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August 24, 2005
Maybe Google should move its headquarters to Bentonville
That way, they could commiserate with the folks down there about how much resentment a successful company faces.
Ok, I jest, but before you laugh it off, read this (NY Times).
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 23 - For years, Silicon Valley hungered for a company mighty enough to best Microsoft. Now it has one such contender: the phenomenally successful Google.
But instead of embracing Google as one of their own, many in Silicon Valley are skittish about its size and power. They fret that the very strengths that made Google a search-engine phenomenon are distancing it from the entrepreneurial culture that produced it - and even transforming it into a threat.
...
"I've definitely been picking up on the resentment," said Max Levchin, a founder of PayPal, the online payment service now owned by eBay. "They're a big company now, doing things people didn't expect them to do."
Like make a lot of cool stuff and give it away.
For the moment, at least, Google is aiming for that most coveted position in technology: a platform that, like Microsoft's operating system, is so popular that outside software developers write programs, and Web developers build new Google-related services, that render the Google home page indispensable to the personal computer ecosystem.
I don't want to repeat the whole article, and there is much more than I have excerpted here, so do read it all. For my part, Google seems to be doing a lot of things right. Fears of them taking over the computer world are probably blown out of proportion. Other good ideas will spring from the fertile ground of Silicon Valley. After all, it wasn't long ago when folks might have laughed at Google for thinking they could be a threat to Microsoft. Which brings me to one more good quote from the article.
"When I meet with venture capitalists, or if I'm engaged in a conversation about going into partnership with someone, inevitably the question is, 'Why couldn't Google do what you're doing?' " said Craig Donato, the founder and chief executive of Oodle, a site for searching online classified listings more quickly.
"The answer is, 'They could, and they're probably thinking about it, but they can't do everything and do it well,' " Mr. Donato said. "Or at least I'm hoping they can't."
Go get 'em, Mr. Donato.
Capitalism. Ain't it grand?
Posted by William Polley at August 24, 2005 11:21 AM
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Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air
go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.
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Posted by: gary lammert at August 24, 2005 12:56 PM