So what is it, do you want be transparent about what you are doing or do you want to be opaque? How come the Time interviewer doesn’t say “hey, you just said you don’t want to confuse anyone and now you are saying you do? What’s up with that?”.

Jeff Nolan has the same consistency issues I have with regard to Google making claims about best practice business ideas and yet working in a different direction.

This is a clean example. If a business is transparent, it means we can see what they're doing, what they're going to do it, and why they're going to win. In Google's case, this is -- or was -- totally possible. They've lost some of the karma and mindshare, but previously if they had said "we're going to take over video distribution, with the intent to roll out IPTV"... IPTV companies would fold. Maybe not that directly, even.

But with Southwest, JetBlue, NetFlix, etc: you get a pretty solid idea of what they're up to, how they make decisions, and even how they operate. The Southwest business model is very well documented and they haven't really deviated from it in their 30 profitable years. They win because they're in the better position, with better technology, more reasonable decision makers, and an appreciation for what it takes to own their space. I don't get that confidence, as much, from Google, and I certainly can't deduce which of the directions (people have sussed out) they are going to take (except, most likely "all of them"). Are they aiming to be The Internet Connection? The Advertising Sales company to all media? The Distributed Operating System/Application Platform? Yes.