In Googled, esteemed media writer and critic Ken Auletta uses the story of Google’s rise to explore the inner workings of the company and the future of the media at large. Although Google has often been secretive, this book is based on the most extensive cooperation ever granted a journalist, including access to closed-door meetings and interviews with founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, CEO Eric Schmidt, and some 150 present and former employees.

Inside the Google campus, Auletta finds a culture driven by brilliant engineers in which even the most basic ways of doing things are questioned. His reporting shines light on how Google has been so hugely successful-and why it could slip. On one hand, Auletta reveals how the company has innovated, from Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Earth to YouTube, search, and other seminal programs. On the other, he charts its conflicts: the tension between massive growth and its mandate of “Don’t be evil”; the limitations of a belief that mathematical algorithms always provide correct answers; and the collisions of Google engineers who want more data with citizens worried about privacy.

More than a comprehensive study of media’s most powerful digital company, Googled is also a lesson in new media truths. Pairing Auletta’s unmatched analysis with vivid details and rich anecdotes, it shows how the Google wave grew, how it threatens to drown media institutions once considered impregnable-and where it is now taking us all.

SUMMARY: There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. This is a ride on the Google wave, and the fullest account of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses. With unprecedented access to Googles founders and executives, as well as to those in media who are struggling to keep their heads above water, Ken Auletta reveals how the industry is being disrupted and redefined. Auletta goes inside Googles closed-door meetings, introducing Googles notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as those who work with and against them. In Googled, the reader discovers the secret sauce of the company's success and why the worlds of new and old media often communicate as if residents of different planets. It may send chills down traditionalists spines, but its a crucial roadmap to the future of media business: the Google story may well be the canary in the coal mine.Googled is candid, objective and authoritative. Crucially, its not just a history or reportage: its ahead of the curve and unlike any other Google books, which tend to have been near-histories, somewhat starstruck, now out of date or which fail to look at the full synthesis of business and technology.