Paperback: 325 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.83 x 9.08 x 6.02 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates; 1st edition (February 1, 2003) ISBN: 0596004478

The more you know about Google, the better you are at pulling data off the Web. You've got a cadre of techniques up your sleeve--tricks you've learned from practice, from exchanging ideas with others, and from plain old trial and error--but you're always looking for better ways to search. 

It's the "hacker" in you: not the troublemaking kind, but the kind who really drives innovation by trying new ways to get things done. 

If this is you, then you'll find new inspiration (and valuable tools, too) in Google Hacks from O'Reilly's new Hacks Series.

If you're a Google power user, you'll find the technical edge you're looking for in Google Hacks.

First off, I have to admit: I fell in love with this book while looking at the description at ora.com before it was ever published. I'm a geek. I've used Google for years. I live and breathe this stuff. 

I know the high editorial and production quality that O'Reilly puts into their technical books. But the pre-publication descriptions left an open question for me: just how useful would this book be for normal people?

To those who know nothing about programming/scripting, fear not. About half of this book is stuff that anyone anywhere can use with no programming skills whatsoever. 

And if the hacks described in the other half of the book sound useful, sufficiently-motivated people will find a way to use them: talk to their technical friends, their children, or (heaven forbid!) teach themselves how to use Perl/Python/etc. 

And even that's kind of missing the point: the book is about giving you a taste of what is possible to do with Google. You will get an education simply by leafing through the examples.

How do the authors get so good? Clearly, they're smart folk. But they have a much more important quality: a sense of adventure and, at times, a giddy quality of fun in what they do. Chapter 7 -- Google Pranks and Games -- is as good a place to start reading this book as any. 

And a non-technical person who reads and tries the examples in Chapter 1 will have a far better working knowledge of google than 99.5% of the technical types out there. Finally, Chapter 8 is an excellent intro to webmasters to understand how google picks which pages rank higher for any particular search. 

It gives valuable advice on how to get a good rank for your website. This book should be a good antidote for small-time operators who are currently getting hustled by "rank booster" con artists and other snake-oil salesmen.

One side comment: hacking is a good thing. In the past two decades, the word has been co-opted to mean a dubious or possibly-illegal activity. Nonsense. Hacking is a most honorable activity; it's part of what makes the world works. Kudos to O'Reilly for starting their "Hacks" book series.

Google is an Internet search engine database, but it's far more than that. It's existence has begun to shape the very fabric of the Internet. Anyone wishing to be literate on the Internet would be wise to understand quite a bit about it.

I'm buying a copy of this book for my mother tonight.
Reviewer: A reader from The Colorado Front Range (with its terrible winters)

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