Perhaps the most notable book of 2011 is Walter Isaacson’s biographyof Apple’s founder Steve Jobs. In a caseof interesting timing, Steven Levy has written what is essentially a biography of Google,a company that has sometimes been an ally of Apple and sometimes a nemesis; today it is both. Levy traces theorigins of the company through its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Those two men found a way of doingsomething no one else had quite been able to master: making billions of dollars through online advertising. The near-endless streams of revenue generated by advertising has sinceallowed them to pursue innovation in other fields–email, social media, mobile communications andon and on. Like Steve Jobs, Page and Brin are very complex characters whose motives are difficult to understand. Their careers have been marked with great successes and somevery public failures. Yet for good or for ill,and at times for both, they have truly changed the world. Not only do they continue to strive to make all of the world’s information available to all of us all of the time, but they have also changed the way we access it and understand it. This isa book to read if you want to understand the massive impact Google has made on me and you and all of us. You’ll be amazed to learn just how far it extends into your life.
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