How Google Might Fail?

Thomas Claburn has an interesting article that appeared in Information Week titled, "How Google Might Fail" that presents a fairly well-thought out analysis of some of the challenges Google faces. The Information Commons was mentioned in the "Distributed Databases" section in the following manner:

Distributed Databases
Search, at the moment, works best with a centralized index. That may not always be the case. Peer-to-peer networking and distributed database projects like the Information Commons may obviate the need for a centralized system.

Risk: Moderate. Efficient peer-to-peer searching requires significantly faster network infrastructure than currently exists — Google built that infrastructure from scratch and it will retain that advantage for some time. But it makes much more sense for companies to control their databases than to rely on Google's index as a pointer to their data. If the trend is truly toward disintermediation — removing the middleman — then Google has to think long and hard about how far into the future it can play that role.

It's really nice to see that the media is starting to pick up on the Information Commons concept on their own. Only time will tell if we are the disruptive technology others think we are, whether the market adapts well to the change from client-server to p2p architecture.