拉里?佩奇眼中的未來

????編者按：1月3日，《財富》發表本文時，美國聯邦貿易委員會（Federal Trade Commission）結束了對谷歌搜索業務的調查，稱未發現該公司操縱搜索結果、違反反壟斷法的證據。歐洲委員會（European Commission）和其他監管機構繼續就此問題展開調查。

????去年秋天，廣告巨頭WPP集團（WPP Group）的CEO馬丁?索里爾爵士訪問谷歌（Google），谷歌CEO拉里?佩奇派了輛車到大約20英里遠的紫檀酒店（Rosewood Hotel）去接他。但這不是輛普通的車。這輛雷克薩斯SUV能夠自動駕駛。這歸功于很多高科技工具，包括雷達、傳感器和每秒進行150多萬次測量的激光掃描器。在大約20分鐘的時間里，這輛車利用自動駕駛儀在280號洲際公路和該地區繁忙的85號公路上行駛，迅速修正航向，接近交通信號燈時會減速，進入鄰近車輛的盲點區域時會加速脫離。索里爾說：“簡直不可思議?！?/p>

????佩奇的無人駕駛汽車服務并非只是娛樂來賓的小把戲。正如佩奇將對任何愿意聆聽的人所說的那樣，這就是交通運輸的未來。不用擔心大多數人會認為自動駕駛汽車的想法很可笑、很危險或者不那么有趣，因為佩奇用工程師那種冷靜客觀的邏輯證明自動駕駛汽車是可行的。佩奇是兩個幼子的父親，他堅持認為他看重的這個項目一旦準備就緒，就能切實地提高安全性。很快谷歌就能夠模擬人們的駕駛方式，“但請確保你不會死或者撞死其他人”，他在私人“牛欄”里接受采訪時這樣對我說道。他也是在那里會見他的高級副手們。他有條不紊地列舉了無人駕駛汽車的其他優點，包括節能（交通的運行將更有效率）和提高生產力（節省下來的上下班時間可用于其他事務），還有成本節約，僅谷歌就能節省數百萬美元。他說，谷歌總部園區（Google plex）的停車位緊缺，新車庫的報價達到每輛車40,000美元。為什么不讓汽車把你送下車，然后自己到園區外找個地方停車呢？佩奇問道?！懊慨斈阈枰鼤r，”他說?！澳憧梢杂檬謾C通知汽車你正在走出辦公樓。等你走到樓下時，你的車已經等在那里了?！?/p>

????聽起來像是《杰森一家》（Jetsons）和上世紀八十年代電視劇《霹靂游俠》（Knight Rider）的瘋狂搭配，但這就是佩奇想讓谷歌創造的那種未來。這個偉大的想法令他激動不已。自從谷歌在1998年成立以來，佩奇和共同創始人謝爾蓋?布林就致力于使這家公司長期押注于大膽想法。其中很多想法已經迅速變成了必不可少的產品。佩奇正是以支持最瘋狂的想法而著稱，例如拍攝每條街道的每寸地方以創造出真實世界的數字復制品，掃描出版過的每本書，籍以創建世界上最大的書庫，以及打造可以在任何兩種語言之間進行互譯的機器（目前已有4,200對語言）。因此，當《財富》（Fortune）雜志想要了解計算機、機器學習甚至交通運輸的未來時，我們采訪了佩奇，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.