Next up: Google, The Movie

The box office success of The Social Network has spurred Hollywood to get a move on with a movie about Google.  Groundswell bought the rights to adapt Ken Auletta’s bestseller Googled: The End of the World as We Know It and has begun the hunt for a screenplay writer in earnest.

Groundswell picked up the movie rights to Googled in August. At the time, no one was sure when the film would make it to the screen if ever. With critical acclaim being heaped on The Social Network, the producer is now hot to find a writer who can do for the Google story what Aaron Sorkin did for Ben Mezrich's then-obscure tale of Facebook, The Accidental Billionaires. (Mezrich is better known for his New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House: The True Story of Six MIT Kids Who Took Vegas for Millions, a great book -- I have a copy on my bookshelf right now.)

Groundswell has gone so far as to set the date for the movie's release -- 2012. It could be a well-done movie if Groundswell's previous films are any indication. The production house is responsible for "Milk" the story of Harvey Milk, and Matt Damon's comic thriller "The Informant," among others.

The question is, where will it end? Can we expect to see the big screen version of The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia? Or The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: *God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison? (Seriously, if ever there was a Silicon Valley bad boy, Ellison is it.) I don't think a worthy book about Twitter has been written yet, but maybe we'll still be treated to "Twitter: How 140 Characters and A Lot of Down Time Changed Mobile Phones Forever."

Funny, but the stories of Microsoft and Apple have so far only warranted a made-for-TV movie -- The Pirates of Silicon Valley. The move achieved critical kudos at the time it was aired, in 1999, earning itself a handful of Emmy nominations.