Resources - Book review - Google's shock to the system. John Battelle's must-read title thrillingly explains how search engines have radically changed business and culture, as Mark Chillingworth discovers.

"Just Google it." If you've heard people in your organisation saying something on these lines, you probably don't need convincing that Google has become part of the fabric of 21st century life. But how did it get there?

The answer is that search engines are now an integrated part of our existence. John Battelle's book The Search seeks to explain how Google and other search engines "rewrote the rules of business and transformed our culture".

Battelle is well placed to pen an historical analysis of Google and search. As the co-founding editor of the magazines Wired and Industry Standard, he was a part of the dotcom boom and bust that typifies the history of the internet. Throughout the book Battelle uses his impressive contact list and litters the title with strong interviews that bring the story of search to life.

But The Search isn't just a history of search engines; Battelle also provides a compelling insight into the importance of search to business and culture, or the "database of intentions" as he terms it. Battelle argues that search engines, and the indexes behind them, represent a database that records the desires, needs and wants of people, and can be tracked and exploited.

This history of search serves as ...