Google’s ambition knows few bounds. A note about Google’s goals from a new Fast Company article at the moment when Larry Page assumes leadership of the company:
“Google is not always easily categorized. You can’t shorthand it the way you can with, say, Apple (a consumer electronics company) or Microsoft (a software company). While minimizing the world-changing visions of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates seems unwise, making computers a utility and transforming their power into desirable objects cannot compare with the ambitions of Google’s founders. Page and Brin’s stated mission has been to catalog and analyze all of the world’s information, and their larger, unstated aim is to reform all of the globe’s inefficiencies. In addition to translation and speech recognition, the founders are obsessed with image recognition (Google Goggles), advanced energy solutions (Google Energy), and robotics (check out its self-driving car).
Page and Brin’s big bets don’t always work. Google has had to back off reinventing TV-, radio-, and print-advertising sales; its book-digitization project has become a protracted mess; and its initiatives to make wireless networks more open and to change the way cell-phone carriers sell their plans have failed.
Focus on the misses, though, and you risk overlooking its remarkable successes. Google persists in reforming modern communications networks. Google Voice has taken off. Indeed, in 10 years, we might look back on this moment in Google’s history with surprise. While tech wags slagged Google for losing to Facebook, almost none of us saw it turning into the world’s largest phone company.
That’s what’s thrilling about Page taking the helm at Google right now. You get the sense that under his leadership, Google could try its hand at anything. More than anything else during my interviews with people who know Page, one comment stands out: ‘I don’t care what you put in the article,’ says David Lawee, Google’s head of acquisitions. ‘To me, this is the real story: Larry is a truly awesome inventor-entrepreneur. My aspiration for him is that he becomes one of the greatest inventors-entrepreneurs in history, in the realm of the Thomas Edisons of the world.'”