Google's Pending IPO (Of Limited Value)

Thu Oct 16 22:21:44 PDT 2003

(An acquaintance from Linuxcare, whom is now at Google, forwarded a URL 
describing the anticipation with which Google's probable IPO is being 
viewed, and the conditions which make it likely. The URL is ... well, 
let's just say 'www.wsj.com', it's a long URL and I know HTML is viewed, 
by many, with suspicion, as a subversive technology, anyway.)

(I read it and I think it's shortsighted. I'm not saying they are wrong 
but I don't agree.)

(My conclusions are worth sharing, I think. They are below.)

I expect that Google's viability in the long term may be limited.

Consider: its basic product is a search engine; which is predicated upon 
a more or less massively parallel architecture, both front end (web) and 
back end (RDBMS).

(I don't know this for a fact, but it's straightforward to infer.)

Consider: applications based on massively parallel architectures, are 
targets for applications based on distributed architectures. Examples 
abound; SETI at home, and distributed.net, as well as a plethora of file 
swapping softwares.

How long will it be before someone writes an application which, once 
distributed, replaces Google as the premier search engine, worldwide, 
redundantly cached, perhaps language-neutral, with error checking to 
protect against cache poisoning and encrypted channels to prevent 
in-transit corruption of results?

I'd give it five years at the outside; two years seems more likely, at 
the speed things are moving and with the vast number of unemployed, but 
brilliant, software engineers idle. It could already be undergoing 
testing in a garage somewhere, right now, as I type. It wouldn't 
surprise me.

(I hereby dub this application 'Gnugle', for purposes of future 
discussion. Or should that be 'Gnugle(tm)' ?)

Anyhow, that's basically the period during which Google stock will be 
profitable to own; two to five years, on the outside.

Much like stock in RDBMS companies was profitable, during a certain 
period, but, as RDBMS technology and products percolated through the 
society, the control was lost; and so was the value. Oracle will never 
see $60 a share again, for instance.

So my advice is to keep a close eye on the distributed applications; 
that's your bellwether for when to sell your Google stock.

Remember, you read it here first.

Regards,

-- richard

Richard Childers / Senior Engineer
Daemonized Networking Services
https://www.daemonized.com
(415) 759-5571