Google leaves no question unanswered. It sends e-mail. It runs cell phones. It has mapped and photographed much of our planet. It helps us keep tabs on classmates and ex-lovers.

It handles 3 billion searches per day. It receives 1 million resumes each year, and hires about 1 percent of applicants.

Its ad revenue is larger than that of the five broadcast TV networks combined.

It’s no surprise, then, that this Silicon Valley behemoth is now the subject of several books detailing how Google came to dominate the Information Age.

Now Ken Auletta is tackling this topic in “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It,” which grew out of his articles on the media and communications industries for the New Yorker magazine.

Known for his profiles of the grand sachems of Old and New Media, Auletta wanted to write about a company at the heart of the digital revolution. He had to work to convince Google’s executives to cooperate because they initially thought doing so wouldn’t be an efficient use of their time.

In “Googled,” Auletta writes that Google is a “frenemy” to the world’s broadcasters, telecom companies, book publishers and newspapers.

Google sells ads for them and exposes their content to more viewers, but critics say the company violates copyright laws.

Auletta doesn’t view Google as evil, though it has replaced Microsoft as the most feared high-tech company — “Googzilla,” in the words of one consultant. He traces the story back to the rise of the Internet and to the day in 1995 when founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page met at an orientation for Stanford University graduate students.

They had the idea of indexing the Internet and ranking every Web page based on how many other Web pages link to it. This system relied on the wisdom of crowds to provide a coherence to Web searches.

“The Internet makes information available. Google makes information accessible,” said Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian, a quote Auletta liked so much he used it twice.

Google swiftly surpassed other search engines, holding fast to its stated mission of providing objective search results. It would not allow advertisers to pay to manipulate search results, it did not offer annoying pop-up ads and it did not clutter its home page with ads.

Google makes nearly all of its money from selling ads, and its AdSense and AdWords programs have made the market for ad sales more efficient and eliminated the middle man.

Google boasts a culture of innovation, and employees are encouraged to use 20 percent of their time to work on whatever they want.

The company is famous for how well it treats its employees — offering everything from free massages to lucrative stock options — and for its mantra of “don’t be evil.”

Google’s engineers genuinely want to make the world a better place, Auletta believes, but there is an arrogance surrounding the company, too.

This feeling of, Trust us, we know what we’re doing, has backfired on Google.

Google executives, for example, expected people to take them at their word that the voluminous personal data the company collects about each user would be safe in their hands. The concern raised by some users and privacy advocates surprised them.

Google’s self-censorship at the request of Chinese authorities; its initial refusal to pay publishers for the right to scan and store books; and its failures in video-sharing and social-networking all show that Google doesn’t succeed at everything it attempts.

The book’s weakness is that the characters at its heart — Brin, Page and CEO Eric Schmidt — are geeky engineers who aren’t as compelling as the media titans of the past.

There’s also nothing remarkable about Auletta’s writing.

Tensions between Google and Apple simmer before coming to a boil, the cold war between Google and Facebook may go hot some day and the company is surfing a large wave that hasn’t crested yet.

Overall, however, Auletta does a good job detailing the challenges facing Google and every industry affected by this search-engine colossus, and “Googled” is thoughtfully written and comprehensive in its scope.

If Auletta doesn’t present any earth-shattering conclusions, well, that’s because we’re all still looking for the answers.

Stephen T. Watson covers technology culture for The Buffalo News.

Googled: The End of the World as We Know It

By Ken Auletta

The Penguin Press

384 pages, $27.95