superclown2 - 9:12 pm on Jun 6, 2011 (gmt 0)

Google (ie Page) want to absorb all the available talent. It will be interesting to see whether their Montessori principles will work as the google family turn into an intellectual leviathan.

The original investors had some clout and could insist on what they termed 'adult supervision'. Under the present system this is no longer possible because of some clever voting rights and Page can do pretty well what he wants to do regardless of how it affects anyone else, including shareholders. Webmasters of course are irrelevant in this hierarchy. This is what is unsettling investors since Eric Schmidt was replace as CEO; there is no longer 'an adult' in control.

Can Google keep om absorbing all these people without getting indigestion? If they can it will be a very exciting ride as all the old concepts of privacy, and copyright - those that are left, anyway - are further eroded and replaced with one universal repository of all the world's information.

This is just one more step along the road to Google's control of "data". This company will either become the biggest thing since the British Empire or be destroyed by governmental privacy concerns. I've no idea which will prevail, at the moment.