Andreas Ekström – är nu ett alternativ?

I realize as I go along that this blog is a way for me to be transparent towards Google as well. As of any day now, I am making my final adjustments to the book, meaning I am not likely to be doing any more interviews. Except those when someone else asks me the questions, which is always a good crash course for a reporter. I have some experiences in that field with my third book, which was about parenting and I guess what you might call a minor hit in 2006. That one I had some small hopes for, internationally. Close but no cigar, or so my agent said.

I don’t have an agent anymore…

Just got home from Cameroon, where I have been finishing the chapter about Google’s philantropic arm by visiting an initiative that Google is funding: Global Viral Forecasting Initiative. An amazing experience, and as far as the reporting goes, something I have yet not seen in any other book about Google. I feel good about adding some unique values, albeit in Swedish!

One thing that concerned me initially was the level of unique content – what could I tell that wasn’t told already? Turns out there are so many interesting people to talk to and so many possible stories about Google that that really hasn’t been a problem. It’s just been about deciding what not to write…

Since I am in the middle of finishing, I mean really finishing, the book right now, I am scattered-minded like an idiot. I don’t pay attention to anything. And small, tiny questions become huge important problems for me to solve. I am slowly losing not only my mind, but just my general feeling for evaluation of quality… And that’s why I need an editor, a publisher, someone who knows his shit.

Lucky for me, I do.

I am flying out of Cameroon tonight, after too short of a stay in an amazing place. It’s friendly, warm, slow and intense at the same time and there is enough red dust on these roads for it to make a serious difference when I q-tip my ears after the morning shower… Which, by the way, was all cold water. Internet access is off and on, but mostly on.

Today, I have some meetings lined up, but first, I am out to find some breakfast on the street. Payed a dollar for a spicy omelette squeezed into bread yesterday. Might see if I can find that same guy again…

Friends, I am writing this sitting by the small desk at Hotel Franco in Yaoundé, Cameroon, a nicer hotel than the name with all of its historical and political baggage may imply.

I am here to see money from Google.org at work. I follow the work at Global Viral Forecasting Initiative – an amazing project, it seems, and I am learning more by the hour. This will be the very very last thing I write for the book. The presses will start rolling February 2nd.

I am here for just three days, which is absurd, considering how far I have travelled to get here. What I have seen so far surely motivates me to make my way back here sometime…

More reports to come whenever I get the chance. Thursday, we’re out on a long trek in the jungle, but we hope to make it to a television set by five – Cameroon will then take on Tunisia in the African football championships. Nobody here wants to miss it, me neither!

During the fall I have travelled extensively, but I have not been alone – I have been in good company every mile. Three persons have been right there for me, every dull hour on every plane, in the line to yet another security check or on the CalTrain on The Peninsula: Leo Laporte, Gina Trapani and Jeff Jarvis. Together, they produce ”This week in Google”, a weekly netcast talkshow about everything that concerns Google, and all other googley things.

Might not be overkill, after all, writing another book about the big G…

If you’re interested in subscribing, check out the TWIG site. Follow Jeff Jarvis here and the amazingly brilliant and knowledgeable Gina Trapani here. (Her handbook about Google Wave was written and published in real time this fall. Read all about it here.)

The biggest, most exciting and potentially best piece of news from Google that I have seen in the time I have reported on Google came last night.

* Google will refuse to accept censorship on the search engine results in China.

* Google considers shutting Google.cn down if those demands aren’t met.

* Google considers shutting down all Chinese operations, and will begin negotiations with Chinese authorities immediately.

All of the background can be read in a post from Googles chief legal officer David Drummond here.

Personally, I think this is wonderful news. If there is anything in the Google world I have had a hard time accepting, it’s the policy in China. Google does have the power and the importance needed to stand it’s ground and really making a difference by doing so. Finally, that path will be explored to the fullest.

This is more than ”don’t be evil”, this is ”be good”.

And guess what? I have a phone call to make. My publisher need to make sure that I can make some small adjustments to my book…

This Sunday is a special day. I am supposed to send all of the book to the publisher for them to start laying out the pages. Still, three things are missing:

1. The chapter on Cameroon, which is a story about Google.org and their philantropic work told straight from the African jungle. The publisher is saving a space, since I haven’t been there yet… But it’s all set up, and I am about to travel. Very exciting! And something I have not seen in any other books about Google.

2. A small thing here in Sweden, a sales meeting that I hope to be able to participate in, just to give the ”this is how it all works”-chapter some color. Hopefully this upcoming week.

3. A background interview with Google high-up Rachel Whetstone on the subject of Google and China. This interview has been postponed, hm, let’s see… five times. Yes, five times it is. Perhaps I am gullable, perhaps I should have gotten the hint by now, perhaps she has never intended to talk to me. I am not sure what to believe. But I am still hoping for this to happen. I am asking for fifteen minutes on the phone, and there has been no such fifteen minutes for six weeks…

So what kind of a book is this? A small corporate biography for sure. An introductory-level course in Google knowledge. And it is a collection of stories of defining moments for a company that has set out to change the world – and done a pretty amazing job to really accomplish that too.

I personally have set out to write prose at the top of my game and to write code at no level at all. In other words: it’s not a tech nerd book. My mother – an intelligent, reading, thinking, socially aware teacher – is my target audience. Many Swedes are like she is: They could very well go online to Amazon and pick out one of the many Google books that are available in English, and read it too, comfortably – but they just won’t. The tresholds of international book deliveries and second language challenges will make them decide on another book. Yet, the story of Google needs to be told to everybody. Google has long ago passed the line from ”just another big company” into the sphere of infrastructure.

”The Google Code” will be generous in its praise and stern in its critizism. It will distinguish between ”critical” and ”negative”, and leave no space for the latter.

And most of all, it’s an attempt of truly understanding. Understanding what Google is, what it does and how it is transforming our lives.

Recently I have had the opportunity to travel to the US twice, and for a great reason too: ”The Google Code”. That clever rip-off of a title was created by my editor-in-chief at Sydsvenskan, mr Daniel Sandström, as I asked him for advice on a name for my next book.

So, another book about Google, huh? Well, no. It’s not ”another” book about Google, it’s the very first. In Swedish, that is. Strangely enough, there has been nothing written. Nothing at all. And none of those really high quality American corporate biographies about Google have seemed to catch Swedish publishers’ attention.

Strange, strange indeed. But a window of opportunity for me.

Not that I necessarily wanted to open it. I was talked into it by editor and publishing house CEO Svante Weyler, who has stepped down from a similar role at one of Sweden’s leading publishing houses to finally make it on his own. I respect him a lot. Weyler förlag will only publish something in the vicinity of ten or fifteen books per year, focusing hard on each title, really making very concious decisions on what to print. Among published writers are German superstars Juli Zeh and Ingo Schulze, as well as Nobel prize winner Inre Kertész. So when Svante kept on repeating a few simple things as we swapped e-mails (”this is it, this is your topic, this is the time and I swear, you will be swept away once you get going and I DON’T CARE that you are not a tech guy, you are a REPORTER and you can ASK about stuff you don’t know or understand, that’s kinda your JOB, right?”) I finally believed him. Decided he has the experience to make that call.

Damn, did he ever.

I have been on a three month long high since we agreed to do this. Partially because of the very speed of the project. I have worked harder and faster than ever before, and I have rarely been as happy writing as I have the fall of 2009.

More to come…

First: Who am I? The basics can probably be boiled down to one sentence. A lengthy one. But for your reading pleasure, I’ll just try to be clear and divide it in smaller pieces, ok?

I was born in 1975. I am a reporter at Swedish daily Sydsvenskan (”The South Swedish”, which is an abbreviation of the more formal ”Sydsvenska Dagbladet”, which translates to something like ”South Sweden Daily News”. We thought it was too long, and dropped it not too long ago. Nobody used the full name anyway.)

I work at the department for culture, life and arts, which leaves me covering everything from Ian McEwan’s latest novel and the Nobel prize to the equivalent of American Idol. I have great liberty writing there. Among other things I have two blank pages every Saturday to portrait a person of my choice. A book of my best interviews with authors, all published in that space, is going to be published here in Sweden this very month, which I am very excited about – even though I very well understand that journalistical compilations are safe non-sellers…

I am married, have two little girls and a big family all together, and I live in Lund, which relates to the more urban Malmö like Boulder to Denver – a university town, in every aspect of the word.

And I consider myself a lucky guy.