I aspired to profile a company at the epicenter of the digital revolution, a company whose rise would also tell the story of how “new” media disrupted “old,” and offer a glimpse into the future of media. Google was my chosen vehicle, but the company was reluctant to cooperate. Google’s founders and many of its executives share a zeal to digitize books, but don’t have much interest in reading them. They worried that cooperating on a book was an “inefficient” use of their time. I made the argument that my task was to understand and explain what they do and how they were changing the media world, and that they should look upon my project much as they look upon search. If my book was good, it would rise to the top of search results, becoming a common reference. After months of my kicking at the door, they opened it. I could not have told this story without their cooperation. I made many weeklong visits to the Google campus in Mountain View, conducted a total of about 150 Google interviews, including 11 with CEO Eric Schmidt.
