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While Google no longer has a search engine operation inside China, it has maintained a large presence in Beijing and Shanghai focused on research and development, advertising sales, and mobile platform development.

The story of Google is just when everyone concluded that a search engine would never make any money, everyone backed out of it, and Google walked into that vacuum and dominated.

When Google went into China, there were some people who said they shouldn't compromise at all - that it is very bad for human rights to do so. But there were other people, particularly Chinese people, who said they were glad Google had gone in.

Clearly Google is searching for a way to do business in China that avoids them sending someone to jail over an e-mail.

Google's real threat to China is not that it will leave the country. It's that it will embarrass China and damage its national reputation as a place to do business.

The reason that Google was such a success is because they were the first ones to take advantage of the self-organizing properties of the web. It's in ecological sustainability. It's in the developmental power of entrepreneurship, the ethical power of democracy.

To me, the biggest surprise is that Google still functions despite the explosion in the number of sites.

The next Google is more likely going to come from outside the U.S. Whether it's in Europe, I am not sure. A lot of things have to change.

Google started out when the dot-com boom was happening. It grew under the radar of big companies that were competing in but basically ignoring search. Then they were able to really invest during the bust for a long time.