In this part . . .

You might think of Google as the ultimate search engine. You go to it, you humbly feed it your keywords, you heed its magisterial declamations, you surf where it bids us. You live online lives guided, influenced, even determined by Google. All this is true and good. Yet Google stands ready to serve no less than it commands. The Google Toolbar is a loyal information butler that never strays from our side. And Google begs to be a universalist sensibility in our nationalistic culture, translating almost every non-native tongue it is possible to encounter. Then, as a business partner, Google is blindingly innovative and powerful on our behalf almost beyond conception. As a great populist force, Google has singly brought targeted, high-powered Internet advertising to amateur and semi-pro Webmasters the world over.

The chapters in this part encourage you to build a deeper relationship with Google. It is almost a marriage, really: constant companionship, cooperative prosperity, and a partnered relationship with the larger community. Chapter 9 might be the most important in the book, for if you do nothing else in response to these pages, it is my hope that you install and use the Google Toolbar. Likewise, the AdWords program could change your life as it has the lives of countless others. And if paying for traffic is not your way, Chapter 12 provides valuable, subtler methods of broadening your visitor base.

Ramp up your readiness. You’ve come this far; in your soul’s core you know you must not turn back. You cannot: The transformation of online life is in process, and its momentum grips us all with the gleaming vision of new possibilities, new realities, new virtual selves. [Editors’ note: Brad Hill has become clinically caffeinated. An intervention has been scheduled. We hope for a return to normalcy by Part IV.]