Chapter 13. Conclusion
Within the last seven days, Google has altered and augmented my perceptions of tulips, mind control, Japanese platform shoes, violent African dictatorships, 3-D high-definition wallpaper, spicy chicken dishes, tiled hot tubs, biological image-processing schemes, Chihuahua hygiene, and many more critical topics. Clearly, thanks to Google, I am not the man I was seven days ago.[]
—John Gaeta, visual effects supervisor, the Matrix trilogy
Imagine doing that for someone? Imagine doing that for 90 million people a day? Larry Page and Sergey Brin can say they have changed the world. Their story, and that of Google, makes one of the most interesting tales of this century or the best "so far," as admits Brin, "the number-one factor that has contributed to our success over the past seven years has been luck."[]
It has been a dramatic journey from when Page and Brin celebrated milestones by going to Burger King for hamburgers and when they played roller hockey in the parking lot with employees. Those were the good-old-days. Google has moved on to the good new days and to a time when it has enormous responsibility to the public, to employees, and to shareholders.
"There are people who think we are plenty full of ourselves right now, but from inside at least, it doesn't look that way," said Craig Silverstein, Google's technology director and its first employee. "I think what keeps us humble is realizing how much further we have to go."[]
Google also presents one of the most perplexing paradoxes of our time. We love Google, we use it obsessively, we bare our souls to it. The information makes us healthier, wealthier, and wiser. Information is the underpinning of personal and political freedom.
On the other hand, we don't understand how Google really works. It feels as if it knows too much about us and has too much control over us. We are suspicious of it. The whole process of search and search-related advertising challenges age-old concepts of personal privacy. When it comes to property rights, Google seems to have the attitude, "What's mine is mine; what's yours is mine."
"As a corporation," wrote BusinessWeek, "it's often a cipher, its intentions and methods concealed by algorithms that look impenetrable and impersonal. Yet the search engine and the blockbuster business built atop it utterly depends upon millions of people sharing through searches their most intimate desires, and upon thousands of businesses willing to open their data storehouses to feed Google's voracious digital maw."[]
The question that most people ask about the company is, "Do they really do no evil?" It is their oft-stated intention not to do evil, and very likely they don't do evil on purpose. But the Google guys are human, and Google is a complex business. Different people have different definitions of evil. In its dozen years of existence, Google has changed its own definition of right and wrong. Originally, the founders refused to offer horoscopes, financial advice, or chat. Horoscopes were considered bogus, financial advice often suspect, and chat superfluous. They originally claimed not to accept pornography advertisements, but then such ads would mysteriously appear. Those ideals have long gone by the wayside.
Ah, well, evil happens.
Writing in Canada's The Globe and Mail newspaper, Matt Harley and Grant Robertson insist that "Google is a work in progress, and always will be. The Mountain View, Calif., Company exists in a state of perpetual beta, and it's a corporate philosophy that has helped drive the company's seeming boundless innovation."[]
As long as the company continues with high profitability and outstanding growth, it can get away with a lot of missteps and mistakes. But once those two measurements of success lag, it will deal with the same harsh judgments other mature companies must face. In fact, some of those criticisms have begun.
Trip Chowdhry, a senior analyst at Global Equities Research, claims that being the king of search won't be enough to sustain Google over the long term: "Name me anything they've been successful in besides search," Chowdhry asks. "I think the board and management of Google needs a total overhaul."[]
Certainly investors have signaled their doubts about Google. The stock started 2008 off strong with shares hovering above $690—slightly below the all-time high of $747.24 as of November 2007. But as 2008 progressed, the company's stock plunged 56 percent, partly because of fears that its revenue growth would tank. Google's core business has in fact slowed, but held up reasonably well during the 2008 to 2009 financial turmoil.
Despite the legitimate fears, Google remains a stable organization and a trusted brand with a strong franchise. The number of searches done on Google grows every month.
Its ad revenues have also been on a fast track. In 2007, Google outstripped every other media company, whether it was the Web, TV, print, or radio. Google's ad revenues outstripped 17 major media businesses, including News Corp, Time Warner Cable, Viacom, Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL, the New York Times, and CBS Radio. Online ad revenue for these 17 companies grew 9 percent that year, while total online revenues grew 28 percent. Google's online ad revenues grew 44 percent compared with 15 percent for the combined online ad revenues of Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL.[] Revenue growth declined slightly in 2008 and was expected to slide more in 2009. Still, Google leads its pack and continues to rake in the money. The positive side of the company far, far outweighs the negative.[]
Eric Schmidt announced a defensive plan for Google but said he was bullish about the economic outlook for Silicon Valley companies.
"This is the sixth or seventh cycle I've seen in Silicon Valley. I think we're better positioned than ever." Then he placed the blame squarely on the area's terrific weather, and Larry Page agreed:
"I don't think there's anywhere else you'd rather be. We're investors in Tesla, for example. It's pretty amazing you can drive an electric car with a 220-mile range. Those are produced here. I don't see those anywhere else in the world."[]
Silicon Valley is amazing, but before the end of 2008, Google announced it was trimming overhead and laying off much of its 10,000-strong contract workforce. Even Tesla, with its backlog of sales to movie stars and industry moguls, felt the pinch.
Admittedly, Google's survival is anything but guaranteed. The company operates in a quick-changing, highly competitive environment—it is involved in a global scientific and economic boxing match. Yet, if the founders continue to be as cautious and crafty as they have been in the past, they will prosper. "Google will keep pushing the envelope," predicted writer John Battelle. "It's one of the things that seems to make them happy."[]