• What Would Google Do?

  • By: Jeff Jarvis
  • Narrated by: Jeff Jarvis
  • Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (1,103 ratings)

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What Would Google Do?  By  cover art

What Would Google Do?

By: Jeff Jarvis
Narrated by: Jeff Jarvis
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Publisher's summary

A bold and vital book that asks and answers the most urgent question of today: What Would Google Do?

In a book that's one part prophecy, one part thought experiment, one part manifesto, and one part survival manual, Internet impresario and blogging pioneer Jeff Jarvis reverse-engineers Google, the fastest-growing company in history, to discover 40 clear and straightforward rules to manage and live by.

At the same time, he illuminates the new worldview of the internet generation: how it challenges and destroys, but also opens up vast new opportunities. His findings are counterintuitive, imaginative, practical, and above all, visionary, giving readers a glimpse of how everyone and everything, from corporations to governments, nations to individuals, must evolve in the Google era.

Along the way, he looks under the hood of a car designed by its drivers, ponders a worldwide university where the students design their curriculum, envisions an airline fueled by a social network, imagines the open-source restaurant, and examines a series of industries and institutions that will soon benefit from this book's central question.

The result is an astonishing, mind-opening book that, in the end, is not about Google. It's about you.

©2009 Jeff Jarvis (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers

What listeners say about What Would Google Do?

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Author should take his own advice

Interesting book, but it would be nice if the author would have provided a page on his website that had a list of the links referenced in this audio book. I did as he suggested, a Google search, and found no such list. It's hard to go back in an audio book to find those links after you've finished listening. It's not as easy as a book to mark a page. So, a page on his blog would be nice.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Google yourself into success

Audible and this book together provide limitless knowledge for our future in the online digital space. I love listened to this twice now just while commuting and driving to different states on business.
Understanding Google as a whole is crucial. It's so much more more than just a powerful search engine. Listen in to go deeper!

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Boring

I think Jeff Jarvis would be happier living in a European country, more specifically France.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Shallow and Bias

The review is probably bias as I only made it to chapter 3 and decided I should not waste my time listening further. It has no objectivity, and mention of opposing business principles. One example the author states that you should let customer feedback completely dictates your product design and road map as a customercentric way to run businesses, but what about products that customers didn't even know they wanted?
Know what you are getting into before you read this book.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Author does a great performance, easy to listen to

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Many Ideas

Looked at the new world created by Google with a level of transparency and a unique perspective. I will take away many fresh ideas for my business.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

An Enlightening Guidebook

Great book! Great stories of personal application and success!
Jarvis does an amazing job of enlightening the listener on how to answer the question "what would google do" in your personal life/business

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Thought triggering hints about now and future

Jarvis both describes how Google works and thinks, and analyses what this means for other businesses, industries and parts of society. The book inspires to apply innovative and disruptive thinking to whichever context you are in. It made me hopeful and excited about the future and what is yet to come - curious to see how we will interact, shop, learn, bank and organise ourselves in the years to come.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Interesting

What made the experience of listening to What Would Google Do? the most enjoyable?

This book made me think in a different way on many issues in life today. Both as a private person and in business

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

Think different and apply sharing to many more areas

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Transnational Corporations Must Bow to Little Guy

I consumed this book on audio-format and Jeff's delivery is great. Amid the range of neo-entrepreneurial platitudes like, "Small is the new Big" and "Free is Competitive", he brings some fascinating insight into how the digital era may impact the world of knowledge. His running commentary on the social impact of the interactive, dialectic of the Web 2.0, suggests that unlike Secretary Clinton's Internet Freedom speech that the Internet can help grassroots movements throughout the disaffected areas of world, Jeff says, it can have some of the most powerful social reform where people are most connected.

I agree with the reviewer who complains what would Jeff do because while telling us to focus on the user, ignore the cost, make a free product and find an alternate way to monetize, Jeff talks about negotiating with his book publisher. His message would be more powerful if he self-published on Amazon and Nook, cut out the middle man and practiced what he preaches, but I still love the content of his book. Does he contradict himself? Yes.

Still, now that I've read, You've Been Googled, The Search, Inside Larry and Serge's Brains and am reading In the Plex, I realize that looking back, this is my favorite Google book.

Jeff takes on a range of industries from energy to advertising, but just to take a glance of how he sees the Internet remaking industries, we'll take a look at books:

Jeff observes that while books occupy space on so many people's bookshelves, they are decreasingly read.

"Books are expensive to produce, they kill trees, rely on the blockbuster economy -- which is to say that most are losers and a few are big winners.

80% of US families do not buy or read a book in a year.
70% of US adults had not been in a book store in a year.
56% of adults haven't read a book since school.
40% of books that are printed are NEVER sold.

Books are where words go to die.

When books are digital, all kinds of possibilities open up. They become like Harry Potter newspapers with moving pictures and sound. They can be searched, linked and updated."

His ideas of a more interconnected, interactive world in which politicians and transnational corporations (like his Dell Hell story) must enter into conversations with "the little guy" are inspirational as a fiction and truly stunning in the idea that they might very well be valid and be reshaping our world as you read this.

Jeff gives us a fascinating look at the future of ideas, which links nicely to The Search the ideas that our future might include GPS-locator linked car keys. Maybe they already exit.

It's a Brave New World and Here Comes Everybody!

This audio book was well-read and well-produced. The audio sound didn't detract in any way from the listening experience.

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