WWGD: What Would Google Do, by Jeff Jarvis
I finished listening to What Would Google Do, by Jeff Jarvis, the other day and I thought I would share some thoughts about the book.
I have been listening to Jeff Jarvis talk on This Week in Google for the past year, and during the introductions of the guests on the show, Jeff’s introduction is always prefaced as being the author of this book. I put off buying it for the longest time because I already had a large stack of books to read. Also on the show, they are heavy promoters of Audible, the audiobook company. I have been taking walks almost daily since April, and I thought I would try listening to an audiobook instead of music on these walks. One of Google’s guiding rules for their workers is that people must commit 20% of their time to other projects not Google-related. Conversely, I thought it would be appropriate for me to commit 20% (well, closer to 5% for me) of my time on Google-related ideas through this book.
Jeff Jarvis’ background is as a journalist and blogger, so it is appropriate that he would attempt to reverse-engineer Google’s successes through interviews and anecdotes with Google executives and successful business people. Through his research, Jarvis developed his Laws to help guide companies in the 21st century attain a new level of success similar to that of Google. Without repeating all of the laws, it can be summed down to: customers control brands, companies should aim to be fast, and companies should aim to build platforms upon which their customers or new companies can build or expand.
The explanation of these laws and how they operate in the new world was quite fascinating to me and captured my interest from the get go. Some of them were a bit obvious to me (mainly from hearing about them repeatedly on TWiG), but the idea of building a platform had never really occurred to me even though I’m presented with platforms on a daily basis (Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, GMail, WordPress, etc.) Some of the stories tied to these rules are very good, as well, and I was quite entertained with the story of Jarvis and his Dell laptop, because I could relate completely to it.
The problem for me with the book comes up in the last two-thirds of the book when he builds the case for how non-Internet companies can become Googlified. The idea of the Google University is appealing to me, but the cases for some of the other businesses are too quickly mentioned and not nearly as detailed as I would like. Some of the ideas are a bit far-fetched and unpractical. For example, his case about restaurants having a voting system about their menus or contributing to a recipe. For someone going to a restaurant to eat for the purposes of feeding their stomach, I can see why he would be interested in knowing what the most popular dishes are or wanting a dish that appeals to a larger population. But restaurants and their chefs are more artisans of food, serving dishes that appeal to a certain palate or ethnic group (niche) and would be much worse if they did appeal to a larger audience. I am not sure why he did not think of this when he wrote that particular section of the book. I think we need to steer people in the direction of eating at or developing local restaurants rather than evolving into more chains and more popular recipes.
Another problem for me is the pacing of the book, but it is hard for me to distinguish whether it was the fast reading of the narrator (who is Jeff Jarvis) or the text. I decided to take a quick look at the comments of other readers on Amazon, and most had the same opinion I did for the pacing. They went as far as to say the book was more rambling and was like a lengthy blog post. I would not go quite that far with my critique of the book, but there are some sections of the book that felt much longer than they needed to be.
Overall, I do believe that Jarvis presents some valuable points that should be of interest to a general public and people looking to develop their own businesses. I think the book could have gone a bit further in describing Google’s success outside of their search application and advertising, however. There are so many Google apps that are passed over that also contributed to the success of Google as a company of information. Apart from that criticism, the first half of the book feels a lot like a new Cluetrain Manifesto. It may not be as elegantly written or presented as that book, but it does have an aura of importance that makes it required reading for any young upstart interested in creating a business.
Audible does have a starter package available that will allow you to download a book for free. I would suggest listening to the book through Audible or finding a used copy if you can to make it completely worthwhile for you.
By James McCullough
