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Steven Levy -- Has written about Google for more than a decade.
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How Google looks at us: a view from 'In the Plex'

josephine schiele

How Google looks at us: a view from 'In the Plex'

Book review: 'In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives,' by Steven Levy. Simon & Schuster, $26.

Sometime in 2002, a team of engineers was having difficulty honing an algorithm for a product search component of Google's website.

Each time the engineers typed in the phrase, "running shoes," the top result was a garden gnome wearing sneakers.

They tried tweaking the algorithm, to no avail, until one day, the gnome disappeared from the search results.

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No one could explain why the gnome result had vanished, until one member of the engineering team showed up late, carrying the persistent gnome in his arms.

Frustrated by his team's search problem, the engineer had purchased the one-of-a-kind item so it would no longer be for sale.

It's an incredible, though not atypical, story in the short but enthralling history of the ubiquitous Google, and Steven Levy is well qualified to tell it.

Mr. Levy has written about Google for more than a decade, first for Newsweek and then for Wired magazine, and he spent three years conducting interviews and research for his 387-page book.

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He received what must have been wide access to enter the world of Google. He toured the company's facilities, observed employees at work and interviewed Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the company's co-founders, as well as everyone ranging from top executives to engineers to chefs.

Yes, chefs. Google has become legendary for the perks it offers its employees, and Mr. Levy doesn't hide his awe at the Google corporate environment, or the company's myriad advancements and innovations

"In the Plex" is less a biography of the company's founders and leaders and more a biography of a search engine, a look at how Google has grown since 1998 from a young, eager start-up to a mature, multibillion-dollar company.

The author delves into the complexity of the process that Google has made so simple: Finding information on the Internet.

Mr. Levy recounts how the early Google search engine had to be taught, like a child, semantics:

That boiling water is hot water, and that a dog is similar to a puppy, but that a hot dog is not the same as a boiling puppy.

The Google of today now gives us maps, directions, email, news, images, books and documents. It can tell if its users are contemplating suicide or in danger of contracting the flu.

At the end of 2010, Google revealed that it had been working on a project to create cars that could drive autonomously. A team of Toyota Priuses had successfully navigated a complicated 1,000-mile course in California, and the only accident, Google reported, occurred when a human driver rear-ended a Google car.

It seems Mr. Levy thinks there are no boundaries to what Google can achieve. To his credit, however, he does not gloss over the company's stumbles.

It's an old saying, "To whom much is given, much is required." And though Google gives a lot, it has been given a lot as well.

The company takes its leaps forward and makes its money not only by providing information to its users, but by taking the information its users provide about their habits, likes and dislikes to improve their products and guide their future.

Managing this enormous flow of information is a delicate balance. Privacy concerns have arisen when Google has overstepped its bounds, such as with its Buzz email social networking program, or when it was discovered its Street View cars were collecting personal information from unprotected Wi-Fi networks.

Google has also faced public criticism in its expansionist efforts, especially when it tried to break into the Chinese market. Its mission -- to make all the world's information accessible -- has not been welcomed by authoritarian regimes, and the company that famously proclaimed its mission as "don't be evil" found itself colluding with a government bent on censorship.

The history of a company that has placed utmost importance on the power of data and the objective algorithm includes the very human tendencies toward hubris and ambition. Mr. Levy manages to get the company's leaders to not only describe their mishaps, but to reflect on them.

Google has shaped the way we use the Internet and even the way we view our world. If its past is any indication, it seems Mr. Levy will have to write a sequel in a few years.

First Published: June 5, 2011, 8:00 a.m.

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Steven Levy -- Has written about Google for more than a decade.  (josephine schiele)
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