I was thinking about what Google might do with the huge platform it has and is continuing to build. What might be a profitable and deeply cool use of such a platform? Something Wayne Rosing said in Alex’s piece struck me, when crossed with Simson’s Akamai insights:
Engineering Vice-President Wayne Rosing has on several occasions emphasized that Google’s primary expertise is in so-called distributed computing. That’s a fancy way of talking about delivering applications to a computer user’s browser or to remote locations.
So, what if Google becomes an application server cum platform for business innovation? I mean, a service, a platform service, that any business can build upon? In other words, an ecologic potentiality – “Hey guys, over here at Google Business Services Inc. we’ve got the entire web in RAM and the ability to mirror your data across the web to any location in real time. We’ve got plug in services like search, email, social networking, and commerce clearing, not to mention a shitload of bandwidth and storage, cheap. So…what do you want to build today?”
If I had that opportunity, I’d take a percentage of revs or profits on the businesses that got built, rather than just service fees. it’s Google as incubator to Web 2.0.
Yahoo is already doing this, though for a fee and in the SMB market. So is MSN. The traces are laid. Both of them were also doing mail. But neither of them have more than 100,000 servers and the GFS. Hmmmm.
OK, back to writing the book, damnit.