Google: Beyond the Hype

摘要

The spring sun shines brightly on the so-called Googleplex, the five-building campus of the hottest Internet search engine on earth. At lunchtime, hundreds of engineers at Google Inc. chow on free fare prepared by the former chef of the Grateful Dead. Kicking back? If s more like a fuel stop. They eat, paying little heed to co-founder Larry Page as he swoops by on skates. And as evening sets in, those same brainiacs, wedged three to six per office, huddle in quiet conference or patter away at their computers in unblinking concentration. Whether in sneakers or on skates, the Google crowd emits cerebral intensity and a near-palpable sense of urgency. You'd think they would be celebrating. All around the world, Web-surfing humanity has found its way to Google's bare-bones Web site and picked up the simple formula, pecking out a few words and hitting enter. Google has blazed a new path of learning and turned its search engine into the keys to knowledge. Its massive banks of servers process more than 3,000 searches every second of the day. Now, much of Silicon Valley waits eagerly for the miracle company to translate its soaring popularity into a mountain of cash. As soon as late April, Google could file papers for an initial public offering, the first marquee tech IPO since the collapse of the dot-com bubble three years ago. Google, which analysts believe topped $900 million in sales and $150 million in net profits last year, could raise $1 billion to $2 billion. The whole company may be valued at $20 billion by the public market-easily a record among Internet IPOs. "Google has proved a better mousetrap matters," says Microsoft Corp. CEO Steven A. Ballmer.