==>>"I’ve smoked some heavy ([removed word]) stuff today"

hey I mus say that is pretty darn good stuff you have been smoking :)-

Anyhoot, removing the fluff from the wool. I have to agree on that Google get its.. and they want to "suck up the air" from all over..

...and if only google will find a solution for global waming.. humanity will be saved ..else google dies with humanity too!!

Philipp, where did you learn all those poetic english? I should start smoking stuff like that too I think...

Philipp, can I get the number of your dealer?

http://www.longinuspark.com/blog/?p=8

Nice arguments, Philipp. And I guess tough grass too :)

I love it when you do this :)

And I guess the 10 followed by 100 is coming reality.

I can hear the amazed gasp of hundreds of Googlers logging on and thinking to themsleves "that IS what we are doing!" and "how on earth did he know that?!"
Touche.

Google is riding high based on a bubbly stock price that can quickly come to earth. I almost choked on my milk when I heard their CEO say they think the company will actually do better during a recession. That is optimism for ya!

I agree that Google has learnt a lot from different bubbles (dotcom, mainly) and is trying to tie itself to the Earth, extending its veins and arteries into as many limbs as possible.
I like that, because they do not want to do any evil.
But will they be able to keep up the good work?
Will their machines respect Asimov's laws of robotics? Because the day will come...

I for one like the point you made about Google listening to users more. I appreciate that they value the user experience. But will that be sacrificed when, as you mention, they try to assimilate search/ads + OS?

It's amazing what tunnel vision we all have (from mainstream media to bloggers to conversations between two people in our office) as we endlessly fixate on the Google Beast and wondering "what will they do next?" Deep down I think we're all waiting for their schadenfreude moment...

huh ??

==>"Deep down I think we're all waiting for their schadenfreude moment..."

"Scheadenfreude moment "?? which equals a "A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others. "

What exactly are you implying ?? What "misfortunes of others" ? and why do you think that the generic Shareholder will obtain any "malicious satisfaction" from any misfortunes, let alone thier users!!

Erica : can you discourse your thoughts further ?? What brought you to this statement ? BTW, nothing is wrong with that thought :)_

Sure! IMO (and it is just my opinion), google's this big rich entity and basically a media darling. $400+ stock price! Billion-dollar acquisitions! 70% of the search share! We're all so focused on them. It's like, whatever will those krazy Google kids do next? And when are they gonna mess up? Hence the schadenfreude comment. It's gonna be a big story when (if?) they stumble...

all the guys doubting Google.

The bubble will burst (eventually) but when the .com bubble burst, Didn't Yahoo, eBay and Amazon survive ?

In the same way, Google will pull it off somehow.

Erica, what you describe is just a simple bell shaped curve in term of market capitalization and EPS for any entity.

ENRON had its share of foo, likewise, HP and also MSFT. Across the broad scope of trading investments and given historical precedence, there is a certainly that GOOGs value will drop-- some day!!

But would that mean that the "krazy Google kids " are conniving to bring the company down to its knees just to have a "schadenfreude moment" ??

I dont think that anyone has any malicious intent at all. I seincerlt think that you may have used the wrong term in the wrong context!!

Erica,

I can't speak for Google or even my fellow Googlers, but I *think* a great many of us here would be just fine with getting less coverage. I know that I enjoy learning about, trying out and and sometimes even using competing services.

I feel that we Googlers design and work on stuff and spend lots and lots of hours trying to make "good things" or "good things better"... not to win marketshare, not for scheming to lift the stock price, and certainly not for fame. There's a palpable pride, yet a sense of humility that others don't see or recognize... and it's so frustratingly obscured in much of the coverage we see ("The Next Microsoft Killer"... bah!)

I think anytime a person or group or company or whatnot is strikingly successful over a significant period of time, there are going to be folks that enjoy engaging in some "tearing down." Schaudenfreude, yes, sometimes seems inevitable (and it was a hilarious ditty in "Avenue Q," too :P).

But I believe that we're doing what we can, within reason, to reach out, to listen, to not just take money and run. I really feel that my colleagues are trying to do right by users over the long haul, and I hope that history reflects this :).

Adam Lasnik,

The first rule of making history is not to talk about it.

I really feel what Adam is saying (above) though using google's tools. I was never annoyed with anything "google" before? do you agree with me?

After all, google is not a charity organization (well, they have google.org for that reason) so, money may not be the major goal, but it surely is a good result for good efforts.

I agree with your observations. One point about Yahoo:
Yahoo's infrastructure, not Google or any other competitor,
is the company's weakness. The cost of keeping many
different systems humming along is rising. One hopes
Yahoo can migrate to one platform or find one vendor
to whom to outsource the infrastructure. Unless the
system costs can be kept in check, Yahoo's great ideas
will be difficult to scale and expand.

pd – no, I didn't mean the Googlers were internally trying to tear down their own stuff. I meant that all of Google's "observers" from media to individuals, were watching & waiting.

Erica : Ok we all are watching and waiting.. after all Google is the only one with the interesting moves :)- take a look at the latest reports that Google is going to make ad coup in the market space for 2006!!

RC : "The first rule of making history is not to talk about it." – oh yeah, I hear you on that one.. Maybe MLK should not have "talked about it" – the I have a dream part :)-

At the margins of the technology, there comes a tantalizing glimpse at a future day with a better search engine for Starlight itself….

http://kentsimperative.blogspot.com/2006/10/searching-starlight.html