Finally finish reading In the Plex by Steven Levy. I started reading it back in May but with school and other stuff I read little by little until this month I decided to finish it all.

Unless you really give a shit about the history of Google this probably isn’t going to interest you at all. It isnt a thriller or anything like that but it does show how all of the Google services came about, except probably Google plus and Google Music, but they were released after the book came out.

Reading about Google is funny because they really don’t care about invading anybody’s space. Google is mainly search and ad’s but by them generating so much money from search and ad’s they say fuck it and invade other peoples territory because they can.

There’s a part in there were the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are friends with Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs brings out the Iphone and things are still sweet. Eric Schmidt who was the CEO at the time is even on Apple’s board of directors. Everything is cool and the BAM Google decides to make a phone and Steve Jobs flips out and stops being friends with them. That was hilarious.

I wonder if Google never bought Android and Iphone only existed how would things be. The Iphone is at the top of the list in everything anyway but what would things be like if it had no competition.

There’s also a big part in the book about China and how they let Google in the country but Google had to filter things out from people or China would shut them down. Eventually it got tiresome and Google just left it all together. Before this I knew about China’s censorship but I didn’t know it was that locked down.

Towards the end it shows them coming for Mark Zuckerbergs neck so they try to create a social network called Google Buzz, and they test it out on other people who work at Google and they love it, so they all drink champagne and whatnot but then it goes to shit when they release it to the public. That was funny too.

The best thing out of the whole book was Larry Page And Sergey Brin wanting to scan every book in the entire world, and having you being able to search through them on Google. That idea was beautiful. They wanted to do it in 1999, but Google wasn’t making that much money, but after they started to make a profit they came right back to it. At first they were doing it by hand but they invented this machine that 3D scanned it somehow. I wish they had a picture of it. They started to do it without any writers or publishers permission but then Amazon started offering snippets and was or already had the Kindle popping (that part wasn’t clear), and had cut deals with publishers. This turned into a huge lawsuit and Google lose. That part was sad to me but probably not to anybody else. I just think Copywrite sucks balls sometimes.

That’s mainly it. Eric Schmidt stepped down as CEO this year and now Larry Page is the new one.

They have Google Plus now but it’s kinda “meh”. I think it would start popping if they promoted more smart and interesting unknown people of the world for you to follow, like Engineers, Scientists, Writers, Doctors, etc, but that just me. They did a redesign of everything which didn’t make sense but I guess they want everyhting to match I think. With them signing deals with record labels you can now have music sent straight to your Google Music account which is cool. I think with them having Apps, Music, Books in one place it makes it better experience than Itunes now, since it’s all in the browser.

I like technology and competition, so I really want to see what they do next. Google TV would be the shit if they actually treated it like a high quality TV channel, and actually hired writers and creators who made original TV shows instead of giving channels to people like Shaq and Ashton Kutcher, they have the money. They could shit on TV networks who still use things like Nielsen ratings to see what people are watching, but that’s just me.

I really liked the book though.