Google

At Second Life, we occasionally debated the merits of virtual reality vs augmented reality. In caricature:

Virtual reality was the core dream of SL, same as the core proposition of Snow Crash, the Holodeck, the Matrix — the idea that a computer simulated world could have all of the…

This week Facebook released a barrage of announcements that reveal a stunning level of ambition. You have to ask, are they really the next Google, but with evil?

I can’t speak to the question of evil, but I do have a mental benchmark for the next…

By my own admission, I’ve become a complete hack, for using the term [blank]-killer. A lot of people are asking whether News Corp would really block its content from Google’s index, and make a deal with Microsoft for exclusive search access. And if they did, and others followed, would this represent a…

The Wall Street Journal reported that Google is working on an algorithm to predict which of its employees is likely to leave. Putting aside for the moment whether there is some creepy aspect to the machine anticipating personal career choices, there are two aspects to this that I find interesting.

Facebook turned 5 years old last week, and a couple of commentators took the opportunity to compare the company’s progress unfavorably to Google’s.

I understand the compulsion to compare every hot startup to the current media darling that literally put its name next to the…