Google's income comes solely from advertising. Its advertising program called Adwords, allows anyone to easily bid for the search phrase of their choice. When someone searches for that keyword in Google the site will be placed in the sponsored results section of the search results. This search program is not only used for Google's site. Other webmasters use Adwords on their sites and Google pays them a percentage of the revenue. Through Google's advanced search engine spider the ads on these webmaster's sites are very targeted to the sites theme and can even show local ads by reading the site's visitors' IP address.

While the advertising side of Google has grown its earnings dramatically recently the future is uncertain. Both Yahoo and MSN are building their own similar advertising programs and will no doubt grab their piece of the online advertising pie.

The real exciting news from Google in the near future will be new sources of revenue. Currency Google's biggest competitor Yahoo has a portal with countless sources of paid services. Simply by repeating what Yahoo has done Google could grow their earnings and take a big chunk out of its competition. However Google's plans are much larger than something this simple. One Google's biggest advantages is the talent within the company. The brightest people are brought in to Google and given free reign to pursue their biggest ideas. On of these ideas is translation. Today websites are made in every language in the world. If Google's plan works out, sites in the future will be translated into the surfer's native language. This would give everyone around the world the ability to visit any website around the world and surely greatly increase Google's advertising revenue along the way.

Google's strategy to pioneer new ideas can also be a disadvantage. Trying out new things means taking risks that don't always yield a good return. While Google may have the best and biggest ideas in the future, the backside of this is the underperforming ideas that burn cash with no return. Microsoft is notorious for being just behind the pioneers. By closely following Google, MSN can repeat a

ny project that works out for Google and avoid all the projects that did not. On top of this Microsoft's Windows monopoly gives it a critical advantage in that it can siphon it's users to go online to any new program which guarantees anything new it creates will have an immediate substantial user base. One more exciting part of Google is not so much based on the company's ideas as much as it's financials. Google is a cash machine, currently it is sitting on over 5 billion in cash. More than 10 times the amount of cash it held in 2004. When this money gets put to use it will surely make the news. If it's used to internally look for big increases in research and development with exciting results in the farther future. Another use for this cash could be purchasing another company or companies. 5 billion is certainly enough to get in the door of any market and with Google's ambitions this could make some pretty big waves.

While Google is the Company to watch, it is still unsure whether it is the company of the future. With only three companies seriously competing to be the main portal of the internet it will be interesting to see whether each find their spot or one beats the others and gains a monopoly as the sole internet portal. Between Yahoo, MSN, and Google, Google is the current leader. The opportunities online are still significant enough that the decisions these companies make can make or break them in the future.