more on google (actually adding this on 22 August):
Where Does Google Plan to Spend $4 Billion?
The space elevator is one of the dozens of business ideas that have been considered by the company's wide-eyed founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. It also is one of the ideas that the company's chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, has taken pride in keeping "below the line." It has been Mr. Schmidt's ability to keep the company focused on its stated mission of "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful" that has so far made the company a powerful threat to larger rivals like Microsoft.
The 4,100-employee company that the three computer scientists have built has maintained a marked predisposition toward building and not buying its future. Indeed, its acquisitions to date have exclusively been of small technology start-ups led by designers whom Google wanted to hire.
That is a marked contrast to its two main competitors, the Microsoft Corporation and Yahoo, which have recently turned to high-profile acquisitions to enter new markets.
Google's preference has been instead to try to create new markets from scratch or to redefine existing ones when it enters them.

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