Google evolves from mundane searches to digital behemoth

— -- It doesn't seem possible, really, but just over 10 years ago a company with a funny sounding name filed for incorporation, and in doing so changed the world. That company, Google, is now on the verge of adolescence — but are we ready for teen rebellion?

In Planet Google, Randall Stross tries to answer that question. Stross, author of The Wizard of Menlo Park, and eBoys, writes the "Digital Domain" column for The New York Times, and is a business professor at San Jose State University.

Planet Google tells the story of Google's recent history — the post-IPO years in which Google is no longer David but a tech Goliath that acquires start-ups and sometimes trips over itself. It's a company that solved the problem of searching for text-based Web pages and is now expanding into organizing much of the world's information, from books to online video to news. It's Google 2.0, if you will.

Today's Google has less sheen than it did in previous years. With size and power, the ambitious upstart has become what some observers see as a creepy overzealous competitor.

Stross captures this sense early in Planet Google, when he recalls Google's CEO Eric Schmidt talking in 2007 about Google's potential for omniscience. Schmidt said that the company's ultimate goal was to provide Google's algorithm — a set of rules for determining search results or answers to questions — with enough personal detail about visitors that it would provide a customized answer to questions.

Stross spends considerable space telling the stories behind four Google components:

•Google Books (a project to digitize books and make their contents searchable).

•Google News (an online news aggregator that organizes news stories based on pre-programmed algorithms, and not the judgment of editors).

•Google Earth (a global mapping system).

•YouTube (the user-run video website).

Stross explains the basics behind Google's search technology: It determines relevant search results based on a series of rules, such as which and how many other websites link to a given page and what keywords are associated with the link.