Google is Innovating While Other Companies Rest on Laurels
January 2, 2014
An article on SVBTLE Magazine by David Litwak titled Google is the new Bell Labs makes the startling and insightful announcement that Google is an unusual business. The Bell Labs the article refers to is the research sector of AT&T and Western Electric Research Laboratories, which takes credit for 7 Nobel Prizes and the invention of (to name a few items off the list) the laser, transistor and UNIX.
The article explains the connection between the two companies:
“Google is acting in the same spirit as Alexander Bell, using their incredibly lucrative money-maker (Google Adwords) to finance moonshots and ambitious side projects. Both GMail and Google Maps are great examples, and they are ahead of the game with a truly integrated travel search engine in Google Travel (2-3 years in my estimate), Google Glass/wearable computing (at least 5 years before its time), autonomous cars (maybe 10 years) and household/military robotics (15 years?).”
Comparing this with the work of Microsoft, Apple or Amazon seems almost unfair, or at least a faulty comparison. (Apples and oranges?) The article does credit Apple with the creation of the smartphone industry, but points out that since then they have not really branched out the way Google cannot seem to help doing. Google is in the business of innovation and industry making. Good thing someone is around to remind everyone.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 02, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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