The SQUEEZE: Writing corporate history has increasingly become the career path for many journalists and media critics. Ken Auletta, a well-regarded media journalist, has joined the wave of writers interested in chronicling the rise and fall of major institutions. In Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, Auletta discusses the story of Google’s rise, its current aims, and future plans. Drawing on personal interviews of key players, Auletta develops a book that is anecdotal in structure and analytical in nature. The book is ideal for consumers and business and policy makers. The time range for the book is between 1999 and 2008, during which Sergey Brin and Larry Page are portrayed as both innovators and disrupters to the modern economy where technology is concerned. Auletta discusses the company’s corporate culture and management strategy and intimates about the growing challenges Google poses for media companies, chief of which are legitimate concerns regarding the use of private information. Auletta’s Googled is a thoughtful analysis about the company and the data it collects.

Notable Endorsement: “[A] savvy profile of the Internet search octopus….[and] a sharp and probing analysis of the apocalyptic upheavals in the media and entertainment industries.”—Publishers Weekly

Common Q’s Answered by this Book:

• What is the link between data collection and the use(s) of data?
• What growing challenges does Google pose within the 21^st-century technology (and business) environment?
• What implications can be drawn from the title of the book?

About the Author: Ken Auletta is an American writer, journalist, and media critic for The New Yorker. Auletta has worked in both government and on multiple political campaigns. Auletta has also trained and taught Peace Corps volunteers. Throughout his professional career, Auletta served as the first executive director of the New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation. Auletta subsequently became the chief political correspondent for the New York Post; a staff writer and weekly columnist for the Village Voice; and a contributing editor at the New York magazine. Auletta also served as a political columnist with the New York Daily News between 1977 and 1983. Auletta is the author of 10 books, which include the following: Greed and Glory on Wall Street: The Fall of The House of Lehman (1986), Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way (1991), The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Superhighway (1997), and World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies (2001). Auletta completed studies at the State University of New York at Oswego (SUNY Oswego).

Book Vitals:

Publisher: Penguin Books (October 2010)