Thoughts on Google

I knew these guys expect to make this an important year for their business. I am waiting for new software and hardware all through the year. Already I am using Buzz to keep in touch with my students in the Communication of Ideas class I am teaching this term.

Here are simple thoughts on this company.

The technical brains, are the owners. I like that. I hate to think of Bill Gates undeservedly getting all that money. The richest man on Earth, which only contribution, as far as I can see, was to ask loosers at IBM to pay for software that was a joke. It was the biggest swindle in the History of Technology (full disclosure: I do not work for Google, nor Micrososft).

I love technical and technological creators.

We are facing a bottleneck in the evolution of Mankind. There had been times when altogether we were a few tens of thousands of people, all over the face of the Earth. If we do not watch our step, we can get in one of those survival tunnels again.

What can Google do for us?

Based on sound mathematical principles, develop more communication software. Integrate with affordable hardware, and lead the business world this year.

I do not know about their search algorithms, beyond the fact that they send your queries to the most visited sites. I can write more on the hardware part.

In the late sixties the High Energy Physics Group at UCSB, was one of the first groups to use the precursor to the Internet.

My friend Don Summers is an expert on computer farms. He invented them to solve an analysis problem at Fermilab. There were twenty thousand videotapes, each with one billion bits of Information, which were the biggest sample in the early 1990s of charm quark data.

I believe he didn't patent that, and as far as I can see, that is the hardware Google uses to do fast searches on huge databases. Just check how long does it take that search engine, to give you millions of hits.

Any patent lawyer can see that 1991 is earlier than 1994, when the Internet came to the masses, and even earlier than the 2000s when Google grew very fast.

We can see that Google knows how to tap on Deep Craft, i.e., the technical leadership knows where to find things. College  dropouts, do not beat PhD CEOs. This craft is in certain places on Earth, as Prof. Brian Arthur points out in his book The Nature of Technology.

I do not see these fundamentals in the competition.

I believe that we will see a fast transition to thin clients. Service providers, like Google, may even give consumers free hardware, they will provide brand new services.

Buzz is just a teaser.