Google has dazzled the tech world with a series of new features, acquisitions and a hiring binge of stellar figures such as Vint Cerf. But what is the company really up to?

Author Stephen Arnold says Google is this era's transformational computing platform and could be about to push aside Microsoft from the center of the technology universe.

In the ebook , "The Google Legacy; How Google's Internet Search is Transforming Application Software," Arnold says Google is about much more than search.

Google's computing platform, which Arnold calls Googleplex after the name of the company's Mountain View, Calif. headquarters, is a faster, cheaper and simpler computer processor and operating system than competitor systems, he says. Its price advantage is five or six to one over other hardware. Massively parallelized and distributed, its processing capability can be expanded indefinitely.

In addition, Google has re-coded Linux to meet its needs, Arnold says. This re-coding enables Google to deploy numerous current and future applications -- 50 or more -- without degrading performance.

Google products have the potential to be assembled into a version of MS Office -- including word processing -- and many other applications.

"Google has a next-generation computing platform," Arnold writes in a sample chapter. "That platform is optimized to deliver virtual applications to its users worldwide."

Send via e-mail | Submit to Digg | Add to Live Favorites