Where does Google want to go today?

updated 11:29 a.m. ET Oct. 3, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO - In just seven years, Google Inc. has morphed from a bare-bones online search engine into a technological octopus that seems to sprout another intriguing tentacle every other week.

The Mountain View, Calif.,-based company, with $7.1 billion to spend thanks to zealous shareholder support, is now positioned to head down a variety of different paths. And that’s spurring an almost-daily guessing game about where Google’s flurry of innovation might lead.

Internet and software rivals like Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. aren’t the only ones tracking Google. Big media and telecommunications companies also are on the lookout, realizing they too may face a looming threat.

The theories about Google’s next move are all over the map.

Is Google cobbling together an Internet-driven computing platform that would challenge Microsoft’s stranglehold on the personal computer? Is the company preparing to build a wireless network that would provide free Internet access nationwide? Will Google dip into its huge hoard of cash to pull off a blockbuster deal?

Objective: ubiquity
There’s a consensus on one overarching point: “Google wants to be everywhere that people are,” said Danny Sullivan, who has followed the company closely as editor of the industry newsletter Search Engine Watch.

But Google’s long-range objectives remain obscure. Is the company simply exploring different ways to distribute the ads that generate virtually all of its revenue? Or is Google pursuing a much grander plan that ultimately will transform the way people work, communicate, shop, read and even watch TV?

Former Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin have never been shy about sharing their ambitions to change the world.

But they have never been keen on discussing the specific implications underlying the company’s stated mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who makes all the key decisions with Page and Brin, isn’t about to start divulging any secrets now.

“You can’t know what we are really up to until you are in the bowels of the company,” Schmidt said during a recent interview with The Associated Press.

The inkblot in Silicon Valley
John Battelle, the author of a recently released book on Google’s impact and potential, thinks the company’s mystique has turned it into the equivalent of a Rorschach inkblot — an amorphous object defined by the hopes and fears of whomever is looking at it.

“When we see a remarkable new company that redefines the technology industry, we either fear it because of all the things it might do or we expect more from it than it can possibly deliver,” Battelle said.

Some previous theories about Google’s maneuvering already have turned out to be off base. For instance, last year, it was widely believed that the company planned to introduce its own Web browser. Schmidt has since thrown cold water on that idea.

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