拉里•佩奇眼中的未来

    编者按：1月3日，《财富》发表本文时，美国联邦贸易委员会（Federal Trade Commission）结束了对谷歌搜索业务的调查，称未发现该公司操纵搜索结果、违反反垄断法的证据。欧洲委员会（European Commission）和其他监管机构继续就此问题展开调查。

    去年秋天，广告巨头WPP集团（WPP Group）的CEO马丁•索里尔爵士访问谷歌（Google），谷歌CEO拉里•佩奇派了辆车到大约20英里远的紫檀酒店（Rosewood Hotel）去接他。但这不是辆普通的车。这辆雷克萨斯SUV能够自动驾驶。这归功于很多高科技工具，包括雷达、传感器和每秒进行150多万次测量的激光扫描器。在大约20分钟的时间里，这辆车利用自动驾驶仪在280号洲际公路和该地区繁忙的85号公路上行驶，迅速修正航向，接近交通信号灯时会减速，进入邻近车辆的盲点区域时会加速脱离。索里尔说：“简直不可思议。”

    佩奇的无人驾驶汽车服务并非只是娱乐来宾的小把戏。正如佩奇将对任何愿意聆听的人所说的那样，这就是交通运输的未来。不用担心大多数人会认为自动驾驶汽车的想法很可笑、很危险或者不那么有趣，因为佩奇用工程师那种冷静客观的逻辑证明自动驾驶汽车是可行的。佩奇是两个幼子的父亲，他坚持认为他看重的这个项目一旦准备就绪，就能切实地提高安全性。很快谷歌就能够模拟人们的驾驶方式，“但请确保你不会死或者撞死其他人”，他在私人“牛栏”里接受采访时这样对我说道。他也是在那里会见他的高级副手们。他有条不紊地列举了无人驾驶汽车的其他优点，包括节能（交通的运行将更有效率）和提高生产力（节省下来的上下班时间可用于其他事务），还有成本节约，仅谷歌就能节省数百万美元。他说，谷歌总部园区（Google plex）的停车位紧缺，新车库的报价达到每辆车40,000美元。为什么不让汽车把你送下车，然后自己到园区外找个地方停车呢？佩奇问道。“每当你需要它时，”他说。“你可以用手机通知汽车你正在走出办公楼。等你走到楼下时，你的车已经等在那里了。”

    听起来像是《杰森一家》（Jetsons）和上世纪八十年代电视剧《霹雳游侠》（Knight Rider）的疯狂搭配，但这就是佩奇想让谷歌创造的那种未来。这个伟大的想法令他激动不已。自从谷歌在1998年成立以来，佩奇和共同创始人谢尔盖•布林就致力于使这家公司长期押注于大胆想法。其中很多想法已经迅速变成了必不可少的产品。佩奇正是以支持最疯狂的想法而著称，例如拍摄每条街道的每寸地方以创造出真实世界的数字复制品，扫描出版过的每本书，籍以创建世界上最大的书库，以及打造可以在任何两种语言之间进行互译的机器（目前已有4,200对语言）。因此，当《财富》（Fortune）杂志想要了解计算机、机器学习甚至交通运输的未来时，我们采访了佩奇，想知道谷歌如何重塑一切，包括它自己。

    Note: On Jan 3, as Fortune published this article, the Federal Trade Commission ended its investigation of Google's search practices saying it found no evidence that the company manipulated search results in violation of antitrust laws. The European Commission and other regulators continue to investigate the issue.

    When Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group, the giant advertising agency, visited Google this past fall, CEO Larry Page sent a car to pick him up at the Rosewood Hotel about 20 miles away. Only this was no ordinary car. The Lexus SUV drove itself thanks to a slew of high-tech tools, including radars, sensors, and a laser scanner that takes more than 1.5 million measurements every second. For about 20 minutes, while navigating I-280 and the area's busy State Route 85, the car cruised on autopilot, making quick course corrections, slowing down here when traffic loomed ahead, speeding up there to get out of the blind spot of a neighboring vehicle. "It was pretty incredible," says Sorrell.

    Page's chauffeurless car service is no mere parlor trick. It is, as Page will tell anyone who'll listen, the future of transportation. Never mind that most people think the mere idea of computer-driven cars is (1) preposterous, (2) dangerous, or (3) not much fun. Page makes the case for self-driving cars with the dispassionate logic of an engineer. The father of two young children, Page insists that his pet project, when ready, will actually enhance safety. Soon Google (GOOG) will be able to simulate your driving, "but just make sure you don't die and kill anybody else," he tells me during an interview in the private "bullpen" where he meets with his top lieutenants. He methodically enumerates the other advantages of driverless cars. There are energy savings (traffic would flow more efficiently) and productivity gains (commuting hours reclaimed). There will be cost savings too -- in the millions of dollars at Google alone. The Googleplex, he says, is short on parking, and quotes for new garages have come in at $40,000 per car. Why not let the car drop you off and go park itself offsite? Page asks. "Whenever you need it," he adds, "your phone notices that you're walking out of the building, and your car is there immediately by the time you get downstairs."

    Sounds like a crazy mashup of the Jetsons and the '80s TV show Knight Rider. But that's just the kind of future Page wants Google to create, and the kind of big idea that excites him. Since Google's founding in 1998, Page and cofounder Sergey Brin set out to build a company that made long-term bets on audacious ideas. Many quickly became essential products. And it was Page who was known for championing the craziest ones, like photographing every inch of every street to create a digital replica of the real world, scanning every book ever printed to assemblethe world's largest library, and building a machine that could translate between any two languages (4,200 pairs of languages to date). So when Fortune set out to understand the future of computing, machine learning, and even transportation, we turned to Page to learn about how Google is reinventing just about everything -- including itself.