All Google... All the time

Talking about tech news is starting to feel like being a publicist for Google. It seems that every week there's a new story about some new venture that Google has gotten into. Today it's online library services. Google wants to scan copies of books and make them available on the web. For those books that are not copyrighted they would be completely viewable. Those books that are copyrighted would have some restrictions. The couple of articles I've read have had alot of hyperbole thrown about and the use of the phrase fair-use is sure to come up more often. For now, though, it appears that Google is making in roads into yet another innovative use of the internet.

Those of use that have followed the technology industry most of our lives are starting to recognize some of the commonalities that Google shares with other great tech companies. Google's business model is looking more and more like Lucent, IBM and Xerox. They are innovating for the sake of innovation and they are reliant on those innovations to eventually pay them off. All three of those tech greats are weaker now but there's is little doubt that they changed the world with their technologies. Few people realize that the mouse was invented by Xerox, the wireless router and TCP/IP were invented by Bell Labs (later Lucent), and IBM created virtually everything that is used in your computer today.

So... Is Google the next Lucent? Only time and luck will tell the story.