Yet More Google Gazing

povvell writes "Bob Cringely has joined the club and just set out his personal vision for the future of Google now that it's flush with cash, thereby joining a happy band of Google gazers. But is he right, and are they? My own guess is that the company intends to become the biggest advertising platform in the world. What's yours?"

Re:Microsoft buyout

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that they're public, Microsoft can buy them and replace their service with whatever they choose.

You have no idea how the stock market works do you? The Google founders have a class of stock that gives them more voting rights than anyone else so unless THEY want to sell out, it'd be impossible for Microsoft to strong-arm them into selling.

Re:Microsoft buyout

[Valar]

That would be a great theory if the majority of the company wasn't still held by actual google staffers...

Re:Eric Schmidt.... hmm, where have I heard that n

[Mournblade]

I like that you failed to RT Entire FA, and therefore missed this:

so technology doesn't scare these guys. In fact, they prefer it because machines are more predictable than people, as Schmidt learned when he tried to turn around Novell.

So I guess he did mention it. I would also guess that he assumes the above is all he needs to write for his target audience to understand the points you made.

Re:All I know is...

[jhunsake]

Actually from what I understand it is those profit numbers that actually made the FCC se mi forcegoogle to IPO in the first place. Apparently there are regulations concerning how much a private company can earn.... shrugs.

Then you understand nothing. There is no such regulations, there never have been, and there most likely never will be. Some of the largest companies in the world are privately owned.

Re:Microsoft buyout

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting that buyouts are not the MSFT way.

What!?! Remember these are the guys who bought QDOS!

Microsoft purchased:

WebTV for half a billion $,

PlaceWare,
11% of Comcast,
Ncompass Labs,
Navision,
whatever the small company that made PowerPoint,
Vicinity,
GeCAD,
Lattice C [Visual C++],
Connectix [virtual PC],
Vermeer,
Bungie [XBox],
Great Plains (all their enterprise software),
Solomon Software (along with Great Plains),
Entropic (speach recognition,
Interix, (Unix-to-Windows code conversion tools)
Axapta (CRM)
Creature House
LookOut (desktop search)
Battlecom
ResNova Software
Rare (xbox stuff)
Vxtreme (web stuff)
Firefly
Colusa Software (their .NET CLR and JIT compiler)

I could list hundreds more, but I think you get the point.