Picture the internet
Picture yourself as the internet
Now be the internet
At least thats what I figure google is doing. From dark fiber, to databases. From word processing to spreadsheets. From blogs to email. From widgets to wikis. From web ads to web stats. From videos to version control. Google is looking to BE the internet. It makes sense too. If you have to choose between spending the time to actively acquire new information in a space growing with the ferver of the internet versus passively already-having the information, which would you choose? I’d choose passive ownership!
What better way to be able to search the worlds information than to have that information already passing through the very arteries of your network of its own volition. Google turns into the worlds most advanced stateful packet sniffer. Poof. Google is now not more than one relationship awway from almost every single information resource on the planet.
What would google have to do to complete the coup? First “finish” and “polish” its products to get a large enough userbase on all of them for the viral-style-marketing-by-necessity “advertising” (but thats not the right word) to work. Next buy amazon, and e-bay (?) outright. Third. Work on not getting “acquired” by various governments itself (otherwise we will have something like a very dangerous big-brother on our hands).
Is this a far fetched conspiracy theory? Probably. But thats what you get with a mind that doesn’t have an off button and “downtime” in the shower. Heh. Is it likely? Maybe not, maybe. But is it an intriguing idea? Definitely!
[...] I’ve mentioned before that the whole goal here is to “be the internet”. I don’t think that goal has changed recently. Google has sown the world two things: First that there’s a vast amount of power to be wielded by being “the internet” to the average Tom Dick and Harry, and Second that the title is *always* up for grabs. A while back Yahoo! was the internet, before that AOL was the internet, before that newsgroups were the internet. Need I say more? And each of those companies wielded an extreme sway over the comings and goings of the internet. [...]