So … Google buys Dodgeball, the social networking company that provides localized buddy alerts to members on their cell phones, and everyone wonders what Google is up to. Gary Price at SEW puzzles over how this acquisition fits into Google's mandate to organize the sum of human knowledge. Nobody outside of Google really knows its master plan, if it has one, but the "Organize the world's information" idea is long gone—or, should never have been taken in a limited literal sense. From a business sense, Google is an advertising company, not a knowledge company. Only by interpreting information to include desire and fulfillment can the company's keyword-advertising models be considered a knowledge business. Organizing information occurs on the front end, but in the back end, where Google conducts its business, the company is all about owning the consumer's quest for satisfaction. Satisfying the user's quest for knowledge doesn't earn revenue unless "knowledge" includes products and services.

Dodgeball is another way to own the consumer. Considering the diversity of Google's acquisitions, I think owning the user in any way possible is probably the goal. Google suffers an enormous disadvantage in its competition with Yahoo! and Microsoft, both of which own gigantic databases of user registrations. Google's in-house registration gateways are mostly uncompelling: Google Groups, Gmail, Google Free, Site-Flavored Search, Google Answers, etc.. AdWords and AdSense do attract significant users, but those registrants must be considered business partners as much as consumers. They particiapte in the back end, not necessarily the front end. Dodgeball is strictly consumer. So are Picassa and Blogger. Nobody knows what Google will ultimately do with these properties. But we know what Google has purchased: large footprints of registered users.