Planet Google

Randall Stross's book: Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know. Was written, it says, with unprecedented access to Google. The book is organized by well-known Google tech areas, as opposed to a time line.

I particularly liked the section on Google's plan to digitize complete university libraries and their struggle with publishers. It turns out to be very expensive to digitize old books, since it is in part a manual process. As a bibliophile I had followed this for years, but the book did a nice job of summarizing progress. Check out the Google Book Search site, which now has excellent coverage.

A good non-technical description of cloud computing and Google's involvement. Gmail's evolution is described but nothing about how it has been invaded by spammers, causing it to be blocked by some anti-spam engines. And a good overview of how satellite images and Street View led to a reexamination of privacy through ease of access. Not much on AdSense and how their economic models have evolved and have been challenged.

Largely a positive view of Google's move towards controlling so much data. Only some hints at the implications about being able to cross index data and how than can lead to privacy invasion. Stross makes the case that they have yet to be tested by adversity or strong competition. He also interviews several Google execs about how long it will take to organize all of the world's information. 300 years is the going answer. They have made considerable progress in the last ten, yet are now coming up against some deep intelligence challenges.

By its nature immediately out of date, but an excellent overviews of current topics.

Stross's site.