Google Inc. is one of the key success stories of the Internet era. The company has expanded beyond its original search business through innovation and acquisition to touch the lives of nearly every person who lives life online. Americans spend more than 3,400 hours per year using consumer media, the field where Google’s impact is most profound, and increasingly must understand what the company has wrought not only to control our offline and online environments, but also to interact and engage successfully with anyone in our professional and personal lives.

You will learn how to understand the tactics that modern media companies, journalists, marketers, politicians, technologists, and social networks are using to reach you and affect your behavior. You will learn how to adopt strategies that put them on an even footing with these entities in achieving your own communications goals. We’ll

• think about, react to, and write about half a dozen important books about Google;
• read a sampling of newspaper and magazine reportage from Google’s entire history;
• monitor news sites and specialized blogs about the company and its competitors;
• take note of our own usage of Google and other online resources; and
• learn how to anticipate the future impact of the company and its competitors on information consumption, creation, and distribution.