[IP] What Lurks in Its Soul?
What Lurks in Its Soul?
By David A. Vise
Sunday, November 13, 2005; B01
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/11/
AR2005111101644.html?nav=rss_technology>
The soul of the Google machine is a passion for disruptive innovation.
Powered by brilliant engineers, mathematicians and technological
visionaries, Google ferociously pushes the limits of everything it
undertakes. The company's DNA emanates from its youthful founders,
Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who operate with "a healthy disregard for
the impossible," as Page likes to say. Their goal: to organize all of
the world's information and make it universally accessible, whatever
the consequences.
Google's colorful childlike logo, its whimsical appeal and its
lightning-fast search results have made it the darling of information-
hungry Internet users. Google has accomplished something rare in the
hard-charging, mouse-eat-mouse environment that defines the high-tech
world -- it has made itself charming. We like Google. We giggle at
the "Google doodles," the playful decorations on its logo that appear
on holidays or other special occasions. We eagerly sample the new
online toys that Google rolls out every few months.
But these friendly features belie Google's disdain for the status quo
and its voracious appetite for aggressively pursuing initiatives to
bring about radical change. Google is testing the boundaries in so
many ways, and so purposefully, it's likely to wind up at the center
of a variety of legal battles with landmark significance.
Consider the wide-ranging implications of the activities now underway
at the Googleplex, the company's campuslike headquarters in
California's Silicon Valley. Google is compiling a genetic and
biological database using the vast power of its search engines;
scanning millions of books without traditional regard for copyright
laws; tracing online searches to individual Internet users and
storing them indefinitely; demanding cell phone numbers in exchange
for free e-mail accounts (known as Gmail) as it begins to build the
first global cell phone directory; saving Gmails forever on its own
servers, making them a tempting target for law enforcement abuse;
inserting ads for the first time in e-mails; making hundreds of
thousands of cheap personal computers to serve as cogs in powerful
global networks.
Google has also created a new kind of work environment. It serves
three free meals a day to its employees (known as Googlers) so that
they can remain on-site and spend more time working. It provides them
with free on-site medical and dental care and haircuts, as well as
washers and dryers. It charters buses with wireless Web access
between San Francisco and Silicon Valley so that employees can toil
en route to the office. To encourage innovation, it gives employees
one day a week -- known as 20 percent time -- to work on anything
that interests them.
To eliminate the distinction between work and play -- and keep the
Googlers happily at the Googleplex -- they have volleyball, foosball,
puzzles, games, rollerblading, colorful kitchens stocked with free
drinks and snacks, bowls of M&Ms, lava lamps, vibrating massage
chairs and a culture encouraging Googlers to bring their dogs to
work. (No cats allowed.) The perks also include an on-site masseuse,
and extravagant touch-pad-controlled toilets with six levels of heat
for the seat and automated washing, drying and flushing without the
need for toilet paper.
Meanwhile, the Googlers spend countless hours tweaking Google's
hardware and software to reliably deliver search results in a
fraction of a second. Few Google users realize, however, that every
search ends up as a part of Google's huge database, where the company
collects data on you, based on the searches you conduct and the Web
sites you visit through Google. The company maintains that it does
this to serve you better, and deliver ads and search results more
closely targeted to your interests. But the fact remains: Google
knows a lot more about you than you know about Google.
If these were the actions of some obscure company, maybe none of this
would matter much. But these are the practices of an enterprise whose
search engine is so ubiquitous it has become synonymous with the
Internet itself for millions of computer users. And if the Google
Guys have their way, their presence will only grow. Brin and Page see
Google (its motto: "Don't Be Evil") as a populist force for good that
empowers individuals to find information fast about anything and
everything.
Part of Google's success has to do with the network of more than
100,000 cheap personal computers it has built and deployed in its own
data centers around the world. Google constantly adds new computers
to its network, making it a prolific PC assembler and manufacturer in
its own right. "We are like Dell," quipped Peter Norvig, Google's
chief of search quality.
The highly specialized world of technology breaks down these days
into companies that do either hardware or software. Google's tech
wizards have figured out how to do both well. "They run the largest
computer system in the world," said John Hennessy, a member of
Google's board of directors, a computer scientist and president of
Stanford University. "I don't think there is even anything close."
Google doesn't need all that computer power to help us search for the
best Italian restaurant in Northern Virginia. It has grander plans.
The company is quietly working with maverick biologist Craig Venter
and others on groundbreaking genetic and biological research.
Google's immense capacity and turbo-charged search technology, it
turns out, appears to be an ideal match for the large amount of data
contained in the human genome. Venter and others say that the search
engine has the ability to deal with so many variables at once that
its use could lead to the discovery of new medicines or cures for
diseases. Sergey Brin says searching all of the world's information
includes examining the genetic makeup of our own bodies, and he
foresees a day when each of us will be able to learn more about our
own predisposition for various illnesses, allergies and other
important biological predictors by comparing our personal genetic
code with the human genome, a process known as "Googling Your Genes."
"This is the ultimate intersection of technology and health that will
empower millions of individuals," Venter said. "Helping people
understand their own genetic code and statistical code is something
that should be broadly available through a service like Google within
a decade."
Brin's partner has nurtured a different ambition. For years, Larry
Page dreamed of tearing down the walls of libraries, and eliminating
the barriers of geography, by making millions of books searchable by
anybody in the world with an Internet connection. After Google began
scanning thousands of library books to make them searchable online,
book publishers and authors cried foul, filing lawsuits claiming
copyright infringement.
Many companies would have reached an amicable settlement. Not Google.
Undaunted, Google fired back, saying copyright laws were meant to
serve the public interest and didn't apply in the digital realm of
search. Google's altruistic tone masked its savvy, hard-nosed
business strategy -- more books online means more searches, more ads
and more profits. Google recently began displaying some of these
books online (print.google.com), and resumed scanning the contents of
books from the collections of Harvard, Stanford, the University of
Michigan, the New York Public Library and Oxford. But legal experts
predict that the company's disruptive innovation will undoubtedly
show up on the Supreme Court's docket one day.
From Madison Avenue to Microsoft, Google's rapid-fire innovation and
growing power pose a threat of one kind or another. Its ad-driven
financial success has propelled its stock market value to $110
billion, more than the combined value of Disney, Ford, General
Motors, Amazon.com and the media companies that own the New York
Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Its
simplified method of having advertisers sign up online, through a
self-service option, threatens ad agencies and media buyers who
traditionally have played that role. Its penchant for continuously
releasing new products and services in beta, or test form, before
they are perfected, has sent Microsoft reeling. Chairman Bill Gates
recently warned employees in an internal memo of the challenges posed
by such "disruptive" change.
[snip]
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