A story in today’s Washington Post by David Vise serves as a nice companion piece to the Business 2.0 article on Yahoo cited in my previous post.
The soul of the Google machine is a passion for disruptive innovation…[Its] 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…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…”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.”
With [Sergey] Brin and [Larry] Page setting the tone, Google’s distinctive DNA makes it an employer of choice for the world’s smartest technologists because they feel empowered to change the world. And despite its growing head count of more than 4,000 employees worldwide, Google maintains the pace of innovation in ways contrary to other corporations by continuing to work in small teams of three to five, no matter how big the undertaking.
And, speaking of DNA:
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.”
As Vise notes, Google’s grand ambitions and relentless challenges to the status quo raise the question of whether hubris and overreaching will eventually cause it serious problems:
Supremely confident, the biggest risk that Brin, Page and Google face is that they will be unable to avoid the arrogance that typically accompanies extraordinary success. Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos jokes that Brin and Page are so sure of themselves, they wouldn’t hesitate to argue with a divine presence.
Mitch Shapiro at 2:09 PM|Comments(0)
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