Shares of Google rose to an all-time new high today onpositive analyst comments and an uptick in trading for major internet companies. The company's shares rose $9.02 to $534.02 and now has a market cap of $163.6bn. Google is certainly a major force in the market, if you were to compare market cap across the major tech vendors it ranks only behind Microsoft and is ahead of IBM, Intel, Oracle and SAP.  

So what's on Google's agenda? What's under the hood? Well, if they told me they would have to kill me. Death by search by advertising by application by maps by 411 you get the point.  

Here's what some of the Active Analysis Knowledge Syndicate team members thought...

Q: What do you think is really on Googe's agenda?

Person A: Commoditization of every software function essential to business and personal use: operating systems, word processing, desktop publishing, data reduction, etc. leading to universality of software distribution and multiuser collaboration via the internet. Google is pushing universal transition to revenue model based on advertising rather than software sale.

Person B: I suspect that Google wants to cover all bases for advertising revenue. They've got PC-based search for data, youtube, etc. The company is working on speech as well, but I bet part of the reason is the near term expectation for ads on your phone and 'click through' search fees generated from voice searches. 

Person C: Gee, what isn't on it?  Maybe taking over world government?

Person D: Google is in a very unique position in the market. The company is definitely an innovator and is dictating the market in many areas, especially advertising. It will introduce and capitalize on new types of advertising media over the next decade or so until the next big innovator enters the market. Whether it's web, video, phone, mobile web or multimodal type environments Google will have a strong presence. The company's strategy seems to be #1 optimize advertising (pay per click), #2 become pervasive (sound familiar) and #3 improve the user interface (GUI and VUI).

Conclusion: Advertising definitely seems to stick out as Google's mantra and it seems like the vendor is following all the right steps. It is capitalizing on the shift in marketing dollars from traditional media (radio, newspaper, magazine, tv) to new media. To extrapolate that into my world of voice technology research it will be one of a couple vendors that will bring the voice user interface mainstream.