Shortly after World War I, Ford and GM created the large modern corporation, with its financial and statistical controls, mass production, and assembly lines. In the 1980s, Toyota stood out for combining quality with continuous refinement. Today, Google is reinventing business yet again-the way we work, how organizations are controlled, and how employees are managed.

Management consultant Bernard Girard has been analyzing Google since its founding in 1998, and now in The Google Way, he explores Google's innovations in depth-many of which are far removed from the best practices taught at the top business schools.

As you read, you'll see how much of Google's success is due to its focus on users and automation. You'll also learn how eCommerce has profoundly changed the relationship between businesses and their customers, for the first time giving customers an important role to play in a major corporation's growth. Finally, Girard speculates about the limits of Google's business model and discusses the challenges it will face as it continues to grow.

Google's culture is one of innovation. Why not make that spirit of innovation your own?

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 11 Ratings

Google is an exceptional company - 2009-08-14
Reviewer Rating:
Google is a company that revolutionized not only how we search for information on the Internet, but also how businesses advertise. The author describes Google's business model, which operates in a two-sided market. In other words, it benefits from a network effect, which occurs as more people use the service, causing the service to become more valuable. As Google has more people using its site, more advertisers want to advertise on the site.

Google's cost-per-click advertising model allowed advertisers to pay for performance. In traditional advertising, paying for performance is unheard of. The author also describes other aspects of the company such as management style, hiring philosophy, customer service, and future challenges. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in studying a fabulous company.

- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market

An interesting introduction - 2009-11-01
Reviewer Rating:
I bought this book as a reference for my ongoing use of Google Inc as a subject for business school studies. It does provide a good overview of Google's business model and looks at their potential for continued growth. I was hoping for a better financial analysis, but will find that from other sources. Overall, a worthwhile read.

ideas that stick - 2009-09-20
Reviewer Rating:
This book gives insight in a number of key concepts applied at Google. As the magic of concepts is in the implementation, this book is good starting point. giving sufficient insight in the concepts, but leaving enough space for your imagination and challenges for your brain in looking for an implementation that fits your organization.

from a distance - 2010-01-26
Reviewer Rating:
This work serves as a competent introduction to Google, why it has done well, and the issues surrounding its business model. Girard is a bright guy, but he was writing from a distance, having never worked for Google, nor, apparently, having much access to those who have. He chose not to go into any real depth on subjects like the search algorithm, and the discussion of Google's advertising model could have been clearer and more complete. By the end I wished this modest work had been even shorter, given the limits of what it had to say.

At Google the sum may be greater than its parts as none of what Girard identifies as its reasons for success are new or unique; or perhaps it is Google's focus on and ability to hire only the brightest. I participated in peer review teams for many years; sometimes they worked well and sometimes not. The concept of modular programming, under different names, is an old idea: you develop blocks of code which provide a function, but protect themselves against changes in other blocks with which they may be used. The idea of creating a prototype as soon as possible, then refining it with the aid of user feedback, is also an old idea.

An easy read, but don't take it too seriously - 2009-12-16
Reviewer Rating:
This fawning portrait of Google's management and organization proves to be a quick read, but its message is rather muddled: the author finds himself often reiterating how what works for Google may prove unique to Google and inapplicable to nearly every other company. He mostly finds Google's management flawless, erecting only token strawmen to knock down in the course of his analysis.

The section on threats to Google's continued success was interesting: the list of threats was fairly solid, although the analysis of those threats was lacking in both depth and credibility.

Ken Auletta's "Googled: The End of the World as We Know It", while far from perfect, proved to be a far more insightful look at both Google's success and the obstacles it will face in the future.

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