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For decades, many of the brightest graduates in economics sought their fortune in finance. In coming years, they will seek it in marketing, as the Internet gives all companies the information-rich environment once available only in financial markets.

Back in 2001 when I stepped down as dean at Berkeley, I thought I would take a leave for a year and do something in the real world. But then the real world seemed a little scary so I went to Google instead. There were only 400 people at Google back in 2002 [there are now nearly 14,000] and I had a great time working with them on a number of projects, primarily involving quantitative analysis of one sort or another. For example, I’ve studied the Google ad auction quite a bit and that turned out to be very interesting from an economic point of view.

After a 1 1/2 year leave I returned to Berkeley to teach on a part time basis, but I’ve continued to consult with Google for a few days a week. As the company has grown, the demands on my time have grown, and I finally decided to devote my full attention to Google. Everything you hear about Google is true: it’s a very exciting place to work. So after studying the tribes of Silicon Valley for several years, I’ve finally gone native.

WSJ: What does the job entail?

Varian: During my time at Google we have built up a world-class group of quantitative analysts, and the economics team will complement these existing resources. Google has a great infrastructure for data analysis, and a management team that is very receptive to quantitative methods and willing to invest in this area.

In addition to working on analytics, I’ve also worked on various business strategy and public policy issues, and will continue to do so as the occasion arises. This set of issues will only get more important to Google as time goes on, so I expect that this will also involve a fair amount of my time.

WSJ: In the past, promising new economics PhDs who didn’t want to work in government or academia probably aspired to work on Wall Street. In the future, will they aspire to work at companies like Google?

Varian: I think marketing is the new finance. In the 1960s and 1970s [we] got interesting data, and a lot of analytic fire power focused on that data; Bob Merton and Fischer Black, the whole team of people that developed modern finance. So we saw huge gains in understanding performance in the finance industry. I think marketing is in the same place: now we’re getting a lot of really good data, we have tools, we have methods, we have smart people working on it. So my view is the quants are going to move from Wall Street to Madison Avenue.

WSJ: Is that because the Web can now provide companies with the density of information once available only for things like stock prices and interest rates?

Varian: Absolutely. Adaptive forecasting, how I revise my forecast to take account of updated information, you use that a lot on Wall Street, where you have time series of stock prices. And some of those things carry over into things that Google is doing, that have this real-time flow of data. How do I detect unusual events, and react to them?

“What we are seeing is the emergence of a new power pole,” said Joe Guinan, a trade expert with the German Marshall Fund, a public policy group. He said that was finally being felt at the World Trade Organization. “They have begun to throw their weight around — and this is a glimpse of the future.”

The discussions in Geneva have confirmed that the balance of power in global trade has shifted irrevocably with the rise of China.

“A lot of the reticence we have seen from Brazil or Argentina in nonagricultural market access is driven not by fear of the U.S. and the E.U. but by fear of being swamped by China,” Mr. Guinan said.

GENEVA — World trade talks collapsed here on Tuesday after seven years of on-again, off-again negotiations, in the latest sign of India’s and China’s growing might on the world stage and the decreasing ability of the United States to impose its will globally.

The failure also delivers a blow to the credibility of the World Trade Organization, which sets and enforces the rules of international commerce. It could set back efforts to work out other multilateral agreements, including those intended to reduce the threat of global warming.

The collapse of the talks will not bring an end to world trade, of course, which will continue under current agreements, many of which are between two or more countries rather than under the W.T.O.

The proliferation of bilateral deals and the continuing expansion of exports from both developing and developed countries have raised doubts among some Doha skeptics about the necessity of a global agreement. But experts said it was important, particularly as a bulwark against rising protectionist sentiments.