So what kind of a book is this? A small corporate biography for sure. An introductory-level course in Google knowledge. And it is a collection of stories of defining moments for a company that has set out to change the world – and done a pretty amazing job to really accomplish that too.
I personally have set out to write prose at the top of my game and to write code at no level at all. In other words: it’s not a tech nerd book. My mother – an intelligent, reading, thinking, socially aware teacher – is my target audience. Many Swedes are like she is: They could very well go online to Amazon and pick out one of the many Google books that are available in English, and read it too, comfortably – but they just won’t. The tresholds of international book deliveries and second language challenges will make them decide on another book. Yet, the story of Google needs to be told to everybody. Google has long ago passed the line from ”just another big company” into the sphere of infrastructure.
”The Google Code” will be generous in its praise and stern in its critizism. It will distinguish between ”critical” and ”negative”, and leave no space for the latter.
And most of all, it’s an attempt of truly understanding. Understanding what Google is, what it does and how it is transforming our lives.
