google sees it. Judge Google by their intentions rather than their actions. He's like one of those "embed" journalists that travel with the U.S. forces in Iraq. After a while, he starts to be one of them. This issue confirms my guess that this is a fan-boy book.

But as I read on, the author raises questions about Google losing its soul (my words not his), and how it was transformed from an Internet startup to a giant corporation, and how all this affect Google. He's not a fan-boy, he's a fan of Google for sure but the way it was not necessarily the way it is or would be.

The story is told in terms of topics and products. Starting with important products to less important topics and failed products. This causes some jumps in the time line forward and backward which could be frustrating. At least I felt that sometimes it lacks connecting all those stories together.

There's a focus in the book on technical details. They're explained in plain English in a way simple enough for a reader to understand but are also very intriguing for a developer or a person with technical background.

There are two stories in the book that I was impressed by: Google's approach to Data Center and Google position towards China.

This book is a good read and I recommend it if you want to find more information on Google or want to see the world as they do.

This book is interesting and informative. It's historical and at the same time nicely considers current events and future prospects. The interview was a fun surprise!

This book has taken me through a series of fascinating internal debates, no only within Google, but within my own mind. The book details how the people working in and around Google have debated issues of privacy, human rights and corporate culture, among others.

While we all enjoy the advantages of finding any factoid in milliseconds, the book details horror stories from the complaints department of Google that a former abusive spouse was able to catch up with a person who had hoped to hide from them forever. This is a side of search I'd never considered. Of course, the book goes deeply into the debates around restrictions requested on the Internet by various countries, but which countries and why is surprising.

Most of all, I was captivating by the idea of creating a non-hierarchical leadership structure without chaos. I served 13 years in the Marine Corps and have worked in universities and embassies, both as a part of the State Department and as a local hire. Historically, militaries, universities and embassies from any country have been top-down hierarchical structures. However, when the Marine Corps put me in Staff Academy, a four-week mid-level management training course, we were all the same rank of staff sergeant. In that scenario, various people in the 23-man group volunteered to lead various segments of our course according to their unique expertise. I came away from that course amazed by how fluid and operationally effective this technique was. However, until In The Plex, I had never believed it possible to implement this concept on a broader scale.

Google appears to have intentionally made its program managers new, inexperienced members who had to collect data and appeal to the logic of their ... uh, subordinate? engineers with more experience both in Google and in the business. Subsequently decisions were made more on data than on power struggles. Like so many aspects of the Google story, this seems too idealistic to be true. If I didn't have the all staff sergeant Marine experience, I wouldn't have believed it possible. But I lived it once and I think that thick-skinned people who are openly honest with themselves and their teammates about their abilities really could revolutionize what has been corporate culture in the United States since Ford. I'd like to see that.

This is a great thought-provoking book.The voice quality and sound production is solid.

This book was a good, clear book that showed how the company Google thinks about it's mission, works on the inside, and affects our lives, as the subtitle says. Some bits here and there delve into technical aspects but was simplified well. As a programmer and someone who follows the tech industry this book shed a little light on why Google has done the things it did.