Rating: 
Summary: An improvement on a great original
Review: This is a fine update to an excellent original work. If you aren't familiar the series there are one hundred hacks that cover a wide variety of, in this case, Google related topics. For example, how to determine the word of specific Google AdWords words. Each hack runs a couple of pages in length and has short code examples, usually in Perl, where appropriate.
A wide variety of Google topics are covered. From the basics of search use, through desktop integration, gmail, AdWords and finally into web page optimization. Part of this new version is the gmail content.
This was an excellent book the first time around. This second version brings it up to date with Google enhancements and gmail. Given the ever-widening variety of services my guess is that O'Reilly will need to split the coverage among a number of books in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book
Review: This is a great book with plenty of sample code - mostly in Perl, so if you're not familiar with Perl take that into consideration. About half of the hacks you could probably find on Google's web site with the other half being true "Google hacks".
I thought one of the more interesting hacks was #91 Remove your Materials from Google. It describes how to prevent Google from storing your information as well as how to get it removed once Google has it.
Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: This is a really fun book to read. There are some great ideas and tips available to do things you never would have imagined possible with Google. Highly recommended for anybody who uses Google extensively.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent start
Review: This is an extremely well-written book that provides a comprehensive look at probably the most important site on the web today. It's sensibly structured for users of different levels - surfers find out about all the lesser-known useful features in the Google site, while web developers get a deep look at the Google Web APIs, which allow add-on services for Google to be developed. And the sweetest part of the book is the information about the many such services that are already out there.But with that comes the problem with publishing this kind of information in book only format - this list is bound to be out-of-date by the time it reaches the reader. For example, it doesn't mention Google Alert, which has been around since January and must be the most useful Google Web APIs application developed so far (it sends you updates when there are new results for your search). Overall though, if you are a serious web surfer, Google fan, or are thinking of incorporating some kind of Google features into your site, this is a must read. Let's hope a second edition appears soon!
Rating:
Summary: Everything you ever wanted to know about Google
Review: Upon picking up this book, I was immediately overwhelmed with the amount of "hacks" outlined. Basically, this book shows various different ways to get Google to provide you with the information you want. Additionally, there is a discussion on accessing the Google API, to integrate this search engine with your custom application. Finally, there is a discussion on what a webmaster can do to increase their "page ranking", the way Google ranks sites. My favorite section of this book was on accessing the Google web API. Basically, this API allows you to integrate Google searches directly into your application via a web service. In addition to discussing the API, actual program examples are provided in Perl, Java, C#, Python, and VB.NET. For example, you could integrate Google's dictionary directly into Microsoft Word to provide a more comprehensive dictionary than is provided. Another really cool example provided integrates the Google and Amazon.com's API. In this example, the author shows how these APIs are integrated to show a list of "most popular" books, followed by recent news articles on the books and a list of items that people bought who also purchased the book in question. It's pretty cool and quite impressive. The book ends with a section dedicated to the web master. This section goes over a good guess for the mathematical equation used in Google's mysterious page algorithm, and describes what you can do to increase your visibility on Google. The book even includes a list of "thou shalt not", which can keep your site from being indexed by Google.
Rating:
Summary: Gmail is the main new feature
Review: [A review of the 2ND EDITION.]
That was quick! The authors have just released this edition. So what is new? Gmail, above all. An entire chapter is devoted to this phenomenon. The obvious attraction is the 1 Gb quota. Though the authors omit mention, when Google announced Gmail, it triggered a response from the large ISPs, Yahoo and hotmail. Within several months, they increased their quotas. Yahoo went from 4 Mb to 250 Mb, and hotmail went from 2 Mb to 250 Mb. While the book rightfully talks about the virtues of Gmail, this response may have been the best thing about Gmail, if you are a user on those other ISPs, even if you never joined Gmail.
As for Gmail itself, it has excellent search capabilities. Big surprise, eh? Plus, the custom addressing is a nifty feature. So if you are jane@gmail, you can make arbitrary addresses like jane+test@gmail, jane+hobby+swim@gmail. All these resolve down to jane@gmail. Simple to implement, and possibly quite useful if you avail yourself of it. I'm surprised more ISPs haven't followed suit.
And you should [must?] look at hack 78. It turns that 1 Gb account into a linux file system, via a Python freeware called GmailFS. Bloody ingenious! It has implementations of the most common linux commands (mv, ls, ln, cp...) to make you feel at home.
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