Google - where does it want to go tomorrow?

chaosrules, in his blog, speaks of the new ketchup cooked up by Google, Sketch up, which happens to be a new 3D modeling tool acquired from @Last Software. Following the link to tool, my first reaction was, you must be kidding. Google and another mainstream desktop software application...wow.

So my immediate question was...what in the world has a 3D modeling tool got anything to do with Google and why the heck did it buy it...I did not see the connection until I read this..

Google SketchUp (free) is an easy-to-learn 3D modeling program that enables you to explore the world in 3D. With just a few simple tools, you can create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects - even space ships. And once you've built your models, you can place them in Google Earth, post them to the 3D Warehouse, or print hard copies.

Now things made sense..lot of sense..think of it..if each user made model of his street or block and puts it on Google Earth, what a resource it would turn out to be for Google and this for just the investment on the tool. I say its a smart move.

Sketch up is the latest toy which Google has bought. On Digg, one user had the following to say..

At this rate they’ll be buying McDonalds next year

This broadly sums up the acquisition overdrive we are currently seeing at Google. Add to this recent rumours of Google WiFi service, Google "Dark-Fiber" network based broad band service, Google OS based on Ubuntu, Google office (Writely + openoffice), Google GDrive and now a free 3D tool! I am not sure what to make out of all this.This one really got me into thinking, what exactly is Google's strategy and where exactly is Google headed?

one explanation could be, Google strategy is three-fold. One aimed towards browser side of market, second the Desktop side and the third aimed at mobile devices. Google, I guess,has plans(or already developed) to develop tools for all 3 sides of the market and then slowly provide a seamless integration between Web,desktop and Mobile tools.

For example take text documents...Google has recently announced partnership with Sun to "promote and enhance" OpenOffice.org, If you read between lines, It clearly says, don't be surprised if you see Google releasing desktop side office tools to create/edit/share text docs similar to MS Office suite. Also Google recently acquired Writely, which, shall we say coincidentally happens to be a web service to create/edit/share text documents including MS Word documents.
So aren't we seeing the wall between the desktop and web browser being breached? I guess this trend will not be restricted to just text documents, but will be spread to all types of files you create, be it music, images etc..
So the bigger picture will be something similar to this, Google will provide Desktop tools to create/edit files and then you can edit these on the web with another set of tools and then place them in a universally shared drive to be accessed from anywhere under the sun.
The next stage of progression would be to develop tools for your mobile devices, which will give us the ability to access the files (present either on the web, your PC or on the universally shared disk drive), share these files, edit these files and save them back, all this done on your mobile device. With Google's acquisition of Reqwireless, Inc, Zipdash, Dodgeball and Android, it wont be long before these mobile tools will start to pop up.

So I think creating synergy between desktop, web and mobile tools will be mantra for Google going forward, probably build "Google Live" on lines of Microsoft Live, probably at a grander scale. what do you say?

Update:
I missed out on Google Health in the "recent rumours" paragraph :)