New Yorker Google article

Remember "Webcrawler?"
That was the search engine I used when I first started messing around on the Internet.
I wonder if it even exists anymore...

Oh, yep, it does--I just googled it.

One of the recurring debates in this article--and, it sounds like, at the Google company--is whether Google is a "one-trick pony," and, if it is, whether it should remain that way in the future.

Even if Google is" just a search engine," it is definitely more sophisticated and comprehensive than other names in that category. And, what do we mean "just a search engine," anyway? Google has redefined the way we do virtually everything--and the way we do everything virtually. It is the nature of the Internet that we begin at a directory, whether it's our bookmark bar or a search engine. For Google to be so many people's first destination--and, in a sense, "contain" all their subsequent destinations--is a big, big "trick" indeed.

--Leah Dennison