Where Google Goes From Here, Part 1

December 2, 2009, — Updated: 4:11 pm -->

Where Google Goes From Here, Part 1 By THE EDITORS

Google’s dominance in Internet search has earned it billions in profits and has allowed it to expand its ambitions far beyond search and advertising to all other aspects of the online world, including publishing. Next year, it will challenge Microsoft Windows by unveiling its Chrome operating system, a browser-based technology.

We asked two observers of Google to discuss its effect on the Internet and new and old media:

We asked two observers of Google to discuss its effect on the Internet and new and old media:

Ken Auletta has written for The New Yorker magazine since 1992. He is the author, mostly recently, of “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”

Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures and an early-stage investor in many Web companies, including Twitter.

Moderating the conversation:

John Markoff, a reporter for The Times, has been writing about technology since 1976. He is the author of “What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry.”

John starts off the discussion with some questions for Ken and Fred. Read their answers to the first two questions below, along with follow-up questions, answers and comments, which we’ll add throughout the day. 

Question 1
Markoff:Google executives have said that their industry position is vulnerable to new technology advances. How robust is Google’s near-monopoly over Internet search? If there is a threat to Google’s search domination, from which direction will it come?

Question 2
Markoff: During the past four decades first I.B.M. and then Microsoft dominated the computing industry. Both faced extended antitrust battles with the government. Now, despite its “do no evil,” motto, Google is increasingly seen as the dominant force in computing. Is it heading for an antitrust collision?

Read the rest of this report here

Read Part 2 of this discussion here.

Google.

Read Markoff’s comment for Auletta.

Updated, 11:50 a.m.

Markoff: In alluding to Google’s engineering mindset, I wonder if you consider it to be the company’s Achilles’ heel?

Auletta: This vice is the flip side of Google’s engineering virtue: A passionate focus on eradicating inefficiencies. This blind spot to things it can’t measure — like fear, politics, concerns about Google’s dominance, or privacy and copyright protections — is one threat to Google, but not the only one.

Read Markoff’s comment for Wilson.

Updated, 11:55 a.m.

Markoff: To date do you think that Google has proved more adroit at managing the government than Microsoft was in 1995?

Wilson: Yes. It is more politically savvy. It learned from the mistakes that Microsoft made.

Read Auletta’s response to Wilson.