If it wasn’t clear that Larry Page is playing—and winning—a game of chess against the rest of the technology industry, it has become clear in the past two weeks.
The Google CEO took aim at Apple and upgraded its entire hardware strategy by ditching struggling Motorola and buying Nest Labs, the thermostat company loaded with Apple alumni. And he made quick and shrewd acquisition of artificial intelligence company DeepMind, which Facebook had been interested in acquiring, landing a bunch of brains to help Google’s search and personalization services and beyond.
