As many of you know I've been a Google Watcher for some time now. My main attraction to Google is that they are actualizing many of the theories I've developed over the past decade and a half. Similarly they are bringing the model of network-centric computing to the average consumer, which I feel can be quite empowering. Personally I've been using Google's Calendar for quite a while, and am now starting to use their Spreadsheet program. For professional reasons I've also learned quite a bit about their advertising programs, which are their core sources of revenue.

Two years ago I made a post on this site talking about Google's relationship with the field of Artificial Intelligence. I was interested therefore in finding a similar analysis on the site ValleyWag, which is for gossip on all things Silicon Valley. Here's a summary/quote:

Google knows semantics. Its entire business drives it toward pulling meaning from context. Better semantics make better ad placement and more precise search results. That's the reasoning behind contextual ads, topical search results, and the closely guarded and ever-changing search algorithm.
Google has the smartest people in the world.
Google has Marissa Mayer. Senior VP Marissa Mayer, one of the most powerful Google executives after founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, is a titan of artificial intelligence. For her Bachelor's and Master's at Stanford, she specialized in A.I., and she holds several patents in the field. Her knowledge will not be lost in her role as Google's product gatekeeper -- it's Marissa who decides what products are ready for release.
Google is filthy rich.
Google says it's working on AI. The co-founders already said that they're building a sharper artificial intelligence. Their new ambient sound translator can already identify a TV show from five seconds of computer-captured sound. Google plans to use the system for even more contextualized ads and content.
Google is not distracted. And Google will stay on top -- by beating everyone else to the world's first global A.I. system.

Similarly another article I found describes Google's File System, which is an accomplishment in and of itself, if not a new wonder of the world. Written by Robin Harris, over at StorageMojo.com, it's an incredible overview of what the GFS is and does, well worth the read even if you don't understand all of it. Here's a quote:

GFS is one of the key technologies that enables the most powerful general purpose cluster in history. While most IT folks lose sleep over keeping the Exchange server backed up for a couple of thousand users, Google’s infrastructure both supports massive user populations and the regular roll out of compute and data intensive applications that would leave most IT ops folks gibbering in fear. How do they do it?

Partly they are smarter than you. Google employs hundreds of CompSci PhDs as well as many more hundreds of really smart people. Partly it is their history: impoverished PhD candidates can’t afford fancy hardware to build their toys, so they started cheap and got cheaper. And finally, being really smart and really poor, they rethought the whole IT infrastructure paradigm.

Their big insight: rather than build availability into every IT element at great cost, build availability around every element at low cost. Which totally changes the economics of IT, just as the minicomputer in the ’70s, the PC in the ’80’s and the LAN in the ’90’s all did. Only more so. When processors, bandwidth and storage are cheap you can afford to spend lots of cycles on what IBM calls autonomic computing. With the system properly architected and cheap to build out, it scales both operationally and economically.

All that said, Google hasn’t done anything unique with their platform that other people hadn’t already. They just put it together and scaled it to unprecedented heights.

Note to CIOs: it isn’t going to take your users long to notice that Google can do this stuff and you can’t. Your life isn’t going to get any easier.