While everyone has been warily watching Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) entry into the TV business and the company's interference (at least to some) with net neutrality via an agreement with Verizon (NYSE: VZ), the Silicon Valley monster hasn't forgotten its roots. It is, first, foremost and most profitably, a search engine.
Google has capitalized on that foundation and, it hopes, pushed back some of the competition from Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Bing with Google Instant, a new product that predicts Internet search queries as soon as the searcher begins to type.
"We want to make Google the third half of your brain," Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder said at a press event, evidencing the same fuzzy math that has a hold on broadcasters. "There's even a psychic element to it."
Paranormal or normal, the new search device should further entrench Google in consumer minds and make it easier for the company to push into new competitive areas like TV, advertising and cellphones.
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