Friday, Apr 16 2010 8:30AM to 10:30AM
Fred Sexton, Mouse and Man
Goodmortgage.com, 3325 South Tryon Street, Charlotte, 28217
Monthly BIG Ideas Exchange
“Googled- The End of the World as We Know It"
Friday, April 16, 2010 (rescheduled from original date of April 9)
Location: Goodmortgage.com, 3325 South Tryon Street, Charlotte, 28217
http://www.goodmortgage.com/directions/
Agenda:
8:30 am to 9:00 am- Continental breakfast and networking
9:00 am to 10:30 am- Big Ideas Discussion
For April 9, we'll discuss “Media disrupted and redefined" and content from the book, “Googled- The End of the World as We Know It" by Ken Auletta.
Video: Does Google Own Us?
Mar 10, 2010 at 9:33am ET by Barry Schwartz
A short but very well-done video on how much Google knows about us, possibly implying that Google owns their users. Clearly, this topic is not new, but the video was really well done.http://tinyurl.com/y9528cu
As a reminder, you don’t have to read the book! The facilitator will share the main principles from the book with the group.
Fred Sexton with Mouse and Man will facilitate this discussion.
For an excerpt of book, go to:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/03/googled-exclusive-excerpt_n_343377.html
Free to Members and Guests of BIG: Register Below.
During this roundtable we'll:
· share our own experiences in this area in our businesses
· share best practices from our own personal experience or from industry thought leaders
· share ideas on how to improve the area within our businesses to fuel growth
Overview:
In early 1998, Bill Gates headed Microsoft at the peak of its commercial powers. The world’s preeminent software giant claimed a 90 percent market share in all desk and laptop PCs and it was difficult to imagine anything that could unsettle, much less evoke fear in, the Sultan of Software.
Nonetheless, when asked what challenge he most feared, Gates responded, “I fear someone in a garage who is devising something completely new.” Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the cofounders of Google, were that very pair. Nestled in a Menlo Park, Calif., garage, these two software engineers were preparing to launch a product that would change the way the world used the Internet.
Ken Auletta, an author and a longtime columnist for the The New Yorker, documents the meteoric rise of Google from its humble beginnings through its multibillion-dollar profits in his latest book, Googled: The End of the World as We Know It. As the latter half of the title suggests, Auletta’s work is more than just a history of Google and a biography of its principals. It is rather a tripartite inspection of modern technological innovation, the decline of traditional media (print journalism, music CDs, etc.) and its revenue stream (advertising sales), and the ways in which Google serves as a flash point for many of the successes and controversies surrounding the Digital Age.
Auletta regularly diverges from the history of Google to frame the company’s rise in the context of an environment in which traditional media firms, by resisting innovation time after time, have begun penning their own eulogies. Auletta’s treatment of the newspaper, magazine, and music giants of the world is far from harsh, however. Edgar Bronfman, Warner Music Group’s CEO, summarizes the author’s take, “The record business is in trouble. The music business is not.” It is clear that there is still a market for information and for journalism. It is less clear how media companies will engineer a means of distribution for their content that not only caters to the changing habits of its users, but also can be properly monetized to make their operations profitable.
Auletta neatly inspects the threats, both internal and external, that will challenge Google’s founders, executives, shareholders, users, and competitors in the future. His thorough reporting and declarative writing provide a crisp, informative read. A seasoned observer of the boom-bust cycles emanating from California’s Silicon Valley, Auletta displays the skill of a responsible journalist in both researching and crafting this snapshot of today’s technological landscape.
Having witnessed the rise and decline of countless Internet and software start-ups, Auletta proceeds with an analyst’s discretion when determining the effects of Google as a product, a publicly traded company, and a corporate brand. Although Auletta acknowledges the robust success of Google, he is quick to point out that the company is far from invincible. It only takes a few geniuses in a garage to prove that.