After Google had one of the most successful IPOs in history, in August, 2004, raising a staggering amount of cash, the company set forth on an incredibly audacious new strategy for its future, a vision so bold, large-scale and in many ways so troubling that the company has worked very hard to keep it totally under wraps. Randy Stross has achieved unprecedented access to the Google headquarters and top management, including notoriously close-to-the-vest CEO Eric Schmidt, and to a wide range of sources who have worked with Google or monitored its activities, and he will reveal in this book for the first time the astonishing scale and scope of what Google is setting out to accomplish, and also explore the profound implications for not only the business world, but for our culture at large.