Welcome to Technology Review: What’s Next for Google

Welcome to Technology Review: What’s Next for Google "Google seeks to become the gatekeeper for not only the public Web but also the “dark” or hidden Web of private databases, dynamically generated pages, controlled-access sites, and Web servers within organizations (estimated to be tens or even hundreds of times larger than the public Web); the data on personal computer hard drives; and the data on consumer devices ranging from PDAs to cell phones to iPods to digital cameras to TiVo players. Google’s founders understand the scale of the opportunity. Larry Page recently said, “Only a fraction of the world’s information is indexed on our computers. We are continually working on new ways to index more.... Thirty percent [of our engineers] are devoted to emerging businesses.” And Sergey Brin once told Technology Review’s editor in chief, “The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.”

This is an outstanding article on Google and Microsoft. Charles H. Ferguson's 1999 book, High Stakes, No Prisoners : A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars, along with this article, should be required reading for anyone seeking to compete with Microsoft.