Hot Take Resulting from Google Method
December 5, 2022
I read “Hot Take: Google Has a Company Strategy, Not a Product Strategy.” The write up explains that Google thinks like this:
Hire all the smart people and let them build. Hire all the smart people so they can’t work at a competitor. Hire all the smart people even if we don’t have something important for them to work on. Google acts like a venture capitalist, investing in promising people with the expectation that most will fail. They invest broadly in search of the idea that will deliver 100x. Let 1000 flowers bloom, and see which are the best.
You may agree or disagree with this statement. It is probably helpful if one has worked as an employee at Google or a consultant to the firm. But that does not stop Silicon Valley types from expressing their views of the world as information gleaned from an Egyptian ruler’s tomb.
I noted this statement in the comments to the article:
romwell said: Hot take: Google doesn’t have a strategy, period. Neither company, nor product.
In numerous articles and my monographs about Google, I have emphasized one point which, to me, encapsulates the company’s remarkable 25 year trajectory.
The firm made use of ideas developed at GoTo.com, Overture.com, and Yahoo.com. Those ideas converted Google from a mechanism for searching the content on the Web into a platform for advertising. By keeping one’s eye on the advertising ball, it’s clear that Alphabet YouTube Google DeepMind has been struggling to find a revenue winner.
Net net: As romwell said, “Google doesn’t have a strategy, period.” Had Yahoo not settled the court case for a $1 billion prior to the IPO, Google would have become another AllTheWeb.com, Lycos.com, or one of the many other outfits indexing problematic content.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2022
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