A model of business commerce that is contiguous, available, and always there is presented in this book. The business commerce model is essentially a chain that most likely will be unbroken in the future. Its life could only be snuffed out by a revival of the Luddites or total nuclear war. So, more or less, the business commerce model presented is set forth as inevitable. The business commerce model is no longer site-driven for production, distribution, and revenue generation, but, rather, it is driven by deep linking (allowing others on the Web to link to your information with a completely different strategy of providing things of value, enabling distribution, and generating revenue). For example, in the news industry, publishers can let people link to any story the publishers post to enable deep linking among people who are interested and linked. Publishers limit further consumption of their site to paid subscribers. Advertising is also done in this context, replacing the old inserts.

There are 11 chapters, whose titles give an overview of the coverage of the book: “The Database of Intentions,” “When, What, Where, Who, When, and How (Much),” “Search Before Google,” “Google Is Born,” “A Billion Dollars, One Nickel at a Time. The Internet Sets a New Business Model,” “Google 2000 - 2004: Zero to $3 Billion in Five Years,” “The Search Economy,” “Search, Privacy, Government, and Evil,” “Google Goes Public,” “Google Today, Google Tomorrow,” and “Perfect Search.” Besides these chapters there are some other offerings in the book. There is a short epilogue discussing immortality and bringing a philosophical context to the quest for search. There is also a useful index. The business organizations discussed in the book are Google (predominantly), Yahoo!, Idea Lab, Microsoft, Ask, A9, IBM Web Foundations, and many others (to a lesser degree). The personalities discussed are Sergey Brin and Larry Page (predominantly), Jerry Yang and David Filo, Bill Gross, and many others.

The book raises many issues with the model for business commerce. One is the loss of privacy. The book suggests typing your personal phone number into the Google search box and seeing what you find out. The book reports that a map can be linked to, showing the location of your residence. Another issue is the issue of spamming--relevant listings pushed up the index by bad actors looking to acquire free traffic. Another example issue is that of government searching personal Web histories and having access to personal information in a search business index without notification or the permission of the person whose information is being accessed or whose Web history is being searched. The issue of a search business company changing its index is also addressed. Then, the companies that do business by having their links ranked highly by the search business company’s search algorithm lose money and livelihood when the change in the index results in a distinct, significantly lower rank. An example is 2bigfeet.com’s loss of business on, and subsequent to, November 14, 2003, when Google tweaked its index and search algorithm.

There is an issue with these changing business-commerce models that the book does not discuss--namely, the issue of the people affected by these changing business-commerce models. These changing business models seem to incorporate no plans for the provision of an avenue of transition and recovery for the upheaval in jobs, livelihood, and careers. There is no provision made by those that enable or profit from the changing business-commerce model. The plan is simply presented to put the inevitable business-commerce model in place and see what happens in becoming rich and letting others pay by their loss of jobs, livelihood, and careers. Sensitivity to this issue is left somewhere, probably to governments, charities, and labor organizations, who are uneducated and insensitive to what is causing the turmoil and upheaval.

The book is a good, informative read. There is a searchblog site, http://www.battellemedia.com, where the conversation of the book has been ongoing since the book’s publication. A lot has happened, and continues to happen, since then.