本周二，科技博客Asymco的贺拉斯•德迪乌在Critical Path播客上发布了一则经过编辑的录音文字记录，通过巧妙的隐喻描述了谷歌（Google）的商业模式。

    德迪乌认为，谷歌是一家这样的企业：在密西西比河上拉起网，同时试图通过增大水流量来使捕鱼量最大化。为此，谷歌疏通河流盆地，使溪流改向，拆除现有水坝，反对新建水坝，还播云布雨。

    这篇文章很有意思——旨在打破我们对谷歌非黑即白的印象——我推荐诸位都读读看。

    此外，这篇文章还解释了谷歌为何给一座座城市装上宽带，为何开发出Android，以及免费开放Android可能带来哪些意想不到的后果——例如允许Facebook通过Facebook Home打造上游网络。

    但这也提出了一个问题，苹果（Apple）的位置在哪里？Asymco的多位读者也提出了自己的比喻：苹果就像一位环保主义者，试图保持水质清洁。苹果就像一个孵化场，尝试培育出更优良的鱼类。或者说，苹果就像一家制造商，生产更美味的鱼食。

    不过我对这些比喻都不太感冒。诸位有什么想法？（财富中文网）

    Asymco's Horace Dediu on Tuesday posted an edited transcript of the part of his most recent Critical Path podcast in which he described Google's (GOOG) business model through an elaborate extended metaphor.

   Think of the company, he suggested, as an enterprise that has strung nets across the mouth of the Mississippi and is trying to maximize the number of fish it catches by increasing the flow of water. To that end, it dredges river basins, redirects streams, knocks down existing dams, opposes new ones and seeds clouds to make it rain.

    It's a lovely piece of work -- offered to get us beyond the view of Google as either good or evil -- and I encourage you to read it.

    Among other things, it helps explain why the company is wiring whole cities with fiber, why it created Android and what the unintended consequences of giving it away might be -- such as allowing Facebook (FB) to lay down upstream nets with Facebook Home.

    But it also raises the question of where Apple (AAPL) fits in. Several Asymco readers have tried to answer that with their own analogies: Apple is like an environmentalist, trying to keep the water clean. Apple is like a hatchery, trying to breed better fish. Apple as a manufacturer of sweeter-tasting fish food.

    None of them quite work for me. Any ideas?