Slouching toward Google

Christopher L. Filkins

Jason Kottke is reading Rich Skrenta and both of them are making pretty grand predictions about the growth of Google. I must admit I have been entertaining similar ideas. The advent of the Google calculator started me on this train of thought. I use this function of Google on practically a daily basis. It will certainly be interesting to see what Google becomes in 5 years.

UPDATE I'm still thinking about this. I think why it is so compelling to me is that this is the exact reason why I was so completely behind Penfield Jackson's remedy of splitting Microsoft's OS business from its application business. I have been under the impression for several years now that such a solution was the only real hope to save Microsoft by being crushed by the net. If Google is able to supply a point of contact with the net that serves as a suitable desktop environment that I can access from a multitude of platforms then Google has effectively eaten Microsoft's lunch. Netscape attempted this by leveraging the Netscape "platform" but they failed. And they did it wrong. The made their product more complicated. You can't compete against Microsoft by making your product more complicated. Google has it right. They are making it simpler. I still maintain that Microsoft is in bad shape for dealing with the future of computing and it is their current dominance that is the source of that weakness. If only's count for naught I know but if Microsoft had been split I think the entire computing environment would ultimately benefit. Google may be in the process of doing that. If the OS business is forced to deal with real competition (I realize Linux is getting there.) I'd wager it would make economic sense to split up the company. But what do I know.