DMV at MemeStreams has a theory that I find both shocking and believable, that Google borrowed against its tax rate the previous three quarters, leaving us with the whopping tax rate in the final quarter.

To my knowledge, this is the first Memestream citation I've had to a blog that I read. Just a little shocking to see that in the aggregator. I suppose this was a trackback system of some sort.

As for the subject matter: I have not done any of the research needed to make this assertion; or at least, make it stick. I had a long talk with Bucy @ { Memestreams, Google } about this last night, and should restate: this was not necessarily evil. As one of Nathan's readers asserted, Google is still a young company; while they are oozing tech talent, the company lacks structure and discipline. What I mean is that they have enough brains, computational power and coding talent that their financial control could put State Street (several trillion dollars flows through their system every day) to shame. I believe most of Googles revenue comes through their automated systems, and I can't see why their expenses wouldn't be automated as well. Having that level of control -- knowing what their money statements look like at any given instance -- fits with the model people like me carry for how Google could be.

But tying back to the monoculture post of yesterday, they lack the discipline and structure that this would be obvious. If they were IBM -- if IBM's cash flow and operating expenses were so simple -- I would assume they had such a system. But Google may not be hiring and placing people into making their money counting operations as slick as their money makers. They know how to evaluate a PhD in CS for her ability to come up with good algorithms and ideas on improving search, GIS, email, etc. But we're not going to see gAccountant soon.

It still sounds funny to me.