I came not to bury Google....

Jeff Jarvis on his book What Would Google Do, a paean to the Greater Googlegod as reported on Newsweek:

NEWSWEEK: Besides Google, it seems like you have crushes on Facebook and Amazon, too. Did you ever think about writing on WWFD or WWAD, or might you in the future?

......the point isn't so much to worship Google, it is to face the confusing, counterintuitive, fundamental change going on in our world now and ask, "Who is succeeding in it, and why?" So, just as I try to look admiringly from a distance at Google, I include anecdotes and examples from Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook and Craig Newmark at craigslist and Jeff Bezos at Amazon. There is a club of people who've figured out the Internet and succeeded at it. You can pick your own. I just think Google is the most appropriate lens, because it's gigantic; indeed the Times of London said that it's the fastest growing company in the history of the world, so who better to use as a lens to this new worldview?

So, asks Newsweek, what are the ways in which you've used Google in the last 24 hours?

Oh, can I count them all? My mail is on Google, so every time I've pinged it, I'm on Google. I've searched for news of various sorts; I used Google Maps to find restaurants in Munich, I used Google Maps to get directions; I used Google search to find movie listings, and then I used it to find reviews. I watched a mess of Google videos.

Google mail - yes, that state of the art product that just today has announced the ground breaking concept of storing mail offline. Astonishing!

But hark, he hath not yet finished:

On my blog, I have Google ads there, so I made some pennies. Tonight I'm going to take a Flip video of this great event last night [a beatbox-violin duet] and put that on YouTube. I'm trying to think of all the tentacles that Google reaches out—I've probably used it in ways I don't even know.

Apart from suspecting the learned professor has probably been drinking too much sponsored Google-Aid, we could even be tempted to think the scurrilous thought that the Google that Prof Jarvis is in love with is a romanticised version of the Real Thing. But a dog's gotta do what a dog's gotta do:

First, I'll confess, I'm a hypocrite. I didn't put this book up as a purely digital, searchable, linkable entity—I didn't eat my own dog food—because I got an advance from the publisher, and other services. Dog's gotta eat. I couldn't pass it up. In terms of the process of the book, though, I hope it was Googlier [than most] in that I thought this book through on my blog

Well, we will of course read it - though maybe we should apply "What Would Google Do" to his book, by closing all the chapters except the ones on advertising and search - after all, that's what Google is doing now

Update - I read the Amazon reviews of the book, and they are quite divided - this actually makes me more impressed with Mr Jarvis, as he has clearly not (yet, anyway) packed the review section with sock puppets, a not uncommon wheeze)