Imagining the Google Future

Lester67 writes "Business 2 put a bunch of big brains together to give us a peek at Google from 2015 to 2105. "Will it succumb to hubris and flame out like so many of its predecessors? Or will it grow into an omnipresent, omnipotent force--not just on Wall Street or the Web, but in society? We put the question to scientists, consultants, former Google employees, and tech visionaries like Ray Kurzweil and Stephen Wolfram. They responded with well-argued, richly detailed, and sometimes scary visions of a Google future." "

Comments

Um

[Alex P Keaton in da]

Where was google 10 years ago?
Google will either drastically change (do you thnk you can grow as big as MSoft and keep your don't be evil thing?) or they will become less relevant.
The real key, is how will the internet change in 10 years, and how will google fit into that...

Re:sure ... google will be around in 2015, right

[rjstanford]

One point I'd like to make -

Their stock did not drop 20% of its value. It dropped 20% of its price. Unless you truly believe that Google, its assets, revenue stream, et cetera, have no inherent value. The company is the same company that it was before the price drop. If you're buying shares because you believe in its ability to make money over the long term, this price drop was a Good Thing.

5000 Worthless PhDs?

[quokkapox]

They have basically no meaningful assets.

They've got 5000 PhDs. Such a group may not be able to turn on a dime and innovate themselves out of a rut at the slightest hint of competition (like Microsoft keeps doing) but they're not exactly a gaggle of worthless lackeys, either.

Re:5000 Worthless PhDs?

[kfg]

They've got 5000 PhDs . . . a gaggle of worthless lackeys

I've probably known that many PhDs in my life, and; oddly enough, that's exactly the phrase to describe them that usually comes to mind.

On the other hand one of the most worthwhile human beings I've had the pleasure to discourse with had no degree at all, having earned the dubious distinction of being thrown out of Harvard. . .twice.

Oh, and having a molecule named after him.

Credentials don't mean as much as you appear to think they do. Taken en masse 5000 PhDs just means that the bullshit gets piled even higher and deeper.

KFG

Re:5000 Worthless PhDs?

[Dukael_Mikakis]

The PhDs aren't worthless. Or rather the people with PhDs aren't worthless, they're very valuable. But as I said in a previous post, Google, Microsoft, and one poor office chair all know that having 5000 PhDs today doesn't mean you'll have 5000 PhDs tomorrow. On top of that, PhDs are a renewable resource. Google doesn't control their own PhDs or the ability of competitors to acquire PhDs, which means long-term they can't claim a competitive advantage from it.

But for right now, yeah, all that talent is great for Google. The article's talking about the future. A hundred years out.

Re:5000 Worthless PhDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, it's unlikely that you've "known" 5000 PhDs to draw a meaningful conclusion.

Second, doesn't it depend on what you find useful. And, perhaps it might be better to assess PhDs relative to another group doing the same job. Just out of curiousity, are the PhDs at the Stem Cell lab at a Wisconsin University (?) useless? How about those earning Nobel Prizes in Medicine, Chemistry, and Physics? What about the tens of thousands that go to work each day, earning not that much, just to incrementally improve our knowledge base?

I suspect Google employs PhDs from only a subset of the university research system (e.g., mathematicians, CS, and so on). They do so because they have a specific objective in mind, which makes the PhDs (sampled in large numbers) a wise investment. Further, by and large the hiring process is not blind.

Re:5000 Worthless PhDs?

[caffeinemessiah]

You sound a trifle bitter, and your argument is the same one used for the college degree vs. hard working high school dropout issue. But perhaps my biggest problem with your comment is that you seem to associate Ph.D.s with inherently smarter people. As you've rightfully pointed out, that claim is likely to be pure B.S. However, what the *average* Ph.D. CAN do that the *average* Bucky Fuller CANNOT do is bridge the gap between academia and industry. Note that we're talking averages here -- you're likely to find some Bucky's who can do what Ph.D. can do and some Ph.D.s who cannot do what Bucky can do. However, any Ph.D. (at least those employed by Google) has spent several years wrangling with the state of the art in the field and furthermore, has contributed originality to the FIELD. They are in a much better position to analyze academic developments in the field, EXTEND those developments to the project at hand and figure out how to integrate them into product in a commercial sense. Now if Bucky had chosen to get his Ph.D. (or at least masters) and survived the rigors of graduate school, he would be able to do the same. But Ph.D.s have put in the time, the pain and like it or not -- are more intellectually rigorous than your *AVERAGE* (keyword) Bucky with a bachelors. So no, 5000 Ph.D.s employed by Google -- and these are likely to be leading figures in their respective fields -- is NOT a bad investment. At the very, very least, they know more and can think more critically than their bachelor counterparts. To use a terrible military analogy, anyone can be a marine, but only if they put in the time, the training, survive the rigors and finish the program. But not everyone can perform like a marine, although *SOME* intuitively gifted individuals might.

2105

[thefirelane]

Honestly, does that really even make sense?

I bet people sat around and wondered what the Carnegie Steel of 1995 would be like. I'm sure they had fun, but it probably wasn't worth the effort.

Predicting the future eh? Put some logic into it.

[MindPrison]

Google is all about information. This is worth a lot of money, and can be used to just about anything, what else is new?

My worry is not related to Google being evil, its more in the power of the individual. No man should have access to all information about another man. Personally I dont believe in Google being Evil as such, but experience and history shows that if you put man into a position where he has the choice of being all powerful ruling and controlling the other party or just sticking to morality and ethics he will chose control over ethics in the blink of an eye.

Its good to see the general public so concerned about what Google does, this means you are not willingly giving up your privacy just like that and wont let anyone get away with bullying your life around. Now this sounds awful paranoid and crusader-like... but its really not. The action we take today - will affect everyone tomorrow, so better be safe, take precautions now rather than say "oh...its probably all okay" and have a disaster unforseen in the future.

Every time Ive been paraniod Ive been right, that doesnt mean that Im right about everything - it simply means - if you can think it - its probably feasible and doable. So better safe than sorry.

Re:sure ... google will be around in 2015, right

[zfractal]

They have a name that can be easily recognized by just about anyone that uses the Internet (and even many that don't).... that alone is worth quite a bit.

They have a lot of (paying) customers, that's also worth something.

They have some pretty bright people working for them.

I think it's a little bit more than a bunch of computers, some code and an algorithm.

Re:One Day Too Early

[Surt]

The key problem is that their stock is way overvalued in terms of ordinary stock price/earnings ratio. That's based on two things: market insanity, and rational belief that google will be able to deliver enough earnings to improve the ratio in the future. When google isn't delivering enough evidence that it will have massive earnings in the future, both camps sell.

Re:sure ... google will be around in 2015, right

[MasterOfUniverse]

hey have basically no meaningful assets. A bunch of computers, some code, and an algorithm.They could be put out of business in a year by any of hundreds of software companies.

How is that different from any other software company? And the comment about being put out of business by hundreds of other companies can be applied to almost any industry...

Yahoo!

[Anonymouse Cownerd]

Remember 10 years ago, when Yahoo was what Google is today? People don't really care for Yahoo anymore. In 10 years from now, someone else would have de-throned Google, and we'll wonder how we could live without them. Google would no longer be king, and they won't matter any more.

At least they didn't ask John C. Dvorak

[FishandChips]

The articles would have had more bite if they'd included one or two written from a different perspective.They all come over as the ideas of comfortably-off American professionals doing OK thank you. But if it's true that the coming century will belong to China and perhaps India then Google's eventual fate may just as easily be decided by those outside the USA as those inside it. It would have been interesting to read a SE Asian or Indian journalist's take. After all, in twenty years' time Google could be owned by a foreign corporation.

Just my 2 cents, but Google's dream of becoming the world's information provider doesn't look as if it will come off. People have seen the trap already - no corporation can be trusted, so it's insane to give one that kind of power - and Google's mistaken moves in China have blown off the remaining gloss on Do No Evil. From now on, it may be a much harder grind for them, and if the information issues get too hot they could easily end up being regulated into a corner. The last of the articles alludes to the huge trouble and loss of trust even one hacking scandal could cause them.

Re:sure ... google will be around in 2015, right

[corbettw]

Their stock did not drop 20% of its value. It dropped 20% of its price. Unless you truly believe that Google, its assets, revenue stream, et cetera, have no inherent value.

I think you're confusing "book value" with "market value". Those are two distinct items. So, yes, Google's stock value (eg, market value) did drop 20%, even if its book value (all those other things you mentioned) remained essentially unmoved.

Re:More like "Stolen From Arthur"

[mykdavies]

You're implying (or that's my reading) that this story was plagiarised, but I'm sure that Kathy wrote the story as an homage to Arthur C. Clarke's story, and expected that her readers would recognise it as such (especially as it won a 'retrospective'(?!) Hugo a couple of years ago).

I certainly read the story in that way, and enjoyed the story more for its resonances, and how it played with the original, than I would have done without that understanding. I think that SF is very often clearly "of its time" and responds better than other genres to re-interpretation.

On the topic of cartoonists writing philosophy, the least said the better!

You will know when the future has reached us...

[gmuslera]

...when you search in google "how to reverse entropy", you press "i feel lucky" and the resulting web page only says "LET THERE BE LIGHT" (there is an interesting twist to the original asimov story in The last query, suspiciously related to google).