''In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives'' is a 2011 book by American technology reporter
Steven Levy
Steven Levy (born 1951) is an American journalist and Editor at Large for ''Wired'' who has written extensively for publications on computers, technology, cryptography, the internet, cybersecurity, and privacy. He is the author of the 1984 book ...
. It covers the growth of the
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
company from its academic project origins at
Stanford to the company that is rolling in billions of
long-tail
In statistics and business, a long tail of some distributions of numbers is the portion of the distribution having many occurrences far from the "head" or central part of the distribution. The distribution could involve popularities, random nu ...
advertising dollars, forms the central exchange for information on the internet, having by then already grown to 24,000 employees.
Synopsis
Contents
*The World According to Google: Biography of a Search Engine
*Googlenomics: Cracking the Code on Internet Profits
*
Don't be Evil: How Google Built Its Culture
*Google's Cloud: Building Data Centers That Hold Everything Ever Written
*Outside the Box: The Google Phone Company and the Google TV Company
*
GuGe: Google's Moral Dilemma in China
*Google.gov: is What's Good for Google, Good for Government --- or the Public?
*Epilogue: Chasing Taillights
Reception
Siva Vaidhyanathan
Siva Vaidhyanathan (born 1966) is a cultural historian and media scholar, and the Robertson professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Vaidhyanathan is a permanent columnist at The Guardian and Slate; he is also a frequent contrib ...
writes in ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'': "Others have tried to make Google’s problem-solving processes intelligible and gripping. Levy has outdone them all. He has produced the most interesting book ever written about Google. He makes the biggest intellectual challenges of computer science seem endlessly fun and fascinating." ''
Kirkus Reviews'' sums up the book as: "Outstanding reportage delivered in the upbeat, informative fashion for which Levy is well known."
References
External links
Interview with Levy on ''In the Plex'', April 6, 2011 C-SPAN
2011 non-fiction books
Books about Google
Books by Steven Levy
Simon & Schuster books
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