After one of the most successful IPOs in history, Google set forth on a bold new strategy for its future, a vision so large and controversial that the company has worked very hard to keep it under wraps. The business world has been desperate to learn what Google is up to because they know that Google is the arbiter of the future of the web.

Now, with unprecedented access to Google’s top management, Randy Stross reveals for the first time the audacious scope of Google’s new plan — including such potentially disruptive initiatives as free downloadable software, which could put providers like Microsoft out of business, and GoogleEarth and GoogleMaps satellite technology, which is rapidly mapping the entire surface of the Earth in high-powered detail. Stross explores the profound implications not only for the business world but for our culture at large.

RANDALL STROSS is the author of the New York Times column on business and technology, “Digital Domain”, as well as a professor of organization and management at San Jose State University, which is based in the heart of Silicon Valley. His book The Microsoft Way (Addison Wesley, 1996) was the most critically acclaimed book about Microsoft at the height of the company’s power, and his book eBoys (Crown, 2000) was one of the most successful books about the web 1.0 phenomenon, for which he was given full access to the venture capitalists who funded eBay and was able to tell the inside story of how and why eBay took off.