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Google and Its PR Push

Wow, the Web logs have recycled the Sergey Brin article “A Library to Last Forever”. If you want a run down of the news stories about this opinion piece, navigate to Techmeme, Megite, or Google News and have a click fest. I found the information in the article interesting, but less interesting than the fact that Google is getting into the public relations amusement park. The idea is to get the “message” out and fascinate those in the amusement park with the sounds, lights, and manufactured excitement therein.

Google Books, although important, is one project. The conversation about Google Books is important, and I am surprised that it has taken 11 years for intelligent people to connect the dots about Google. In my opinion, Google Books as a project will continue. The only unanswered questions are essentially details.

Google Books is not Google. Google is an application platform within a new type of organization. Interpreting Google with methods derived from traditional businesses both product and service oriented is going to create more Google Books-type situations.

Let me give you one example of the flexibility of the Google construct. Perhaps Google’s most important technical innovation is essentially unknown outside of a small number of specialists. That innovation has the potential to transform the way information access is performed in any use case. Compared to this innovation, Google Books is a modest undertaking that informs the Google knowledge base and permits some secondary and derivative products to be generated.

The discussion about Google Books is worthwhile but it is similar to a group of experts examining the tail of an elephant and not looking at the entire creature. The perspective is important. Understanding Google’s achievements and capabilities requires perspective. That’s what’s missing in the analyses of Google’s PR push.

PR is not always congruent with reality in my opinion. A Euclidean triangle might not “look” like a triangle in a non Euclidean space. The flood of write ups about Google Books are Euclidean, just like the solutions in sophomore high school geometry class. The proper method may be non Euclidean. If this makes no sense, enjoy the Google PR blitz. If it does make sense, you can interpret the messages within the Google PR blitz.

Stephen Arnold, October 10, 2009

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