Some people peer into crystal balls to predict the future; Stephen Arnold peers into the vast database at the U.S. Patent Office to predict the future of Google.

Focusing on one patent on transportation routing, he told a gathering at last week's AIIM conference in Boston that he sees not only a business opportunity for Google in transportation routing, but also the tip of a proverbial iceberg in the way the search engine colossus approaches much of its business.

"No one knows what these guys at Google are up to," said Arnold, who has written two books on Google, in an interview this week. "That's why their patents are so important."

Arnold, who takes an investigative approach to Google without help from the company, says the transportation routing patent is already embodied in Google's employee bus system in the Bay Area. Using Google's mapping technology, GPS location finding linked with Google employee cell phones, the buses and employees are connected efficiently in real time. Employees are informed wirelessly when their bus is approaching. Another iteration of the system appears to be in use at a Google facility in Korea, Arnold added.

While the system is useful now for the company, Arnold believes it can have wider use in larger transportation routing systems including highway systems and air traffic. The approach spelled out in the patent could have use anywhere routing is important, even in the spacing of cell phone towers, Arnold said.

"Google wants to move people cheaply and intelligently and be environmentally friendly," said Arnold. "Who'd ever thought that Google could be in the mass transit routing business? And it looks very casual."

The method, said Arnold, behind the transportation routing system is an example of Google's approach to research and development, which relies more heavily on mathematicians rather than on software programmers with computer science backgrounds, although the latter still make important contributions to the search engine company's work. Google, Arnold said, seems to have a built-in bias for mathematics and as such is oriented toward solving puzzles.

Perhaps reflecting the backgrounds of the company's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin -- both have strong mathematics backgrounds -- Google likes to hire bright mathematicians "who don't have to code much" and who are given relatively free rein to solve problems on their own, said Arnold.

"It's important that the transportation routing system was done casually," he said. "It's an example of how Google can innovate in some very surprising ways that can't be predicted." He explained that Google's patent portfolio tells him that Google has a mathematics-based infrastructure in place that includes easy-to-use modules of technology that are utilized by the company's employees, many of them very young.

"It's like Lego blocks and a new business can be enabled without a lot of planning," Arnold said. He thinks the entire approach, part of Google's underlying DNA, has evolved over several years, giving the company a long head start over competitors; he believes the approach, already responsible for Google's dominance in search, will continue to have a disruptive impact on its IT competitors in the future.

While Arnold may sound like a Google cheerleader, he's anything but. By digging so deeply into the company's patents and intellectual property, he reveals more about the company than it wants to tell the world. Arnold told the AIIM audience: "Google doesn't like me."