[austinaero]

Is this article saying that Google is the only way to find such information?

The whole premise is really absurd.

[summer]

No, silly. It's saying that google's innovations are making companies afraid and fearful in a sense, because google is creating new competition in many areas of business -- real esstate, newspapers, etc -- due to all of google's innovations and expansions in its business. Read the article!

[summer]

This is such an interesting irony here, from the article:

Such advances, predicts Esther Dyson, a technology consultant, will bring "a huge reduction in inefficiency everywhere." That, in turn, would be an unsettling force for all sorts of industries and workers

So, in other words: eliminating "inefficiency" is predicted to cause a lot of initial angst. Wow! I always thought eliminating "inefficiency" would result in the OPPOSITE response from people! Seems the writer is implying humans are more comfortable in the current, inefficient mess!

[irons_player]

Goes to show you how poorly run these companies are. Harvard A-wholes.

Google is just a piece of software.

There is nothing stopping these corporations from doing their own google.

The day that one of them decides to do it their way is the day to dump your google shares.

[DB]

Not really.

For example, who needs multiple listings service for Real Estate when we have Google and the Internet?

Just search for houses in locations and for prices you're interested in. Suddenly there's no need for a whole sector of the Real Estate business... The same is true in other areas of business as well.

[DogBarkTree]

I had a bathroom vent fan motor burn out a few weeks back. I made several phones calls from lots of walking thru the Yellow Pages and drove the burnt out motor around to 3 different electrical suppliers and still no luck. I ran a google on the Manufacturer's name and model number of the motor and up came a link to an electrical supplier in Indiana. I had the motor delivered 3 days later at an incredible price. Im sold.