From eWeek’s “Upcoming” section, which I’d praised a few weeks ago, comes this interview with Java creator James Gosling. The key quote, for me:

Of Google, Gosling said: “I guess part of me has almost a moral problem with, ‘What do you mean the killer app for Internet is advertising?’ I’d love to believe it was all about building communities on the Web. But building communities is just a scam for getting people to pay for advertising. Search is just a scam to get people to pay for advertising. I know the Google folks actually resisted doing advertising for a long time. They didn’t like the idea, but they had to have a spreadsheet solve to a positive number.”

He goes on to overreach with some of his conclusions, but I thought his perspective was interesting.