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Google's DNA
bart_scriv writes "Businessweek confronts Google naysayers with an analysis of the company's business structure, arguing that its unique structure lends it the flexibility to adapt to any and all markets: 'Google is actually the first company with a brand that is built entirely on stem cells: able to grow and develop into whatever form it sees fit.' The article predicts significant changes for the company in communications, hardware, entertainment and localization and goes on to argue that Google is on the verge of achieving the holy grail of branding--being all things to all markets."
This comparison of Google to stem cells is rather hyperbolic. After all, many companies out there do almost everything. Microsoft has its fingers in a lot of pies, too, even though they have been playing catch up in most of the areas that they don't yet dominate. IBM is probably another example; though they're known for their computers, they are very big in software services, chip manufacturing and basic research, and they have internal projects going on a whole lot of interesting stuff that never makes it into the market.
Google does have the coolness market cornered right now, though. They have continued to do a great job on their search engine, and their email, mapping, and other web services are really well done.
I would like to see Google truly act like stem cells and develop a better car. I am willing to bet that a Googlemobile would be truly innovative. Probably it would come with builtin navigation tools such as Google Maps but beyond that it would be self-parking, highly secure from theft (because it runs Linux), and get terrific gas mileage--or else use some other less carbon-generating source such as alcohol or direct solar power.
On a less whimsical note, there's a tremendous potential for Google in branding nifty handheld devices that have easy access to the world's online knowledge, incorporate speech recog and the like. I suspect that Google's move into urban wifi is a step in this direction; if they can control the airwaves and the receiving devices they will truly have vertical integration. And Microsoft will be even more annoyed, which is probably a good thing.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
This looks like an article written about the dot-com of the week in the late 90s. When all the hype dies down, Google will likely be a success like Yahoo -- solid, but not the most amazing company out there.
Don't let Bush know! He'll demand that they do not produce any new products based on new stem cells, but only using existing stem cells. After all, using new products would be tantamount to murder and might upset his base.
If Google succeeds, the terrorists win.
Actually, its a site called abusedshoes.com however I'm afraid to click, maybe some more fetishist slashdotters could check it out (or I could just wait until I show my missus later - shes the shoe person in the family)
liqbase
But don't stem cells become static and defined after some time? I hate to say it, but I think the innovation well will dry up eventually.
I can't wait to see the horrible, mutant creation that they come up with. I mean, there's no point in using DNA unless you can make monsters.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
Google is just another dot-com flash in the pan. There is nothing about Google's business model that provides any more sustainable competitive advantage than any other firm. Is Google a success? Is it an admirable company? Yes -- in many ways. Will that change? Count on it.
Treat Google like any other company: sprinkle its stock in a nice diversified layer over your other holdings.
>>Google is on the verge of achieving the holy grail of branding--being all things to all markets. When I'm driving my GoogleCar into my GoogleGarage after a long drive along the GoogleTurnpike, guided by my GoogleGPS to have dinner prepared by my Froogle-provided Russian mail order bride, then we'll talk.
I would hardly call google the 'first' company to be able to take any form it sees fit. I would rather attribute this skill to any large multiunational company with enough money to do so. I am sure that M1cr0S0ft could have done such, had it been that way inclined.
>>>Scanning for I.D.I.O.T.S. >>>
>>>I.D.I.O.T.S. FOUND! >>>
If that's true, then pick one or two and excel in those markets the way you excel in adwords.
I hate to say it, but Google reminds me more and more of Netscape in 1996. Both companies were leaders with strong brand names and one great product (web browser, search engine, etc.). However, Netscape utterly failed to build on their success, squandered their brand name and was eventually equalled and bettered by Microsoft. I see the same thing going on now with Google as they lurch from one non-profitable project to another and other competitors start eyeing the search engine market again...
I don't know about "all markets". Steven A. Silvers seems to own kids' googling.
--
make install -not war
...doesn't that make it a virus? It can basically spread from one place to another, adapting to each new "host" as it goes.
Now, before the "Troll" stamps come out, I'm not saying this is necessarily bad, though this does tend to make Google a... wait for it... monopoly. Yes there are competitors, but they seem a distant second right now and are probably going to remain so if the article is true. I doubt Yahoo can modify its culture to compete directly with Google.
Google's strength in being so adaptable is in the power it gains with each arena it moves into. If Google truly wants to be the planet's information source, there will come a point that it is so large yet so tenuous and amorphous, that no government will be able to go around it. This means trouble for a United States hell bent on spying on people or a China trying to rewrite history and keep fresh ideas coming in in a controlled fashion.
The question now becomes, has Google learned the Spiderman lesson -- will they treat their great power responsibly?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Long live the synergistic DNA based information economy. The paradigms of old cannot explain the morphous structure of such a groundbreaking and globulous company. It's ability to dynamically adapt to multi-faceted environments while leapfrogging the pure-play biases of old while creating a new dynamic for business is absolutely staggering. Business, debt, and equity analysts falter before this new way of business that completely destroys the old business paradigm while thinking out of the box in it's ultimate goal to deliver real-time, free, services while caraessing the consumer mind with visually appealing and sensual avertisements, enticing consumers to spend their way into further debt laden lives, for which there will be an exit once GOOG becomes the master of their domain and ensures economic growth of 30% per year, creating a perpetual economic boom and a wonder economy unparalled in history, even considering post-WW2 German and Japanese growth. Spearheading this will be the awesome leadership of GOOG that will never become a 800lb gorilla as they dynamically and deftly work their way through the maze of business. They will never grow to large to innovate quickly and will always be lean and agile in their persuit for the ultimate goal, the highest P/E ratio known to man and a stock price in excess of the greatest investor of all time's company, Bershire Hathaway, which is nothing more than a speck of dirt imagined by an intellectual dolt, as he cannot fathom the sheer genious of the DNA structure at GOOG.
I pity the fools.
They've pretty much killed off all competition in the search engine business. Sites I used when I started using the web, like Altavista and AllTheWeb are now even copying Googles layout!
In Holland the verb 'to Google' has actually been added to the dictionary, I believe.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since Google is/was simply the best. It does mean however that pretty much all Internet searching is done through Google, which gives it the same possibilities for abuse as MicroSoft had a while back in the desktop PC market.
Already the amount of ads on a Google page is increasing by the day, as is the amount of sites that use those Google text-ad. (any more people out there who have pagead2.googlesyndication.com blocked?).
One of Google's CEO's has been heard to say: And of course we've all heard of the 40-year cookies and what not.
I'm not exceptionally paranoid, but put it all together and something in my head says `1984'... To those who want to be on the safe side, I heartily recommend Scroogle. Cheers.
I take life with a grain of salt...a slice of lemon and a dash of tequila
...the article is written by Gabriel Stricker from BrandChannel. The tone seems to be a typical marketing/branding kind - lots of high-sounding assertions and phrases, and very few solid justifications for the same.
For instance, check this sentence: "Google is actually the first company with a brand that is built entirely of stem cells: able to grow and develop into whatever form it sees fit."
Huh? World's first company? Built entirely of stem cells? Into whatever it sees fit?
What is this guy smoking?
Google's decision to branch into many unrelated/related ideas is not due to any stem cells or mitochondria, but simply because it has enough money and talent to do so. More importantly, the stock market that usually punishes companies for expanding too fast/too much still seems to be in awe of Google.
Imagine Microsoft deciding to enter into server harware, or Sun into smartphones, or Dell into online dating! But when Google does it, its suddenly "stem cells" in action!
According to the article, Google is a company like no other because it is producing its own versions of things that already exist. Perhaps I've missed the point, but from where I'm sitting, this actually seems to be something that nearly every company does, and many of the bigger ones have their fingers in a lot more pies than Google do.
IMO rather than proving Google are somehow "built almost entirely out of stem cells", this actually shows that Businessweek publishes artices built almost entirely out of bullshit.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
We here in Slashdot land are not known to like "shiny, pretty" things...we like functional. However, the vast majority on computer users like pretty guis, etc. that they can click click click and be done. Google is a great search engine, and they have some great technology. However, until Google decides to make it's portal functional for the masses as YAHOO does, I don't think Google will be all things to all people. It will remain all things to all geeks. YAHOO will remain all things to all people.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Google is on the verge of achieving the holy grail of branding--being all things to all markets.
The fastest and surest was to displease everyone is to try and please everyone.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
The nonsense about AdSense
Remember how in US airports a person could be denied to take a flight, but due to "national security" wasn't allowed to see which law was applied? "National security". Um... yeah. Right.
Well, Google can remove your membership because of "Click fraud", but due to "trade secret" you weren't allowed to see the fraudulent traffic.
Um... yeah. Right.
Google Beer. I can hardly wait!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'm not knocking Google. I've been using it as a search engine since the beginning. However their financial stats scare the hell out of me. A stock price of over $400 per share. A market cap of $122 BILLION (Microsoft is $281 billion; Apple $58 billion)and a P/E of more than 80. An investor should be veryyy cautious about playing with this one.
From the article: Google Entertainment? Yeah, its DNA can do that...
Google Hardware? Genetic mission accomplished... The stem-cell question for prospective consumers is, Where would you prefer to buy this hardware...?
Guys like the author are the reason scientific terms get degraded and clouded in the mind of the public. £10 says this guy couldn't give a coherent description of DNA, stem cells OR why he thinks they apply to the business world.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
"web X.X" Death by anime face overload?
And Toyata Cars can use their brand recognition to sell Toyota Chocolate, so what?
DNA analogies. They are so true.
- drink Google Beer?
- wear Google Glasses?
- drive a Googlemobile?
- see a movie at the Googleplex?
- wear Google #5 parfum?
- wipe with "don't squeeze the Google!"
--- Corporations Are A Fad.
"What naysayers don't understand is that the DNA of the Google brand is unlike anything ever seen in the modern market landscape. Google is actually the first company with a brand that is built entirely of stem cells: able to grow and develop into whatever form it sees fit."
I'm not really sure what DNA has to do with stem cells in this sense. The first sentence implies we're going to hear about Google's "parents", perhaps the companies the employees worked at before coming to Google. The following sentence about stem cells is comlpetely unrelated, as DNA isn't really what makes stem cells interesting, especially not in this case.
I know it's kind of nitpicky, but frankly it's annoying to see this kind of stuff when the audience is relatively scientifically well-versed, at least compared to the general public.
I dunno, I'm always suspicious of someone claiming we've reached some sort of philosophical (or marketing, business, educations, military, scientific, literary, etc) "endpoint".
Businesses go through cycles of "diversification" (hey, I worked for a freight forwarder that owned gold shares in RSA) followed by "focus" (when someone asks why a car maker owns resort hotels and travel agencies). The business MODEL in general might go through meta-versions of these cycles, where diverse, widely ranging businesses are successful and rewarded in the marketplace and then eventually constrict to where narrow-focus seems to be preferable.
Google is a great company, as far as I can tell. Kind of the "Magical Trevor" of the business world...for now.
-Styopa
They grow everywhere. They are showy and fun for kids to play with. They are showy and superficially attractive, but in reality are destructive weeds that need to be mercilessly extirpated. They can lead to false conclusions, such as that there must be a way to brew wine from analogies. In the end, their seeds are carried by the wind and, thus, they blow.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Sounds like the basic principle behind all human success.
Our species survived by outsmarting and overwhelming its game. Coming from all directions, cutting off an animals exits except over a cliff or into the spike lined pit. Spears and fire just helped drive the animal. Until those weapons became more advanced.
Today, the military tries to do the same thing; Come from every direction, with so many different weapons, so many different strategies, each co-opted for their strengths that the enemy can't challenge them. Of course when not all the exits are covered, the enemy squeezes itself into whatever style can continue to combat, like terrorism.
Finally, Google is (trying) to do the same thing, trying every strategy and good that they can do well, each individually improving and co-opting themselves/each other. Inadvertantly, this also squeezes out Google's competition, giving them even more room to operate.
While eventually the success of so many different strategies will meld into a more singular path, limiting innovation, until it does it will be good.
Demented But Determined.
"it\'s" == "it is" && "its" == "possessive"
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
But, in some countries it would only run on government approved roads. In other countries it would run on all roads, but report back to the government where you've been.
--
Someone had to say it.
Others have pointed out that this article is very hyperbolic, but Google itself is built entirely on hyperbole. It is perhaps the greatest con job ever perpetrated on Wall Street and the business community, and on its own terms. Look at what Google has become. Google is just Yahoo more than five years ago, just with a better interface and a stronger marketing brand.
Let's look at the main services Google has rolled out: Search, News, Mail, Maps are the principle ones. All available on Yahoo fairly quickly after the Web took off. Image Search and Froogle - I'm not necessarily sure that Yahoo had these linked off their main site, but such search engines for images and pricing did exist back when Yahoo had reached critical mind share and Google was relatively unknown. It's arguable as to whether the improved interfaces are because of good design, or more capable Web browsers (I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between).
This is not to impugn Google's business acumen. In fact, they have proven themselves most capable in this respect. Heck, they were even dictating to Wall Street how their IPO would go. But the bottom line is that Google has offered absolutely nothing truly new that wasn't available years and years ago when you look at the big picture of service offerings. They are simply another Web portal, which were in vogue around 1997 or so. I know people will come out of the wood work saying well they have this beta lab app that Yahoo didn't have, but, you know what? That's a beta lab app. Until they roll it out and no one else has it, big deal, and, from a business perspective, is there actually a revenue stream there or is it just a technical novelty? The only actual significant thing that Google does that makes money is sell text ads.
The question now becomes how long can Google keep this marketing charade up before people realize it's just another Web portal and move on? So far, so good, but keep your fingers crossed.
heheeheee, whenever I think about Yamaha I imagine a keyboard strapped to the handlebars of a motorbike... and you play it to steer it.
Maybe I'm losing it...
...are not inextricably linked, but in this case they should be. When people start talking about companies in terms of grand metaphors like stem cells and "all things to all markets," it's time to abort the stock. The days of meaningful growth are peaking.
Call it the business analysts' version of jumping the shark.
Happy Days and Long Nights -
- Supergus
is so cool it's just like . was the old way of doing things in . Didn't we use Madlibs during the dotcom bubble?
At Google, most new ideas are dreamed up and implemented by individual contributors. That's why the search engine keeps getting cool new features without any prior notice. That's a good way to drive innovation. Problem is, that leaves everybody doing what they feel like doing, and nobody doing the boring stuff like adding the uninteresting things that make a mature product, or making sure that every obscure syntax feature is properly documented.
The result is a company that seems to announce some really cool product or feature every week — but hardly ever produces a mature version of anything. Gmail, Google maps, all the little tools built into the search engine... These are all really power, innovative, useful, widely imitated products and features. But they're all badly documented, or very much a beta product (I don't just mean they have a "beta" label, I mean lacking in basic features) or both. Excusable when these things were pushed out the door — but some of them have been in "beta" mode for years.
So the stem cell comparison is actually pretty apt — in both a positive and negative sense. The positive sense is that you have a lot of people creating stuff on their own initiative. The negative sense is that these are not healthy stem cells.
Healthy stem cells work because they each have a complete plan of the human body, and can fill in wherever they're needed. Google stem cells just go and do what they think is important, and have no sense of the needs of the company as a whole.
Amazingly, it's actually working.
Google doesn't...
- Compile my code
- Index and store my code
- Back up my sensitive information
- Provide my game content or hardware
- Serve as my rendering engine or have any other graphics role
- Have anything to do with my cell phone
- Handle my email
- Provide my browser
- Search my local content
It's a pretty good search engine...but that's pretty much it. Even though Google COULD provide serve some of those needs listed above, the average geek has better tools for each function anyway.
i thought Hello Kitty was the first brand that was into everything. everything from erasers to vibrators.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
the founders and CEO understand something about orders of magitude and numerical quantities. The CEO and founders yearly salary are 1 dollar, because they know that their fortunes are worth $12B - enough money to take care of their great great grandchildren. (and then some) These guys are fundamentally intelligent starting from top management. Imagine if only more CEOs were as intelligent and exercised as much wisdom.
You made Google and the Google PR people happy for bringing in more web-clicks to their Press Hit.
Actually, any stem cell continues spawning adult cells until it fails due to DNA degradation or expiration of its host's body. It's the offspring that become static and expendable.
AlpineR
Sorries for using the word "propaganda". But anything that distorts a picture is propaganda, keeping in mind that propaganda is not always about furnishing false statements. False percepts can be rendered even when furnishing entirely true statements. The article is built on rhetoric that has no purpose or value. Aren't a lot of companies adaptive? Stem cell analogy? WTF? Consider this sentence:"The Google Video Store currently competes with Apple's iTunes, which for the time being is more user-friendly and has a substantially larger market-share. But given Google's distribution network -- either through Froogle or its Google Base -- the market-share gap could narrow in a hurry." IS the writer kidding? iTunes is not just some store that currently happens to have a larger market-share that Froogle and Google Base would compete with, just like that. iTunes is a fashion statement that every teen needs to make. iTunes is "cool". GBase and Froogle won't take it out just like that. The writer fails to mention that as Google broadens into more services it's reach and use also dilute. In order to rock this world Google needs more than engineers. It needs visionaries like Steve Jobs who understand media and design and fads and all those rhetorical things that us digiratis disregard because we are logical and precise. Unfortunately, the rest of the world is not.
Google's revenue last year was $6B. In the recent Forture 500, let's say you combine Google revenue with Yahoo and eBay. The combined company is less than *one tenth* the 2005 revenue of Exxon ($~350B, yes billion). Google will always be an information parlayer, though probably a pretty good one. Will it ever be the most powerful company in the US? Not in our lifetimes, if ever.
Totally makes sense. Zawinski is an oss zealot. Well I guess they are serious about getting into entertainment.
"The only brand that tries to be everything to everyone". What about Richard Branson's Virgin Enterprises? Not as successful or cool as Google these days, but he certainly tries. He's also pretty successful on an absolute level.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
When somebody comes up with a better search engine goog will topple quickly. Also it would be nice for them to do more product branding for the items they are selling. ( an image of a coke bottle instead of a square blue background for an add)
Hello Cruel World
"Stem cells" are the best and the brightest engineers and, although I've heard that google hires such talent, I was rather disappointed when I actually went through their interview process. Basically, I met 5-6 people, many of which were Ph.D.'s but some of which had dropped out, and all of them asked me the same inane questions: implement BFS in C on the board, implement a linked-list on the board, implement some-other-stupid-algorithm-for-which-you-would-no rmally-just-download-some-code on the board...
I was thinking "if I really have to do this kind of thing on the job, I don't want this job." And anybody who nails these questions because they think about these kinds of things on a daily basis is by definition NOT the best and the brightest; they are code monkeys. so, google is hiring a bunch of code monkeys with (or without) Ph.D.'s. I don't see how that equates to "stem cells."
I am doing top research (or so I think) at a top cs Ph.D. program in the country, and had several ideas that I thought would really help the company, but nobody asked me about these nor did I have the opportunity to talk to anybody about any interesting ideas whatsoever. It seems that google will hire anybody who can win a speed coding contest, but "stem cells" are people who can figure out *what* to implement, not just *how* to implement it.
Frankly, I sold my google stock after going through their interview process, because I don't see google continuing its old growth with the kind of people they are currently hiring.
"Oh, and for those who don't want to be tied to their laptops to call Mom, fear not: Google Talk engineers are hinting at new mobile versions of the software in the months ahead." Because I really want to use Google Talk to voice chat on my cell phone...when I can just use my cell phone. What is google going to come up with next? Google Toaster that runs on toasters?
First, Exxon's operating costs are surely many times what Google's are. Servers and bandwidth are cheap compared to moving oil tankers around.
But second, and much more importantly, you're measuring power ("the most powerful company in the US") in terms of dollars. When you consider the number of people that use Google for information, suddenly it becomes much more powerful than a simplistic numbers game reveals. A slight tweak here improves this company's visibility immeasurably; a slight tweak there shoves a webpage into obscurity. Censorship, control of who sees what, determination of market visibility.. I'm not saying Google does or would do any of these things, but they could, and that makes them immensely powerful.
Whether they ever become "the most powerful country in America" is almost irrelevent -- and that's probably not even their goal. But don't make the mistake of using raw revenue as a useful metric. Plenty of companies rake in billions of dollars annually, but ultimately don't do much other than act as useless middlemen.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
I'm sorry but I just don't buy it. Google's revenue is made up something like 99% from AdWords revenue - an advertising channel.
I fail to see how they'd adapt in (which I don't think will happen) a market where advertising spending drops - be it through a general economic downturn or the next "Google" appearing delivering a better service. In fact, I'd probably expect to see them to what any other company would do - downsize.
Right now I'm baffled by the number of employees they have there, and the tiny developments we see (as the public). They have something like 5,000 employees and so far their revenue continues to derive from their original success - AdWords.
I have a theory that the Larry & Co are smart enough to see that their market perception is as important as products. This is what made Google as big as it is today, and it in turn drives people to their search engine, which delivers revenue.
They are also smart enough to realise (like the Middle East) that their ride isn't a guaranteed one longterm, and in amassing 5,000 of the greatest minds they essentially incubate further potential ideas and at the same time generate a "Willy Wonka-esque" mystery about them. Everyone always asks "what are they doing with 5,000 people?" and with AdWords, Earth (bought), and other labs projects, I'd probably say just trying to brainstorm and invent while they have time (which is reinforced by the personal research time they all have).
I personally see Yahoo! as a safer bet than Google given it has a more diverse revenue stream. Google is smart, don't get me wrong - they realise they have to do more to be safe. Especially when they are no longer the The Next Big Thing.
You could say the same thing about Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, or EBay. The web is becoming a superstore for all information, entertainment, and communications. Google just happens to have the best search engine and the highest stock price right now. There is nothing preventing many other companies from competing with Google.
Todays closing price for GOOG: $409.66 per share.
Time to sell.
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
I think what Google do is very plannable business. It (will) covers every system on internet, then next time it would be a Google Cybercity. I'd like to be Google citizen. :)