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Yet More Google Gazing
povvell writes "Bob Cringely has joined the club and just set out his personal vision for the future of Google now that it's flush with cash, thereby joining a happy band of Google gazers. But is he right, and are they? My own guess is that the company intends to become the biggest advertising platform in the world. What's yours?"
you think google is heading for ad-world domination? :)
Well, im buying that
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
that I never really thought of Google as a company. For the longest time I was wondering how they were even making enough money to pay their employees.
I thought of them more like "A group of SMFs that wanted to make some neat shit". Which they accomplished.
So with all this money now, its almost as if the impression that I have of Google has died and something else has taken over.
You have no idea how the stock market works do you? The Google founders have a class of stock that gives them more voting rights than anyone else so unless THEY want to sell out, it'd be impossible for Microsoft to strong-arm them into selling.
I don't really care what extra things google will do as long as they continue to be a great Internet search engine
Google's adsense technology will ultimately grow outside of the Internet realm and include instant advertising during movies, tv shows, billboards, etc. Imagine that you are watching a movie on NBC without commercials, but whenever someone says the word "soda" an ad streams across for Coke/Pepsi. Maybe Google will grow into that realm of advertising.
Second, as reported on my website Google's stock price is still fairly attractive from a P/E basis. If Google stays on track to grow for the rest of the year, Google should be valued more than Yahoo, which could mean the stock should still be attractive above $100.
Just my thoughts,
Aj
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artlu.net
I see an excellent point made in the article, which is that the founders want to maintain control of the enterprise as much as they can. The problem is that as soon as you've taken a company public, it isn't your baby anymore. It sounds like decisions need to start being delegated before the founders wear themselves out from working too hard.
I've worked at more than one company where the founder(s) micro-managed the entire enterprise. The did themselves a tremendous disservice in the long run by discouraging independent thought and actions.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Whilst I do like Google, I think they need to be very careful about the next few years. There *will* be rivals (Microsoft foremost, of course) in the search-engine space. Ads are one thing, but if people aren't visiting google out of preference for their search engine needs, much of the rest of their business model falls apart.
The hype - almost hysteria at first - surrounding the Google IPO has so much resonance with the dot gone fun of a few years ago, they would do well to look to the future without forgetting the pertinent and still relevant lessons of the past. Just because the stock market thinks you're worth $billions, doesn't mean it'll stay that way, or that you really are worth that much.
Remember Netscape? The parallels are noticeable. Cornered market until MS got there with IE and ownership of the desktop. It's a different political world now though, but it's worth remembering.
And for a company that's historically been very secretive, how will that play out in the publicly listed world?
ooooooh! What does this button do? - DeeDee, Dexters Lab.
I think you're on to something. Google's googlesyndication.com has already found its way into my list of blocked domains, right next to doubleclick.net. I wish they kept their tracking to their own site. When Doubleclick set cookies through their banners on third party sites, people were up in arms. Google apparently gets away with collecting data from webhits on third party sites, personally identifying information from GMail and Google Groups, social networking information from Orkut and of course their search engine. Let's hope that people stop being blinded by cuteness now that Google is a multi-billion dollar corporation.
> Why would Microsoft buy a company for $20 billion and then run it into the ground?
habit?
Wired 12.03: The Complete Guide to Googlemania!
... The Complete Guide to Googlemania! (continued). 4 Scenarios for the Future of Google
Sometimes a liquidity event changes everything. By Tom McNichol. ...
GooOS, the Google Operating System (kottke.org)
GooOS, the Google Operating System. He argues that Google is building a huge computer with a custom operating system that everyone on earth can have an account on. His last few paragraphs are so much more perceptive than anything that's been written about Google
Personalized Results: Exploring The Future Of Google ... Personalized Results: Exploring The Future Of Google. ...
msgraph Moderator view user profile joined-Nov 29, 2000 posts:1330 msg #:1, 7:29 pm on Feb 12, 2002 (utc 0).
MacMinute: The future of Google and Web searching? ...
www.macminute.com/2004/03/31/google - 29k -
* WWDC 2004: Discover how to put Mac OS X to work for you at WWDC! *. The future of Google and Web searching? March 31, 2004 - 07
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The problem with online advertising in its current state is that we, the consumer, do not want or like it.
We do like google. And when google started running little text link adds off to the right, I said "Way to go, google, now you can mage something for all your hard work." A lesser company might have sold "preferred listing" links *COUGH* YAHOO *COUGH* but Google remained honest and our friends.
And now, I see that google's little text links are actually usefull to me. I'm searching for airfare, and google suggests that I try an online airfare that I hadn't tried before. I do and I get a good price! And that place gets my business, and Google gets a few millicents for my click.
As long as google can remain my friend, I hope they do take over all of online advertising. Adds that arent' hideous in some way and actually advertise things I'm interested in will, in my eyes, revolutanize the online world.
Way to go Google.
As with all young companies that go IPO Google's course will go as follows:
1. All founders and current top executives will cash out and leave within the first year. Right now they are dizzy with possibilities and future ideas for the company but that will quickly fade to watching the stock ticker, taking long lunches, shopping for real estate, and counting the days to when they can legally cash out and leave.
2. Within 8 months new executives will be hired to take over when the founders and top executives jump out.
3. The new executives are have long resumes, short contracts, short attention spans, big dumb ideas, insane salaries, and lots of stock options. They will announce "a bold new vision" several times and sell out the company for all it's worth.
4. After 3 years and various layoffs the second generation management cashes out and jumps ship.
5. The third generation management comes onboard with a round of layoffs and useless new hires and looks at what else can be sold off. They change the name of the company and start shopping around for buyers to sell the whole company too.
Here's the trend I see of lots of Kleiner companies like Sun, Compaq, AOL, Netscape, Electronic Arts, and yes, Google.
The begin with lots of top-talent in lots of areas - academic, practical, financial, etc. Eventually they do very well (Sun, Netsape and AOL come to mind as the examples most familiar to /.); and some of the bright peole move on - some to start their own things, some to retire, or get promoted to management. Whatever the reason, most (notable exceptions, electroninc arts, genentech) fade after a while; IMHO because the best people moved on.
Then KPCB'll invest in those best people's next venture that will once again take on Microsoft in the next hot area of High Tech.
IMHO it never was Netscape vs MSFT, or Sun vs MSFT or AOL vs MSFT -- it's always been KPCB vs MSFT; with Sun, NSCP, AOL, Google just minor divisions of KPCB's virtual company bound together by a common culture of great innovation.
The fascination with google is simple. In today's broken capitalist economy it is very hard to get ahead. The biggest most powerful corporations are those that do "evil" and use lots of advertising and lies to get ahead. Google is the first company to hit it big in a long time in the true Adam Smith capitalist sense. They made the best product, they did right by the customer and they have a policy of "no evil". People voted with their dollars and now google is on top. If only the same thing happened in all markets and not just web search engines we might live in a much better place.
Imagine if your car was as good at being a car as google is at being a search engine. Imagine if the tv channels and radio stations you watched had a similar advertising policy to googles.
Google is fascinating because it proves you can get ahead without underhanded business tactics, coercion and lies. You can just make a product that is better than everyone elses, quality wise, and that's enough.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I think they will buy Sun, who has a different set of strengths in high-end computing (customer contacts).
This is made more likely because of the personal connections between the companies, including having the same investors, whose portfolio companies often help each other long after they're small (remember AOL,NSCP), and recieved their seed money from Andy Bechtolsheim one of the founders of Sun Microsystems .
Unfortunately I think Google has been getting worse at its primary function, finding relevant webpages based on simple queries, for years. I remember back in 1999 when i 1st discovered Google. The results at Altavista were littered with spurious results, and I usually had to use long boolean searches to get decent results-- usually on the 3rd try and the 4th page of results. Google came along and blew that all away, and there was 1 big reason-- no one was trying to SPAM Google's results, and I doubt anyone even knew how.
Fast forward 5 years. So many SEO types are now infiltrating Google's results that they are not nearly as relevant as they once were-- remember when Google was sued for downgrading linkfarm results, and they backed down? Anyone use the "Feeling luck?" button anymore? It's nice you can see 100 results per page, but I usually end up doing 2 or 3 queries to get the proper result these days. I still use Google, but Teoma (Ask.com, I believe) seems to work equally as well, and if Google doesn't improve their search results, they will have a long, slow decline.
Their other innovations are nice (Froogle, Google News, GMail), but they are really just sidelights to their core competency-- finding relevant webpages. I'm hoping they figure out how to do it.