So the PhDs over at Google obviously had some time to spare and did a math excercise to see how long it would take them to complete their mission to collect and structure all the information in the world. The answer? 300 years, since apparantly there is 5 million TBs of data and Google has so far collected 170 TBs.
The problem for most blogs I read commenting on these figures is that most information is stored inside peoples head which I recon will be solved pretty soon, with Ray Ks singularity coming up any day now (and that guy’s never wrong).
Simple math excercise says that Google has then collected about 25 TBs per year since they went into business in ‘98… so obviously they would have to speed up their information collection procedures a bit to get all 5 million TBs before 2300.
Assuming that this bulk of information is static (which is pretty stupid and I somewhat assume that he everyday mensa convention that is Google has taken this into consideration) it only takes a 4 percent increase per annum in information collection efficiecy to map all the information. They’re obviously not anticipating any disruptive leaps in technology anytime soon, instead opting for a Kaizen/Cani-style approach (which would explain the 300-year plan) of continuous improvement. Very eighties, if you ask me.
Apart from their lack of leapfrogging enthusiasm I recon that there’s another big problem with their collect-all-the-information-from-all-over-the-world-megalomaniac-mission: what if people, companies, orgs etc. don’t want to participate in collecting all this information? It’s not like Google built the Internet or anything (although if their quest for world domination continues to go as planned, the Google-branded history e-books of 2300 it will probably say they did). I’m always amazed by the common assumption that everyone wants to be listed on Google (or any other search engine for that matter). Just ask the writers guild how they feel and take a look at how Google is handling that situation. And btw, considering how Google and Yahoo is handling that whole China-debacle, would you really let them jack into your head?
And in the long run, who cares about information anyway? Information does not equal knowledge, good luck with solving that algorithm. I hereby predict some dialectic shifts à la Hegel coming up pretty soon with a knowledge-scouring company building on some wicked singularity related socioholistic approach, chewing Google for breakfast. How I wan’t live to see the day… and according to Ray Kurzweil I just might!
Nothing remarkable, hardly innovative and not a very sustainable competitive advantage. 
