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Yet More Google Gazing
povvell writes "Bob Cringely has joined the club and just set out his personal vision for the future of Google now that it's flush with cash, thereby joining a happy band of Google gazers. But is he right, and are they? My own guess is that the company intends to become the biggest advertising platform in the world. What's yours?"
better color here
Now that they're public, Microsoft can buy them and replace their service with whatever they choose.
you think google is heading for ad-world domination? :)
Well, im buying that
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
Boxing Equipment Reviews
i hope that the suits of google keep their heads on straight and continue doing what they do best, using this money to further improve their products and fund more research.
Maybe they just needed the cash for hard drives for ppls gig o' spam accounts
Heck, if I can't get an interview, hardly anyone can get an interview.
I am sure Google really wants to have an interview with an asshole that complains of their micromanagement.
I am no Googlelover (as far as their IPO/business practices go) but I don't think it's a bad idea to ignore Cringley.
that I never really thought of Google as a company. For the longest time I was wondering how they were even making enough money to pay their employees.
I thought of them more like "A group of SMFs that wanted to make some neat shit". Which they accomplished.
So with all this money now, its almost as if the impression that I have of Google has died and something else has taken over.
What's with this fascination with this company? Are we so bored?
I don't really care what extra things google will do as long as they continue to be a great Internet search engine
Google's adsense technology will ultimately grow outside of the Internet realm and include instant advertising during movies, tv shows, billboards, etc. Imagine that you are watching a movie on NBC without commercials, but whenever someone says the word "soda" an ad streams across for Coke/Pepsi. Maybe Google will grow into that realm of advertising.
Second, as reported on my website Google's stock price is still fairly attractive from a P/E basis. If Google stays on track to grow for the rest of the year, Google should be valued more than Yahoo, which could mean the stock should still be attractive above $100.
Just my thoughts,
Aj
-------
artlu.net
Maureen O'Gara doesn't seem to care for Googlers Page and Brin and says that they've gotten their "comeuppance" - I wouldn't mind a billion-dollar comeuppance myself come to think of it. It's an interesting article though.
I see an excellent point made in the article, which is that the founders want to maintain control of the enterprise as much as they can. The problem is that as soon as you've taken a company public, it isn't your baby anymore. It sounds like decisions need to start being delegated before the founders wear themselves out from working too hard.
I've worked at more than one company where the founder(s) micro-managed the entire enterprise. The did themselves a tremendous disservice in the long run by discouraging independent thought and actions.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Google's biggest assets above its staff, are its name and reputation for solid, advanced technology effectively implemented. I figure they could move into any web-based application field but expect that it will begin with licensing out search technology for company intranets (already available from them actually) and instant messaging/conference software. (Jabber?)
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
What?!? They flushed their cache?!? What are we going to do when someone gets Slashdotted?!?
www.wavefront-av.com
We're talking about Cringley. So, uh, no.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
that's so yesterday.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
And now we're suddenly back to 1998 and "It's computers! It's completely exempt from all normal principles of economics and business!"
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Whilst I do like Google, I think they need to be very careful about the next few years. There *will* be rivals (Microsoft foremost, of course) in the search-engine space. Ads are one thing, but if people aren't visiting google out of preference for their search engine needs, much of the rest of their business model falls apart.
The hype - almost hysteria at first - surrounding the Google IPO has so much resonance with the dot gone fun of a few years ago, they would do well to look to the future without forgetting the pertinent and still relevant lessons of the past. Just because the stock market thinks you're worth $billions, doesn't mean it'll stay that way, or that you really are worth that much.
Remember Netscape? The parallels are noticeable. Cornered market until MS got there with IE and ownership of the desktop. It's a different political world now though, but it's worth remembering.
And for a company that's historically been very secretive, how will that play out in the publicly listed world?
ooooooh! What does this button do? - DeeDee, Dexters Lab.
Google does become the biggest advertiser and continues a policy of clean, unobtrusive adverts. not only does this reduce the percentage of annoying adverts directly by market share, but it makes people more sensitive to annoying adverts and eventually the stupid dumbfuck marketers realise the error of their ways and also adopt unobtrusive adverts.
Google uses its money to start buying up real life billboards and dismantling them, thus improving real life too. this turns out to be one of the greatest moves in marketing history and Google continues to prosper.
I think you're on to something. Google's googlesyndication.com has already found its way into my list of blocked domains, right next to doubleclick.net. I wish they kept their tracking to their own site. When Doubleclick set cookies through their banners on third party sites, people were up in arms. Google apparently gets away with collecting data from webhits on third party sites, personally identifying information from GMail and Google Groups, social networking information from Orkut and of course their search engine. Let's hope that people stop being blinded by cuteness now that Google is a multi-billion dollar corporation.
reading the title of your post, I first thought you meant that google wanted the IPO money to buy Microsoft.
Now THAT would be a successful IPO.
As Cringley points out, the possibilities for google are extremely broad, but limited nonetheless by the necessity of playing to the "technology" strength of google management and employees. Presumably the 20% project time (i.e. where employees develop pet projects) will help in the short term and long term. The bazaar model may work, but in terms of making money off of technology, they need to expand their bazaar thinking beyond just new technology, into market creation and the like. Otherwise all that creative R&D time is lost in a sea, like many sourceforge projects. Presumably they allow _all_ their employees the 20% time, not just engineers, in which case this works.
Only vaguely relatedly, it seems that utilization of their distributed computing expertise and power (as per previous slashdot discussions) is an immediate area they can capitalize on. I wonder what a google-backbone based MMORG (with _ultimate bandwidth power_) would be like?
Even if the stock goes to $1.00, the keep all the money they raised at the IPO. The only way they get "unflush" with cash, is to spend it.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
How about something more meaningful than 'the biggest marketing company'? How about taking all that money and being the leader among big companies with loads of money by showing that being big and powerful does not need to turn you into a monster.
How about that?
Simpy
For your eyes only. In other words, the Mod's won't see this, so I expect only you to see this!!
P.S. Cheers!
They don't drill down this deep!
Wired 12.03: The Complete Guide to Googlemania!
... The Complete Guide to Googlemania! (continued). 4 Scenarios for the Future of Google
Sometimes a liquidity event changes everything. By Tom McNichol. ...
GooOS, the Google Operating System (kottke.org)
GooOS, the Google Operating System. He argues that Google is building a huge computer with a custom operating system that everyone on earth can have an account on. His last few paragraphs are so much more perceptive than anything that's been written about Google
Personalized Results: Exploring The Future Of Google ... Personalized Results: Exploring The Future Of Google. ...
msgraph Moderator view user profile joined-Nov 29, 2000 posts:1330 msg #:1, 7:29 pm on Feb 12, 2002 (utc 0).
MacMinute: The future of Google and Web searching? ...
www.macminute.com/2004/03/31/google - 29k -
* WWDC 2004: Discover how to put Mac OS X to work for you at WWDC! *. The future of Google and Web searching? March 31, 2004 - 07
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Kind of sorta the same thing
The problem with online advertising in its current state is that we, the consumer, do not want or like it.
We do like google. And when google started running little text link adds off to the right, I said "Way to go, google, now you can mage something for all your hard work." A lesser company might have sold "preferred listing" links *COUGH* YAHOO *COUGH* but Google remained honest and our friends.
And now, I see that google's little text links are actually usefull to me. I'm searching for airfare, and google suggests that I try an online airfare that I hadn't tried before. I do and I get a good price! And that place gets my business, and Google gets a few millicents for my click.
As long as google can remain my friend, I hope they do take over all of online advertising. Adds that arent' hideous in some way and actually advertise things I'm interested in will, in my eyes, revolutanize the online world.
Way to go Google.
As with all young companies that go IPO Google's course will go as follows:
1. All founders and current top executives will cash out and leave within the first year. Right now they are dizzy with possibilities and future ideas for the company but that will quickly fade to watching the stock ticker, taking long lunches, shopping for real estate, and counting the days to when they can legally cash out and leave.
2. Within 8 months new executives will be hired to take over when the founders and top executives jump out.
3. The new executives are have long resumes, short contracts, short attention spans, big dumb ideas, insane salaries, and lots of stock options. They will announce "a bold new vision" several times and sell out the company for all it's worth.
4. After 3 years and various layoffs the second generation management cashes out and jumps ship.
5. The third generation management comes onboard with a round of layoffs and useless new hires and looks at what else can be sold off. They change the name of the company and start shopping around for buyers to sell the whole company too.
But their market cap will go down, which means they have less cash to play with.
Google has the biggest database of basically everything in the Internet. What would they say to various agencies who want premium access to do data-mining? Of course such agencies would pay lucratively.
Google would not turn them down. Why do they hire ex-NSA people, or people with security clearances anyway?
How long could you run a company with 5000 million dollars (Google's valuation at $20 per share)?
sPh
parent post should get at least +3 (insightful)...
These colors are very hard to read! Especially with a big red flashing banner on top..
Whatever happens to the stock in the future does not affect this. Future stock price affects things related to money in the future, but all the money raised in the IPO is cash in the bank, so to speak.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
If the people at Google know what's good for them, and a suspect they might, they will keep their search engine clean and fast. Refineing it such that it stays on top. No more wading though countless newsgroup posts to find what your really looking for. Or a better way to refine searches that do hit things like newsgroups.
After that they can branch out and play in the market. Gmail is one such venture and there are others that are worth a stab at such as the peoplefinder thing that I don't remember off the top of my head right now what it's called but it's been a pet project for a while now. Other things such as Froogle seem to be worthy of more development.
However key to all the fishing they might want to do they have to keep that main engine humming. Do no evil! Keep the respect of the geeks and lusers alike. Computers move fast and the internet moves even faster and once you slip it's very hard to go back.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Not really. The buyout would still have to be approved by Google executives and shareholders, the only reason they would approve that is if Microsoft offered more than the mid-term market value of the stock which Microsoft is not likely to do especially at these prices.
Google will spend the money to create new search technology that will search for buried treasure. Then they'll be rich I tell you, RICH! And not just this rich in the play stock money rich.. oh now... they'll have real gold dabloons, cups of silver, and precious gems from the farest reaches of this world. Ayh! Dabloons I say! Million of em! And they'll be rich!
Sometimes writers use it when they want to say one thing but mean another. Cringely is a funny guy, and he's not as full of himself as you might think. If you'd read his stuff over time, you'd get the joke.
I did a WebCrawler search and can't find anything about it. It is a NCSA Mosaic enhancement?
I think (And I'm Always Right) that Google is going to pour a lot of that cash right into a 'Z' Prize, 1.2 billion for the first to establish an inhabited base on Mars. I have inside information.
Is google an advertising channel or a search engine? Right now the advertising channel only exists because of the search engine, and the channel is what's making them money.
How does google make its advertising independent of its search?
How do you broaden search to make it more useful?
What kinds of things are people searching for?
What's happening to their enterprise search business?
When businesses want information, how do they get it?
I'd expect them to buy doubleclick as their first acquisition.
I like that you failed to RT Entire FA, and therefore missed this:
so technology doesn't scare these guys. In fact, they prefer it because machines are more predictable than people, as Schmidt learned when he tried to turn around Novell.
So I guess he did mention it. I would also guess that he assumes the above is all he needs to write for his target audience to understand the points you made.
I think google should use the money to build their own theme park. With hookers! And blackjack! In fact, forget the theme park!
It seems that, while ad revenue has made Google what it is, ad revenue can not be the company's only source of income forever. They have to expand into other areas. Everything they do seems to be based on the expansion of their ad revenue (i.e. - GMail, Froogle, etc.). They also bought they recently bought Picasa, so where else will they expand and how will they make money doing it?
Try eMusic. DRM free, legal, MP3 downloads.
"Google's strengths are its technology, its brand recognition, its current status as a stem cell of Internet business"
Wow, first use of stem cell as a metaphor.
If the rumors of Google's 100,000 servers and proprietary grid/cluster OS are true, then what I think would make the most sense for Google is to offer free access worldwide to their supermachine from any standard computer or through special terminals. Google could essentially be the next OS: virtually unlimited storage, bandwidth, and information at your fingertips from anywhere in the world. People could log-in from anywhere in the world and have access to vast resources for running applications remotely, instantly searching and sorting all your files, or managing your personal email or other information. And all you have to do is put up with a couple of unobtrusive text-based ads, or pay the low, low subscription fee of $29.99/month.
Information about consumer habits and desires drives product development. Knowledge is power, and many companies are driven by marketing initiatives. In other words, marketers determine the need and direct product development.
Credit cards provide a useful way to track consumers and build files on their habits. Other electronic cards (club card memberships, air miles, etc.) provide similar ways to gather consumer information. The companies that gather this information then sell it out to other marketing firms.
It's safe to say that Google is an internet search used by everyone. This means they have some of the most valuable information for a consumer world. They could easily make billions packaging this data properly and selling it to marketing firms.
How much of your time do you spend searching anyway?
Proof? Here you go. Pud was in the Google offices just a few days ago...
I think they will buy Sun, who has a different set of strengths in high-end computing (customer contacts).
This is made more likely because of the personal connections between the companies, including having the same investors, whose portfolio companies often help each other long after they're small (remember AOL,NSCP), and recieved their seed money from Andy Bechtolsheim one of the founders of Sun Microsystems .
There isn't enough public history of this company to even merit speculation based on fundamentals. Its hype, then growth, then maybe numbers. In that order.
$100/shr. * 6 million outstanding shares = $600,000,000
Microsoft spent 2 billion on the settlement with sun. No one was concerned, why? With QUARTERLY profits of 10 BILLION dollars, MSFT can buy most anything it wants. They also have tremendous cash reserves.
If microsoft wants google, there is a good chance that they can get it.
Unfortunately I think Google has been getting worse at its primary function, finding relevant webpages based on simple queries, for years. I remember back in 1999 when i 1st discovered Google. The results at Altavista were littered with spurious results, and I usually had to use long boolean searches to get decent results-- usually on the 3rd try and the 4th page of results. Google came along and blew that all away, and there was 1 big reason-- no one was trying to SPAM Google's results, and I doubt anyone even knew how.
Fast forward 5 years. So many SEO types are now infiltrating Google's results that they are not nearly as relevant as they once were-- remember when Google was sued for downgrading linkfarm results, and they backed down? Anyone use the "Feeling luck?" button anymore? It's nice you can see 100 results per page, but I usually end up doing 2 or 3 queries to get the proper result these days. I still use Google, but Teoma (Ask.com, I believe) seems to work equally as well, and if Google doesn't improve their search results, they will have a long, slow decline.
Their other innovations are nice (Froogle, Google News, GMail), but they are really just sidelights to their core competency-- finding relevant webpages. I'm hoping they figure out how to do it.
Google releases an GNU/Linux distro that is a internet-based cluster.
Distributed everything, single-sign-on, P2P? Ha! How-bout shared directories of media, distributed to each node via bittorrent.
Shared cycles via an honour-system.
Your system becomes 'integrated' into the cluster in every user respect.
This is the same irrational exuberance that persisted throughout the late 90s. People say, "Look, that looks cool, and a lot of people use it, so it MUST be a good investment." This groupthink forms a feedback loop and before you know it, the stock price is way beyond fair market valuations. When the company starts to run into trouble because it has too much cash on hand and too little management experience, people start dumping the stock, trying to get out while the price is high. This forms another feedback loop and the stock plummets.
Never, EVER buy a stock where the conventional wisdom says it is a sure thing...
Having billions in cash helps ward off potential suitors.
Yeah. I always thought the real reason AOL bought Netscape was to allow Kleiner and their friends cash out.
See, despite NSCP being public, KPCB and their buddies at ml.com probably had so much NSCP stock that if they sold right away it would have tanked the stock.
On the other hand, AOL was a nice huge company that probably felt it owed these former benefactors (kpcb.com was the VC behind both, and ml.com did both of their IPOs) a favor; so they bought them. AOL was so big, that these guys could cash out without any effect on the stock.
Remember, AOL never even used Netscape, but rather continued to use Explorer. Can anyone think of any other reason AOL would have wanted MSIE. Also, this favor-repayment can explain the funding of Mozilla.org.
. "As mentioned "
They are just trying to solidify the BRAND, so they can start selling tasty, fruity, frozen GooglePops (with Vitamin C)!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
The overarching answer to the question "what does Google want to be when it grows up" is a provider of information services through the web. That means at least two different things, stuff like the search engine and Gmail that will be aimed at individuals, delivered through a browser and funded through adverts but probably a bigger deal is the provision of Web Services through APIs to businesses funded by micropayments or more likely subscription.
"THAT's why Google is cut from whole cloth with every new hire chosen to be of the body."
Is there anyone who can parse this?
"chosen to be of the body"?
Is that even English?
Two things, first thanks for the Wired link on Cringley. I own both of the 3 tape Oregon PBS sets of his, enjoy them. I do disagree with him from time to time, and when I've replied he snaps back. Supercomputers are still sexier than clusters of commodity crap. Sorry Bob.
.jp).
Anyways, I'm a heavy user of Google. But recently when unable to find a link or two I've reverted to the Yahoo search engine at search.yahoo.com. The interesting thing was I found what I was looking for without the same amount of false crap! (I think I was looking for some info on the MIDI protocol, but I don't 100% remember). It wasn't bad. So now I wonder by using google only, what am I missing out on? Alot of people are playing games to get their garbage ranked high.
My attraction to Google has always been the fact that the pages are lightweight and not filled with ads. I'm sure others feel the same way. The search.yahoo.com thing is pretty leightweight as well, I didn't know it existed until someone else (on slashdot perhaps) pointed it out.
Orkut has turned into a slow dog. Gmail is okay I guess, I still think it could be utilized as a music or warez distribution system! (Break down files and span them across mailboxes. Wala, uber bandwidth at your disposal). A client would use a server to track all of the mailboxes to find the needed data. Don't hate, it is jus the first thing that came to mind when they said free mailboxes and 1gb of storage.
Anyways, my two cents. Google ain't the only game in town. I totally don't get ask jeeves though. And how are companies like Yahoo worth so much money? Do they actually make money outside of maybe personals and auctions (I hear the auctions site is huge in
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
while they develop new inventory ala gmail to boost ad sense / ad words revenue. Their fault tolerant file system and proprietary storage will allow them to do these things better than anyone else.
They will also expand into graphic ads as they are much more effective than text ads.
online ads are the future.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
create a new bookmark and use this as your location
javascript:void(self.location.replace( self.location.href.replace('it.','')))
No they can't. The stock structure was built specifically to make it extraordinarily difficult. It basically would require the owners to sell out.
look at posting history
every single post he is pimping his pump & dump stock scams, dont fall for his lies
perhaps Mr Anthony Klatch is also interested in a free ipod or flatscreen tv ? or maybe Anthony Klatch is just a petty criminal ?
They have quarterly revenues approaching ten billion, not profits. There is a huge difference. Last quarter profit was about $2.7 billion. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3918721.stm)
At $100/sh, google's market cap is over $25Billion, according to my broker (etrade, if it matters). The fact that well over 60% of the stock is held by insiders, means that google is almost certainly one of the things that microsoft can't buy.
There's a few folks at Google that want a house, car, yacht, huge bank balance, etc. What other reason could their possibly be?? Well, perhaps Schmidt, Brin, Reyes, etc. just want to become the first Google-aires!!
I don't know who modded this troll, but that's bullshit. Otter is right.
If you people devoted to Google-worship out there would take your heads out of your collective asses, you'd see exactly what he's talking about. We're only now getting over one disastrous dotcom bubble, and now Google could very well be initiating another one. Just HOW are they going to make enough money to justify their IPO? Advertising? They can't do it through their current ad market. They've sold investors on the promise of profit through some kind of nebulous business expansion. Into WHAT, they won't say. We're just expected to belive that Google will make fabulous money because, well, they're Google.
P.T. Barnum was wrong. There's not a sucker born every minute. There are thousands of them. And apparently, most are investors that refuse to learn their lessons. To make money, you have to have a product to sell.
Oh, and Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto? They're a publicly traded company now. You can kiss that goodbye. Shareholder interest just became the most important principle, no matter how much control Brin and Page think they're keeping.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
google: bastards
except pump and dump is illegal, so complain about this troll correctly
http://www.sec.gov/complaint/selectconduct.shtml
Eric Karch
Eric Karch
eric.karch@lawyer.com
1221 Brickell Ave.Suite 900
Miami, FL 33131 US
+1.3053778767
Anthony Klatch
artlu@artlu.net
422 St. Rte. 93
Sugarloaf, PA 18249 US
+1.5705943028
+1.5705943028 (FAX)
Isn't it funny how, in the dot-com boom of the roaring 90's, "disintermediation" was the buzzword for the phenomenon that was going to make everyone super rich? Cut out the middleman, allow shoppers to directly access your site, and watch the dough roll in.
:)
And isn't it great how the most successful web businesses, like Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, and Google, are all busy making money through "intermediation", acting as the middleman who points buyers to sellers, and making money by selling ad space and transaction fees?
I love it when a plan comes together
Maybe so (but can 1000 hamsters actually power google?)
They're going to redirect all search results to "http://thebrainisyourmaster.com," thereby making it the most popular site on the internet, and therefore one of the most trusted, making everyone want to elect the Brain as the leader of the world.
Then, to really clinch it, they'll use the money to buy everyone free t-shirts. It's foolproof.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
What is your vote for the next great search engine once google sells out and all we see is ads in the top results? (you know this is what will happen)
Meh.
Within a year from now, Microsoft will be giving a superior search experience, subsidized by their billion$, with few advertisements, and no screwy paid placement. It will be just like the golden age of Google was, before they started to cash in. Microsoft will suck them dry over several years and once they have 85% market share, we'll see ads and placement and perversions of search like we've never dreamed of.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Why in the world would Google buy Sun? Google does not want to sell hardware or Java. Google's data centers run el-cheapo commodity x86 servers. And Sun is not even profitable.
cpeterso
The way I see things going is that Google will be augmented/supplanted in niche markets that can be better served by a more customized solution that takes advantage of the characteristics their markets. A good example would be http://www.jiffyspot.com/ WARNING: adult search engine
All I can say is... why would Google do pop ups?
They know that the reason their text ads are so much more effective then reguler banner ads is because they are useful, low bandwith, and unobtrusive. Giving this up in favor of a more obnoxious, less effective, advertising scheme would be useless and would alienate all the customers they have garnished on good name alone. Constantly i hear "what if google turns around and becomse evil" with no reason why. "what if google suddenly realies that a gigabyte is too much", "what if google sells out to the man", "what if google steals my bicycle."
Google is making a lot of money, right now, doing something well. As long as they continue to do well, you can trust them. And, as long as people trust them, they will continue to do well
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
...that they do not suffer from the netscape effect and go out and purchase a large number of tech companies that are not generating profits that cause a drag on their earnings whilst fending off m$ft.
a polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate change.
Something to think about for them, I hope.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
As the parent posting mentioned - Sun has a sales staff and decent installed base of customers for high end computing. Google has neither.
Some interesting comments can be found in this article on Yahoo! Finance
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
A question that anyone approaching this book with an eye to criticizing it as 'obscene' should ask themself is, "Can the human body be obscene in and of itself?" The only way this book can be attacked as obscene is if one answers "Yes," to that question. But if the answer is yes, then all depictions of nudes must be obscene regardless of age, something most people outside of the Victorian Era would strongly disagree with. If the answer is "No," then one must ask why someone turning 18 magically transforms a nude image of them from obscene to artistic?
The only way to avoid these paradoxes is to embrace this book for what it is: a beautiful and deeply erotic examination of girls on the cusp of maturity. (A subject which is sadly taboo in Anglo-American society.)
Many people would probably characterize such an assessment as sick or disturbed, but before doing so they should examine this book honestly and with an open mind. Can any man(excluding gay men logically)say to himself that he feels no desire or arousal looking at these images? And can any woman say to herself that she did not want to be desired when she was that age? I think that one would be hard pressed to find someone who would answer no.
That said, it is time that American society began understanding something which most of the rest of the world already does: Eroticism develops as a continuum, not a series of lock-steps. This book is an important step to the realization that sexuality does not simply appear fully-formed at 18, but is a progression over a number of years prior to that. A society which realizes that is on the road to a better understanding of what constitutes healthy sexuality and where the real patholgies lie. Read this book, buy it if you like it, and, if you enjoy deep discussions about human nature with your dinner guests, proudly display it. I do not believe you will regret it.
Is this the case you were thinking of? If so, Google won. There's also a Slashdot story about it, if anyone cares to dig it up.
Just to prove the above posters point:
Koch Industries
Oppenheimer Bank
Check those first if you are looking for a reference
The AC is absolutely correct. Buying their way in is absolutely the Microsoft way. However, this is more a revision of the grandparent's point than a refutation. Once in, Microsoft simply abuses their market share in other areas until they bury the competition. They do not buy out competitors. They only buy to get a foothold in that market. Then they outsource (recently offshore but traditionally in the US) improvements to that software.
Another aspect of Microsoft: they team up with a company to develop an extension to their current software then dump the partner. Both Roxio and Citrix fell for this.
Microsoft probably would buy out the competition but for those pesky anti-trust laws.
WARNING! here comes an opinion! It's on-topic and it may not jibe with your own opinion, but that does not make it a "troll"!
You are right, I believe that Google will be come an insanely huge advertising machine. At the same time it will do more to remove a persons on-line privacy than any company before.
They have already moved in both these directions in big ways in the last few years. Now that they are insanely flush with cash, it is a little frightening to think about how much further in both areas they may go.
At this point, based on past and current moves, I trust Google less than any other corporation.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Try searching with yahoo for a while, or along side google.
Maybe it's just me, but Yahoo seems to actually be more relevant that Google. Most of googles high ranked sites are commercial whereas Yahoo is more laced with real peoples information and websites rather than just solid commercial sites...
If you are actually looking for "information" rather than "shopping" I find yahoo a better bet.
What Google can do is know, very early on, what people are looking for -- worldwide, by specific location, by demographics.
... The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Eleventh Series. Mills, Robert
... Davidson, Avram, Sources of the Nile, The, 1961 JAN, nv, ...
If you don't remember the short story that nailed down the value of this knowlege, read Avram Davidson's story "The Source of the Nile" -- it nails this down.
FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION: ANTHOLOGIES (by content)
P. Doubleday (1962).
www.sfsite.com/fsf/bibliography/ fsfanthstorieswhen11.htm
Most analyses don't cover google's main 'product'-- for $X, they'll give you a box you hook up to your intranet and *presto*, you now have google searching internally.
$X tends to be 'about one full-time salary per year' for each box you need, and you get a number of boxes based on how many internal pages you need archived. So if you have a large site, you might need 2, 3, 4 boxes.
But it all works off the shelf, minimal integration, it's wonderful.
Problem is, most places think, "wait, we can't afford $100k for internal search! Let's just make our own!" So they pull 2 guys and have them half-time to make their own 'solution', those two end up dragging in a sysadmin at quarter time, a web designer for a couple of months, and before you know it, you've blown 6 months for 4 FTE equiv and have a bad implementation that requires a half-timer permanently assigned to keep it going.
So google has a pricey but superior solution for doing internal searching for any large corporate or gov't site... the only problem is convincing the customers it's a) better and b) cheaper, really!
But you sell 1,000 $200k annual systems that keep contracts for 5 years, that's an easy billion dollars of revenue that's almost pure profit, just reselling your existing tech. Finding 20 customers per US state isn't hard-- each state gov't division, each state-wide corp, toss in a multinational or megacorp that's based in that state, you could make it.
A.
The next move will be to lauch a google optimised browser (firefox with custom theme) and a google-internet optimised OS some linux distribution rebadged as Gloolix or something like that)
Then google will enter the desktop market and Microsoft will to be scared......
I usually go to Yahoo first. Rarely do I not find what I'm looking for.
Google's only real vulnerability is in the court of public opinion, so privacy issues are a big deal. For now, they can't go too far for fear of public backlash. Soon, they will be held in check only by their "don't be evil" mantra. But the more money and power that their storehouse of information can provide, the harder it will be to resist using that information in unscrupulous ways. In my experience, you just can't trust in someone else's personal integrity to safeguard your interests; either that integrity will crack under pressure, or the person will be swept aside and rendered irrelevant. (Especially if it's a public company...)
I'll end with a little scenario. Someone bombs a building. Google decides to help out, and tells the FBI who bought the needed materials and when, everyone those people know, what they've looked for on the web, and what time they've been awake for the last few years.
Okay, the last is a stretch -- but I bet if I plotted every Google search I made against time, you could at least get a feel for what hours I'm keeping.
And they'll report the same for all of the bomber's acquaintances and those acquaintances' acquaintances, one of whom happens to be you. But don't worry; I'm sure the FBI would delete all that information once they were done with that case.
But watch out for how much trust you put in them, how do you know they won't start doing popups etc?
Bad example. I block all pop-ups, and Google's not about to get a pass there.
I'm more worried if they sell out & data-mine all the Gmail accounts in some intrusive way. Of course, every other webmail provider could do that, too...
I was just meditatating on the economic theory of agency and moral hazard, and had coined this formula just before I found your post; so allow me to show off.
The economic theory is that sales is really an agency for the customer which ought to be paid for by the customer. That this does not happen is described as a moral hazard. Another moral hazard is that, paid by the customer or not, a sales agent will not present the product which serves the customer best.
In contrast, a marketer should be paid by the producer to offer correct product information to the best sales force. Ebay automates this.
Thus the future of the Ebay and Google types is as producers and consumers respectively of better semantic information. Can the semantic web deliver?
And, the point is made above that marketers also comsume sales information.
Michael J. Burns
no, i can drive myself to the porno shop...
*gets the keys*
now?? will it go up or down. please let me know if you are a genius or something, thx.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
if they can do 1mm x 1mm matrix rotations and math, why don't they just admit that they work with the NSA and that your long prime is worthless...
As popular as Google is, and as much as most other search engines suck far worse, I have to say that Google sucks. It's just the best option we have right now.
First, I can't believe they don't try and derive more context out of the combination of words I search for. That would help a lot.
Second, you can't search with more than 10 words! So given that Google isn't too smart, it should at least let you craft a decent sized search string to cut out the cruft of unwanted urls (ranking only works well if it knows what you want).
Third, it doesn't even have a NEAR operator like Infoseek used to. That was so useful. You could say "Tom NEAR Dick NEAR Harry" so that those words had to at least be close to each other but not necessarily next to each other.
I wish something better than Google existed. If someone knows of one, please let me know.
Well, buying SUN would be the first step towards taking over the Solar System, right?
The earth is so overdone these days. Why not go *big* and *creative*?
This company makes a engine nearly to that spec, but it's not aimed at the Internet, just law/personal information. If it were, you'd have a search engine that'd work as such.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.