Googling the future

About a year ago I became seriously interested in search and by extension, Google.

Google is search. At least for now.

As a small business owner you can’t ignore the potential Google has to bring customers to your door via the Internet.

One of the first books I read on Google was titled The Search and it was a page turner. Google’s explosive growth and lack of a true revenue stream in its’ early days make for compelling reading, especially when you consider where Google is at now.

While it is hard to imagine life without Google and search, and heaven forbid (!), the Internet, it is even harder to understand what Google might be like in 10-years time.

The following quotes come from a lengthy article over at Wired.com titled: “Why is Obama’s Top Antitrust Cop Gunning for Google?”

Now before you fall off your seats in boredom or click over to another site, here are two quotes from the article, which I just couldn’t pass up.

Firstly, on how big is Google?

“Google is big. Very big. Its millions of servers process about 1 petabyte of user-generated data every hour. It conducts hundreds of millions of searches every day. This is no accident; bigness is the very point of Google. The company’s great skill—its competitive advantage—is its ability to find meaning in massive sets of data. The larger the data sets, the more potential meaning can be derived and the better its search results become. The better Google’s search results, the more people use its search engines and the more data the company collects. It is a virtuous feedback loop, harnessing the power of network effects to create a more useful product.”

[A petabyte is a 1,000 terabytes or a 1,000,000 gigabytes.]

Secondly, on what the future may hold?

“Google’s largest problem isn’t what the company is today; it’s what it plans to become. Google aims to create a world in which Web services replace desktop software. That vision seems to terrify regulators like Varney, who fear that Google could grow too powerful in such an environment”

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