But if these tablets do come on the market, will they catch on? And will you be getting one anytime soon? Well, to try to answer that question, let’s take a look at tablet computing history.

Tablet Evolution, not Revolution

First, let’s just lay this on the table – tablet computers are not new. A few years ago tablet computers burst onto the scene with a lot of promise, only to be relegated to niche markets and specific uses.

While it showed to be quite interesting, it is my opinion that the implementation was not right. The Windows based pen computer was virtually a windows computer with a few goodies thrown in for the pen. Sure, journal and the sticky notes were definitely interesting, and it allowed a lot of freedom when using the pen. But merely replacing the mouse with a pen and adding a few specialized functions is probably a good entry into the “How not to introduce a new computing paradigm” playbook.

The pen took longer to enter data than a keyboard did, and the interface was designed for a mouse. The tablet computer suffered, despite a few holdouts that actually liked a pen computer (I still love my TC1100).

Where tablets are now

As mentioned, the CES 2010 brought out a lot of tablets that will soon see the light of day. And the majority of them are running Windows 7. Aha, isn’t that an OS designed for a mouse? Did we not just go through that with the last round of pen tablets?

Sad to say, we did. Windows with a touch screen is, in this writer’s opinion, not a finger friendly OS. Sure, it does finer touches now – multiple simultaneous touches, even. But even a quick look at a screen shows you that they are using the same screen mechanics as a mouse does for the most part.

The interface is not designed for a pen, much less a finger. Yet the bulk of the new tablet market is going to be running this OS, apparently. So, why would the average person want to forgo the mouse and use their finger instead?

The answer is this – they have no reason to do so. If the tablet computing paradigm continues to be introduced with a mouse designed interface, then we can stick a fork in it. Outside of a few niche areas (and I am in one of those, to be sure), you can call tablet computing done.

Tablet Computers, From the Ground Up

So, if sticking Windows 7 on a tablet with touchpad support is not going to make it work, then what is? Well, the answer to that might just be in recent history. Recent Mobile history, to be exact.

Windows Mobile has seen a good run, and from its early inception to the latest version (sans Windows Mobile 7, if that ever does see the light of day), it has sold in the millions. They precede a lot of the current competition in mobile OS, and they carry with it the branding of the world’s most popular desktop operating system. They should have the market.

But they don’t, and a few relatively new competitors are ripping through the market, leaving Windows Mobile behind in their dust, at least for now. What did they do wrong?

Simple – they implemented an interface that was too much like the desktop. The mouse-evolved screen elements took up a lot of precious screen real estate. As a long time user of Windows Mobile (also known by the more correct name, Pocket PC), I can attest that you needed a good stylus and a steady hand to make use of the interface. It may have been labeled mobile, but you had to stop to see what you were doing.

A New Interface

But recently a competitor released a phone that had an interface designed from the ground up to be finger centric. The iPhone, by Apple, showed us exactly how you could scroll a list using a touch screen without a single tiny scroll bar on the side. Suddenly a finger would actually work, and screen elements such as drop down lists were accommodating to the user, not the other way around. The result was a great success.

On its heels, computing giant Google has released its Android operating system, again designed to be finger friendly from the ground up. The Android name is finding its way onto many different handsets, and the end result is that a touch screen device is becoming accepted as the normal smartphone of choice, no stylus required.

Interface Impact

So, how does this affect tablet computers? Well, if the rumor mill proves to be true, then there are new tablets coming on the market that run these operating systems. This is perhaps the biggest difference from the earlier attempt at making tablets a mainstream device.

A tablet device running an interface that is finger-centric by design, not mouse-centric with allowances, is in my opinion enough to turn the tide and opens the door for these sleek machines.

It really does come down to this – it must be conveniently easy to use. Otherwise the new crop of tablets are again headed for the niche markets and power users only. You have to give the users a reason to use a tablet, not let them make do with a tablet.

Is a tablet in your future?

With that said, I am curious as to how the average computer user feels about the new crop of tablets. Would you want a Windows 7 device so that you can run existing software? Or would you want a new design that allows a new software design to interface to your lifestyle?

This type of interface is a classic tool in gee-whiz science fiction. But the hard science behind it is even more wow-inducing.

Researchers are already using brain-computer interfaces to aid the disabled, treat diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and provide therapy for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Work is under way on devices that may eventually let you communicate with friends telepathically, give you superhuman hearing and vision or even let you download data directly into your brain, a la “The Matrix.”

Researchers are practically giddy over the prospects. “We don’t know what the limits are yet,” says Melody Moore Jackson, director of Georgia Tech University’s BrainLab.

Adds Emory University neuroscience professor Michael Crutcher, “Anything can happen.”

At the root of all this technology is the 3-pound generator we all carry in our head. It produces electricity at the microvolt level. But the signals are strong enough to move robots, wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs — with the help of an external processor.

Harnessing that power “opens up a whole new paradigm for us as human beings,” says neuroscientist Rajesh Rao of the University of Washington.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) come in two varieties. Noninvasive techniques use electrodes placed on the scalp to measure electrical activity. Invasive procedures implant electrodes directly into the brain. In both cases, the devices interact with a computer to produce a wide variety of applications, ranging from medical breakthroughs and military-tech advances to futuristic video games and toys.

Much of the research focuses on neuroprosthetics, which offer a way for the brain to compensate for injuries and illness. Jackson helped develop an intelligent wheelchair called the Aware Chair, which can be guided by neural activity.

She is also working on communication programs for people who have been paralyzed by strokes or spinal-cord injuries. Implanted electrodes allow “locked in” patients to spell out messages by manipulating a computer cursor with their thoughts alone.

Rao is tapping into that same concept to help paralyzed people manipulate robots to fetch items or move things around the house. With cameras to provide visual feedback, the patients and robots don’t even need to be in the same room, or the same city. Rao says the technology “frees the mind from the constraints of the body.”

Cochlear implants are the most common neuroprosthetic. They help the brain interpret sounds and are sometimes called “bionic ears” for the deaf. Other researchers are looking for similar ways to help blind people see. Neurobiologist Ed Boyden of MIT says miniature optical devices can be implanted to convert photoreceptors into workable cameras for the brain.

None of this comes cheap. Most research is funded by deep pockets such as the National Institutes of Health, the defense department and NASA.

But every breakthrough brings the most advanced BCI technologies closer to the mass market. Jackson says she foresees a day when people with disabilities can spend a few hundred dollars instead of $20,000 on a workable system.

Mainstreaming the technology raises some troubling issues for Crutcher, who teaches a course at Emory in neuro-ethics. He fears that expensive eye and ear implants could produce a computer-enhanced elite.

“If only the rich can afford it, it puts everyone else at a disadvantage,” says Crutcher, who believes many aspects of BCI are ripe for abuse. Just the idea of mucking about with a person’s brain “raises questions about safety and efficacy,” he says.

One of the more controversial uses under development is telepathy. It would require at least two people to be implanted with electrodes that send and receive signals back and forth.

DARPA, the Pentagon’s technology research division, is currently working on an initiative called “Silent Talk,” which would let soldiers on secret missions communicate with their thoughts alone. This stealth component is attractive, but naysayers fear that such soldiers could become manipulated for evil means.

Telepathy implants won’t replace Facebook and Twitter anytime soon, but that possibility is problematic as well.

“You can imagine communicating with your friends through the devices, and that opens up a lot of ethical issues,” Rao says. Would you want your friends and family to know everything you are thinking? Would little white lies become obsolete?

These questions of morality and liability are not a huge factor for the toy makers and video game developers who are already bringing the most basic BCI technology to consumers.

Games like Mindflex and the Star Wars Force Trainer use headsets with simple electrodes to monitor levels of concentration and relaxation. The signals trigger a fan that can move a ball up or down, depending on how hard you’re thinking. Jackson calls it a “fascinating application of a very sophisticated technology in a very cheap package.”

The headsets used in both games were designed by the California company Neurosky. Its corporate partners are working on games that help Alzheimer’s patients improve memory techniques, teach concentration skills to kids with ADHD and let stressed- out CEOs work on relaxing.

Software entrepreneurs and executives are streaming into Boyden’s neuro-ventures class at MIT, looking for ways to capitalize on the array of potential uses for brain-computer interfaces.

Some ventures are already up and running. NeuroVigil in California is working on iBrain, designed, in part, to help provide instant feedback to drivers who start falling asleep at the wheel. Eos Neuroscience is developing light-sensitive protein-based sensors that can treat blindness.

Numerous companies are developing video games based on direct brain-computer interfacing. Neurosky sells a wireless headset that connects to any computer for a series of brain-training games. NeuroBoy lets you set targets on fire just by concentrating on them. Relax, and your character levitates. Another application lets you see a colorful visualization of your brain-wave activity.

Boyden expects to see many more such products hitting shelves sooner rather than later. He says the possibilities are endless if just a “fraction of the business leaders” taking his class start “bringing the technology into the world.”

Users can touch the screen to activate controls on the display but as soon as they lift their finger off the screen, the system can interpret their gestures in the third dimension, too. In effect, it turns the whole display into a giant sensor capable of telling where your hands are and how far away from the screen they are.

“The goal with this is to be able to incorporate the gestural display into a thin LCD device like a cell phone and to be able to do it without wearing gloves or anything like that,” says Matthew Hirsch, a doctoral candidate at the Media Lab who helped develop the system. MIT, which will present the idea at the Siggraph conference on Dec. 19.

The latest gestural interface system is interesting because it has the potential to be produced commercially, says Daniel Wigdor, a user experience architect for Microsoft.

“Research systems in the past put thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment around the room to detect gestures and show it to users,” he says. “What’s exciting about MIT’s latest system is that it is starting to move towards a form factor where you can actually imagine a deployment.”

Gesture recognition is the area of user interface research that tries to translate movement of the hand into on-screen commands. The idea is to simplify the way we interact with computers and make the process more natural. That means you could wave your hand to scroll pages, or just point a finger at the screen to drag windows around.

MIT has become a hotbed for researchers working in the area of gestural computing. Last year, an MIT researcher showed a wearable gesture interface called the ‘SixthSense’ that recognizes basic hand movements.

But most existing systems involve expensive cameras or require you to wear different-colored tracking tags on your fingers. Some systems use small cameras that can be embedded into the display to capture gestural information. But even with embedded cameras, the drawback is that the cameras are offset from the center of the screen and won’t work well at short distances. They also can’t switch effortlessly between gestural commands (waving your hands in the air) and touchscreen commands (actually touching the screen).

The latest MIT system uses an array of optical sensors that are arranged right behind a grid of liquid crystals, similar to those used in LCD displays. The sensors can capture the image of a finger when it is pressed against the screen. But as the finger moves away the image gets blurred.

By displacing the layer of optical sensors slightly relative to the liquid crystals array, the researchers can modulate the light reaching the sensors and use it capture depth information, among other things.

In this case, the liquid crystals serve as a lens and help generate a black-and-white pattern that lets light through to the sensors. That pattern alternates rapidly with whatever the image that the LCD is displaying, so the viewer doesn’t notice the pattern.

The pattern also allows the system to decode the images better, capturing the same depth information that a pinhole array would, but doing it much more quickly, say the MIT researchers.

The idea is so novel that MIT researchers haven’t been able to get LCDs with built-in optical sensors to test, though they say companies such as Sharp and Planar have plans to produce them soon.

For now, Hirsch and his colleagues at MIT have mocked up a display in the lab to run their experiments. The mockup uses a camera that is placed some distance from the screen to record the images that pass through the blocks of black-and-white squares.

The bi-directional screens from MIT can be manufactured in a thin, portable package that requires few additional components compared with LCD screens already in production, says MIT. (See video below for an explanation of how it works.)

Despite the ease of production, it will be five to ten years before such a system could make it into the hands of consumers, cautions Microsoft’s Wigdor. Even with the hardware in hand, it’ll take at least that long before companies like Microsoft make software that can make use of gestures.

“The software experience for gestural interface systems is unexplored in the commercial space,” says Wigdor.

Retrieving information from the Web when you’re on the go can be a challenge. To make it easier, graduate student Pranav Mistry has developed SixthSense, a device that is worn like a pendant and super­imposes digital information on the physical world. Unlike previous “augmented reality” systems, Mistry’s consists of in­expensive, off-the-shelf hardware. Two cables connect an LED projector and webcam to a Web-enabled mobile phone, but the system can easily be made wireless, says Mistry.

Users control SixthSense with simple hand gestures; putting your fingers and thumbs together to create a picture frame tells the camera to snap a photo, while drawing an @ symbol in the air allows you to check your e-mail. It is also designed to automatically recognize objects and retrieve relevant information: hold up a book, for instance, and the device projects reader ratings from sites like Amazon.com onto its cover. With text-to-speech software and a Bluetooth headset, it can “whisper” the information to you instead.

Remarkably, Mistry developed SixthSense in less than five months, and it costs under $350 to build (not including the phone). Users must currently wear colored “marker­s” on their fingers so that the system can track their hand gestures, but he is designing algorithms that will enable the phone to recognize them directly.

Each day more and more people are opening up their email inbox to find an invite to Google Wave (Google Wave). With that shiny new invite comes the inevitable quest for ideas about to how to put the medium to good use.

Should you happen to be one of those people, we’ve got a number of different resources that you can use to get up to speed with Google Wave. This time around, however, we wanted to look at how people are actually using it now. From process modelling and customer service, to project collaboration, annotation, and gaming, the examples listed here highlight the power of the newborn medium, and in part, showcase what we can expect as the platform matures.

1. SAP Gravity: Modeling within Google Wave

Understanding the power of real-time collaboration and its relevance to clients, SAP Research in Australia (Australia) has developed a business process modeling tool called Gravity that works within Google Wave.

The sophisticated tool, which can be embedded within a Wave as a gadget, allows for team members to remotely build complex models in unison, or after catching up via playback, without having to leave Google Wave.

Gravity and Google Wave work together harmoniously to create a modeling environment that appears to be just as robust as, if not more flexible than, expensive desktop software built for the same purpose.

We think SAP is certainly on to something here, and we encourage you to watch the video demonstration of Gravity in Google Wave in action.

2. Salesforce: Google Wave for Customer Service

Salesforce, like SAP, has figured out that they can use the Google Wave platform to support client needs and tackle real-life problems. As such, Salesforce has created a Google Wave extension that clients can use to help automate, and even personalize, the customer service experience.

Watch the demonstration video to see how the Salesforce extension gives customers the ability to use Google Wave to interact with an automated support robot. Of course, customers can request assistance from a human within the Wave as well.

What makes this example stand out is the fact that not only is the Google Wave dialogue being stored as a case record within Salesforce, but, because the robot is connected to the Salesforce Service Cloud, the robot can access previously stored customer data for tailored service. Ultimately, Salesforce has found a way to potentially save clients money on customer service efforts, all the while maintaining active records, with the assistance of Google Wave.

3. Mingle: Integrated Project Collaboration

Mingle is a project management and team collaboration tool developed by ThoughtWorks Studios, who realized that they could add Mingle’s project management metadata to conversations in Google Wave.

The integration is still a work in progress, but a demonstration of the concept was highlighted at Enterprise 2.0, and the basic idea is to give Google Wave users/Mingle clients the ability to bring their Mingle task data, which takes the form of cards, into Google Wave. Existing Mingle cards can be embedded into Wave conversation threads, and new Mingle cards/tasks can be created within Google Wave.

This particular use case highlights how Google Wave can work with existing project management systems for more streamlined and cohesive communication, creating parity regardless of where the user is accessing project data.

4. Ecomm Conference: Annotating a Live Event

Just last week our CEO, Pete Cashmore, wrote about how the savvy people behind the Ecomm conference doled out Wave accounts to attendees so that they could collaborate, in real-time, to annotate presentation content. The result was arguably a much better way to consume conference content than attempting to follow hashtag tweets on Twitter (Twitter).

You can read the full account, which was documented by Charlie Osmond, on the FreshNetworks blog, but here’s an excerpt that we think drives home the utility of the use case.

“Here’s what happened: an audience member would create a Google Wave and others in the audience would edit the wave during the presentation. The result would be a crowd-sourced write-up of the presentation: a transcript of key points and a record of audience comments.”

We happen to think this particular use case is genius, especially for content-rich seminars and events where attendees are typically taking their own individual notes. With the shared Google Wave experience they can combine forces to create a more meaningful and accurate recounting of information shared in conference sessions.

5. Gamers: Google Wave RPGs

A very detailed Ars Technica post highlights that there’s a growing collection of Google Wave users who are using the medium to play wave-borne RPGs (role playing games). As mentioned in the post, there’s a even a Wave dedicated to serving as an index for all the Wave RPGs currently in existence, and the last time we counted it included upwards of 300 contributing members, and a combination of 30 different ideas or full-fledged games.

According to Jon Stokes, the author of the post, Google Wave is adequate for some RPGs, but it could certainly be improved to allow for a more enjoyable experience. In the excerpt below, Stokes describes the current RPG (RPG) experience within Google Wave:

“The few games I’m following typically have at least three waves: one for recruiting and general discussion, another for out-of-character interactions (”table talk”), and the main wave where the actual in-character gaming takes place. Individual players are also encouraged to start waves between themselves for any conversations that the GM shouldn’t be privy to. Character sheets can be posted in a private wave between a player and the GM, and character biographies can go anywhere where the other players can get access to them.

The waves are persistent, accessible to anyone who’s added to them, and include the ability to track changes, so they ultimately work quite well as a medium for the non-tactical parts of an RPG. A newcomer can jump right in and get up-to-speed on past interactions, and a GM or industrious player can constantly maintain the official record of play by going back and fixing errors, formatting text, adding and deleting material, and reorganizing posts. Character generation seems to work quite well in Wave, since players can develop the shared character sheet at their own pace with periodic feedback from the GM.”

More cellphone makers are turning to the free Android operating system made by Microsoft’s latest nemesis, Google.

Cellphone makers that have used Windows Mobile to run their top-of-the-line smartphones — including Samsung, LG, Kyocera, Sony Ericsson — are now also making Android devices. Twelve Android handsets have been announced this year, with dozens more expected next year. Motorola has dropped Windows Mobile from its line entirely in a switch to Android. HTC, a major cellphone maker, expects half its phones sold this year to run Android. Dell is using Android for its entry into the cellphone market.

All four of the largest carriers in the United States have now agreed to offer Android phones. When the first Android handset, the G1 from HTC, was introduced last fall, only T-Mobile offered it. Now, Verizon, the largest carrier, is putting a huge promotional push behind the Droid from Motorola, set to be introduced this week. Even AT&T, the home of the iPhone, recently said it would join the Android party next year.

Google is rapidly introducing updates to Android, each named after a bakery sweet. Version 1.5 (cupcake) came out in April, version 1.6 (donut) appeared in September. Version 2.0 (éclair) is expected to appear on the Droid.

“A lot of manufacturers are walking into our office and talking about how important Android is becoming to them,” said Cole Brodman, the chief development officer of T-Mobile, the first carrier to sell phones with Google’s software. “Android is ramping with more manufacturers and more price points. It is going to have a pretty significant impact.”

Android is on only 1.8 percent of smartphones worldwide, according to Gartner, and Windows Mobile software still dwarfs Android. But Microsoft is slipping. The percentage of smartphones using the Windows Mobile system has plummeted to 9.3 percent, from 12 percent in the second quarter of 2008. Microsoft fell behind Apple, which shot up to 13.3 percent, from 2.8 percent. (Nokia’s Symbian operating system is the world leader, followed by Research In Motion’s OS for its BlackBerrys.)

Android does have its share of doubters. “The industry has decided that Android is going to be a huge hit, but I’m skeptical,” said Tero Kuittinen, an analyst with MKM Partners. “To have legs, you have to be a hit. The first three Android devices didn’t connect with the mass market.”

Nevertheless, Android is free, while Windows Mobile costs manufacturers $15 to $25 a phone.

Google’s software is intended for modern screens you tap with a finger, while Windows Mobile was built for use with a stylus. Android has attracted far more applications for consumers in the first year than Windows Mobile has in a decade. As a result, Android is winning over the world’s largest cellphone makers.

One part of the appeal is that, unlike other operating systems, Android is open source software, so anyone can use or change it.

“We have access to the source code,” said Sanjay Jha, the co-chief executive of Motorola. “To do that on any other platform would be very difficult.”

HTC, the Taiwanese cellphone company that has grown quickly in recent years making only Windows Mobile phones, also finds the customization attractive because Android phones allow users to add apps. “Customers are really embracing personalization, and Android brings that to the forefront,” said Jason Mackenzie, HTC’s vice president for North America.

Windows Mobile, by contrast, appeals more to corporate computing managers who like how it connects to Microsoft’s e-mail and office software.

“A year ago, we significantly changed our strategy,” said Andrew Lees, Microsoft’s senior vice president for the Windows Mobile effort. “Our value proposition is you can get your business and your consumer scenarios on the PC, and in a relevant way for you on the phone.”

But Microsoft has not announced a release date for Windows Mobile 7.

“You will see a speedy set of innovation for us in the next 6, 12, 24 months,” said Robert J. Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division at a news media event in New York to introduce a quick revision of the operating system called Windows Mobile 6.5. “Should we have picked up on the trends a little sooner? It’s hard not to say we should have,” he added.

So far, Microsoft has not been able to answer critics who say its operating system is old, slow and hard to use.

“Windows Mobile is simply dated, and that hasn’t changed in this release,” said Avi Greengart, research director for consumer devices at Current Analysis.

Indeed, a J. D. Power & Associates survey found that Windows Mobile had the lowest satisfaction rating among customers of any smartphone operating system. The iPhone has by far the most satisfying software, the study found. Android is a distant second, followed closely by BlackBerry’s operating system.

Windows Mobile scored below average on every attribute, said Kirk Parsons, director of the study, especially in ease of operation, speed and stability.

Android’s supporters say that in contrast, Google’s software and the devices that run it are evolving very quickly.

“They started with the base layer of capabilities,” Kevin Packingham, senior vice president for product and technology development at Sprint. “What was missing from the first generation was the user interface that really gets to consumers.”

Mr. Packingham said he was confident that Android phones would gain popularity.

“In the next year, there is the potential for Android to have huge growth and market share,” he said.

In researching his new book, Googled: the End of the World as We Know It, to be published next week by Penguin Press, author Ken Auletta had extensive access to the company’s inner workings and reported widely on its impact on the media landscape.

In a Fortune.com exclusive, he offers ten enduring lessons drawn from his journey into Google’s realm:

1. Passion wins

Start with the words of advice — “Don’t settle” — that Larry Page offered the Stanford graduating class in 2002. This intensity was revealed in the zeal with which he and Sergey Brin inspired the entire company to “serve the user,” to take more risks, to radically improve search.

Or as CEO Eric Schmidt told me: while he assumed that “Google would be an important company; the founders always assumed that Google would be a defining company.”

A moment after venture capitalist Michael Moritz finished describing Google as “a rare” company, I asked Moritz, an early investor in both Yahoo and Google, whether he felt the same enthusiasm for Yahoo.

He winced, hesitated, then finally said: “Yahoo is a company I’ve been close to for a long time and feel a lot of affection and loyalty towards. But within the first 18 months to two years of being associated with Google, I began to understand this was a very different company than Yahoo. It was rooted in the studies of the founders. Google was built on a foundation of Larry’s and Sergey’s intellectual pursuits. Yahoo was built on the foundations of Jerry’s and David’s interests. And there’s a big gulf between those two.”

That deficit of passion, he suggested, was a reason that Jerry Yang and David Filo chose not to be fully engaged full-time with the company they created.

2. Focus is required

Passion without focus can lead you astray. Bill Campbell, chairman of Intuit and a Silicon Valley mentor who spends a couple of days each week at Google, thinks the key to Google’s success is “focused passion.” He credits Schmidt for bringing a focus to the founders.

In an interview with Betsy Morris of Fortune, Steve Jobs offered an interesting and, typically, upside-down perspective on focus: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the 100 other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the many things we haven’t done as the things we have done.”

Media mogul Barry Diller, who had an unsettling session with Page and Brin in the early days of Google, when Page would not look up from his PDA to talk to him, now thinks what might be construed as rudeness was really focus.

“They had their own method of communicating and processing,” Diller said. “They give much less quarter than other people do to common business courtesies. They’ve stayed true to this. It’s a spectacular strength. It means you never get de-focused by the crowd.”

3. Vision is required too

Without vision, even the most focused passion is a battery without a device. “Don’t be evil” is a vague incantation. But Page and Brin’s effort to make “all the world’s information available,”and to first and foremost serve users, is a vision.

It’s one that successfully drove Google to index the Web, make news and books searchable, treat ads as information and to reject dollars if the ads were not “relevant,” help users search for the best or cheapest products, find simple travel directions, store and search their e-mail, and share calendar information.

Such a vision does not come from survey research. In his 2005 speech to graduating engineers at the University of Michigan, Page told them they didn’t have to go to business school. He said he had read an entire shelf of business books when he was younger, and among the lessons he learned was that “many of the amazing insights that happen in business actually come from people who really aren’t in the business.”

4. A team culture is vital

Google’s allocation of 20% of employee time to projects of their own choice give them a sense of proprietorship. True to its open-source, wisdom-of-the-crowd ideals, Google has created a networked management that functions from the bottom-up as well as the top-down. In both directions, it unleashes ideas and effort.

As Larry Page astutely observes: “There is a pattern in companies, even in technological companies, that the people who do the work — the engineers, the programmers, the foot soldiers if you will — typically get rolled over by the management … you end up kind of demoralized. You want to have a culture where the people who are doing the work, the scientists and the engineers, are empowered. And that they are managed by people who deeply understand what they are doing.”

5. Treat engineers as kings

For most Valley companies, engineers are the equivalent of the television writer, the movie director, the book author. They are the creators. The 20% time Google grants its engineers gives them a sense that they are liberated to take risks, to follow their passions.

Innovation, as Bill Campbell told The McKinsey Quarterly, comes when “the crazy guys have stature, where engineers really are important…. empowered engineers are the single most important thing that you can have in a company.”

It is no accident that Page and Brin and Schmidt spend so many hours each week in meetings with engineers. For most traditional media companies, the engineer is less central.

However, as digital is now part of the mainstream, and as older media companies struggle to master its challenges, they would do well to heed the advice Google’s David Eun offers: Don’t do what these companies traditionally do and stick “the geeks in a corner.” Instead, CEO’s should have at their elbow “a top Chief Technical Officer.”

6. Treat customers like a king

An important reason Google is usually listed among the world’s most trusted brands is that it conveys a sense that the user comes first. Advertising may produce 97% of Google’s revenues, but to a user it doesn’t feel that way. Google services are free, and they’re user friendly, just as an iPod is.

The lessons Larry Page took away from reading Donald A. Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things while a graduate student at Stanford, helped shape Google’s approach to its customers. Or as Page said, “Having an attitude that your customer or users are always right, and your goal is to build systems that work for them in a natural way, is a good attitude to have.”

To understand how Google earned the trust of its users, go back to its 2004 IPO. Again and again it referred to the users as sacrosanct: “We believe that our user focus is the foundation of our success to date. We also believe that this focus is critical for the creation of long-term value. We do not intend to compromise our user focus for short-term economic gain.”

By focusing on the user, Page and Brin provided an organizing principle for Google employees that echoed Sam Walton’s adage: ” ‘If you don’t listen to your customers, someone else will.’”

7. Every company is a frenemy

What Lord Palmerston said of nations applies as well to corporations: There are no permanent allies, only permanent interests. A medium like the internet blurs the borders between companies, sometimes making it more difficult to sight a potential rival or to distinguish between ally and foe.

Google started as a search engine, but quickly realized it could efficiently sell ads or aggregate news or search books or use its infrastructure to create cloud computing or expand into video by acquiring YouTube or expand into mobile devices.

At the same time, Google’s AdSense helps newspapers by supplying them with ad dollars; AdWords partners with ad agencies to sell products; YouTube is a coveted promotional platform for the television networks; Android software supplies an operating system for more than a few mobile telephone companies.

These horizontal ambitions, coupled with the fears aroused by the speed of technological change, inevitably frays the bond of trust among companies. Most companies become frenemies, both cooperating and competing.

8. Don’t ignore the human factor

As a journalist, the deeper one burrows, the more complicated narratives and the people who populate them usually become. Among the enduring truths I keep bumping into when there is the luxury of time to get to know people or institutions, is that their decisions are often made for what are not, strictly speaking, reasons of logic. These can be ascribed to human factors. How to measure wisdom, judgment, sensitivity, relationships?

Google has been wise in winning the trust of its users, in building a team culture, and in thinking long-term. But when you start from a blanket assumption that the old ways of doing things are probably wrong, as Google does, you’re bound to make unwise mistakes.

Page was unwise to assume Google could immediately digitize all books, just as Google was wrong to assume that it could devise formulas to better sell ads for newspapers and broadcast radio, two efforts it has since abandoned. Google has not always been wise in avoiding battles, in being insensitive to copyright, or privacy, or the concerns of government.

9. There are no certitudes

Today, Google appears impregnable. But a decade ago so did AOL, and so did the combination of AOL Time Warner.

“There is nothing about their model that makes them invulnerable,” Clayton Christensen, the Harvard business historian and author of the seminal, The Innovators Dilemma, told me. “Think IBM. They had a 70% market share of mainframe computers. Then the government decided to challenge them. Then the PC emerged.”

Seemingly overnight, computing moved from mainframes to PCs. “Lots of companies are successful and are applauded by the financial community,” Christensen said. “Then their stock price stalls because they are no longer surprising investors with their growth. So they strive to grow but forget the principles that made them great — getting into the market quickly, not throwing money at the wrong thing. When you have so much money you become so patient that you wait too long. Look at Microsoft. No one can fault them for not investing in growth ideas. But none of these have grown up to be the next Windows.”

Maybe, Christensen added, we are now beginning to “see this at Google.” The company has poured money into YouTube and Android and cloud computing, but has yet “to figure out the business model for each.”

10. “Life is long but time is short.”

The words belong to Eric Schmidt, who explained: “Life is long in the sense that we have long memories. Time is short in that you have to move very quickly. But to me the most important thing to know is that life has a way of working things out. We forget so quickly what the problem was three or four years ago. So my personal view of life is that every problem is an opportunity.”

This is a reason to think and act boldly, as Google has, to take risks, and not to be anchored down by “long memories.”