第 1 章
The Digital Revolution Through Google's Lens
Have you ever wondered how one company managed to rewrite the rules of business in just a decade? While countless organizations struggled to adapt to the internet age, Google not only survived but thrived, growing from a simple search engine into one of the world's most valuable companies. What makes Google's approach so revolutionary is that it isn't just about technology-it's about seeing the world differently. Jeff Jarvis's "What Would Google Do?" explores this perspective shift, asking us to reimagine every industry through Google's lens. The book has become required reading in business schools worldwide and influenced a generation of entrepreneurs. Even tech luminaries like Mark Zuckerberg have cited its principles. Beyond business circles, the book sparked conversations about how the internet fundamentally changes power structures in society. At its core lies a simple but profound question: when faced with any challenge in our digital world, what would Google do?
第 2 章
The Great Power Shift: Customers Take Control
The fundamental shift in today's world is that people now have control, and companies must adapt or perish. The internet has transferred power from institutions to individuals in ways we're still coming to terms with. We can now speak to the world, organize ourselves without traditional hierarchies, find information without gatekeepers, and challenge systems that once seemed immovable.
My own experience with Dell illustrates this shift perfectly. After purchasing a lemon of a computer and experiencing horrific customer service, I vented my frustration on my blog in what became known as "Dell Hell." The post went viral, appearing prominently in Google searches for Dell, and damaging their reputation. Eight months later, Dell began implementing my suggestions: reading blogs for unfiltered feedback, talking directly with consumers, launching their Direct2Dell blog, and eventually creating IdeaStorm where customers could suggest and vote on product improvements.
When Michael Dell invited me to his headquarters, he acknowledged the new reality: "These conversations are going to occur whether you like it or not... do you want to be part of that, or not? My argument is, you absolutely do." Dell invested $150 million in customer service improvements, measuring resolution time rather than call handling time, and their negative blog mentions dropped dramatically from 49% to 22%.
The lesson is clear: your worst customer can become your best friend if you embrace rather than fear criticism. When facing customer complaints online, smart companies search for mentions of their brands, engage directly with unhappy customers, and show gratitude for feedback that exposes broken processes. The cost of addressing problems is far less than the potential reputation damage from ignoring them.
Once you've resolved issues, these formerly angry customers often become your strongest advocates, sharing your turnaround with their networks and offering more ideas to improve your products. The challenge is transforming consumers into partners across your entire organization-not just in customer service or PR, but in design, production, marketing, and sales.
The greatest transformative power of the internet isn't technological but social-making new connections among people who can now collaborate, create, and organize in ways that were impossible before. Companies that understand this shift in power will thrive; those that resist it will eventually perish.
第 3 章
The Link Economy: New Rules for a Connected World
On September 11, 2001, I was on the last train into the World Trade Center, arriving just as the first plane hit. After gathering notes and surviving the south tower collapse, I wrote my news story and started a blog to share more of my experiences. When bloggers in Los Angeles linked to my posts and I responded, I realized we were having a distributed conversation made possible by the link-a structure that would redefine commerce, marketing, politics, and education.
The link and search created means to find anything and connect anyone. The atomic unit of online media became the blog post with its permalink-a permanent address allowing it to be linked to from anywhere. These permalinks organize information and build social networks through distributed conversations.
This system requires everything about you and your business to have a permanent online address so people can find you, respond to you, and distribute your message. The link transforms every business and institution, enabling specialization and collaboration. Newspapers don't need their own golf writers when they can link to better tournament coverage elsewhere. They shouldn't waste resources on commodified news but should concentrate on creating unique value.
The principle "Do what you do best and link to the rest" applies beyond media: retailers should link to manufacturers for product information; manufacturers should link to customer discussions; authors should link to experts. The link forces specialization across industries. One-size-fits-all products are becoming obsolete as people can access specialized sources directly.
Most industries view the internet through their limited lens: retailers see it as a store, marketers as a message delivery system, media companies as a content distribution channel. They all want control because that's how they view their worlds-owning customers, controlling distribution, making exclusive deals, locking out competitors.
But the internet explodes these control points. It abhors centralization, tears down barriers to entry, despises secrecy, rewards openness, and favors collaboration over ownership. The internet creates networks of links connecting people with information and each other, and in these connections value is created. The more connections, the greater the value.
Networks are built atop platforms. The internet itself is a platform, as is Google, as are services like Flickr, WordPress, and PayPal. A platform enables others to build value. Google Maps exemplifies this approach-instead of just creating a destination site, Google opened its maps so anyone could embed and build upon them. This openness spawned countless "mashups" and new businesses.
Most companies think centralized, making customers come to them. Google thinks distributed, coming to us whenever and however it can. Its search box appears on browsers and pages across the internet. Google distributes itself by placing ads on millions of websites it doesn't own, earning billions for those sites and itself. This distributed thinking led Google to buy YouTube, which succeeded by making it easy not just to upload videos but to embed them anywhere.
第 4 章
The New Publicness: Be Found or Be Invisible
Once upon a time, all roads led to Rome. Today, all roads lead from Google. Your web presence must be built around answers, not messages. Most visitors won't see your fancy homepage-they'll arrive through Google after asking a question. Each page should clearly answer a specific question that potential customers might ask.
About.com exemplifies this Google-first approach. Owned by The New York Times Company, it hosts over a million focused articles structured for Google to find easily. Writers monitor search queries to create content people are actively seeking. This search-engine optimization has infiltrated The Times itself, where editors now rewrite headlines to be more Google-friendly and create permanent topic pages to accumulate "Googlejuice"-the magic elixir that raises your search rankings when others value and link to you.
Googlejuice is the virtuous circle where more links, clicks, and mentions raise your search ranking, offering potential for even more visibility. Companies hiding from Google are committing business suicide-like newspapers telling newsstands, "How dare you make a penny distributing my product!"
Being searchable benefits everyone from multinational corporations to local restaurants. Customers now expect any information to be available in one click. Not having a Google-friendly web presence is like not having a phone number or sign over your door.
When Flickr launched, its founders made the revolutionary decision to "default to public" with photos. This counterintuitive choice created vibrant communities, encouraged tagging and sharing, and helped interesting content rise to prominence. Publicness has become essential in the Google age. It's not just about having a website-it's about conducting business transparently where people can see your actions, react, and share with friends. Every decision to keep something private risks customers not finding you or not trusting you. The more public you are, the more discoverable and trustworthy you become.
The ideal marketing strategy? Eliminate advertising. When customers recommend you to friends, you don't need to market to those friends. Dell learned this lesson both ways-losing sales from my negative blog posts and gaining $500,000 when Twitter users shared discount codes. Your customers have always owned your brand. The more they take ownership, the less you'll spend annoying people with ads. Google became the fastest growing company in history without marketing, spreading through word-of-mouth from satisfied users.
第 5 章
Elegant Organization: Communities Without Hierarchies
At Davos, a publishing executive begged Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for the secret to building communities. Zuckerberg's blunt response: "You can't." Communities already exist, he explained. The question isn't how to create them but how to help them do what they already want to do better. His prescription: "Bring them elegant organization."
This is exactly what Facebook did at Harvard-not creating social life but organizing existing networks. Zuckerberg demonstrated this principle when he aced an art exam by creating a collaborative study page where classmates filled in knowledge about artworks. The entire class earned better grades by capturing their collective wisdom.
The most successful internet companies follow this pattern: Google organizes information, eBay organizes markets, Amazon organizes consumer opinions, Facebook organizes friendships. These platforms don't organize us-they help us organize ourselves.
As Clay Shirky argues, we can now "organize without organizations." Meetup.com proved this by enabling unexpected communities (like witches) to find each other. The key is providing open, flexible platforms rather than dictating how people should connect.
The social web has transformed politics too, with Obama's 2008 campaign brilliantly using social tools to organize rallies, raise money, and build a movement. Despite fears of technology making us antisocial, we're actually connecting with more people from more places than ever before.
Organization is a business model. Look at the communities you serve-not ones you create. Enable them to talk, share knowledge, support each other, and do business together. But remember Zuckerberg's wisdom: They're not your communities. They're their own.
第 6 章
The Post-Scarcity Economy: Managing Abundance
Big isn't disappearing-Walmart remains earth's largest company, media conglomerates continue growing, and even Google is ginormous. But small is rising dramatically. Today, tiny startups can become global manufacturers using others' factories while reaching worldwide markets through Google. Anyone can launch a specialized media company with blog software and Google ads. Individual political movements can spread from a single seed.
The economics have fundamentally shifted: eBay's 547,000 online stores sold $59.4 billion in merchandise in 2007. While dwarfed by Walmart's $345 billion, eBay beat Macy's $26.3 billion from 853 physical stores. Some blog networks now outperform major newspapers online-Gawker Media's dozen sites doubled the LA Times' web traffic in 2008.
The critical mass needed for business success has plummeted. You no longer need physical stores, massive inventory, or expensive marketing campaigns. You can find customers through eBay, Amazon, targeted Google ads, and niche marketplaces like Etsy. With lower costs-no office space, commuting, or suits-profitability comes faster.
Google is teaching us to manage abundance in a post-scarcity economy, challenging economics' fundamental law of supply and demand. Many industries built value on scarcity: airlines with limited seats, newspapers with exclusive printing presses, retailers with finite shelf space, TV networks with scarce airtime. Controlling scarce resources meant controlling prices.
That era is ending. You can sell products worldwide without fighting for shelf space. Consumers find unlimited choices online. News scoops spread instantly beyond paywalls. Even advertising inventory, once artificially limited, is now virtually infinite online.
The open-source economy powers much of the internet's infrastructure-from Linux operating systems to Apache web servers to Firefox browsers-created by unpaid programmers working collaboratively. These contributors work for free because they're generous, want to belong to something meaningful, care about the outcome, may want to challenge corporate dominance, and recognize that open networks create better products than closed corporations.
The mass market is fragmenting into what customers call "choice." As the internet enables unlimited content creation and consumption, commerce becomes less dependent on blockbuster hits and more distributed across specialized niches. Chris Anderson's "Long Tail" theory argues that while individual niche products attract small audiences, collectively they capture significant market share.
The mass market was historically brief-emerging with television's dominance in the 1950s and beginning to fragment in the 1980s with remote controls, cable channels, and VCRs. Today, we've moved from the promised "500-channel world" to a "billion-choice universe" where comScore reports Americans watch 10 billion online videos monthly. Though individually small, collectively these niches capture enormous attention.
第 7 章
The New Business Reality: Atoms, Middlemen, and Free
Physical stuff has become a burden in the digital age-expensive to produce, store, ship, and manage. Companies are realizing their true value isn't in the atoms they move but in knowledge and service. IDG Communications proudly crossed the "Rubicon" from print to digital when online revenue growth exceeded print decline, allowing them to focus on customer needs without being "unburdened by print."
Amazon exemplifies this shift-while selling physical goods, Jeff Bezos built a knowledge company that knows more about what individuals buy than anyone. Amazon creates value through digital services like Amazon Web Services and Mechanical Turk, turning cost centers into profit centers. The question for businesses: are you limited by your stuff, or is your true value in what you know and how you serve?
The internet ruthlessly eliminates inefficiency by connecting buyers directly to sellers. Middlemen can only survive by making marketplaces more efficient and adding genuine value. Real estate agents represent one of the last dark pools of restricted information through their control of multiple-listing services (MLS). Despite being the least-trusted professionals in Britain (worse than tabloid reporters), they maintain their 6% commissions by restricting access to property listings.
Free is the most efficient marketplace and impossible to compete against. While traditional businesses charge customers directly, the internet enables alternative revenue models. Media pioneered this approach by charging advertisers instead of readers-high-end magazines might cost $25-$35 to produce and market per subscriber but charge readers only $1 per copy.
Google exemplifies this strategy by making services free while generating revenue through advertising. When the New York Times removed its TimesSelect paywall in 2007, audience increased 40%, advertising revenue grew, Google rankings improved, and columnists rejoined public discourse. As Wired editor Chris Anderson argues, "free" itself is a business model-exemplified by Ryanair's strategy of nearly-free tickets supplemented by ancillary fees and advertising.
Understanding your true business is critical in the Google economy. Companies must question their fundamental identity: Are you a knowledge company? A data company? A community? A platform? A network? Even traditional businesses need this rethinking-airlines could be relationship companies, cable companies could be hosts for digital creation, doctors could be health rather than sickness companies, insurance companies could be guarantors of safety rather than risk arbitrageurs.
第 8 章
Trust and Transparency: The New Ethics
Trust isn't something institutions can own-it must be given to them. When leaders treat constituents like masses of fools or children, they lose trust. Trust requires transparency and sharing. David Weinberger's corollary to Jarvis' First Law states: "There is an inverse relationship between control and trust." This contradicts traditional institutional thinking where control was believed to engender trust.
Before institutions can earn public trust, they must first trust the public. I learned this as a TV critic when I realized that given choice and control via remote controls, viewers tend to select quality programming. This created a virtuous circle: more choice led to better selections, forcing Hollywood to produce better shows. Abundance breeds quality.
The internet strengthened this populist worldview by enabling unlimited creation. Yes, there's plenty of bad content online, but also unprecedented opportunities for talent that couldn't emerge under old systems of control. Google's algorithms work precisely because they trust us-PageRank interprets links as votes, recognizing that trust is something we share with each other.
At Google, data is God and the proxy for users' will. Rather than making decisions based on opinion or focus groups, Google conducts A/B tests to measure user responses and follows the numbers. This reliance on data is so ingrained that it even transcends office politics-as Marissa Mayer explains, "Data is apolitical." Google has faith in data because it has faith in us, embracing the wisdom of crowds.
The counterintuitive truth about mistakes is that corrections enhance credibility rather than diminish it. Admitting errors builds trust and shows audiences you'll right future wrongs. Being willing to be wrong is essential for innovation-as P&G's Lafley noted when improving their product launch success rate from 15-20% to 50-60%, he deliberately didn't push higher because that would encourage playing it safe.
Google's perpetual beta approach-releasing unfinished products for public testing-reflects a fundamental shift in business philosophy. Rather than striving for perfection before release, Google embraces iteration based on user feedback. As Marissa Mayer explained, "Innovation, not instant perfect perfection" drives success.
In the Google age, honesty trumps spin. Jon Stewart and Howard Stern have become trusted voices precisely because they "call bullshit" and speak directly. Stern's satellite radio service tagline-"No more bullshit"-represents what every organization should aspire to. In a world where the truth is a click away, institutions can no longer hide behind PR-crafted messaging.
第 9 章
Speed and Innovation: Life in Real-Time
Google has conditioned us to expect immediate answers, delivering search results in fractions of a second. This speed-one of Google's core principles ("Fast is better than slow")-has made us impatient with any delay. Industries must adapt: fashion chains like Zara and H&M now react to trends overnight, while businesses hampered by physical constraints (automotive manufacturing) or institutional tradition (publishing, education) struggle to keep pace.
The internet is evolving beyond mere currency to live broadcasting. With tools like Nokia phones and services like Qik.com and Twitter, anyone can broadcast events worldwide as they happen. During crises like earthquakes, witnesses share experiences instantly. This creates challenges for Google, which excels at completeness but struggles with currency.
The connected internet allows like-minded people to organize and act instantly. Howard Rheingold called them "Smart Mobs," exemplified by the Philippine protesters who toppled President Estrada through text messages. On smaller scales, Twitter enables spontaneous gatherings. The internet has eliminated businesses' control over timing-customers expect immediate responses and transparency, with competitors ready to steal dissatisfied customers "in a flash."
Success often blinds companies to impending failure. TV Guide exemplifies this danger-despite falling from 17 million to 13 million circulation as television expanded beyond its format, the magazine resisted transformation because it remained profitable. When it finally modernized years later, circulation had plummeted to 3.2 million.
Google's famous "20 percent time" policy requires employees to innovate as part of their job responsibilities-half of Google's new products in late 2005 emerged from this program. While not every company can replicate this exactly, all businesses must create systems to hear and reward new ideas from employees at any level.
Google's power comes from its simplicity. When testing its early homepage, users waited for "the rest of the page to load" because they were accustomed to flashy, cluttered websites. Google's User Experience team aims for designs that are "useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable." Their key principle: "Simplicity is powerful... Google teams think twice before sacrificing simplicity in pursuit of a less important feature."
第 10 章
Generation G: How Google is Rewiring Our Brains
Google is fundamentally changing our society, relationships, worldviews, and possibly even our brains. For Generation Google, friendship is evolving as the internet prevents losing touch with people. While older generations struggle to find past connections, young people will remain linked throughout life through their digital footprints-blogs, social profiles, photos, videos, and platforms yet to be invented.
This lasting connectedness improves friendship by making it harder to escape our pasts and act poorly without consequences. Our circles grow larger, though friendship still finds its natural level within our capacity for relationships. The Dunbar number suggests we're wired for about 150 relationships, though this may grow with online connections.
Our public lives mean our embarrassments live forever online, but "mutually assured humiliation" creates a shield-we'll forgive others' mistakes if they forgive ours. As David Weinberger noted, "An age of transparency must be an age of forgiveness." We're already seeing this with public figures like Obama, who admitted drug use without scandal.
The internet and Google are causing numerous behavioral shifts with uncertain long-term impacts. First, computers create an expectation that problems always have solutions, potentially making Generation G more disappointed with life's harsh illogical realities. Second, Google's devotion to data might diminish appreciation for qualitative, counterintuitive human insights. Third, Google's empirical standards could sharpen our analytical skills by rejecting intuition, hunches, and accepted wisdom in favor of data-driven decisions. Fourth, while instant access to facts might atrophy memory, it could also free education from rote memorization.
Young people are absorbing new behavioral norms from digital platforms. As Clay Shirky notes, "Social software is political science in executable form" and "social norms in game worlds have the effect of governance." Lawrence Lessig famously declared that "code is law"-it "implements values, or not. It enables freedoms, or disables them."
The internet is fueling the rise of the third estate-the people-with unprecedented organizing power. Our organization is ad hoc; we can find and collaborate with like-minded individuals anywhere. This may lead to new growth in individual leadership, as being out of power is no longer a barrier to seeking it. The youth armies that gathered around Barack Obama demonstrated this potential for a generation.
The internet reveals humanity's profound will to create. Most people believe they have a book or business inside them. We produce tens of millions of blogs, hundreds of millions of photos, and upload 10 hours of video to YouTube every minute. People design products on collaborative platforms, and kids launch companies.
The internet doesn't make us more creative-it enables what we create to be seen, heard, and used. It allows every creator to find their rightful audience, taking creation out of the proprietary hands of the "creative class." The Google age represents a new society built on connections, transparency, openness, trust, wisdom, generosity, efficiency, markets, niches, platforms, networks, speed, and abundance. This new generation will change how we interact with the world and how institutions interact with us. It's just beginning, and I'm thrilled to witness its birth.
