{"product_id":"9781843279983","title":"Google And The Mission To Map Meaning And Make Money","description":"This book is the unfolding story of the new technology of Internet\u003cbr\u003eSearch -  how  Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google,\u003cbr\u003ediscovered a new way to index the Internet's network of networks by\u003cbr\u003edeveloping Search methods so powerful that they effectively created a\u003cbr\u003efree, public and universal library out of billions of random documents. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt also tells how, together with the help of a brilliant team built\u003cbr\u003einitially at Stanford University, they then found a new way of making\u003cbr\u003emoney through contextual advertising - now worth $e billion, leaving\u003cbr\u003epotential competitors, particularly Microsoft, far behind. It shows how\u003cbr\u003eGoogle's founders have also succeeded in insisting that integrity,\u003cbr\u003erather than profit, remains at the heart of an enterprise that they will\u003cbr\u003econtinue to control, despite the best efforts of Wall Street.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe second half of this book also seeks to explain the central problems\u003cbr\u003eof machine intelligence - the difference between words and their\u003cbr\u003emeaning, or syntax and semantics - which had blocked this kind of IT\u003cbr\u003edevelopment for half a century until Google's founders discovered that\u003cbr\u003ehypertext, the unique feature of the Internet that links documents,\u003cbr\u003ecould be measured and mapped to sort millions of apparently similar\u003cbr\u003epages for relevance and significance.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGoogle's pursuit of a hugely ambitious and optimistic American dream\u003cbr\u003ethat leaves them globally admired, and respected - keeping their\u003cbr\u003eprinciples intact whilst also creating a fabulously wealthy company - is\u003cbr\u003ea winning blend of luck, jokes, mathematical inspiration, engineering\u003cbr\u003eperspiration, deep technical knowledge of the Internet and, theywould\u003cbr\u003ehave you believe, thousands of highly-trained pigeons. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book is 288 pages long, including a comprehensive index and 600 item\u003cbr\u003ebibliography covering virtually all aspects of Internet Search. The\u003cbr\u003eprint version of the book comes with a free online electronic version,\u003cbr\u003ewith hypertext links to related articles and books - designed to make\u003cbr\u003eany aspect of the history of Internet search easy to find with a couple\u003cbr\u003eof mouse clicks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book's author, Bart Milner, is a trained technology journalist and\u003cbr\u003eeditor who started using the Web in 1984 (with a 300-baud acoustic\u003cbr\u003ecoupler!) and then became a developer partly to try and solve the\u003cbr\u003equestion of why computer logic has been unable to deal with meaning and\u003cbr\u003eassociation. This background has given him an insight into the inspired,\u003cbr\u003ebut almost accidental, way that Google's founders cracked the problem of\u003cbr\u003efinding a significant document from billions of unindexed and changing\u003cbr\u003eWeb pages in a fraction of a second.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnyone interested in the future of the Internet and Information\u003cbr\u003eTechnology  should enjoy this fast and fluid story of a company which\u003cbr\u003ehas become a flagship business of the 21st century by not conceding any\u003cbr\u003eof its integrity and principles to the huge pressures of commercial\u003cbr\u003eprofit, whilst providing some of the most elegant and powerful\u003cbr\u003eengineering solutions ever seen on the Net.  ","brand":"The Electric Book Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47064233640176,"sku":"9781843279983","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781843279983_p0.jpg?v=1763741364","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781843279983","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}