Mind Blown

I believe Inspector Gadget said it best: "Yowza!"

Auletta brings up a great deal of amazing points about Google's dominance, and I think the vision articulated and history of the company are fascinating. I'm lead to recall the first line sent over the telegraph: "What hath God wrought." Goals and ideals are one part of the picture, but it seems like these fun-loving, insanely rich guys don't contemplate the potential consequences.

Wow - I'm not sure where to start on this. I think for me the biggest take away concerned the potentially side effect of turning the World Wide Web into one giant echo chamber by implementing the idea of transparent personalization discussed on page 54.

I think we already subconsciously do this as a society (select media that affirms our own beliefs), but if the slight opportunity to be exposed to different content decreases when we allow computers to reinforce our own preferences in presenting info to us. Now it seems like we could still accidentally stumble across something that might make us think twice. Does this mitigate the power of the user by reducing things to mathematics aimed towards precision of the decidedly imprecise subjects we are as humans? Cue philosophical debates. This also threatens potentially the Google goal of democratizing information by polarizing society when only certain information is presented to each user.

The other contention I had was the vision for democratization of information. The Google guys (one of whom was described as utopian by his Stanford advisor) seemingly fail to recognize the other elements that are needed to make this happen - a solid education system in k-12 and access to reliable, fast internet. This hasn't happened yet for groups that are already underprivileged in terms of access to resources.

I agree that it's hard to imagine Google completely folding. If the company has already gone through its awkward teen years, now (with the economic downturn) it seems to be entering it's strange post-collegiate years of working and paying the bills/understanding more what is required to run well. Ultimately it will make the company stronger and perhaps embrace a more coherent management structure/process, but growing pains are still a sign of growth.

I do know that if Google does eventually go the way of the Dodo, something even more mind-blowing will probably have boxed it out of the competition. Until then, I'll happily interface with Goog's many services.

Other notes: If I could rollerblade, I'd totally show up late to meetings, out of breath and in workout clothes. Also, I want to write the next peanut butter manifesto... on a bagel.