Google’s Demise with a Network World Imprimatur
July 11, 2009
I sat on the May 2009 write up by Kaila Colbin. She wrote the first part of her “Google’s Dilemma and Why It Will Die, Part One” and Network World published the essay. You can read Part One here. Part Two became available on June 9, 2009. You can read that installment here. The “it” in the title refers to Google not the dilemma, but I pushed that ambiguity aside and jumped into the argument.
Part One trots out the problem innovator have; that is, in the intellectual shade of Clayton Christensen, Google won’t be able to keep pace with the many problems, see through its blind spots, and recapture the sizzle that made the steak great before it stayed on the fire too long.
Part Two recycles more of the good professor Christensen’s findings and races to this conclusion:
Finally, any investor in Google would have to concerned about the narrowness of its success. They’ve never gone through a leadership transition. They’ve never generated significant revenue from anything other than AdWords. As of now, they’re Gloria Gaynor; they’re Dexys Midnight Runners; they’re Harper Lee. Don’t get me wrong — I’d welcome the kind of success and financial returns associated with I Will Survive, Come On Eileen, or To Kill a Mockingbird — but it’s generally not desirable to predicate long-term business strategy on a single major success.
Let me offer several observations:
- What if Google is, as I argued in my three Google monograph’s here, a new type of company? Will the lessons of those who found themselves crushed by the logic of Mr. Christensen’s analysis apply? One quick question: who regulates the GOOG if it parks its data beyond the three mile limit on its data center barges?
- How will Google’s controlled chaos, eternal betas, and surround and seep tactics help protect the company from the type of ossification that characterizes some of its competitors? Will companies like Microsoft and Yahoo, to pick two competitors, themselves be able to change to keep pace with the multi-front tech probes Google delights in launching?
- What is Google doing that makes it vulnerable to the specific points Ms. Colbin plucked from the Christensen book? Are there any steps Google has taken to resolve those issues, say, for example, some of the ideas in The Innovator’s Prescription?
Network World’s imprimatur is not enough to make me grab on to this analysis.
Stephen Arnold, July 11, 2009
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