Rattle wrote:

Behemoth search engine Google signaled an even further climb to the top of the Internet mountain Thursday with its announcement that Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the Internet, is joining the company as its 'chief Internet evangelist.'

This is some kind of milestone.

At this point, Google has more brains in one place than anyone can possibly know what to do with. What are they going to do? I picture a situation where they become so dense they fall in on themselves in some giant think-tank black hole. Unless they can keep all these people busy, they are going to simply be well paid bored people. That might have unintended negative effects. Either that, or Google is on its way to become a monastery like church of technology.

I've heard both good and bad things about their culture. I don't buy fully into either take on it. Its going to be interesting to see what happens. I think they have the integrity to keep trying to follow their "don't be evil" mantra, but can they? Not doing what you are capable of is a form of evil, because you hold the resources back from the rest of the world. Its a page from Microsoft, and hopefully not the one Google is flipping to.

Well, I wouldn't get too excited about hiring Cerf. The guy is a good guy and all, but he's a bit of a whore when it comes to this sort of thing. I realize that when you're the father of something, you basically have a free ticket to do whatever you want. But you don't see Tim Berners-Lee doing this shit. You only seem to see Cerf and Alan Kay trying to one up each other on who has the cushiest job at the hottest stock at the moment. So far, Cerf's done a much better job.

As for compiling all of those brains into one place, that's unsustainable. First, consider the dynamics:

Google has a shitload of cash. More than it can possibly know what to do with. The funny thing about cash when you have a lot of it? You tend to waste it on shit. Why worry about what you're spending? You've got plenty! This dynamics makes people lazy and unfocused on profitability. That tends to spell death, especially if allowed to fester in the culture for a long time and then something bad happens (like a market disappears). Even if you were diligent about managing your cash, it's still very hard work and it's very hard to create a reasonable return on it. Look at Microsoft or even Apple. Microsoft had to finally cave in and give investors a dividend because they couldn't figure out with all of their brains what to invest that money in that could yield a high enough return to make people happy. Google is now managing more cash than most VC funds have. That can be a significant drain on resources and decision making.

Speaking of decision making, I've got to believe that Rattle's gaze into the future is probably correct. All organizations have political battles. All organizations have tensions and tugging at the resources, attention, and direction of the company. When you interject this many smart and ambitious people into an organization, add a lot of pressure to do something "amazing", and stir gently with the notion that Google is still just barely not a startup, then you have a recipe for disaster. You've probably been in a situation where you were in a company that had a successful business and was making the transition into another business line, or launching a new product that was different from the old, or maybe they acquired someone. There's always the new world versus the old world, the mature cash making operating unit that's floating the company versus the new fangled internal startup that's consuming cash. This dichotomy tends to destroy most companies from the inside out. Now imagine having 5+ of those going on at the same time. The turf battles must be outrageous. Just because you have 'smart people' all over the place doesn't mean that you don't have human nature. In fact, I'd venture to say that you have more problems of that type, because you have far more people who are clever at trying to make a name for themselves and create their legacy. Think Xerox PARC or Apple before Steve came back. Not good.

So I love the idea that Google is trying to pursue. That once you create enough momentum, you can go off and do some really big and interesting things. Things that ought to be done, but somehow don't because of a lack of resources, vision, or moxie. But the failing is that you can't escape gravity in the business world. Even the most vigilent and wildly successful companies have caved into the black hole. I do play the stock though, since it tends to bounce $5-$10 per week. But I'd never go long.

RE: Google says `Cerf`s Up`