This is the Modem World: The day Google died

Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. One day, Google will not be the technology giant that it is today. Consider the following: In 1968, the Pontiac GTO was Motor Trend's Car of the Year. Today, Pontiac is a historical footnote of General Motors. In 1981, IBM launched the PC, which became the de facto standard of personal computers, spawning hundreds of PC clones and dominating the computing market to...