Most people now know that the company Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded a mere eight years ago is one of the new century’s most cunning enterprises. If there were any lingering doubts, 2005 erased them. Google’s sales jumped an estimated 50 percent to $6 billion, its profits tripled to a projected $1.6 billion, and Wall Street answered with an unprecedented vote of confidence: a $120 billion market cap, a share price soaring above $400, and a price/earnings ratio close to 70.

Google signed up about eight new hires per day in 2005- a lot of them from Microsoft, many among the smartest people on the planet at what they do. Google is on track to spend more than $500 million on research and development in 2006, and last year it launched more free products in beta than in any previous year. Name any long-term technology bet you can think of– genome-tailored drugs, artificial intelligence, the space elevator–and chances are, there’s a team in the Googleplex working on an application.

The question which raises the most widely debated question in business is now: What kind of company will Google become in the coming decades? Chris Taylor put this same question to scientists, consultants, former Google employees, and tech visionaries like Ray Kurzweil and Stephen Wolfram. They responded with well-argued, richly detailed, and sometimes scary visions of a Google future. Visit Chris Taylor for four very different scenarios for the company.