In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

(Paperback)

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The most interesting book ever written about Google (The Washington Post) delivers the inside story behind the most successful and admired technology company of our time, now updated with a new Afterword.

Google is arguably the most important company in the world today, with such pervasive influence that its name is a verb. The company founded by two Stanford graduate studentsLarry Page and Sergey Brinhas become a tech giant known the world over. Since starting with its search engine, Google has moved into mobile phones, computer operating systems, power utilities, self-driving cars, all while remaining the most powerful company in the advertising business.

Granted unprecedented access to the company, Levy disclosed that the key to Googles success in all these businesses lay in its engineering mindset and adoption of certain internet values such as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk-taking. Levy discloses details behind Googles relationship with China, including how Brin disagreed with his colleagues on the China strategyand why its social networking initiative failed; the first time Google tried chasing a successful competitor. He examines Googles rocky relationship with government regulators, particularly in the EU, and how it has responded when employees left the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups.

In the Plex is the most authoritativeand in many ways the most entertaining (James Gleick, The New York Book Review) account of Google to date and offers an instructive primer on how the minds behind the worlds most influential internet company function (Richard Waters, The Wall Street Journal).

Reviews

[Steven Levy] spent much of the past three years playing anthropologist at one of the Internet's most interesting villages and set of inhabitants -- the Googleplex and the tribue of Googlers who inhabit it. . . . A deep dive into Google's culture, history and technology.
--Mike Swift, San Jose Mercury News
Almost nothing can stop a remarkable idea executed well at the right time, as Steven Levy's brisk-but-detailed history of Google, In the Plex, convincingly proves. . . . makes obsolete previous books on the company.
--Jack Shafer, The San Francisco Chronicle

An instructive primer on how the minds behind the world's most influential internet company function.
--Richard Waters, The Wall Street Journal

Dense, driven examination of the pioneering search engine that changed the face of the Internet.

Thoroughly versed in technology reporting, Wired senior writer Levy deliberates at great length about online behemoth Google and creatively documents the company's genesis from a 'feisty start-up to a market-dominating giant.' The author capably describes Google's founders, Stanford grads Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as sharp, user-focused and steadfastly intent on 'organizing all the world's information.' Levy traces how Google's intricately developed, intrepid beginnings and gradual ascent over a competitive marketplace birthed an advertising-fueled 'money machine' (especially following its IPO in 2004), and he follows the expansion and operation of the company's liberal work campus ('Googleplex') and its distinctively selective hiring process (Page still signs off on every new hire). The author was afforded an opportunity to observe the company's operations, development, culture and advertising model from within the infrastructure for two years with full managerial cooperation. From there, he performed hundreds of interviews with past and current employees and discovered the type of 'creative disorganization' that can either make or break a business. Though clearly in awe of Google's crowning significance, Levy evenhandedly notes the company's more glaring deficiencies, like the 2004 cyber-attack that forced the removal of the search engine from mainland China, a decision vehemently unsupported by co-founder Brin. Though the author offers plenty of well-known information, it's his catbird-seat vantage point that really gets to the good stuff.

Outstanding reportage delivered in the upbeat, informative fashion for which Levy is well known.

--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Levy is America's premier technology journalist. . . . He has produced the most interesting book ever written about Google. He makes the biggest intellectual challenges of computer science seem endlessly fun and fascinating. . . . We can expect many more books about Google. But few will deliver the lively, idea-based journalism of In the Plex."
--Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Washington Post

Steven Levy's new account [of Google], In the Plex, is the most authoritative to date and in many ways the most entertaining.
--James Gleick, The New York Review of Books

The most comprehensive, intelligent and readable analysis of Google to date. Levy is particularly good on how those behind Google think and work. . . . What's more, his lucid introductions to Google's core technologies - the search engine and the company's data centres - are written in non-geek English and are rich with anecdotes and analysis. . . . In The Plex teems with original insight into Google's most controversial affairs.
--Andrew Keen, New Scientist

The rise of Google is an engrossing story, and nobody's ever related it in such depth.
--Hiawatha Bray, The Boston Globe

The wizards of Silicon Valley often hype their hardware/software breakthroughs as 'magical' for the products' ability to pull off dazzling stunts in the blink of an eye. And true to the magicians' code, these tech talents rarely let mere mortals peer behind the curtains. . . . That's what makes Levy's just-out tome so valuable.
--Jonathan Takiff, The Philadelphia Daily News

Author Bio

Steven Levy iseditor at large atWiredmagazine.The Washington Posthas called him Americas premier technology journalist. His was previously founder of Backchannel and chief technology writer and senior editor forNewsweek.Levy has written seven previous books and his work has appeared inRolling Stone, Harpers Magazine, Macworld, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The New Yorker,andPremiere.Levy has also won several awards during his thirty-plus years of writing about technology and is the author of several previous books includingFacebook: The Inside Story;Insanely Great;The Perfect Thing;andIn the Plex.He lives in New York City.