Larry Page's Google 3.0

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Schmidt and the co-founders soon put Gundotra in charge of Google's effort to create applications for mobile devices. Under his watch, Google cranked out a much faster mobile search engine, a more useful Google Maps, and Google Goggles, which lets phone owners get information on things around them by pointing the camera at them. He also became point man for dealings with software developers, racing Microsoft and Apple to persuade programmers to write for Google's cloud services and its Android platform for phones.

In Silicon Valley, that kind of evangelism usually involves firing insults at the competition. While that hasn't typically been Google's style, Gundotra hasn't shied away. As he says, "It's an art to create a sense of inevitability." In a keynote speech at a Google event for developers last year, he even took aim at Steve Jobs and "a draconian future where one man, one company, and one device would be our only choice. … That's a future we don't want."

Gundotra has also sparred with Apple behind the scenes. As Android became a threat to Apple in 2008, Apple began resisting Google's claim to valuable location data gathered whenever an iPhone owner used Google Maps. His negotiations with Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller grew so heated that Schmidt and Steve Jobs had to intervene to settle the matter, according to two people familiar with the incident. (Apple announced earlier this year that it had developed its own location-monitoring system. Gundotra and Schiller both declined to comment on the incident.)

In October, Gundotra assumed joint command of a secret SWAT team to add social elements to Google's array of services. The company hopes the effort will help it combat Facebook and rebound from botched social networking forays such as Buzz and OpenSocial, a failed 2007 attempt to forge an alliance of social networks other than Facebook. Gundotra and a former Yahoo executive, Bradley Horo witz, run the effort from a shared office in Building 2000 on the Google campus.

Gundotra won't say much about the initiative. Two sources familiar with it, who asked not to be named because the project is not yet public, confirm that it is tentatively called Google +1 and that it is designed to cull data about relationships among users from current services such as Gmail and YouTube. Google will then let users share material through those connections, while using the information to make other products more social. Search results may be skewed toward pages that your friends found useful—for instance, a Google Maps query for nearby Italian restaurants could return one that was positively reviewed by someone you know.

Gundotra won't comment, but Page hints that Google's social network plans will offer more refined privacy protections. "You see tremendous controversy around [social networks] today, with people being worried: Am I sharing stuff with the right people or not?" Page says. "I think there's a long, long way to go to make these systems do what people need."

The Inventor

Andy Rubin is a tinkerer, as adept at creating mechanical marvels in his home as he is writing the software that runs tablets and mobile phones. His latest invention, produced with several Google colleagues, is "Java the Bot," a wheeled two-armed robot that can roll up to an espresso machine and perform all the steps needed to make a decent cup of coffee. (It's still in development.) "From a computer science perspective, it's an unsolved problem," he says, emphasizing that he has no plans to put Starbucks' (SBUX) baristas out of business.

Since Google acquired his eight-person startup, Android, in 2005, Rubin has expended most of his entrepreneurial energy within the Googleplex. His Android platform has pulled off arguably the fastest land grab in tech history, jumping from also-ran to market leader with 26 percent of the smartphone market, vs. 25 percent for iPhone, according to research firm ComScore (SCOR). (BlackBerry (RIMM) was first, with 33 percent, but is losing ground.) Android's success has made Rubin a model inside Google for how executives can run units autonomously. "We need even more of those," Page says of Android.