Google's 300-year plan
Scott Ard Former Editor in Chief, CNET
CNET former Editor in Chief Scott Ard has been a journalist for more than 20 years and an early tech adopter for even longer. Those two passions led him to editing one of the first tech sections for a daily newspaper in the mid 1990s, and to joining CNET part-time in 1996 and full-time a few years later.
Google is running into some headwinds as it seeks to expand beyond its core business of serving up Web pages and related ads in its search results, according to this front-page story in the The Wall Street Journal. But it's the closing quote in the story from Google's CEO that brought back fond memories of dot-com mania.
As Google's Web site explains, the company's mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." And how long might that take? Chief exec Eric Schmidt told the Journal: "It will take, current estimate, 300 years to organize all of the world's information."
Hmm, a 300-year plan from the Net's premier company. Where have we heard that before? From Masayoshi Son, who boasted to Time Magazine about his 300-year plan for Softbank to essentially own the Internet. "Our 300-year plan is the long-term structure we need to fit our goals," he said after being named Time's "Asian Newsmaker of the Year" in 1999.Makes you wonder if Henry Blodget is out there with a 300-year price target for Google.