Book Review: What Wood Google Do? By Jeff Jarvis (Read Via Audible.com)

This piece albeit about Google, was more about the direction of the internet and global communication is going. Jeff cleverly uses Google as a solid footing on how its young roots are really changing society.

On of his key points that I most heartily agree with is that since the advent of modern communication via the internet. People no longer have to discuss things on other people’s terms or by a corporations terms. The net result is that you cannot simply ignore or force people through rigid communication channels to keep your message. The public will just ignore you and use their channels to tell their experience.

Jeff use his experience with Dell, which eventually became one of the publicly incited incidents for a rather large revolution/change in the way Dell interfaces with its customers.

The book does compliment Don Tapscott’s books on the subject very well and even references Wikinomics a few times. I do agree that crowd sourcing ideas for innovation is great, however: Ideas are cheap, Execution is hard. (I don’t remember the refernce - possibly Cory Doctorow?)

Which leads me to my last point. Maybe its just me… I totally hate the concept that everything media or as Alex Lindsay puts it “Digital Products” should all be ad based. However I do realize that in practice, as even as Leo Laporte has seen, people would rather consume periodical advertisements than pay for they same content without ads. I definitely have to think about that a little more.

For a very well written book with some great thought on how communication/the digital revolution will shape up over time, I give it a 8/10.

-Kevin