[Mb-civic] What Lurks in Its Soul? - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

What Lurks in Its Soul?

By David A. Vise
Sunday, November 13, 2005; Page B01

The soul of the Google machine is a passion for disruptive innovation.

Powered by brilliant engineers, mathematicians and technological 
visionaries, Google ferociously pushes the limits of everything it 
undertakes. The company's DNA emanates from its youthful founders, 
Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who operate with "a healthy disregard for 
the impossible," as Page likes to say. Their goal: to organize all of 
the world's information and make it universally accessible, whatever the 
consequences.

Google's colorful childlike logo, its whimsical appeal and its 
lightning-fast search results have made it the darling of 
information-hungry Internet users. Google has accomplished something 
rare in the hard-charging, mouse-eat-mouse environment that defines the 
high-tech world -- it has made itself charming. We like Google. We 
giggle at the "Google doodles," the playful decorations on its logo that 
appear on holidays or other special occasions. We eagerly sample the new 
online toys that Google rolls out every few months.

But these friendly features belie Google's disdain for the status quo 
and its voracious appetite for aggressively pursuing initiatives to 
bring about radical change. Google is testing the boundaries in so many 
ways, and so purposefully, it's likely to wind up at the center of a 
variety of legal battles with landmark significance.

Consider the wide-ranging implications of the activities now underway at 
the Googleplex, the company's campuslike headquarters in California's 
Silicon Valley. Google is compiling a genetic and biological database 
using the vast power of its search engines; scanning millions of books 
without traditional regard for copyright laws; tracing online searches 
to individual Internet users and storing them indefinitely; demanding 
cell phone numbers in exchange for free e-mail accounts (known as Gmail) 
as it begins to build the first global cell phone directory; saving 
Gmails forever on its own servers, making them a tempting target for law 
enforcement abuse; inserting ads for the first time in e-mails; making 
hundreds of thousands of cheap personal computers to serve as cogs in 
powerful global networks.

Google has also created a new kind of work environment. It serves three 
free meals a day to its employees (known as Googlers) so that they can 
remain on-site and spend more time working. It provides them with free 
on-site medical and dental care and haircuts, as well as washers and 
dryers. It charters buses with wireless Web access between San Francisco 
and Silicon Valley so that employees can toil en route to the office. To 
encourage innovation, it gives employees one day a week -- known as 20 
percent time -- to work on anything that interests them.

To eliminate the distinction between work and play -- and keep the 
Googlers happily at the Googleplex -- they have volleyball, foosball, 
puzzles, games, rollerblading, colorful kitchens stocked with free 
drinks and snacks, bowls of M&Ms, lava lamps, vibrating massage chairs 
and a culture encouraging Googlers to bring their dogs to work. (No cats 
allowed.) The perks also include an on-site masseuse, and extravagant 
touch-pad-controlled toilets with six levels of heat for the seat and 
automated washing, drying and flushing without the need for toilet paper.

Meanwhile, the Googlers spend countless hours tweaking Google's hardware 
and software to reliably deliver search results in a fraction of a 
second. Few Google users realize, however, that every search ends up as 
a part of Google's huge database, where the company collects data on 
you, based on the searches you conduct and the Web sites you visit 
through Google. The company maintains that it does this to serve you 
better, and deliver ads and search results more closely targeted to your 
interests. But the fact remains: Google knows a lot more about you than 
you know about Google.

If these were the actions of some obscure company, maybe none of this 
would matter much. But these are the practices of an enterprise whose 
search engine is so ubiquitous it has become synonymous with the 
Internet itself for millions of computer users. And if the Google Guys 
have their way, their presence will only grow. Brin and Page see Google 
(its motto: "Don't Be Evil") as a populist force for good that empowers 
individuals to find information fast about anything and everything.

Part of Google's success has to do with the network of more than 100,000 
cheap personal computers it has built and deployed in its own data 
centers around the world. Google constantly adds new computers to its 
network, making it a prolific PC assembler and manufacturer in its own 
right. "We are like Dell," quipped Peter Norvig, Google's chief of 
search quality.

The highly specialized world of technology breaks down these days into 
companies that do either hardware or software. Google's tech wizards 
have figured out how to do both well. "They run the largest computer 
system in the world," said John Hennessy, a member of Google's board of 
directors, a computer scientist and president of Stanford University. "I 
don't think there is even anything close."

Google doesn't need all that computer power to help us search for the 
best Italian restaurant in Northern Virginia. It has grander plans. The 
company is quietly working with maverick biologist Craig Venter and 
others on groundbreaking genetic and biological research. Google's 
immense capacity and turbo-charged search technology, it turns out, 
appears to be an ideal match for the large amount of data contained in 
the human genome. Venter and others say that the search engine has the 
ability to deal with so many variables at once that its use could lead 
to the discovery of new medicines or cures for diseases. Sergey Brin 
says searching all of the world's information includes examining the 
genetic makeup of our own bodies, and he foresees a day when each of us 
will be able to learn more about our own predisposition for various 
illnesses, allergies and other important biological predictors by 
comparing our personal genetic code with the human genome, a process 
known as "Googling Your Genes."

(continued)...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/11/AR2005111101644.html?referrer=email
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