"The basic SL-6000N will be launched on December 10 and cost around $845; the SL-6000L will go on sale on December 24 and cost around $920; and the SL-6000W will be available from January 23, 2004 and cost around $1010, said Sharp."

Thirty per cent of Google's thousand plus employees are contractors, the bottom of what Vogelstein describes as "a caste system". The contractors don't have access to the Waiters on Wheels vouchers for fathers on paternity leave, or any stock options.

Google's foes have a much firmer hold on customers, argues Seth Godin, a well-known Internet consultant and editor of last summer's widely distributed online book What Should Google Do? Competitors have troves of personal information about users that they draw on to customize products, ads, and services—consider the way My Yahoo brings you information on everything from your portfolio to fixing your house. They will probably use that same information to tailor search results. Google, meanwhile, knows little more about you than what you are currently searching for.

Unveiled in February 2002, Adwords now has more than 150,000 advertisers, many of whom rave about the service. Seth Berkowitz, the head of business development at Edmunds.com, an online car shopping site, says the response rate for his ads on Google has been so good that he has gone from buying $70,000 a month in advertising to $250,000 a month in less than a year. "It's the cheapest and most effective form of advertising ever created," Berkowitz says. He figures that every dollar spent with Google generates about $1.70 back.