Google may not be a pioneer, but it's better to be a settler.

Last week I mentioned I've been reading the Business Innovation 2005 blog, which goes along with the Fortune Innovation Forum going on later this month. Today, it led me to the blog for Innosight and its discussion of the Google innovation culture.

In the comments to that blog post, and in the comments to the BusinessWeek article that inspired it, people question whether or not Google is an innovator. After all, they say, Google didn't invent search, toolbars, blogs, Web analytics, or any other of the Web-based business ideas the company has brought to market.

There's a difference between an innovator and an inventor. If you don't believe me, check out the dictionary. Inventors make up something completely new. Innovators introduce things as if they're new. Robert Fulton did not invest the steamship, as many believe. But he was the first to put it into regular passenger service. Fulton's name would go on to become synonymous with steamship service the way "Google" has become a verb for search.

If you're interested in learning more about famous innovators, I can personally recommend the book They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators from the Steam Engine to the Search Engine (since I've read it). At the end of the book, which is written like a timeline, you'll find the founders of Google.

Innovators don't have to invent; they just have to act like they did.