During meetings, they bounce on huge rubber exercise balls. At lunch and dinner, they dine on gourmet meals prepared by Charles le Chef, previously employed by members of the Grateful Dead and diverse upscale restaurants. Classical music from a baby grand piano will soon waft through the lobby.
Consumers still rank search as the second most important function on the Web, behind email.
Never Never Land, where money is as plentiful as 30-foot waves at Maverick's. But the biggest mystery is that the company seems to give such short shrift to the more mundane aspects of developing corporate strategy, penetrating new markets, and creating revenue. Nor does anyone in Googleplex have a clear timetable for when Google will turn search technology into profit. We are insanely focused on that. Google 's bouncing optimism is centered around what Jupiter Communications analyst Anya Sacharow sees as a growing opportunity for companies exclusively focused on search.