Cool Marketing Thoughts

I’m almost finished proofreading Philipp’s book about Google, which is cunningly titled “55 Ways To Have Fun With Google”. I had a great time reading it and there’s a lot of cool things about Google that I didn’t know yet which Philipp explained and now make more sense. I was surprized to find out how many Google Games there are to be played and indeed, Google is more than just a search engine. It’s a source of happiness, fantasy and fun. Google can become a way of life, not just a tool to help you look for answers.

Excerpt from “Chapter 30: Ten signs You Are Addicted To Google”:

• When people talk to you, you try to optimize their keywords.
• Your reply to “how are you?” is “I’m feeling lucky”, combined with a clicking gesture.
• You are convinced that “What’s your PageRank?” is a good pick-up line.

I especially liked chapter 42, the science-fiction interlude. Truly, inside Philipp hides a great novelist. Of course it’s not the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, and no, it’s nothing like 1984 either… but it comes close. I was really excited while I read it and the tales intrigued me. I couldn’t let go of the book once I started a chapter. I even read while I was walking home from the train station because it was so captive that I couldn’t just close the book in the middle of a story.

What are Google Robots?

Google Robots are our human-like machines that walk the earth to record information. They do no harm, and they do not invade your privacy.

The book is a must-have. If you like, love or hate Google, this is what you need to read. You’ll never regret having ordered your copy, but you’ve got to wait a little more because it isn’t for sale yet. If you follow Philipp’s Google Blogoscoped or 55fun.com you’ll definitely see the date of launch being posted when it’s ready.

I asked Philipp what his main reason was to start writing the book and what he learned:

I don’t know exactly what triggered my decision to start writing this book. I guess it was inevitable because my head is overflowing with Google trivia, which I collected in 3 years of writing a Google blog. I also wanted to give people something to take with them on the beach, onto the airplane, or whenever else you’re not in front of a PC. It was a lot of fun writing the book.

As for what I learned… – I learned a lot about Open Office Writer, but finally had to buy Microsoft Word and convert the document. The sad truth is that when you’re using an “exotic” tool, even though it’s free, you’re likely to run into problems with online tools and help sites… most help pages online will be about the most popular tool, Word, and most online converters (like Lulu.com’s self-publishing book converter) will also only support the most popular tool.

The book is rated ‘G’ for Googlish.