I know a lot of people that work at Google there; in my work lately I have met a bunch more — it’s an interesting place. Sort of the center of the world for the consumer Internet these days.

John Batelle is a very smart, very connected guy here in the Valley — he was at Wired in the early days, and the founder of The Industry Standard — and is probably closer to Google than anyone on the outside of the company.

This book is a very readable, very interesting account not only of Google’s rise and challenges, but also how search started (with Yahoo & AltaVista) and the notion of advertising and search colliding really made a whole new industry possible. Everyone who’s in the industry or cares about information and how we find it should read this.