Desperately Seeking Google

Speaking of Google's global ambitions, here's an article in The New Yorker on the same subject - and more:

In its 2004 annual report, Google, amending its basic corporate strategy, officially signalled its intent to be more than a search engine. The company announced that seventy per cent of its efforts would continue to be directed to its “core” mission, “our web search engine and our advertising network.” Another twenty per cent of its energies would be devoted to “adjacent areas such as Gmail”—the free e-mail accounts available to just about anyone who wants one—and the range of software that falls under the heading of “apps.” Finally, the report said, “the remaining 10 per cent is saved for anything else, giving us the freedom to innovate.” To other media companies, this sounded suspiciously like declaring, “We are in the search business, but we might be in your business.”

The piece is by Ken Auletta, which is both an advantage, and a disadvantage. He's not really a deep technology writer, but he does write well and - most importantly - he has access to all the top people, including the holy trinity at Google - Larry, Sergey and Eric. This makes the feature a nice mosaic of juicy quotes that you won't find elsewhere.