Google leaps into Global Top 100

With the market capitalization of more than $83bn (as I am writing this) Google riding over its phenomenal share price advance, having defied most predictions by more than tripling in the ten months since the firm made its stockmarket debut at $85 a share, has leaped into FT Global top 100, a jump from 279th as on March 31, 2005 to 95th as the ranking been compiled on stock value as of June 30.
The leap is unprecedented by any standards. Yet few people are casting doubts over the long term sustainability of Google valuation. There is lot of mist built around Google, as this article in The Economist mentions that

Now valued at more than $80 billion, Google has left in the dust the other three internet Wunderkinder—Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon—and even passed media stalwarts such as Time Warner. How does Google do it?

At least in part by shrewdly manufacturing a winning mystique. No outsider today can prove definitively that Google is not an office park full of geniuses who could at any moment announce, simultaneously, world peace and a cure for the common cold. That is because no outsider today can say anything definitive about Google at all. This is intentional. Google makes itself totally opaque by camouflaging itself with lots of what journalists call “colour”.

Interesting take on an organization, that is widely respected and admired even by the techies all over the world, even though it failed to push any significent advances recently in its core area of searching in the world of ever increasing content to explore. Though the recent surge in the popularity of AJAX techniques (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) can be attributed to its use in Google's Gmail, Google Groups and other prominent interactive applications.

Past threatening the future

Bram Cohen, the author of BitTorrent is under legal scrutiny for something he wrote back in 1999.

A technological activist's agenda

"I am a technological activist. I have a political agenda. I am in favor of basic human rights: to free speech, to use any information and technology, to purchase and use recreational drugs, to enjoy and purchase so-called 'vices', to be free of intruders, and to privacy.

I further my goals with technology. I build systems to disseminate information, commit digital piracy, synthesize drugs, maintain untrusted contacts, purchase anonymously, and secure machines and homes. I release my code and writings freely, and publish all of my ideas early to make them unpatentable.

Technology is not a panacea. I refuse to work on technology to track users, analyze usage patterns, watermark information, censor, detect drug use, or eavesdrop. I am not naive enough to think any of those technologies could enable a 'compromise'.

Despite my emphasis on technology, I do not view laws as inherently evil. My goals are political ones, even if my techniques are not. The only way to fundamentally succeed is by changing existing laws. If I rejected all help from the political arena I would inevitably fail."

The big fishes are already after Bram's blood for developing BitTorrent. Oh Bram, don't get into trouble for not knowing the future and writing this parody. "They" blame you for failure of their outdated business model. But why hinder the evolution of technology. BitTorrent is the present and future of how data will be transferred over network.